Give a Girl Some Warning

No one ever told me that after I had Henry, random physical characteristics would change. My hair got a little thinner, my shoes went up half a size, and my eyesight altered enough to merit getting a new prescription. I have a blown blood-vessel on my nose that looks like a eternally premature zit, and although the tummy stretch marks significantly faded (thank God), my stomach still looks pizza dough that's ready to be punched down after raising (it's like the sun; just don't look directly at it). For a while I felt a little betrayed by my body, but I eventually got over it.

What still gets me every now and then is how I also felt the same irrational feeling of betrayal by my friends and family who had babies before me who didn't warn me about what could happen. I'm just saying, if I had had a heads-up that my belly would look like a five-year-old took a purple marker to it, I wouldn't have been so thrown off-guard. So here's some of my Henry's story. Consider it a head's-up to my pregnant friends...or my friends who might get pregnant...or my friends who perhaps want to validate their decision to NOT get pregnant. ;-)

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I was in labor with Hank for just over 30 hours. In the same amount of time I could have watched Leonardo DiCaprio be the king of the world in Titanic nine times. I could have flown from Minneapolis to LAX, flown back because I realized I forgot my suitcase since I was pregnant and forgot everything, and still had time to fly all the way back to the West Coast and then to New York just for fun. I could have watched all of season 1 AND 2 from Sex and the City and still had time for the bonus features (dang it, why didn't I do that at the same time?!). It was a long time. I didn't know that labor could be that long. Or when it would start, or get better....or worse. We didn't even know when you were supposed to go to the hospital. I still don't know.

Eventually we called our doula, Liz, to come over and start telling us what the hell to do. A doula is like a labor coach, and thank God for her. They're not covered by insurance, but I would have given her anything short of the actual baby for being there. She's the one who pointed out the obvious that it would be way easier to labor on our soft bed then curled up on our hardwood floor. She's the one who showed Dan where to push on my back during contractions to help ease the pain. She's the one who told me to eat as much as I could handle because once I got to the hospital, they wouldn't let me have food until way after the birth...who knew? But most of all, thanks to Liz I got to stay home as long as possible, and once we did go to the hospital she was Dan's and my rock :: a handle on reality in totally uncharted territory.

When we got to the hospital, I didn't realize I'd be alone for what felt like eternity (even if Dan says it was less than ten minutes while he parked the car and ran back to the labor & delivery wing...he's lying). I didn't know to ask for help as I tried to walk through the hallway mazes before a maintenance guy took pity on me and grabbed a wheelchair to take me to L&D. "What the hell are you doin' tryin' to get all the way over there on ya'own?!" he scolded me. My blubbering response was something about how I was trying to multitask walking and contractions. What an idiot.

I learned that I should have told them right out the gate that I had already been working on this watermelon for nearly twenty hours on my own. Instead, I just told the nurses it was my first baby, and I got shuffled behind a curtain to wait, wait and wait while they took my vitals, put my shoes in a plastic bag (I still don't get that part) and had Dan fill out forms. Meanwhile, I had four contractions but tried really hard to hide them because I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing. I felt super vulnerable in that threadbare, backless gown, and I couldn't think clearly enough to grab my own nightgown that I purposefully purchased just for the occasion. It was neatly folded in the overnight bag which had been packed weeks ago - a bag that proved to be all but forgotten about in the corner of the room for most of our stay. So ladies, quit pinning things on Pinterest about the best way to pack a hospital bag with tags like, "I'm totally going to have to remember this some day!". It's just so not worth it.

Dilation Scale 1-10

Eventually the nurse did her thing and said, "Whoa!" which I thought was one of the worst things to say in front of a scared set of soon-to-be parents. It turned out that I got to the hospital at 8 centimeters. At first I was proud that I had gotten that far on our own, but then immediately panicked when I was told I might not have time for an epidural, which I was all but certain that I wanted. I know the drugs thing isn't for everyone, but I was very comfortable with that decision and insisted that they try to get it going. I was hopeful that Henry might hold off long enough for it to kick in. If you're considering one, think of it like any other shot :: if you don't look at the needle, it doesn't hurt as much. Also, be sure to get over how cute the anesthesiologist is and ask him before he disappears how to control the epidural :: no one ever mentioned that I could control the pain with the mystery button on my IV, so in the end I'm not really sure how much it impacted my pain levels.

After seeing two sets of nurses come and go who had jokingly said, "oh you'll have that baby before the end of my shift! He'll DEFINITELY be a Leap Year Baby!" I was exhausted. I was crying and I didn't know if it was because I didn't know what day it was anymore or if because I was told they might have to break my water for me if things didn't start moving faster. As if sensing the challenge, my water broke on it's own and I finally felt like there was an end in sight.

The nose blood vessel burst during the three hours of pushing that followed. I was very aware that the room kept getting more and more crowded. I wish I would have asked people to leave unless they were absolutely necessary. I mean, as awesome as it was to have 267 nurses, lab techs, doctors and med students be up in my business while a baby's made his way through, it would have been nice to hold on to a thread of privacy (dignity?). When I realized that I had ten minutes left to get him out in order to still have him be born on Leap Day, I got really focused. But we were scared too. We were told that he might have an infection and that he was under a lot of stress from the long labor :: we wouldn't get to delay clamping like we planned or even do skin-to-skin for very long because he would have to get to ICU Nursery ASAP. Dan was upset because he wouldn't be able to cut the cord. I was upset because I would only get to see him for mere minutes before he'd be gone. And even when he was only moments away, no one knew how big he was.

I mean, he was huge.

Henry was born just after 11:50pm on Leap Day 2012. He was a bit under 11 pounds and already two feet long. He was the size of your average three- or four-month-old. People often comment about how it's unusual that I didn't have a c-section for such a big boy. Besides the fact that I didn't want one, not once did any nurse or doctor mention it as a possibility, and I'm grateful for that. But the whole process did a number on me. After he was out, I still had a ton of stitches to sit through (another thing no one really mentioned as a possible result), and I took almost 12 weeks to heal, not the six I was told. I had never heard of witch hazel before, nor had I seen those mesh underwear or ice packs so big they could keep my fridge cold, but I squirreled away as many as I could find in that hospital before I left, and you should too.

Turned out Henry never got that infection. But he was the ginormous baby in the special care unit full of tiny premies and their parents with judgmental eyes. Eventually the staff moved us to our own section of the nursery, "for everyone's sake", and I was fine with that. In all, I should have asked more questions, I should have tried harder to get him to be with us in our room. I should have been more active in the whole process, but I just didn't know what to expect. I do now. I also know that blogged "birth stories" can be both cliche and TMI, but I wish someone would have told me about some of these things before they happened, so hopefully that's what I just did for a friend. If you're pregnant, labor happens whether your ready or not, and each one is different. But at the end? We get to take home one of these :: and that just starts a whole other adventure that I wish some friends had warned me about! :-)