Her birthing story began the night before when Geoff experienced one of the calmest car rides to the hospital with an over-due, pregnant wife...who wasn't in labor. I think Geoff was a little disappointed when I didn't let him drop me off at the main entrance and sit in a wheelchair while he parked the car, but I reassured him (quite a few times) that I was fully capable of walking with him from the parking garage to the women's center.
We checked in for our 10:00 PM appointment to be induced and soon after found ourselves in the labor and delivery room.
The nurses began prepping me for everything and around 11:00 PM the doctors came in to assess a few things in order to decide which approach to take with the induction process. We were delivering at a university hospital, so student doctors are always in tow. Normally, I don't mind at all, but the student physician on the night shift appeared extremely green, which didn't put me at ease. He had a hard time finding the baby's head on the ultrasound...yikes. So anytime the resident doctor asked my permission for the student to perform a procedure, I found myself cringing as I said "yes". I felt bad saying no, because they have to learn sometime, right? And as long as this guy wasn't actually delivering our baby, I was fine enduring everything else--including the base of the bed collapsing because he didn't put it back on correctly, ha!
They decided to use a device called an EASI to help my body dilate as well as administer some pitocin. The procedures began at midnight, the pain began at 1:00 AM. Once the contractions started kicking in, so did the back pain. The nurse kept coming in and saying, "This is the time to rest! Why aren't you resting?" Umm, because I'm in severe pain? (Apparently, they induce you late at night because it is supposed to take a while for your body to respond, so most patients sleep through this part...not me.) The back pain I was experiencing was so bad that I welcomed the contractions to distract me from the constant ache in my lower back. I found if I stood up, the back pain lessened, but because of the EASI, I wasn't allowed to stand. So the nurse propped up my bed and gave me heating pads, but relief didn't come until they took out the EASI at 5:45 AM. At that point I was dilated to a 5, but they said it was a false or an EASI 5 because I was mechanically put there and my body would most likely digress back a centimeter or two before I would continue to make progress.
I'm going to guess that my body starting making its own progress around 7:00 AM. The contractions were becoming more severe and closer together. Unfortunately, Geoff was also not feeling so hot--he was not acting like himself and had to sit down. Terrified at the thought of not having a fully-coherent and attentive husband through this labor, I asked him to go get something to eat. He wasn't completely willing, but after the nurse and I both insisted, he headed out to find food. The nurse stepped out as well and soon-thereafter, my water broke--well, it really burst. I felt like I was in a movie with how dramatic it was. I paged the nurse and soon thereafter, the nurse and Geoff were back with me.
Now the pain REALLY kicked in. The contractions were so painful and intense, I was getting worn down with each one. The nurse asked again what pain management options I wanted to consider. Up until this point, I felt like I could make it through, but now I was terrified at how much more worse things would get. Geoff and I decided to go with the epidural, but I wasn't the only one in the hospital who wanted one at that time, so I ended up waiting an hour before the anesthesiologist was able to arrive. That was the longest hour of my life. During that time I kept thinking of all the women who did this without drugs and I couldn't understand how they made it through. It was excruciating...but eventually relief did come and I couldn't have been happier.
At 10:30 AM, Dr. Drachler came in to check me and found I was a 10. He asked me to push on the next contraction and when he saw the progress I made with one push, he decided to suit up for delivery.
At this point, my entire body started to shake with uncontrollable shivers and tremors. It was pretty overwhelming and distracting, Because I was on sensory overload from the shaking, I couldn't feel when contractions were coming, so I had to rely on the nurse telling me when I was supposed to push. Geoff was by my side, coaching and counting and helping me keep focused through all the craziness. The baby's head came through and Dr. Drachler told me to look down and as I did, I was able to witness the birth of our little baby. He flipped the baby over and all in the room exclaimed, "It's a girl!" and they immediately placed our little Eliana on my tummy.
I was overwhelmed with such joy as I looked at this little girl and thought, "This is our daughter. This is Hylie's sister." It felt so good to finally have her in our family.
Eliana was extremely calm right after birth, she barely fussed at all and has been a pretty calm baby ever since! I'm waiting for that to change...but in the meantime, we are enjoying every second with this beautiful girl.
