Saturday, February 6th, 2010, around 9pm, I was making dinner. We had some friends over and there was about an hour to go on the veggie lasagna I was preparing. I began feeling a sensation that was not painful, nor bothersome, but sort of weird, and asked my friend Valeria to time what I was feeling. "Could it be contractions," I thought?
After about an hour of this dull sensation vibrating through my pelvis every 3 minutes, I decided to tell Claudio what was going on. I calmly walked into the dinning room where he was enjoying a cold beer with his best friend Walter and announced, "I would like you to stay calm, and continue to enjoy your beer, however, you should know that I am having contractions, and have been having them for about an hour now. We are going to sit and eat calmly and then, wash the dishes, if, by the time we are finished with all of the above, I am still feeling what I am feeling, we will need to go to the hospital, as I believe I am in labor." You should have seen Claudio's face!!!!!!
We ended up doing exactly that, we enjoyed a fantastic dinner, I ate extra thinking that this would be a good idea, as I was sure I would not be eating for at least another 12 hours...bad idea by the way.
And by 11:30 the contractions were still 3 minutes apart, but increasing in strength...we got in the truck and made our way to the hospital. Upon checking in, I was only 1cm dilated so they sent us to a private room to hang out in until I was a bit more advanced.
The doctors say that first time labors dilate at about 1cm per hour, and there is really no way to speed this up, so anyone that says they had a 2 hour labor is a liar. The doctor on call, however, mentioned that I was having very strong contractions which would speed up the dilating by just a bit, and by 2:30am I was 4cm dilated and in so much pain each time a contraction came that I began to question my sanity for wanting to do this whole thing without the help of pain killing drugs. "Who am I, I am no hero, I have nothing to prove to anyone," I thought to myself.
I looked at Claudio around 3am, contractions measuring 220 on the scale of I don't know what, and said, I don't think I am going to be able to do it without the epidural. Now, for those of you that know me best, this was probably one of the hardest things for me to admit, 1 because it meant that I had to swallow my ego and admit that I was weak and 2 because I was so adamantly against the use of the epidural from the get go, this meant accepting something I hated.
When my obstetrician finally arrived, he took one look at me and without consulting me further, merely said to the nurse to his right, "get the anesthesiologist." I did not protest, but rather just accepted his demand.
Here is where everything slows down. They pricked me and plugged me with the epidural, and I lost sensation of not only the contractions but my entire lower body. I couldn't feel whether I had to pee or not, I couldn't feel my legs and feet, and we soon realized that my contractions had slowed to a stop and I had stopped dilating, slowing us down by about two hours.
Finally, around 6am, the baby was crowning and we we began pushing. This is when we ran into problems and I began to thank my lucky stars that my doctor had suggested, or rather insisted upon the epidural. They cut a small slit to help the baby come through, though try as he may, he was stuck. He had gone in at a 45 degree angle, making it impossible for him to come all the way through unless he rotated to a face down position.
It was at this point that Claudio, AKA Negro, began gagging. His knees had gone weak with witnessing the blood and liquid (feces, urine, ambiotic fluid etc) coming with each push. He kindly thought to excuse himself for some air when my doctor looked up at him and said, "oh no you don't, Negro, you are white! You won't make it as far as the hallway, just sit down where you are." And he did as he was told.
Finally after a few more good pushes, my doctor looked at me and said, "The baby's heart rate is going down each time you push, that happens sometimes when the head is positioned wrongly in the canal, (it also happens when the umbilical cord is wrapped around the baby's neck) so I am just going to help you get him out of there ok? What he meant by this was, we are going to move to another room where he would then employ the use of the forceps. (click here if you are not familiar with this archaic mechanism)
And my genius of a doctor held up to his word. In less than 15 minutes I was holding my beautiful baby boy, unscathed by the likes of what looks like a second world war torture weapon. And the moment when they said, "It's a boy" was every bit worth waiting for
Like Father like Son
Tired mommy
Juan Nicolas, my little pea in a pod
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