Okay, ya’ll (yes I’m from the South 
) are absolutely going to kill me. I haven’t the time as a new mom to sit and finish my birth story from start to finish. So, I’m publishing a little more of it. Thank you so much for your patience and the nice comments posted on the previous post. I’m sorry I didn’t respond to any of your comments. I’m learning the whole blogosphere thing… I didn’t even realize that I could comment on your comments until Brance informed me of this recently.
Haddie’s Birth Story: Part III
I had preregistered at the hospital at around 36 weeks, so thankfully Brance and I didn’t need to fill out any paper work upon our arrival. A nurse led us to a triage room where they hooked me up to a fetal monitor, blood pressure machine and contraction monitor. They would need to monitor me for an hour and receive a doctors approval before admitting us into the hospital. When the nurse checked my cervix I was dilated to a 4. I was thrilled. I had only been barely dilated to a 1 at my doctors visit on Thursday and was not very effaced. My labor got progressively stronger the hour we spent in triage. My contractions went from 5 minutes apart to 3 minutes. I definitely could not talk through them; they were much more intense. I found sitting on a swivel chair that was in the room (I think it was for the doctor) and turning on it, staring at the wall and squeezing Brance’s hand helped me cope through my contractions. After a little while Brance and I decided to walk up and down the hall a bit to encourage my labor along. Around 10:15 p.m. the nurse returned to our room to check me again. I was now dilated to a 5 and the machine agreed that my contractions were coming every 3 minutes or so. The nurse told us that she needed to talk with the doctor, but she was certain that we would be admitted. I stood up from the hospital bed after being examined and I felt a warm gush down my legs. My water had broken. Brance went back to the truck to pick up our bags as the nurse helped me to my hospital room.
Saturday night was a long, long night of intense labor. My contractions were coming 1-3 minutes apart. Initially the nurse had me in bed hooked to monitors and an IV, but after an hour of monitoring me she agreed to allow me out of bed. It was such a relief to be able to labor moving around. Laboring in bed made the pain much, much worse. The swivel chair had helped me in the triage room, so we asked our nurse if there was one that I could use. She was so kind to find me one. I spent the night on the chair some and moving around the room. Periodically my nurse would hook me up to the monitors and make sure everything looked okay. She kept commenting on how all the nurses were impressed with how well I was handling labor and that it must be because I have a high pain tolerance. Honestly I’m not very strong and I do not have a very high pain tolerance. I’m such a baby and it doesn’t take much physically or emotionally to make me cry. I’ve always been a very sensitive person. So it really couldn’t have been me; I know the strength I felt came from from God and all the prayers that were being offered up on my behalf. My family and church family alike were praying for me. This is what I told the nurse.
Oddly as night began to draw to an end, my contractions began to space out again. They were still intense, but only coming every 5 – 7 minutes. Doctor Pernell came into my room around 6 a.m. or so and checked my dilation. I was slightly an 8. Ugh. I had labored intensely all night long only to barely dilate 3 more centimeters. I was utterly exhausted. There is no way to describe the physical, emotional and mental drain that I felt that morning. I felt completely defeated and wanted nothing more than to pack my bags, walk away from the hospital and give up (like that was an option ). I was so tired that with Brance’s encouragement I decided to move to the hospital bed and try and get some rest. But like I had learned the previous night… there is no resting through a contraction. My body and mind were so completely fatigued that I couldn’t fight sleep in between contractions. I would drift off for a few minutes, which felt like moments to me, only to be jerked back to consciousness and the reality of labor with a stabbing contraction that I would have to breath through. Up to this point in my labor I had not screamed, yelled or cried and I felt very confident in my decision to have a non-medicated birth. My mantra had been “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” But this morning I felt weak and uncertain. I’m so thankful for God allowing Brance to be a rock for me to lean on. Brance was no less exhausted than I was, but he absolutely refused to leave my side for a moment. He wouldn’t even eat because I couldn’t. That morning in the hospital bed tears streaming down my face Brance assured me that everything would be okay. Deep down I knew that he was right and that God would never give me more than what I could bare, even though it felt that way. Little did we realize how difficult a path we had yet to tread.
