Macey's Birth Story

I spent the entire day last Wednesday timing my contractions. They had started around 2am the previous night and continued into the next morning and beyond. For most of the day, they were still extremely irregular-- some were spaced 20 minutes apart, others only 8 or 9 minutes apart. Some were very intense; some just felt like mild period cramps. I was determined not to head to the hospital only to be sent home, so I decided to ride it out for as long as I could at home.

My parents came over and we all had a nice dinner. It was around that time that my contractions picked up both in frequency and intensity. After dinner, my mom, Camden, and I headed outside for some fresh air. We brought a small piece of paper with us and wrote down the time every time I had a contraction. When they all became less than 10 minutes apart, I knew we were probably dealing with the real thing. Still, I waited. I remembered that when I was in labor with Camden, I just knew when to call my OB. Sure enough, a particularly intense contraction hit me a few minutes later and I instinctively knew it was time to call. Matt and I gathered out bags, kissed Camden goodbye, and hit the road.

At around 9pm, we arrived at the hospital. I was taken right up to an L&D room while Matt checked me in. Thankfully, one of the doctors from my OB's office was on call (and one I really like too-- he delivered 2 of my nephews). He came by to check me shortly after I arrived. I was 3-4 cm dilated and 80% effaced. Not bad, considering I wasn't dilated at all less than a week earlier. "You've obviously been doing some work at home," he laughed, "No doubt this is the real deal!" And so it became official: Macey was on her way.

Matt and I spent the next several hours watching terrible TV, playing Family Feud on the computer, and trying to get through my contractions. When it was determined that I was 5 cm dilated at my next cervix check, I requested my epidural. Now, you may recall that when I was in labor with Camden, I had a pretty bad epidural experience. Basically, it didn't work. Well, it numbed one side of my body so completely that I couldn't even wiggle a toe and it didn't numb the other side at all. So, I still felt every single contraction-- albeit, only on one side. One sided contractions are still pretty awful, for the record.

So, I was understandably a little apprehensive this time around. I mean, if I'm going to have a needle stuck in my spine, I'd at least like it to be effective. When the anesthesiologist arrived, he asked about my last epidural experience and I was brutally honest. He told me that while he couldn't guarantee it wouldn't happen again, he'd do his best to make sure it didn't. And about 20 minutes later, he became my best friend when I was the perfect amount of numb: I could wiggle my toes a bit, but couldn't feel anything below my waist. Glorious.

Assured that I was resting comfortably, Matt dozed off in the chair next to me. I'd like to say I took a good nap to store up some energy for pushing, but combining my always terrible sleep habits with extra adrenaline pulsing through my body? Well, let's just say it's not conducive to sleep. Instead, I watched some Friends re-runs until my mom arrived around 2:45am.

Around 6am, another cervix check indicated that I was 8 cm dilated. Excitement set in again; surely, Macey would be arriving in the next hour or two! You can imagine my frustration when I was still 8 cm dilated over an hour later. My contractions were 4-5 minutes apart, and my nurse told me that in order to get to 10 cm dilated any time soon, my contractions would need to be more like 2-3 minutes apart. She suggested Pitocin to help speed things along and I think I suggested Pitocin and breaking my water. (I became Kerri, M.D. for a few minutes there. It's always a good idea to take medical suggestions from a woman in active labor.)

Turns out, my water didn't need to be broken. After some Pitocin was added to my IV, the nurse came back to do a quick cervix check and we heard: "Oh! Well, that was your water!" I was 9 cm dilated at this point and she told me to let her know when I started to feel intense pressure.

While I didn't feel pressure, I did start to feel weird. I got extremely anxious and jittery and then felt like I was going to throw up any second. I had no idea what was wrong; it felt like I was on the verge of a panic attack. I had Matt on one side of me holding my hand and my mom on the other side. I remember begging them to talk to me about anything to distract me. And then it hit me: this was transition. When the nurse came back in, I asked her to check me again, and sure enough-- it was go time.

When I was in labor with Camden, I pushed for an hour and a half. It was pretty brutal,  so I had braced myself for lots of pushing again this time. Imagine my surprise (and excitement!) when, after only 4 or 5 pushes, my OB told me that Macey was on her way out. Just like her brother, Macey decided to slide on out in between pushes so that her tired mama didn't have to do any more work. Only Macey came out in less than 10 minutes total.

Seeing her for the first time can only be described as surreal. She looked so much like Camden-- it was kind of like reliving that day, but it was just as amazing and exciting as if it were the first time I had experienced childbirth. There's really nothing else in life that compares to the feeling of laying eyes on your child for the very first time.

Thankfully, we got to skip the whole NICU ordeal this time around, and Macey roomed with us over the next 2 days. Even though I got 4 doses of antibiotics for GBS throughout the course of my labor, they still took the precaution of making us stay in the hospital an extra day to make sure all was well with our little girl. We had plenty of visitors over the next couple of days, though none could quite compare to Macey's big brother. For all of the times I wondered and worried about how he was going to react to her, any doubts I had went out the window the first time he saw her. It was like he instinctively loved her. And seeing my two children together? There's just nothing more perfect than that.