Because my pregnancy and birth, for the most part with Gage were so uneventful and I had Gage exactly on my due date, I didn't expect too much drama from Ezra's birth either. I did expect maybe to go a day or 2 early but that was about it and the closer I was getting to his EDD and the more times at the doctor they were just like 'eh, you're pregnant', I was thinking that he might not actually make it here on time.
Tuesday night around 6-7pm I started to feel kinda crampy. Now mind you, I really didn't even know what contractions felt like since my water broke with Gage hours before I even had any. However, as the cramping started in my back, I started to realize that that's what I remember feeling in the hospital with Gage. I guess it's what most people refer to as back labor. I never seem to get cramps anyway in the front, so when my back started to hurt and what seemed like in waves and just every now and then, it occurred to me, these might be contractions. In fact, I went to a friend's house to drop something off for work and told her I was going to have a baby the next day. At that point I wasn't sure anything was happening or if it was BH (since I never had those either) or what? Anyway, we continued to go along with our nightly routine. We cleaned, ate dinner, etc. although I kept thinking 'if this is really it, are we ready?', 'do we have everything together we need?, etc'. I think I threw some extra stuff in my hospital bag as well. I went to bed around 11pm and got about an hour and a half of sleep before the contractions woke me up and I started to time them. Fortunately, I had downloaded a silly little contraction counter app since I was trying to sleep through half of them and it really is hard to time them from beginning to beginning without trying too hard. Anyway, my doctor had said with the 2nd baby to make sure I called when I was having contractions 5 mins. apart for an hour. I got scared when I realized some were already 5 mins apart. However, then, some were like 15 mins. apart. I couldn't sleep anymore, so I headed downstairs to watch the 17 innning game that the O's happened to be playing to distract me. About 3am the contractions actually seemed to be getting farther apart, however, then I realized I was bleeding a little. Was this what they call the 'bloody show'? Who knows? You'd think I'd never been pregnant before. Anyway, since my contractions were slowing down some it seemed, I decided just to try to rest the best I could (after the 5.5 hour O's game). I was hoping to last until the morning, I really didn't want to call my friend that was on call in the middle of the night if I wasn't sure this was gonna happen.
After calling the hospital at about 445am, they told me it'd be best if I came in so they could see what was going on. They said it so nonchalantly like it was 2 in the afternoon. I mean, sure, just come on over, don't worry about finding somewhere for your 3 year old to go. Just bring him with you! Anyway, we held off as long as we could and called our friend at about 5am to say we were bringing Gage over.
We arrived at the hospital at 6am and checked in. They hooked me up to the monitor and checked me. I was about 3cm and the bleeding was under control. They monitored the baby and I for a while and then asked me what I wanted to do. They wanted to give me potocin and break my water. I didn't want either of those things to happen, so I told them I'd rather wait. They certainly weren't gonna let me sit around in the hospital all day taking up an L&D room so they said if I wanted I could go home and to come back when I was ready. The said the baby would definitely be here within 24 hours either way. The contractions weren't any worse and I figured if I was going to stare at the wall, I might as well do so at home instead of at the hospital. Plus, I was pretty damn hungry and I knew they weren't gonna let me eat. Seconds before the nurse was unhooking me Ezra's heart beat tanked a little. It had done it twice before in the couple of hours I was there, but they didn't seem too concerned. I could immediately tell from the look on the nurse's face that she didn't like the situation. I said to her, 'you don't think I should go home, do you?' She said, 'until that 2nd I would've said yes, but you have a healthy baby here, no point taking any chances'. She asked how I felt about taking laps to see if it would progress labor any farther. I said, yes, anything to keep from being 'induced' or my labor being sped up. So we walked- in circles- for an hour! Nothing was happening, I could tell the contractions weren't getting any stronger and I probably wasn't dilating anymore. Sure enough, it really didn't do all that much. Following that the doctor, again, suggested that he speed up labor. He said they were going to break my water and administer potocin. I agreed to them breaking my water but told him I'd really like to see what happened after that before taking anything else. Fair enough. At 1015am they broke my water and I got used to the fact that I was going to have a baby that day. I texted everyone to let them know that Gage was going to be a big brother very soon. The next couple of hours went by pretty quickly, I think, just about as quickly as labor can go. I was 6cm before I knew it and requested my epidural, which ended up hurting way more than I remember and making me shake like crazy. It numbed me too much and I didn't think I'd ever be able to push. I think that my epi with Gage was like as perfect as it could be. Anyway, that was about 1230pm and I desperately asked the nurse if I'd have this baby by 2pm. She said, eh, but definitely by 3pm. I explained to her last time I was told, 'oh he's so low, you're gonna have this baby in like a half hour, blah, blah' and I pushed for over 2 hours. She said that wouldn't be the case today. So after another hour and a half and about 8 pushes later, Ezra Jude easily entered the world and was given directly to me to snuggle and cuddle! I made my 2pm prediciton! hah...exactly. No complaining here, start to finish- a little over 12 hours and only 8 hours in the hospital before baby. (Gage was 11 hours start to finish and 9 hours in the hospital). All in all, not a bad experience, but just a little different than with Gage. I should count myself lucky though that all went pretty much as planned.
Whew! That was a lot longer than I expected and now if you're not bored and still with me, there you have it- the entrance of this little guy into the world!
