Lexi's Birth Story

It all started the weekend of general conference. I woke up at 6:20 Saturday morning to sharp pains & since my Braxton Hicks had always been uncomfortable at worst, this was new to me. I laid in bed for about an hour before getting up. As I stood up I felt a tiny rush of fluid and thought ‘Surely this is it!’ I decided to have a bath and see if anything changed/progressed. When Dan woke up I told him “I think I might be in labor” but since it seemed so early on and I wasn’t in much pain, I didn’t want to go to the hospital (and risk looking stupid!) We called the nurse who said it was probably false labor brought on by my exam the day before. Needless to say, I was disappointed – I had slowly been getting my hopes up that my baby would be coming today! By mid-afternoon the contractions completely stopped and I just kept saying it was okay, in a week I’d be snuggling my baby no matter what.

The contractions started again in the night, making it really hard to sleep despite not being horribly painful. All Sunday they kept coming irregularly and I tried to just continue on my day – watching conference, spending time with Dan, etc. In the evening I was making a bunch of cookies to take in to work, since Monday was supposed to be my last day. It was so hard though – I was contracting more and more frequently, and they had gotten much more painful, though I was still thinking ‘I can totally handle this!’ We figured the stress of rushing around to get to bed at a decent time and get everything ready for my last day was causing them to get worse, so I was glad to finally crawl into bed. But the pain didn’t stop at all! They kept coming, albeit at irregular intervals and some really weren’t too bad. I wasn’t getting any sleep and though I tried to moan as quietly as possible, I still woke Dan up quite a bit. At 2am I finally started timing them and they were about 10minutes apart but didn’t seem to be getting stronger. After a couple hours I finally got up to have a bath – man did that help the pain! It felt so much better in the water, yet they were still bad enough I was having trouble doing my breathing and being quiet. Dan eventually said ‘If they get to 5minutes, we’re going to the hospital okay?’ I agreed, but I didn’t think it would happen and didn’t want to go if I wasn’t absolutely positive this was the real thing! By 6am, they were coming about every 3-5 minutes so I started getting nervous and we quickly got ready to go to the hospital. I had gotten so behind but figured I had 2 days off to get everything ready at the last minute – I hadn’t even packed my bag! So in a mad rush, we grabbed everything we thought we’d need and raced to the hospital.

Suddenly I was scared I was going to be too far along for an epidural. Though I always wanted to go as natural as possible, I was having a hard time thinking of anything but the seemingly not-stop pain. I consider myself to have a fairly decent pain tolerance, so I figured I must be pretty far along for it to be hurting so badly already. But once I got settled into my room, the nurse determined I was barely 1cm dilated, if that! I was shocked, since the intensity and frequency of my contractions made it feel like I should have been much further.

[Writing this, I sound like someone completely unprepared for the true pain of labor. I assure you, I fully expected this – I just expected it to come a lot more gradually over the hours! I really think if I had known it would only be a few more hours, I could have handled it. But being only 1cm, there was absolutely no telling how long it would be.]

Now, the next many hours are a huge blur to me, so I will retell it the best I can. I gladly accepted the morphine shot right away, and while it took FOREVER to kick in it did help lessen the pain. Normally they would have just sent me home till I progressed further, but I knew there was no way I’d make it through the next 3 days like this. We asked if there was any way to just get induced today, since my diabetes meant I was going to do so later that week anyway. Thankfully, the doctor agreed and we got things started! I was hooked up to an IV for fluids and insulin, started on Pitocin, and strapped to the monitors to watch my blood pressure, contractions, and baby’s heart rate. As much as I had wanted to labor naturally, I was exhausted from the night and miserable from pain that I knew was going to last probably into the afternoon/evening, so I asked for the epidural as soon as possible. Man was I glad for that, since they seemed to check my dilation every hour!

I spent the rest of the day drifting in and out of consciousness, occasionally asking for ice chips and texting updates to everyone. Dr. Wolsey came in around 10:00 to strip my membranes – I was just dilated enough to manage it! Things seemed to progress fairly well after, but I suppose it wasn’t fast enough since Dr. Jacob came in at 2:00 to break my water. (Keep in mind, due to being exhausted I was pretty out of it and didn’t have much say in, or really know, what was going on most the time!) At least I didn’t feel either of these procedures from being so numb. That was when things went downhill. Alexis had been in a pretty bad position (so that explains the excruciating pelvic pain the last week!) and hadn’t been descending much, which was why they broke my water to help speed it along. However it just caused her head to get lodged in my pelvis (as we found out later). I stopped dilating almost completely, and Alexis was a little distressed. Her heart rate kept dropping, which meant I had to lie completely down, on my right side only, and go on oxygen. So when I was awake, it was pretty dang boring – I couldn’t even see the TV! At some point in the afternoon my epidural seemed to wear off just the top half even though I kept pushing the button! So after a few hours of feeling all the contractions while my numbed legs felt like tree trunks, I got some different medication that BURNED like heck for the first minute through my entire body (thanks for the warning!)

