…from a reader
This is the birth story of my now five month old son, Landon. I was due the first of January and of course everyone was excited!!
My dad came from Arizona for a week and said that he wouldn’t be able to come back for at least a year, so I had to have him that week; talk about pressure! I waited a few days, I really wanted Landon to come on his own.
I walked for hours, tried to go on a hike, ate lots of special “labor” foods and drank more than my share of raspberry tea. Nothing was working and my time frame for my dad to be here for his grandson’s birth was quickly closing. I went last to my last resort, castor oil! YUCK!
Well, like most, I went to the bathroom till I couldn’t go anymore, and eventually was able to go to sleep. About four hours, around 1 a.m. I woke with painful contractions. My fiance and I were not sure if this was the real deal, we called the obgyn and everyone and we didn’t get a call back for two hours!!
Chris’ mom finally called around 3 or 4 a.m. and told us to go to the hospital, thankfully it is literally two minutes away from our house. Once I got to the hospital and things started going I found out I was already 4cm dialted! Yes!!
I had planned on going natural, I was bound and determined, maybe even desperate. The doctor broke my water (talk about nasty feeling). I hated having to walk and go to the bathroom while in labor, it was so uncomfortable.
Twelve hours later, I was only to 5cm and they gave me pictocin, more pictocin, and then even more. It send my contractions off the charts I tried my hardest but I eventually ended up getting the epidural, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be at all! I was laughing with the nurses about how funny the epidural guy was and they told me his name was Peter Pan, that’s one of my favorite parts.
Eventually we get to where I can start pushing, that was really, REALLY hard. My whole pregnancy my son stayed under my ribs and bruised them and when I went to push he went back to his favorite place under my ribs. It felt like when you walk for a long time and you get that terrible pain, I tried so hard for what felt like thirty minutes.
Two and a half hours later the doctor came to tell me that it would take another 2 and a half to three hours for him to be pushed out and if I couldn’t do it, then I would need a c-section. I was devastated. I had been hard at work for nearly 26 hours and then I felt backed into a corner, forced to have surgery! I had never had surgery before, and was especially upset because of the personal nature.
They numbed me, but I could feel them moving my body parts around, Landon being pulled out and me being stapled back together, it wasn’t painful but the sensation is definitely not one I’d want to repeat.
Finally my handsome 8 lbs. 14.5oz. son was handed over to me and it was like a wave washed over me, I felt nothing but euphoria. Now that we’re past the tough first two months we are really starting to see our son blossoming as the person he is going to grow up to be. We may be young parents but I would never go back to my old life. We have purpose and meaning now greater than ourselves and its so much better that a monotonous ho-hum life.