Maybe Godzilla Was Just Pregnant, or the Birth Story of My Sweet Squeaky Baby, Part II

Note: I've decided not to share my baby's name on this blog because it is public. If you're one of my facebook friends, you can check my facebook page for her name.

Jumping right back in to my tale from part I:

At 8 the nurse came in and started getting things ready which woke Brad up.

"Hey Brad, we're going to push now," I told him, with a big smile on my face.

"Oh, baby time!" He replied while simultaneously rubbing his eyes and jogging to my side.

How foolish we were. I naively, stupidly thought that the hardest part was over. I just thought I needed to muscle through a little bit longer and then I could cuddle my baby. By nine a.m. the nurse and Brad could see that our baby had a head full of hair. I was thrilled that they could already see her head. That meant it couldn't be much longer, right? I was more tired at that moment than I think I have every been before. I had just pulled the first all-nighter of my life, not to mention weeks of poor sleep before that. The day before I had miraculously had a burst of energy and decided to clean our apartment which had resulted in a sparkling kitchen and bathroom and utter exhaustion. I was so tired that I was almost falling asleep between every contraction and could not even speak more than a few words at a time to Brad and the nurse. By ten I had made hardly any more progress, was shivering uncontrollably, and had back pain that the epidural hardly touched.

The nurse finally suggested calling my OB/GYN to use a vacuum. I wanted to be able to say that I didn't need any help, that I could push  on my own. But I knew that I really didn't have much more to give. I just wanted my baby. If possible, I wanted to avoid a C-section and the nasty recovery that comes with it, but other than that I wasn't very picky anymore. I was too tired to be picky.

This is what happens when your mom takes a little bit too long pushing. Poor baby. Luckily, her head was pretty much back to normal by the next day.

Unfortunately, the vacuum was only minimally helpful. Because baby girl had so much hair, the vacuum kept losing the suction about halfway through the push. After six contractions with the vacuum, they told me that a C-section was looking likely, but I could keep pushing for a little while if I wanted. I kept going. About every ten minutes the doctor would say, "If you don't make enough progress with this contraction, we'll have to go to a C-section." So I focused as much as I could to use what little strength I had and each time I made just enough progress.

A close-up of baby's hair.

At 10:45, the doctor told me I had 15-20 minutes left. At about this time, the nurse thought she saw a dark tinge to the fluid so decided to call NICU just in case the baby aspirated any meconium. A little after eleven, I started hyperventilating and got an oxygen mask. Around 11:20, I asked Brad to call my mom. If there is one thing that being a mother has taught me, it is that I need my mom way more than I thought I did. The moment I saw my mom walk through the door, I first felt a rush of relief and tears. My second thought was how amazing it is that my mom's hair and makeup is pretty much always perfect.

My mom's presence was the final push I needed (no pun intended) and twenty minutes later, baby's head was finally through. The doctor asked me if I wanted to feel her hair, so I reached down to touch my baby for the very first time. I was so amazed by how long her hair was, I burst out laughing which forced the rest of her body out. I'm glad I have that funny memory because the next few moments were the worst of my entire life. Baby had swallowed 3 ml of meconium and was totally unresponsive. She was rushed to the other side of the room so they could get her breathing. It was probably only seconds, but it felt like eternity. I couldn't even speak, I just shoved Brad away from me. I wanted her to have one parent with her, even if I couldn't get up. My mom stayed with me, squeezing my hand and stroking my hair while we watched and waited for her to cry. And waited, and waited, and waited. I have never prayed so hard in my entire life. When I finally heard her start squawking, I wanted to cheer but I was overcome. I just sobbed silently.

Congratulations! You've given birth to a pale, wrinkly old man!

Brad carried her over to me and laid her on my chest. My mom took a few pictures of our first few moments as a family and then quietly slipped out to give us some time together.

This and most of the following pictures were taken later by my dad.

Motherhood is simultaneously the hardest, best thing ever done. I think Brad feels the same thing about fatherhood. I feel so blessed to have our daughter. I don't deserve this blessing, but I will spend the rest of my life expressing my gratitude to my Father in Heaven for such a precious gift.

And to finish out, just a few more pictures of our beautiful girl:

This facial expression reminds my mom of me.

This picture was taken because I was feeling a little self-conscious about the state of my hair and makeup but still wanted our first family picture to be taken.

She loves her tongue.

Somehow, no one stopped us from taking her home with us.

The two of us spend a lot of time on this couch.

She allows me about 10 minutes of practice at a time.

Life is just so hard.

And last of all, one happy family.

Maybe Godzilla Was Just Pregnant, or the Birth Story of My Sweet Squeaky Baby, Part I

Warning: This post is about the birth of a human child. Births are gross. If you are queasy or don't necessarily want to hear mention of female body parts like uteruses (uteri?), skip this post. The next one will probably only mention cute things about babies.


