The whole story (as near as I can recall)

Yahoo!!!! Lance is brushing his teeth; Parker's making cute snuggle noises in her sleep and I can't be happier. It is so wonderful and so SURREAL to know that from now on I am a mom and Lance is a dad.

Parker is such a beautiful gift and oh my god was it painful getting her here. I know women are supposed to have labor-amnesia on the sight of their newborn child, but I think it's fine knowing that Parker is well worth the extreme effort it took to bring her into this world.

As the previous posts said, contractions really started kicking in on wednesday afternoon, after a physical exam at the OB (which felt a little like an excavation). I squirmed and contracted through a lovely lunch with Pinkney and then 2 circus classes. I was a little worse for wear and tried to rest as much as I could that evening. By that night, I knew Parker was coming soon. The big issue was that Thursday morning was the dress rehearsal for the middle school kids' Julius Caesar, followed by a thursday night opening performance. I still had 23 costumes to make. At 2 am, the contractions were so bad that I couldn't lie down in bed any more; it hurt too much. Knowing that I was going to have to head to the hospital, I took advantage of the pain and stood up to finish all 23 costumes before it was too late. Lance insists that sewing from 2 am to 6am while in labor constitutes the "nesting" burst of energy, but I think it's more of a "the show must go on" type of thing; I knew I was going to miss the show and those kids needed to wear something on stage!

After the costumes were done, I managed to lie down and squeeze in about an hour's sleep (facilitated by a nice food rub from Mr. Windish). We called the dr. about 6 am and she recommended we stick it out at home (and take advantage of the pain relieving factors of the shower) until the office opened and we could get a physical, instead to heading straight to the hospital and waiting around uncomfortably for hours. Around 10 am, we packed up the costumes and the car, dropped off the Caesar stuff, and headed to the doctor's office for an update. I had apparently effaced another 20% and dilated to 3 cm overnight. The dr. recommended we walk around for a couple of hours to keep things moving and then head to the hospital. We were on the upper west side, so we got lunch at EJ's Diner and then spent a few hours walking up and down the air conditioned stairs and exhibits at the museum of natural history. At around 4 pm, I was in so much pain that I announced that we were done and it was time to head in.

We landed at the triage room at the hospital around 5pm and hung out there until they admitted up at about 7pm. I was SO happy to be in a private room with a shower I could jump into immediately. The shower was my main pain relief for HOURS. I was allowed off the monitor for 30 minutes at a time and that was the only time the contractions weren't agony, especially since the plan was to avoid an epidural if at all possible. I'm not against pain medication; it's just that all the literature I had read seemed to suggest that epidurals slow down labor, which made the dr;s need to speed things up with pitocin, which brings along stronger contractions, which makes labor more painful than before the damn epidural- a vicious cycle.

All that "natural" labor was all well and good, until around 2 am when I was in so much pain I couldn't function. I had made it to 6 cm, but 10 cm was still a long ways away. I hadn't eaten in 11 hours, wasn't allowed any water other than ice chips and my body was BEAT. I just didn't think I was going to make it. So, I thew in the towel (even though our AWESOME nurse Bekah and the fabulous residents insisted that I didn't think of it as giving up) and asked for an epidural. Thank god. Once it was inserted, I was finally able to lie down through a contraction (first time in 24 hours) and my body could start to build up some strength again. The nurse and doctors kept saying that I should try to get some sleep, but then they kept checking things every 3 - 5 minutes, so it's not like I could actually do that. But at least lying down helped a LOT.

The initial epidural medication lasted about 1.5 hours. We had been told this, but were still shocked when I was in so much pain I was screaming, couldn't breathe, and just WAILED through contractions again. They hurt SO MUCH. I thought I was going to die. My body and the baby's heart beat was happiest when I was either in a modified child's pose or on my hands and knees, so the doctor asked me to stay like that for as long as I could. An hour or two (or 3- who the hell knows?) later, choking on snot and ice chips while attempting to breathe in an oxygen mask, I was still only at 9 cm. I was BEGGING to push, but I wasn't allowed to yet. Thank god for years of Kegel exercises, because it is HARD to talk your body out of pushing when it REALLY wants to. They boosted the epidural a little. I still had a cm to go and the contractions were 3 minutes long and coming every 30 seconds. The dr's were saying it was crazy that it was this strong, as this is usually what pitocin brings. And I was worried about getting slowed down by the epidural. Good lord....

A second boost of epidural made it so that I could breathe enough to stop hyperventilating and even managed to lie down again for a little bit. The baby's heart rate still preferred the hands and knees, so I had to switch back to that as soon as my legs recovered enough to support me. Both the doctor and the nurse separately commented that it was sure lucky that I was Parker's mom, because she really preferred a position that most people couldn't sustain for that many hours at a time. I guess those handstand lessons did SOMETHING for my wrists.

Once the last cm dilated, it was FINALLY time to push. This would have been easier if I could actually feel which muscles were which, but the epidural was finally doing enough of a job that I really had to experiment to figure it out. Pushing ended up being the least painful part (again, thank you epidural). It was pretty fast too. My body had been wanting to do it for hours, so it was such a relief when they could turn down the epidural enough for me to feel a little and get on with it.

Since I was still pretty numb, Parker needed a little help with a vacuum extraction. The dr said she would have let me push by myself (and probably avoided most of the ripping that ended up happening), but Parker's heart rate was NOT happy once the pushing was so start and stop. So bang bang bang and out she came. Lance and I were so teared up looking at her. It makes me cry now just picturing it. It is just a happy, joyful, relief to have her here, in one piece, with us. It's a cliche, but it really feels like a miracle.

I'm sure there's lots more details that I may or may not remember. They broke my water at some point, since it wasn't breaking on its own. During the worst part ever, Lance was trying to coach me (which he did heroically and successfully all night long) by saying to breathe "slow and deep", but I told Lance that HE could go breathe slow and deep (while CLEARLY adding the subtext of "go fuck yourself.") Ummmm the rest will come with time. Maybe.

Parker's getting a final test before they let us go home from our swank recovery room (which we can't afford to stay in another day!). I am fried fried fried. There are 20 messges filling up my voicemail and I can't even begin to think about attempting to listen to them. It's time to pack up, go home, sit on some ice and take a LONG nap while taking advantage of grandma baby-sitting before we're on our own again.

Thank god the beautiful Miss Parker is here and we survivied and love each other and her more than we could ever possibly imagine. Let's hear it for the VERY LUCKY Friday the 13th.

xoxo