Nice, long post today so I hope you’ll all bear with me. :)

This day one year ago was my start into motherhood. I was so very pregnant last Christmas. We didn’t travel anywhere. My husband and his family live in town so my family came down before Christmas to celebrate with us.

There were lots of festivities and on the Wednesday after Christmas I felt terrible. Absolutely awful. I was so done with being pregnant. My husband went to his Mom’s to spend some more time with his family but I couldn’t do it. All I wanted to do was sit in our recliner and watch television and try to will the child out of my body. I was 39 weeks 1 day pregnant.

The next day was my 39 week doctor’s appointment. I hadn’t been checked at all yet and when the doctor checked my cervix it was still high, hard and closed. Sigh. I had actually been feeling pretty good that morning but when he asked me what I wanted to do I remembered the day before and said “please get this baby out of me.”

The doc I saw that day is a man of convenience so he immediately said he would call the hospital and see if there were any induction spots available for tomorrow. There was one left. The husband and I agonized over whether or not we should take it. I mean this whole baby thing was sort of an abstract concept still and the thought that we’d have him here TOMORROW was crazy. Plus I had my concerns about being induced anyway, especially when it wasn’t all that necessary.

The doc gave us a nudge and we agreed to go through with the induction. We had to be at the hospital at 6 PM that night. I was to have cervadil inserted into my cervix over night and then start pitocin in the morning. We spent that last day, the 28th, like it was our last day of freedom. In a way it was for a while. We ate lunch, I packed a ridiculously huge bag for the hospital and we called our families.

When we got to the hospital it took 3 nurses and 4 sticks to get an IV in my arm. I have terrible veins. I kept having lower back pain and the nurse informed me that that was actually contractions. Interestingly enough I’d been having that for a week or so. That was a terribly uncomfortable night of sleep. With me being so huge, plus the fetal monitor and contractions monitor it was fitful.

The next morning they started the pitocin and when I started to feel some pain they gave me a dose of the IV narcotics. That stuff sucked! I still felt all the pain but could not form a coherent sentence to verbalize it. I have often said that the IV narcotics are pain relief for everyone else in the room. The epidural came a little while later. Then it started to wear off.

First it was just one spot on the lower right side, I could handle that. Soon it was full on pitocin induced contractions. It was awful. I have never been in so much pain in my life. I informed my husband that I would not be doing this again so I hope he only wanted one child. Other than that I was actually quite nice to him all day except when he tried to choke me with ice chips. I made jokes about puking and other than a lot of moaning I was pretty well tempered.

I eventually got a second epidural and that one worked. Then I got some sleep. Around 9 pm a nurse came in and checked me. She said I was at 10 cm and that I’d be pushing soon. The doc came in and checked me and said that I was at 9.5 cm and he had me do a test push to see if Boog would come down more. Seems he was still rather high in the birth canal and had stopped progressing down steadily. He didn’t move.

It was at that point that the doc said he thought I should have a C-section. Boog wasn’t in any danger yet but he was pretty sure he wasn’t coming down any further on his own. I agreed to the C-section. I was tired and ready to be done. About the time I agreed I started feeling pain again. Apparently the nurse that thought I’d be pushing soon turned my epidural off so I could push. WTF?!

Ok, so I’ve never had a child vaginally so I don’t know if this is a normal practice or not but I suspect that it isn’t. Isn’t the whole point of the freakin’ epidural is so you don’t feel anything. The one thing that I was absolutely terrified about childbirth was the crowning and let me tell you if I had delivered Boog vaginally with an epidural that had been turned off I would have been PISSED! I was pretty pissed as it was. During my labor with the bum epidural I managed to remain calm because I felt like the pain was for a reason. At this point there was no reason because I was having a C-section.

My husband began pushing buttons on the epidural machine. Note to self, DO NOT allow husband to press buttons on machines controlling drugs entering your spine. That was pretty funny and my mom yelled at him to stop pressing buttons. The anesthesiologist came in and dosed up my epidural again so I couldn’t feel anything and they wheeled me to the OR. Within about 8 minutes Boog was born. He peed on the nurse three times which is apparently a good thing.

He was screaming and red headed and adorable. It turned out that he had a ginormous noggin and it was all wedged in at a funny angle banging on my bladder. So it is likely that it never would have come out vaginally. I’m ok with having had a C-section. Honestly I could never quite picture myself having a child vaginally. And on the plus side, the next one will be scheduled so none of that pesky labor business. My recovery was a breeze and I tell you if you ever find yourself asking questions about C-sections, find someone that uses dermabond instead of staples—best thing ever.

Those that are still here I thank you for sticking around to read Boog’s birth story. It was only just the beginning.