This post is pretty much the complete birth story, to help me remember it all. As such it is really long and perhaps a bit over detailed for a casual blog follower. Just a warning.
At my doctor’s appointment on Monday morning (the 11th) they told me that I was almost dilated to a three and then on Tuesday I lost my mucus plug, so I was starting to get hopeful that Ashlynn would be here this week. We spent most of Wednesday just like a normal day. Zeke and I walked to the park in the morning and I spent about an hour running around the baseball diamond chasing an imaginary baseball (we forgot to bring our real baseball and ball but that didn’t stop Zeke; he was thrilled to jump up and swing his arms and congratulate himself “nice catch!” and then throw it to me. After catching it we had to “run base”). Then there was a grocery trip, lunch, Zeke took a nap and I read a book. All without any discomfort or pain.
Finally at 4:00 I finally started to feel contractions that had any sort of resemblance to pain. I sent Trustin a text that said “some of these puppies are starting hurt, wahoo!” and he texted back “Wahooo!” Not wanting him to get overly excited I told him that my pain wasn’t enough for a wahoo with three o’s. But naturally the moment I sent that they started to get a bit more wahooo worthy. This was about 4:20ish. When Zeke woke up I turned on a movie for us to watch so that I could sit on the love sac and begin my official “relaxing” that I’d been preparing for lately. I called my mom to tell her that I thought I might have a baby within the next day and my dad asked how far apart my contractions were. I had no clue because I never had my timer ready to go before a contraction started and Trustin wasn’t home from work yet to help. (Due to this my dad told my mom he was worried I would have a home birth because I had no idea if I was in labor…I think he should have given me that warning too because he was far too close to being right!) I also called my friend Kendra who had agreed to watch Zeke when we went to the hospital. She said that she would already be over in our side of town around 7 or 7:30 and I told her that that should be a good time to come pick Zeke up.
I never made it back downstairs to watch the movie with Zeke because contractions kept starting before I got up and went downstairs. Rather I just lay on the bed or the floor and tried to relax. Relaxing was not easy but I realized that the contractions really were far less painful when I managed to make myself fully relax. So I tried my best, and was sometimes successful. When Trustin got home he was able to help me relax better than I’d been managing on my own. He was such a lifesaver talking me through relaxing, telling me that I could do it (that was the thing I most needed to hear) and massaging my lower back. I never could have done it without him! We still never got around to a really accurate timing of my contractions because I needed Trustin’s focus on helping me relax and then between contractions I sent him to load up our hospital stuff and pack Zeke’s bag (a detail I never thought about until I was in labor, oops).
There were many factors contributing to our confusion with labor. And yes, we were completely naïve. Here I was in labor and we had to look up at what point we should go to the hospital. The site we found said “contractions should be 2-5 minutes apart for several hours” and then we should call my doctor. Plus I had talked to many friends who said they had tried to bear with labor pains for as long as they could before going to the hospital and when they got to the hospital they were only a 3 or 4 and other friends that were in labor for 18 hours or even more. Plus in all of the things we’d been reading for labor prep there were three stages and the middle phase was many hours long. I had great plans for the movies I would watch, the relaxing(though painful) bath I would take, and I had made a long list of memories and places for Trustin to talk me through visualizing during the many hours of labor. So in my mind, labor was something that lasts a long time. Finally, I had heard that the hospital I was going to was notoriously busy and often time laboring mothers were left in triage for hours (a miserable looking place where up to 4 ladies could be stuck at one time…no thank you please). So even before labor began I was hoping to do as much of my enduring at home as possible.
Yet things were getting pretty much excruciating and it felt like there was hardly any time between contractions. There should have been a bell going off in my head at this point…but there wasn’t. In my head I was probably dilating at about a 4 or 5 and the fact that everything was so painful and felt so close together was simply my low pain tolerance talking. I was frustrated with myself for being such a wimp. Luckily Trustin was there to help me though it all. And Zeke was such a cute helper too. I was lying on the love sac and crying and Trustin told Zeke that Mommy had an owie. Zeke said “Mommy boo boo?” and gave me kisses. Then I discovered that it was helpful for me to crawl around on my hands and knees during contractions and Zeke thought it was great fun to crawl around too. Finally at around 6:40ish I started to think that I had better go to the hospital. I asked Trustin to call Kendra and ask her to come now rather than the original time we’d agreed to. Then I went in to the restroom. While I was sitting there my water broke. I thought “oh that’s really convenient, now we won’t have to worry about sending Trustin home from the hospital clean up wet carpet…there is irony in that, just wait.
