Little Miss Mae. Miss Maeberry. Currently the runt of our little litter.
Just like with my other two, I had been having contractions with Mae very, very regularly (at least a few an hour if not more) for weeks. They got worse when I walked or got stressed out. They kept me up at nights. They were fairly regular.
I went in to see the midwife a few days before Mae was born, and she was concerned about the number of contractions I was having so early (I was not quite yet 35 weeks at the time.) I had to go to my grandfather’s wake that evening, so I was praying that she would stay in just a bit longer. But when the midwife went to check, I actually hadn’t dilated at all. This was a relief because I absolutely did not want to miss the wake and the funeral. But still — zero centimeters? Who wants to hear that after a month of strong contractions?
So I went home and continued on with my weekend. A few days later, I went in to see my perinatologist and he noticed that my blood sugars were dropping. (I have pcos, and I get gestational diabetes although I am not otherwise diabetic.) Blood sugars are never supposed to start decreasing during pregnancy, diabetic or not, so he was a bit concerned. And they were low enough where I was waking up in the middle of the night shaking, with my sugars in the low – mid fifties. That’s pretty low.
Anyway, he told me to go home and give it one more night. If it kept happening though, he said I would need to be induced because lower sugars meant that the placenta wasn’t secreting as much of the hormones and that it was probably starting to fail.
I went home and went to bed later that evening just to be woken up a few hours later to the now familiar shaking and nausea. Looks like we might have a baby soon, I told TJ after I had eaten to raise my sugars.
We went to bed and called the perinatologist the next morning. It was a bit of back and forth between him and our regular obgyn, but eventually, they told me to come in for an amnio to check the maturity of her lungs since we were just shy of 36 weeks. I was a bit disappointed because I had my sights set on an all natural birth like I had had with Goosie, but there are some times when induction really is medically necessary, and I believed and still do believe that this was one of those times.
We went in for the amnio, and the dr was fairly certain by the looks of it that the tests would come back saying her lungs were mature, and that is what happened a few hours later. We were told to come to the hospital at 7pm.
The rest of the day was a bit of a blur. We dropped Magoo off at preschool and had the joy of telling everyone there that we were going to have a baby soon. And then we went home, grabbed our stuff, dropped the girls and the dog off at my parent’s house, and headed to the hospital.
I remember when we got there that Modern Family was on and that Gloria was going into labor on the show. I remember how I was shaking with anticipation in the waiting room, waiting to be checked in. I saw all of the people sitting there waiting for the sleep studies, and I thought how lucky I was that I was going in to have a baby.
Finally, we got settled into our room, and I got the dreaded hospital gown on (I still say labor would be so very much better in my own clothes, but they wouldn’t agree,) and I got hooked up.
Unlike with my first induction, I was not dilated, so I needed Cervadil that evening which meant that I couldn’t walk around for at least an hour. Still, I requested the portable contraction monitor so that when the time came, I could walk around and help things progress.
I still had all I had learned a few years back from the Bradley classes stuck in my head, and I still thought I wanted to go without pain relief.
I had remembered how glorious it felt to give birth to Goosie. I remembered how I was amazed at what I accomplished for months and months after she was born. But I also remembered that unyielding pain of transition and how my heart was filled with pain rather than excitement as she was ushered into the world. And I also knew that this birth would be a lot different than Goosie’s because of the induction and because of the prematurity, and I wasn’t sure I would be able to maintain the peaceful center necessary to birth naturally in the midst of all of the interventions that had already happened.
So back to the story.
They gave me the Cervadil, and the contractions started immediately, and they were strong. I had to lay in bed which was so unpleasant, but I was hoping that since I had been having contractions for so many weeks that the Cervadil would do its job and I wouldn’t need the Pitocin.
Nope. No such luck. The contractions continued throughout the night, and they continued to get stronger, but they weren’t regular enough to avoid Pitocin.