My mom told me that the purpose of the last couple months of pregnancy was to make you so miserable that you would be willing to do anything to get the baby out of your body. That was definitely true in my case. The last 4 weeks of my pregnancy I had contractions almost every single day. Several times they even became consistently three minutes apart. I couldn't sleep through them and hence was getting little to no sleep at night and I had no energy to do anything at all.

A candid shot that my dad took at a concert that shows some of my discomfort.

Some very simple tasks became incredibly difficult. Things like playing my violin (every time I played on the E string, my bow would hit my belly), reading books to small children (they struggled to get comfortable on my shrinking lap), sweeping the kitchen floor (I had to sit my behind on the floor in order to sweep the pile into the dustpan.)

My nephew finally decided it was just easier to lean his elbow on my stomach rather than leaning back.

 I gave my Senior Recital 7 1/2 months pregnant. I went in to the hospital the day before because I started having contractions for the first time. They told me they were probably caused by stress. Huh. Who would have thought a senior recital and impending motherhood could be so stressful.

Last picture taken of me before getting rid of the bump ten days later. This was the day I ended up driving to the hospital in a blizzard with Brad and my parents because we thought the baby was coming. That story is worth its own blog post. Needless to say, we were all getting sick of false alarms.

At 9:30 p.m. on January 5th, Brad and I were watching a movie when my usual contractions all of a sudden became much, much, much more painful. I pretended to watch the movie while moving between bouncing on an exercise ball, doing gentle yoga stretches, and beating my head against the wall. Brad  obediently fulfilled his duty by stroking my hair and telling me I was beautiful. At this point my contractions were five minutes apart, but I did not want to be sent home from the hospital again. I had decided to wait until they were 2 minutes apart.

At 10:30 I turned off the movie and told Brad it was time to pack our bags. In the time between contractions I would run around grabbing everything I thought we might need (we didn't use half of it) and during the contraction I laid on the bed looking rather unhappy. Now when I say I laid on the bed looking rather unhappy I mean that I crawled around the bed, grabbing whatever was closest, clenching it in two fists, and attempting to tear it apart.

"Hey, you kind of look like Godzilla," Brad said as he packed the camera charger into the diaper bag.

"Poor misunderstood Godzilla," I replied, "Poor thing was probably just pregnant and cranky."

As the contractions got closer and closer together, I was no longer able to run around fetching useless items and had to resort to telling Brad what to do. 

In between contractions: "Hey, this isn't so bad. I think we can stay at the apartment for a few more hours. Did you pack the camera charger?"

During a contraction: "Argh! I need drugs and a hospital and nurses and doctors! Someone help me! Grab that darn camera charger!"

At about 12:30 I had enough and told Brad it was time to go to the hospital, and would he please grab the camera charger? In the car, I called my mom to tell her we were on our way. Well, Brad told her, I mostly just groaned into the phone. When we got to the hospital, I knew I had about 30 seconds before the next contraction started, so I ran in as fast as I could waddle on swollen feet while Brad fetched our bags. We checked in, I tried on the gorgeous gown they had available for the evening, and we waited for the nurse to check my cervix. I had been dilated to 1 cm for about a month so I was praying that these contractions were actually doing something, and I was a 3! Not amazing, but I could take it! They told us to hang out for an hour, when they would check my cervix again to make sure that things were moving along. 

An hour later I was a four and the nurse happily announced that I would not be leaving the hospital without a baby. I was excited because a) I get a baby! b) It meant I could officially be admitted and get pain meds. I had made a goal months before not to ask for an epidural until I was dilated to a 7 so I could move around during most of the labor, but that goal was out the window. Contractions were way worse than I expected. I wanted relief and I wanted it now. Excep, the anesthesiologist had just gone into a C-section. Awesome. I kept focusing on my breathing and bruising Brad's hands while I waited.. When the anesthesiologist came in I treated him like a celebrity. I knew instantly that he was a kindred spirit.

Can I just say that epidurals are amazing? I felt so good afterwards and I started dilating much faster once I had it. I think my body was finally able to relax and do what it needed to do. So grateful for modern medicine. Even though I was finally able to manage the pain, Brad and I both could not sleep. We were like kids on Christmas Eve, except for we were gonna get a real, live baby in the morning and not just a Barbie. At 6 a.m. Brad finally fell asleep and I read a book. At 7, I was checked again and was dilated to a ten! The nurse told me we would wait another hour and then start pushing at 8. I happily texted the mothers (Brad's mom and mine) and thought to myself that I could have a baby by 10:30.

Yeah, no.

Read on to Part II.