Elena's birth story starts with my water breaking, just like Isabel's birth story. Isn't that funny - supposedly only 15% of labors start with your water breaking before contractions, but both of my labors did.
My water broke at 3 in the morning, so I called into my midwife clinic and spoke to the midwife on call. She said try to get some sleep and call back in the morning and we could make a plan. I, of course, was so excited, I probably only slept another 15 minutes before we all got up for the day. It was a Monday morning so I told Javi to work from home so that he would be nearby if I needed him. I decided not to send Isabel to daycare because I thought I would be bored by myself and I also didn't want to miss out on our last few hours together before she was no longer the baby. Unfortunately, because I kept Isabel home, I don't think my body felt safe to let my labor progress so nothing else happened all day.
My midwife set up an appointment to be seen around 3pm so my dad came to pick up Isabel and Javi and I headed to the clinic. While I was there, I started having some mild contractions. Finally, I wasn't in charge of Isabel and I felt safe with Javi by my side. It was exciting to have something finally happening. They had me hooked up to the monitors for maybe 30 minutes. They gave us a few options and we decided to set up an induction for later that evening. We headed home to grab our bags and stopped to get dinner at Burger Jones. As we were eating dinner my contractions started getting stronger and closer together but they were still fairly far apart.
We checked into the hospital around 7pm and our doulas were on their way as well (we didn't pay for 2 doulas, they just both wanted to come). After about an hour, I was all checked in and had my team there of Javi, my nurse, my midwife, and my doula. Per hospital policy, I needed to talk to the Obgyn on staff and hear the risks associated with attempting a VBAC (vaginally birth after c-section). She was very nice but I was a little annoyed that she told me my odds of having a successful VBAC were around 55%. It didn't matter what the numbers were, I was determined to try anyways. Isabel's birth was a little traumatic for me and I wanted to be in charge this time and I knew I could do it. She said the odds were based on a million different factors like height, ethnicity, previous births, previous babies birth weights etc.
After that, we hung out in the room for an hour, stretching and moving around, trying to progress things. Around 9 o'clock they gave me the option to continue laboring on my own or be induced. I was nervous about being induced as they told me some people really take to pitocin quickly and it could really push things along very fast. But the midwife told me "you will eventually get there, but this would just be making it faster." I was nervous that I would be in a lot of pain but I decided to get induced.
The most memorable part of Elena's birth was 15 minutes after the gave me the pitocin. I was in so much pain; it was absolute hell. I've never been in so much pain, nor would I wish that pain onto anyone. I could't think straight and was panicked. I asked my doulas to remind me why I didn't want an epidural. She went over the reasons I had told her but they didn't make any sense to me anymore. I had already "intervened" by choosing the induction so why did it matter now. They said they would check me first to see how far along I was. Well I had gone from 5cm - 9cm in 15 minutes flat - hence the unbearable pain. I told them to turn off the pitocin. Less than 10 minutes and I was fully dilated and ready to start pushing. I remembered from Isabel's birth, that once you start pushing, the contractions don't hurt anymore so I decided to stick to my plan of no epidural.
It was so nice to have a team of 5 people helping me along while I pushed, but after an hour, I didn't feel like I was making any progress. When I brought up that there hadn't been any progress and that I now wanted an epidural because I was too tired, no one told me "you're almost there" so I knew I had made the right choice for me. Had they told me I was close, I may have changed my mind, but you could see in their faces, we weren't getting anywhere.
I was in so much pain while I waited for the epidural. I don't know why I didn't just keep pushing while I was waiting, but I was done. The epidural only ended up working on half my body for awhile but later it worked better. My contractions started spreading further apart (a problem I also had with Isabel and a problem with epidurals sometimes). Javi started to worry that history would repeat it self. I think the epidural actually helped me relax a bit and we were making progress but now the problem was just that the contractions were too far apart to make much progress quickly. Elena was very close to making it out for such a long time but it seems like that last little bit took forever. (It was probably only another hour but maybe more)
Elena was born at 3 am. Once Elena came out, I got to hold her immediately and it was the best thing ever. I just held her and she nursed for such a long time (she barely ate the next 24 hours so good thing she nursed so much right away). They let me hold her for 2 hours, before they even thought about taking her away to weigh her. When they took her to weigh her, she did have the shakes so they were a little worried about her. We actually stayed an extra day in the hospital due to that but they went away and now she is our perfectly healthy little babe.