Slowly throughout the night, it became apparent to me that this was NOT going to be the natural birth I had hoped for. I ended up having IV narcotics on two separate occasions. They wouldn’t let me sit up or move around because the monitor would fall off, and so I was laboring under very heavy contractions flat on my back, and anyone who has been through labor knows that this position makes it loads harder. Add to that the fact that I was exhausted and I needed some relief to help me sleep.
The narcotics made me loopy. Really loopy. TJ still jokes about it. I remember telling him that it was like I was in a dream. One side was a dream and the other was real life, and I could walk through the door from one to the other, and I could put my hand in dream world and the rest of my body in the real world.
This experience taught me that it was very good that I had never experimented with illegal narcotics at any point in my life because I surely could not handle them.
This ended up being my longest labor because it took awhile for it to get started. Finally though the Pitocin started to work, and the contractions actually got a lot milder. I could handle these contractions. But I also vividly remembered the pain at the end with Goosie and I kept weighing my options.
Finally, at a point when they were actually at their weakest, but I was dilated to three centimeters, I ended up getting the epidural. I knew it would take a bit for the doctor to get there, and I also knew that she would more than likely be born within an hour or two, so I bit the bullet and got the epidural before the pain got unbearable. This already wasn’t my natural birth; I might as well just get the pain relief.
And then I got happy.
They botched my epidural with Magoo and made it much, much too strong. But this one was just right. I could move my legs, but I couldn’t feel pain.
The time line gets a bit fuzzy at this point.
I do remember that eventually (maybe an hour or so after the epidural) that I started to feel intense pressure. I called the nurse in and she told me I was at a five. Okay, I thought. Time to call the doctor. This is going to go quick. But this nurse decided not to listen to me and my knowledge that this was all going to go very quickly.
A couple of minutes later, I told her I thought the baby was coming. No, she said. You’re fine; you’re only a five. But there was another nurse in the room, and she told her to check me again. So she checked and I was an eight. Okay, about time to push, I thought. Nope. This lady told me she would go call the doctor and it would still be awhile because I was at an eight not a ten.
No, I told her. This baby is coming NOW. Again she didn’t believe me, and again the other nurse told her I could be at a ten, so she checked, and sure enough, Mae was ready to come out. I had had two previous babies and every time, once I hit five centimeters, birth was imminent. I really wanted to tell her, “I told you so.”
And then things got a bit too dramatic for my tastes. The doctor was no where in sight.
“Just breathe through the contractions,” the nurse kept telling me. And I told her that I could breathe as much as she would like but that this baby was going to come whether I was hyperventilating or holding my breath. I couldn’t keep her in.
They started talking about other doctors who were in the building to deliver, but no one was moving. Finally the NICU nurses got there (because she was premature, ) and I felt okay. Doctor or no doctor, this baby could come out; I could catch her if these ladies decided that they had to wait, and then the NICU could make sure she was okay.
Luckily that wasn’t necessary because my doctor showed up one minute later. She ran in the room, put on the gown, sat down and…
Nothing.
The contractions stopped.
I felt like an idiot after yelling for ten minutes that she was coming out.
But then they picked up almost immediately again, and like with the other two, three pushes, and there she was, all eight pounds of her. Just as gorgeous as her older two sisters and as healthy as they were as well.
Looking back on this, I started to question my decisions. Did I make the right decision in regards to pain medications.
But there is one moment that answers that.
It was as we were waiting for the doctor. I would have about ten seconds between contractions, and I remember TJ standing over me, holding my hand, and tears coming to both of our eyes as we realized that we were about to meet our baby girl.
We didn’t have that moment with the other two. With Magoo, I was too overwhelmed by the enormity of the situation, and with Goose, I was too overwhelmed by the sheer physical power of the situation. But here, this third time, I felt it.
Throughout the whole labor, that is the moment I will remember most. The moment we knew we were going to meet her. That moment of anticipation. The moment we knew that she would become a part of our family just as she had been a part of our hearts for months now.
In that regards, the third time was the charm.
So those are my birth stories. I have now shared all three with you. All three are very different, but all three have become a part of who I am. I hope one days the girls look back on these stories and realize just how loved they were from the moment they entered this world.
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