Heidi’s Birth Story
Born: February 13, 2019 at 9:09 am
9 lbs 5 oz, 21 in long, 15 in head circumference
Heidi Caroline Thompson
My parents arrived in McCall February 5 to help, 3 days after Heidi’s due date. I was pretty tired and exhausted after a week of Annalise being the sickest she has ever been in her life (poor baby) and very needy (poor me). In addition, I had also caught some sort of sickness that caused my sinuses to flare up, 2-3 days of fatigue and sinus pressure and headaches as well as pretty bad congestion. I was worried that I wouldn’t get better by the time baby came.
This next week was very uncomfortable. I felt like we were in a waiting game. Some days I had contractions, tons of pelvic pain, cramping, and lots of back pain. Other days I would go on 2 miles hikes/walks and feel relatively fine. Many nights I would have “false alarms” where I would go to bed thinking that I was going to go into labor and then wake up and be fine. It was emotionally exhausting! I also felt bad for my parents, who had flown out here and the time was ticking before their return flight. Not to mention all of people’s (well-meaning) annoying comments. I felt like a freak show and like everyone was wondering how I was still pregnant. I tried to say, “It’s normal to be late” but I doubted myself too because people seemed to be so shocked. People also would make comments like, “Well when I was pregnant, I went on a walk and that started labor. Have you tried that??” which got annoying because I was walking most days and it did nothing for me. I also started to feel like my body had some sort of defect because nothing was happening.
I had a doctor’s appointment at 41 weeks and he told me that most women go into labor during the three days after 41 weeks if they make it that far. So I built up this expectation that I would probably go into labor in that three day window. I even lost my mucus plug and lots of mucus on Sunday morning (8 days late) after a very vigorous walk but I didn’t go into labor! I was so shocked! I got my membranes swept three times, twice by my normal doctor and once by another doctor who was much more aggressive and left me crying and traumatized. None of the times sent me into labor. They also did a non-stress test on the baby and confirmed that she was fine and there was enough fluid in there, which put calmed my concerns about the baby not being okay in there. I also felt movement pretty frequently and so I knew she was most likely fine.
Pretty soon, Wednesday rolls around, 11 days late. Past the 41-and-three-days-late window. I had an appointment with my doctor to talk about a plan. I almost started crying in the appointment when I asked why my body wasn’t doing anything. He suggested putting in a Foley tube, which mimics the baby’s head and puts pressure on the cervix to dilate it and/or soften it for Pitocin. He said often times a Foley tube will put some women into labor on its own 3-5 hours after insertion. In the group that doesn’t go into labor from the Foley tube alone, it usually still dilates the cervix and readies it for Pitocin for induction 12 hours later. Samuel and I headed over to the hospital a few hours later, around 3 pm, to get the Foley tube put in. We stayed in the hospital for an hour and then headed home around 5. I started having harder contractions that were getting closer and closer together while we played games at home with my parents. They were about 4-5 minutes apart for over an hour when I decided this was probably labor and we should head in to the hospital. It was around 7 pm when we got to the hospital and when I got there, I noticed my contractions all of a sudden were not as hard and not as close together. This was super disappointing to me and I felt really stupid when they put the device on me to measure my contractions. I still don’t know what happened. The doctor told me to walk around the halls for an hour and see if that would kick start them again, but I knew that the fact I could walk fast and didn’t have to stop for the contractions meant they were still easing up. The doctor was still optimistic and said it was a good sign my bod responded at all to the foley tube and that it was great to start piton with even mild contractions versus none. Around 8 pm they decided to have me stay at the hospital and rest since the Foley tube would need to be removed 12 hours after insertion (at 3:00 am the following morning). I tried to rest at the hospital until that time but I was still having mild contractions and cramps pretty regularly that, although not increasing in difficulty, still interrupted my sleep. I think I still slept a couple of hours though because when they came in at 3:00 am to take out the Foley tube, I woke up and was kind of in a daze.