Once my water broke, ouch! I called out for Trustin and by the time he got downstairs, still on the phone, I was lying on the bathroom floor crying, writhing, and beginning to yell a bit more than I care to admit. In all of our labor practicing (I used to relax with my hands or feet in buckets of ice water so that I was learning to ignore the pain) I envisioned myself in labor with intense pain but yet with me calmly relaxing through it with our relaxation techniques. I guess I underestimated the intensity of contractions. I wanted to be nice but I yelled “hang up the phone” which he did (nevermind that I told him to make that phonecall. We climbed in the car and started driving to the store where my friend’s husband works. I hadn’t known that I was a screamer, but I definitely had some volume on that ride. Not quite so dramatic as the ladies in movies (at least Trustin says I wasn’t so bad). I was in such a delimma, urging Trustin to drive as fast as he could and also hating the fast turns and bumbs etc. I was trying desperately to be nice to Trustin because he was my hero through everything so I was politely screaming “please drive smoother, please!” and “slow, slow, slow, please slow!!!” We got to the store and Trustin unbuckled Zeke’s carseat from the car (with Zeke still buckled to his seat) and ran the whole thing inside the store and left him just inside the door. He flew back to the car and we raced to the hospital. He only ran 1 red light.
We got to the hospital at 7:00 and Trustin put me in a wheelchair and rushed me upstairs. One nurse at the desk took one look at me and said “I’m just going to take her to a room.” Victory, I successfully evade triage; the secret : look like you are about to die of pain. The nurse said something about an epidural and I was so proud of myself that I loudly said “NO!” I don’t know how I managed that. They got me to the room and the nurse asked me to put on the gown. Before I could another contraction began and I dropped and started crawling on the floor and then lay down on my side on the hard wood floor. I was just praying that I was pretty dilated because I needed some justification for being quite so dramatic. When the contraction eased the nurse urged me to quickly put on the gown and hop on the bed so they could check me. She took one look at me and said “oh, there’s a baby right there.” Naturally my doctor hadn’t had time to get to the hospital and there was literally no time to wait. I didn’t care a bit. I thought “You nurses look competent, let’s just take care of this.” But there was another doctor who was there, Dr. Skinner and he came in in the nic of time to deliver my baby. The nurses kept urgin me to hold my breath and push and I kept remembering the things I’d read about this part of childbirth but it was difficult to get myself to do it. Trustin said “you are about to meet our baby” and that helped. All of this agony, and fear and pain was about to bring forth my little angel. I was so grateful that I was able to have the experience of pushing her out and even all of the misery of labor feels beautiful in my memory. I would go through that and so much more for my little Ashlynn or for my Zeke. I felt so blessed that my body was able to be the means of bringing this miracle into the world.
Ashlynn Kaydean Anderson was born at 7:13 on July 13th. She weighed 6 lbs 12 oz, was 19 ½ inches long and completely beautiful. They laid her down on my tummy right away and I fell in love. She was so tiny and precious and everything about her testified that she was sent straight from my Father in heaven. I love my little lady.
Not to
dampen the mood but…
okay, that is a hokey pun, but I couldn’t resist. The story doesn’t end here. Ashlynn was about 10 minutes away from being born in the car, but that wasn’t enough excitement for us. At about 11:30 that night Trustin bolted up from frantically from his couch and gasped that he had to go home. He was apologizing profusely as he quickly explained and bolted out the door. So back up several hours to a wife in horrific pain crying on the lovesac: Trustin decided to start the bath water for me to lay in to see if that would ease some of the pain. As he went upstairs to turn on the tub I went to the restroom downstairs where moments later my water broke. In that frantic moment Trustin rushed down to my aid and then we were rushing to the hospital…meanwhile the bathtub was still rushing too.
So Trustin gets home at about midnight to see water pouring out of the garage. Part of the ceiling there had completely collapsed and upstairs the entire hallway, three bedrooms and the bathroom were soaked.
Understatement. As of today the carpet has all been ripped up, there are about a million heavy duty fans going, the ceiling and walls of the garage, hall, and laundry room are being torn apart and the bottom foot of the walls upstairs as well. We thought Ashlynn needed to come home to new paint and carpet.
Our suite at the Marriot is not bad. I'm not saying I'd like to build a summer home here but the mini fridge is actually quite lovely.
This has been one crazy week!
also, Trustin has about a million pictures of our house and our beautiful daughter posted on facebook.
