birth story...

Since I was supposedly “due” on July 14, and he still hadn’t come, my doctor decided to induce me. As many of you know, my doctor was also expecting and had the exact same due date as me. So it was not "my doctor", but a new doctor. She was really nice, but a bit odd to have only met her once before my inducement.

I was scheduled to be induced on Saturday July 19 at 8 am. Never having been induced, I thought I would be having Bryant on Saturday, but this was not the case. When I got to the triage, I asked to be placed in the Birth Center. The Birth Center is usually for people who want to experience “a natural birth” with a midwife. But I choose the Birth Center because it was a large room. I really didn’t care if a midwife or a doctor delivered since my doctor was not going to be delivering the baby anyways, as long as I could get an epidural.

The midwife wanted me to walk around and see if the baby would come since I was getting contractions and was 2-3 cm dilated. I tried to tell her, that I had been about 3 cm dilated for two weeks, and I had been walking with Phil and Tri from my condo to Marine Stadium daily and several times even walked to 2nd Street. She gave me the more conservative drug to ready my cervix in the morning but had me wait until around 6pm before I was given the medication to induce the labor.

My contractions were manageable until my water broke at 2:30 am. After my first "real" contraction I was yelling for the epidural. I assumed that I was having the baby within seconds. After the nurse checked on me, I had only dilated 5-6 cm, I still had hours to go. It took the anesthesiologist about an hour to give me the epidural, although it felt like a lifetime. After the epidural, I feel asleep. The nurse woke me up around 5:30 am to check on me. I was fully dilated, so she had me try to push. Because my lower body was numb from the epidural, I was not able to push effectively. The doctor decided for me to wait an hour for the epidural to wear off. Around 6:30am I started pushing, and continued until his arrival at 8:28am.

Phil was great. He helped me stay calm and relaxed especially when my water broke and when I had to push. He held my hand through everything. And no he didn’t faint during the delivery, but helped me out so much. On a funny note, the nurse that helped me during the delivery was Korean, and she was telling Phil to splash some water on his face to wake up, since his eyes were half open. Of course, Phil responded that his eyes were open, and that he was just born that way.