Birth story

I thought I'd include Tara's birth story while I'm at it today. For those of you who haven't read it on Myspace.


Everything started on Thursday night/Friday morning, the 19th/20th. Before I went to bed I noticed lots of mucus. I was wondering if it was the mucus plug. I went to bed at 11:30 & woke up at 1:30. I went down to the bathroom & went. I peed & stopped & more came out & then more. I noticed a little bit of spotting. I was like yay finally. I had thought my water broke, but it wasn't pouring out. I did read that it could just be a dribble. I ran upstairs & woke Anthony. Then came downstairs & called my doc office. They have an answering service. A few min later the doc on call at the hospital called. He said to wait & see if I have more water coming out. To go back to bed. So I did, but couldn't sleep. I noticed more blood like I had my period. By then I was having cramps & knew they were contractions. I tried the breathing. I laid in bed in pain. I ended up calling the doc office again in the morning & my doc called back. I told her about the blood & she said to come in. We left after 8am & got there before 9. It took about 15 min to get there. They checked me in & my doc came in & checked me over. She said I was 2-3 cm dialated. She said something about a pollyp, but wasn't sure. I was having bad low back pains. The nurse gave me water with ice to wake the baby up & told me to walk to get the contractions going. We'd walk up & down the hall. My back hurt so bad. I guess it was back labor, but they never said that. I'd have to stop focus & breathe. I also walked around my room. I hadn't eaten since 7:30 that morning. So they gave me some chicken bullion & yellow jello & tea. My parents came to visit. I threw up twice. I was shivering uncontrolably. I read that, that might happen & it's normal. I had diarhea all day. Also normal. I tried to sleep, but had to keep opening my eyes to breathe & focus. Everytime I started breathing Anthony would ask me a question. My parents did the same thing. My back was hurting so bad. It was hard to lay on my back. Finally at 4pm they said I was dialated 5cm & could give me an epidural. I was real worried about it & nervous. The guy gave me a novicane shot. It hurt. It was like a pinch, but didn't last long. They he did the epidural needle. That really hurt. I got a pain & ache, but again it was just a real quick pain. I laid back down & didn't feel anything. It worked real quick. I was totally numb & drugged out. It was so nice. I was real thursty, but by then they said I could only have ice cause of the epidural. I changed possitions a few times. Well they moved me. When I moved to my right side it made my dialating go down. So they moved me back on to my left side. At 11:00pm I started pushing. It was the nurse on my right & Anthony on my left. He had 1 leg & she had the other. My right leg was so heavy. At 1 point I was holding on to my leg & my hand was going numb cause it was so heavy. I pushed for 2 hrs & 40 min. They put a mirror in front of me so I could watch the baby's head. Towards the end it was real hard. I was running out of breath & energy. Anthony kept feeding me ice. I was so hot & thirsty. The nurse took my temp towards the end & I had a fever of 100 degrees. I pushed more & after I heard the heart monitor going crazy. The nurse told me to take a deep breath. I could see the right side of my chest pulsating. That was real scary. The doc came in. She said that she thought I was gonna rip, so she wanted to do a epesiodomy. I wasn't thrilled about it, but at this point I really wanted the baby out. She also said it wasn't good for the baby that I had a fever. She did the epesiodomy & I pushed as hard as I could a few times & she came out. They had told me ahead of time that she already had a bowel movement inside me. So they didn't want her to take a breath. They said they'd take her right away & try to clean out her mouth. Of course when she came out she did cry right away. But she was okay. The doc stitched me up. They weighed her & handed me my beautiful daughter.