They checked my dilation when they took out the tube and I was dilated to a 4.5, which was encouraging. Labor would be so much easier starting at 4.5 instead of at 1! (I was dilated to a 2.5 the weeks prior). They started me on Pitocin around 4:00 am and increased it by 1 unit every half hour in the beginning. My body responded well to it and I was having regular contractions after 1 unit that weren’t necessarily hard but they were consistent. The nurse said this was a great sign but I knew they weren't hard enough to do anything yet.
I told the nurses that I wanted to labor naturally but wasn’t totally against an epidural if I caved when it got hard. I asked for their suggestions and tips on natural childbirth and they were very supportive, giving me different ideas and positions as I labored. I was dilated to a 5 around 5:20 am when the doctor decided to break my water manually with something that looked like a huge crochet hook (literally). I felt a lot of water leak out but it wasn’t a huge gush so I was leaking for a while; I felt a gush with every contraction.
The contractions started to get more intense once my water was broken and I labored for a while in the tub. Pretty soon they started to get very intense at which point I got out and labored on a birthing ball. I started puking on myself and felt really uncomfortable. I knew I was probably at about a 7 at this point because that is how I felt during transition last time. They checked me and I was at a 7 at which point I mentioned that I wanted to get an epidural and I didn’t know if I could do it naturally. This was around 7:30 am. Part of me still felt like I wanted to go natural to see how it would be different and also to see if pushing would be faster and if I could do it. I asked the doctor how long it would take me to get to a 10 and he said most women dilate 1 cm per hour and I said, “I can’t do this for 3 hours!” He then said that, the way I was laboring, I would probably be dialted to that point in about an hour and a half. Who knows how he knew that.
We were also in the middle of a huge blizzard (I think 18 inches in town over that night and day!) and I doubted that the epidural guy could get there in time to make it worth it. He lived outside of town and the roads were not great. The doctor and nurses didn’t have the same concern and said he could get there on his snowmobile (haha). I think the hospital was short-staffed as it was that morning. One nurse couldn't come into work. I never really brought the epidural up again because I just decided to focus on one contraction at a time instead of the whole three hours. I could do one more contraction naturally! (this suggestion was my mom’s and was how I got through the labor this time around).
I labored in the bed for a while and felt pretty sick and exhausted. They offered me nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, as something to take the edge off and relax me a bit. I tried it for about 30 seconds but it made me feel suffocated and I didn’t like it. I tried the device that pumped the nitrous oxide just into my mouth (the other device covered my mouth and nose) but I ended up feeling suffocated again and almost puked into the tube. I think I only used it for a few seconds each time. Pretty soon I moved to my side and asked the nurse if she had another position that didn’t require me standing because I was getting tired. She brought over what they called “the magic peanut” which was basically a peanut-shaped inflated thing that you put between your legs while laying on your side. She said it really helps put the baby in position for labor and open the pelvic region. Immediately after getting in that position, I started to be in real pain, to which she said that meant that it was working. I could feel the baby moving down the birth canal and it was incredibly painful. I think I threw up again and was groaning and crying. Pretty soon after, I felt like I needed to push and told them I wanted to push. They checked my dilation and I was somewhere around a 9.5. The doctor said I needed to get through a few more contractions before pushing but the urge to push was so strong and I think he eventually manually moved the last lip of my cervix out of the way and said I could push if I felt like it and maybe it would move the baby down the canal faster! I was dilated to a 10 by 8:45 am.
