Hi A!!
Thank you!! Just got the chance to email you back!
How are you doing?? Any day now right?! I can't believe I was 2 weeks early!
The
experience wasn't toooo bad.. I worked really late on Thursday (my last
day) and then after Kev and I went to Denny's. I had a glass of milk
with my food.. and Friday I had diarrhea allll day which I thought
was because of the milk I drank the night before. It was the
type of diarrhea when you do a detox or something.. watery, and very
loose stools.. like the body trying to cleanse itself (which apparently
is what my body was doing to prepare for labor). Then around midnight,
my stomach still wasn't feeling well so I went to sleep and throughout the
night I had cramps and I thought it was just from a bad stomach. At around 4-4:30am I woke up and realized that it
was feeling more like contractions because it was coming in at
intervals, but I wasn't sure and woke Kevin up. We just started
getting everything ready by the door in case and then when we were sure
it was contractions, I timed myself from around 5:30 to 7am and the
contractions started coming in every 5 minutes. During that time, I
showered/washed my hair (especially since I'm doing the Chinese month
thing where you're not supposed to shower/wash hair for the whole
month!!!), curled my hair (haha), and finished getting all the last minute
stuff ready.. I let Kev sleep during this time since I knew he would be
up for a while and then at 7am, he got up to shower and finish packing his bag. I didn't want to get to the hospital TOO early, so I tried to
work through the contractions at home for another hour or so until I was
ready to go. We got to the hospital at 9:30am.
Once we got to the hospital, I was admitted and put
in the observation room. They monitored me for about half an hour and
confirmed my contractions were coming in every 5 minutes and I was 1.5cm
dilated. They paged my doctor and my doctor told me to stay so they
moved me to labor and delivery room around 10:30am. We started calling
family to let them know we were at the hospital and then, it was pretty
much a painful waiting game hahaha.. I was able to move around and try
different positions for about half an hour-45 min, then the nurse gave
me Pitocin to augment the labor/contraction process which meant I had to
stay in bed after that. The contractions really started coming in
strong by 12:30pm at 2 min intervals and I couldn't take it anymore so I
requested for epidural. I was worried the epidural would slow down the
dilation process, but the nurse said that in her experience, epidural
helps to accelerate the process and dilate faster.
The anesthesiologist came close to 2pm and gave me the epidural.
After the epidural, it was SO MUCH BETTER!! My
water broke at 3pm naturally and then, I started to feel some pain from
the contractions again around 4pm, so the anesthesiologist came back in
to give me another boost in the epidural. You get pretty numb from the
waist down with the epidural and your legs are really heavy and tingly
numb, so my mom was using the massage roller on my legs just to get some
circulation because I wanted to still be able to feel my legs during
labor. About half hour after the epidural, they also put in a urinary
catheter since you can't get up to use the restroom. At 4:30pm, the
nurse checked me and said I was at 5cm. Our nurse was this Taiwanese
lady named Joanna and she was super nice and chatting with all of my
family. When she checked, she said she would help me open up faster
down there o_0 (not sure what she did because I was numb down there from
epidural, but apparently it did help haha). At 5pm, my doctor came and
wanted to check me, but I said Joanna had just checked. Since my water
broke already, Dr. Yu didn't want to check again, but was bummed
because she had told Joanna to wait for her to come in to check me. I
heard her asking Joanna outside why she didn't wait and then 5 minutes
later, Dr. Yu came back in and said Joanna said the head was really low
and she should check me again. Dr. Yu checked and I was at 9cm so all
the nurses came and started preparing for labor. Joanna said her shift
was ending at 7pm and was joking to Dr. Yu to make sure the baby comes
out before her shift ends. Labor officially started about 6pm when I
started needing to push... and at 6:26pm after some seriously tiring
pushing, baby Madison was born!!! :)
MAN! It is crazy re-living that right now!! I don't
think I've wrote down everything that happened since the labor.. I'm
going to have to save this email so I remember. hahaha..
A few other things about the delivery.. I did end up
getting an episiotomy. Dr. said she wouldn't unless necessary, and
when baby was crowning, there was a lot of pressure so instead of it
tearing, she made a couple cuts and I got stitches. I couldn't really
feel a thing with the epidural and in between pushing. A lot of times, I
felt pressure down there, but I was so focused on pushing REALLY REALLY
HARD, that I didn't even think about what else was going on down there.
When you push, you just have to use all your might and then push even
more than that. Relax your bottom and really crunch in with your back
like you're doing an ab crunch. Kev was helping me push up from my back
and supporting my neck while my mom and nurse were on either side
helping me push my legs back. I also used my hands to pull back my own
thighs and pulled so hard that even now, my biceps feels like it went
through an intense workout. My mom was pushing my left leg and she was
so nervous (she didn't even want to look at the baby coming out when the
dr. told her to look hahaha).. Even in between the contractions when
you're supposed to relax everything to get ready for the next push, she
was still pushing my left leg back.. I was like.. "Mom, you can stop
pushing my leg now.." haha..
Okay, I think that is all for now. back to my life
in 2-3 hour increments of feeding, changing, and sleeping! It is amazing
though! I thought we would be dead exhausted (which I'm sure we are),
but we LOVE it! Kev has been so helpful throughout the night. He does
most of the diaper changing and everything in between my feedings.
It'll be crazy when he goes back to work next week, but I'm at my mom's
for the month so I have help. I was going to stay at the postnatal
place, but I was 2 weeks early and they didn't have my room ready plus
they were going through some audit/investigation thing which meant there
was a possibility everyone staying there would have to vacate.. so I
just decided to stay at my mom's.
GOOD LUCK!! and I'm praying for a smooth and fast
delivery for you! :) I know you'll be amazing, D will be right
there cheering you on and baby C will be one precious baby!
Love,
mags
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