My original due date came and went. My based-on-the-first-ultrasound due date came and went. As Thanksgiving was approaching, I knew our little baby had plans to get in the way of me eating turkey!
My contractions started the night before Thanksgiving around 7 or 8 pm. I slept through the night and when I woke up, the contractions were still coming. Around 10 am we started timing them and by 4:30 Thanksgiving day, I was ready to check in. The contractions were coming every 4 minutes and lasted 40 - 60 seconds and they hurt (although, now that I know what "hurt" really means, I may have jumped the gun a bit on saying how bad they were...).
As we were pulling up to the hospital I realized my contractions had slowed down and were not that painful anymore. They suggested I still check in because the relaxation of knowing you're at the hospital can give you a fake break when it could still actually be go-time. They checked me and (after almost 24 hours of light to medium contractions) I was maybe 1 1/2 centimeters dilated. I was ready to be sent home (in fact we were talking about going to a movie) when my water broke and there was meconium in it. So instead of going somewhere fun, the monitors were strapped on me and I was there to stay.I was in labor at the hospital for another 23 hours before I started to push (we went through 3 nurses and 2 midwives...). After all that, I only had to push for about 20 - 30 minutes before FINALLY getting to meet Andrew! My midwife (Melissa Rubin) had Matt tell me if it was a boy or girl. It was a pretty exciting time and we were both glad we decided to wait to find out if it was a boy or girl.
Because of the meconium, they warned us they'd be taking him away to check his lungs. They also said that crying is what everyone waits for, but that we should know that if we didn't hear crying, it would actually be better. They did a great job of making us feel as relaxed as possible. And Andrew was perfect! (Huge, but perfect).
There was a long time that passed between the first picture Matt took of him and the one above (taken by Aunt Melanie). As they were getting ready to move me to the recovery room, I started to hemorrhage. I literally had taken one bite of my dinner and our stuff was already moved over, when they went into emergency repair mode on me. It turns out that on the way out, Andrew tore my cervix. It was so far back, and very rare, so it wasn't anything that a normal checkup would catch.
To make a long story a bit shorter... The surgeon was paged and from that point, it was exactly like the movies. The spot lights were on, there were multiple nurses surrounding me, and serious OR talk was all around. I saw one nurse weighing the blood I'd lost and later found out they were debating getting me prepped for a blood transfusion. A little freaky... At one point my midwife had one hand inside me and the other on the outside to apply pressure to stop the bleeding. As she was doing this, she looked at me and said, "just so you know, you will be on antibiotics for 24 hours because nobody should have their hand where my hand is, but right now, it could be saving your life"...yeah, something along those lines... The surgeon was about to wheel me off to the OR but since all the nurses said they could stay with her, I ended up being able to stay in my room - thankfully! It would've been even freakier to be moved to the OR. The doctors and nurses were fabulous - they were funny, they made sure I was comfortable, they complimented my pedicure :) and talked to me about Andrew. Things are a bit fuzzy through that time, but what I do know is I had Andrew at 4:39 but didn't get to really hold him until just after 10:00.
I was worn out, and about as emotional as one person can be, but once things calmed down, it was so fabulous to finally have some time with our beautiful boy. And I'm not just saying this because I'm his mom :) he was truly beautiful from the minute he was born!