They got me in position to labor with stirrups and prepared all the materials and I started to push at around 8:50 am. The doctor said it would probably go faster because I wasn’t a first-time mom and I didn’t get an epidural (although last time he said that the epidural wouldn’t slow it down, so I’m not quite sure what that meant). I started to push for three sets of 10 seconds once I reached the climax of each contraction. I was screaming and gripping the edges of the bed frame when they told me to try to not expend so much energy up top and instead try to channel my energy all to my butt area where the baby was. I could feel myself pooping and they said that meant that I was pushing in the right area! At this point, I didn’t really care that three people were staring at me poop and then wiping my butt. I could feel the baby coming closer to the cervix, which was incredibly painful but also more productive than when I had an epidural and couldn’t feel anything! Eventually they told me to grab my legs behind my thighs and curl my chin down so that my energy wasn’t wasted up top and also because it would open my pelvis. There were two nurses, one on each side of the bed (Cam and Mandi) and the doctor was at the end of the bed. They were very encouraging and I remember them telling me that the third push in each contraction was the most important because that is when you make the most progress (the first push just gets you back to where you were before, the second gets you a little further, but the third is the one that counts even though you are exhausted by that point). So I tried to really give it my all on the third push of each contraction. I remember one of the nurses getting excited and saying, “Oh man that last push was really good! I’m so excited!” I felt the baby start to crown and the “ring of fire” they talk about as it stretches your cervix to the biggest part. Right when it was burning the most, they told me not to relax even though the contraction was over and to just pause. That was probably the most painful part the whole time and I tried to breathe through it but it was soooooo painful to pause with that burning! Then I pushed the baby’s head out but didn’t feel the whole body come out. I saw one of the nurses climb onto the bed with me and hold my leg up high and instructed me to keep pushing even though I wasn’t having another contraction. It turns out that the baby was so big that her shoulders got stuck and didn’t come out like normal so she had to push my pelvic region to get the baby out.
Out came my beautiful baby, all purple and kind of quiet. They put her on me and she was kind of crying a little bit but not a lot. She was all slimy and there was a lot of blood everywhere. They kept saying, “Wow that is a huge baby! How much do you think she weighs!??” and took her over to the weighing table and tried to stimulate her to get her crying more which seemed to work. They weighed her and said she was 9.5 lbs! They also said that when she was coming out they kept thinking, “There’s the head! And more head! And more head!” The nurse told me she had never said a baby with a 15 in head circumference (99%). Huge! The pushing in total took about 19 minutes.
The doctor did not seem as stressed post-delivery as he was when I delivered Annie (I hemorrhaged that time and tore to an almost-4 and I could tell it was very high-stress for him to fix all of that). This time, he was relaxed and joking and said I tore to about a 2 and some. Samuel cut the cord and said that he teared up a little bit at this point and felt emotional and really happy. The doctor tried to pull out the placenta with some tugs and I even pushed once but it seemed to be stuck to the uterine wall. He said if he didn’t get it out, he would have to put his hand in and grab it out and it would be painful and feel like delivering a second baby. My legs were shaking uncontrollably at this point from all the prodding and poking and pestering down there after such a traumatic thing like birthing a baby! I couldn’t get my legs to stop shaking and I felt kind of traumatized. Eventually he had to put his hand in and pull out the placenta and it felt TERRIBLE and painful. And then he had to stitch me up after poking me with a local anesthetic! I felt like I just wanted to close my legs and he kept saying to open them wider. There were some spots that I felt the sharp poke of the needle and I think it wasn’t totally numbed at one part which made it worse. This part seemed like it lasted forever and I was so glad when he didn’t have to keep poking me.
It was SUCH a relief to have my baby on my chest and to be done with labor!! She was beautiful and perfect and I couldn’t believe she used to be in me just minutes before! I did feel a bit faint and they tried to get me to go pee but nothing would come out. Eventually I got transported to another room in a wheelchair and they monitored my vitals and pee for the following day or so. I eventually did pee and in one sitting I peed a total of 800 ml!! I tried to drink a ton of water to make me not feel so faint but the hormones were adjusting and I still felt pretty faint afterwards for about 24 hours. I ate like 5 meals and everything in sight for the next 24 hours and rested. Heidi coughed up what looked like meconium fluid (light brownish) which worried me a bit but they said it was normal and not problematic unless it was bloody.