At 6pm, Dr. Thorpe said I was only dilated to about 5/6cm and that it was looking like a c-section might be in my future, though Alexis was fine so we could keep waiting, which I of course wanted to do! As long as my baby was okay I wasn’t going to do anything just to end my own misery! Over the next few hours they kept trying to up my Pitocin so I would dilate further. But every time they did, little Lexi had something to say about it! Dr. Thorpe came back at 9:15 and I had dilated to about 6.5cm, so we decided to wait another hour before resorting to surgery. By 11:30 my body had failed to progress any further and we decided to have the cesarean.

As they prepped me for surgery, I began to panic and made sure Dan knew full well that I could NEVER do this again! (I blame my freaking out on the long day and having being completely unprepared for a surgery, haha.) I had been shaking all afternoon from the epidural, but it got even worse in the freezing operating room! I was so scared and was so glad to have Dan beside me. It definitely helped to just be able to focus on him while he reassured me everything would be okay. He was amazing throughout the entire thing, being so supportive and holding my hand (literally & figuratively) the whole time. I never would have been able to do this without him. When Dr. Thorpe asked if I was ready to start, I knew there was no going back and I had to get this baby out one way or the other, so I said yes, to which he responded, ‘Trick question we actually started about a minute and a half ago!’ Rude! I was grateful for his upbeat attitude though. I hated the sensation of knowing what they were doing down there, even though I couldn’t feel it. That is, until the nurse started using her elbow to push Alexis out with a tremendous amount of force – the pressure and tugging seemed unbearable. I kept saying ‘I don’t like that!” Apparently I was not very shy in there. Soon they were telling Dan to get ready to look and tell the gender. At 12:21am Tuesday, he stood up and announced in a surprised voice ‘It’s a girl!’ (he was convinced it was a boy), then they whisked her off to get checked out and cleaned. I didn’t even get to see her, but I sure heard her in that other room! While Dan was with her, I was busy getting fixed up (and it was NOT comfortable, let me tell you!) then I finally got to see my precious baby girl. From the first glance I thought she looked so beautiful and just said ‘She’s perfect!’ before she was taken away again and I got wheeled to recovery. I spent an hour mostly passed out, in between “uterus massages” which thankfully weren’t bad since I was still fairly numb. Then I was finally ready to hold my sweet baby, though it took them forever. It was about 3:30 by the time I finally had her in my arms, and though I was exhausted and don’t remember much about it, the moment was perfect. After a while they took her to the nursery so I could rest, but I spent the next 3 days almost constantly holding her in my arms, cuddling and loving this sweet, beautiful little baby who was now such a huge part of my life! I loved just laying her little body on top of me and relaxing, especially since doing anything else was pretty difficult for me!

So it turned out that Lexi’s head was presenting at a poor position in my pelvis, which was why she got stuck and had a big bump on her head when she was born! She was so stuck they actually still had to use forceps to get her out! The nurse told me that if I had ever dilated enough to deliver vaginally, it probably would’ve been a horrible, difficult delivery. So I feel like the c-section was the right decision for us. The next 2 weeks or so though were the absolute worst! I could barely get out of bed – you know those arm bars above hospital beds? Yeah that thing was my best friend. I NEVER would have been able to move around without it, thank goodness I did all my arm exercises because there was no way I was using any of my abdominals (and apparently you use those for everything!) I seriously missed that arm bar when I went home. I slept on the couch for about the first week because it was just too hard to get in and out of the bed. I could barely get up on the couch and bend over to pick Lexi up in the night. I shuffled everywhere hunched over, and had massive muscle pains in my back constantly. But as the days went by, walking/standing/living got easier and I began to heal. My scar is just a big red line, getting up is easy (though I still try not to use my stomach at all), and I can walk straight upright most of the time. Though I can tell I’m still not fully back to where I was, it is nice to feel pretty much myself again! And really, all that matters is Alexis got here safely – I’d say it was worth it!