September 24, 2018
What a whirlwind! Nolan's birth story is basically the exact opposite of Norah's. She was early, forced to make an appearance before she was ready via induction, whereas Nolan came in his own good time, almost a week after what they consider completely full term. I was 40 weeks 6 days when I went into labor with him. Here's the story of how it all went down. **This part gets a little graphic, so if that's not your jam, TURN BACK NOW!
If you're not familiar with Norah's birth story, you can read about it here, but in a nutshell, I was induced for multiple reasons (that I now think were unfounded) and it was a long, painful, frustrating process that I resolutely refused to repeat with Nolan. To all of my care providers ultimate annoyance, I refused basically every intervention that they suggested or offered. I went to my appointments, did all the blood work, did the dreaded glucose test, but that was about it. I refused extra ultrasounds, membrane sweeping when I got to 40 weeks, refused any pelvic exams to check progress, because in my mind, what was the point? I didn't need to know if I was dilating, all it did for me with Norah was frustrate me or make me feel like I was walking around with a time bomb. I had decided early on that I was gonna do this thing basically like I had a midwife, which I had briefly tried to find, much too late in my pregnancy. This of course isn't the popular route with an OB/GYN so I am pretty sure there was a big red "PROBLEM PATIENT" written in my chart, but I didn't care, I was gonna do this on my terms, unless something came up and Nolan's health was at risk. I had joked with co-workers and family that I was going to wait until he was halfway here before I went to the hospital, and little did I know, this was a partially self-fulfilling prophecy. In preparation, I read multiple books about how to have a natural birth, including books about hyno-birthing, and all you non-crunchees out there rolling your eyes, I get it, I used to be you, but I have to say, I 100% think that they helped stay calm, up until a certain point, where I just threw it all out the window and went into a full blown panic.
The night of Sunday, September 23, 2018 I started feeling what I thought might be very weak contractions. Felt more like period cramps than anything else, and they were really sporadic. I went to bed that night feeling calm and hopeful. I don't remember the exact time that I got up, but it must have been sometime before 5:00 am because it was Monday morning and Chase was supposed to be going to work and he wasn't awake yet. I sat on our couch, eagerly waiting for the next crampy feeling, ready to get this thing going. Mentally I felt calm and excited and maybe a little nervous, but mostly excited. When Chase got up, I told him I thought I might be having legit contractions, but I wasn't sure. I remember being so worried about telling him, because I didn't want him to call out of work and then it be a false alarm, but we gave it some time, I felt a few more twinges and he called in and decided to work from home. From there we just did things like normal. Norah got up and we hung out just the three of us for the last time.
A little while later, things started to pick up a little, still was completely tolerable, just felt like really uncomfortable cramps. We decided to call my parents to come over and get Norah, so Chase and I could just chill out and wait for things to pick up. On and off all day I had contractions of varying intensity, they would start to get consistent and then completely stall out. At one point they had all but stopped so I decided to take a nap while Chase worked and what woke me up was the most intense one that I had experienced so far. From here they just continued to get more and more frequent and more and more uncomfortable. By this time it was getting later, Monday night football was getting ready to start and I know this because the Bucs were playing the Steelers and it was kind of a big deal because Ryan Fitzpatrick had been doing really well thus far. Now the contractions were starting to get serious, I could talk through most of them, but on few I had a hard time breathing through, I had to focus all my energy on just relaxing and getting through it and knowing that it would only last for a minute or so and then I would have a break. We did this every 7-8 minutes for the first half of the game, and then after sitting on the toilet to pee and having a super intense contraction, I told Chase we should at least put our stuff in the car just in case. He did that and then I had two more contractions that pretty much took me to the brink of being able to control my breathing and not give in to the pain and freak out. It was time to head to the hospital. We should have gone earlier, but I didn't have normal labor with Norah so I didn't know what things should feel like and assumed that I was going to get to the hospital and they would tell me, "you're 3 cm dilated" and either they would send me home or it would be time to start doing all the things (pitocin, bulb catheters, epidural) that I was determined to avoid this time around. Chase took Shanti (our dog) out and I can only imagine what how scary it must have been for him when he came back in and saw my petrified face. My water had broken. It was like a literal and figurative flood gate being opened. We immediately jumped in the car and drove to the hospital which was about 15-20 minutes away. LONGEST TRIP OF MY LIFE. From the minute that my water broke, I was having the most intense contractions I had felt and they were coming about every minute or so. I was literally holding onto the chicken bar in the car and every contraction I got I remember lifting myself off the seat and just giving in to the pain. All calm and focus went out the window, for me at least, Chase, my steady and unwavering rock was such an amazing partner throughout this blur of insanity. He kept chanting to me "It's gonna be ok, you're gonna be fine, we're almost there" and in hindsight I don't know if that was to try and help me be calm or to keep himself calm. Either way I appreciated the effort. He somehow managed to call the hospital on our way and tell them what was going on, in hopes of speeding things along once we arrived, but that wasn't really the case.
He pulled into the ER entrance, put me in a wheelchair, got me inside and went to park the car. This is where things start to get blurry for me. I was still having extremely painful contractions that were rocking me to my core. I can say this with the utmost confidence because I am not the type to show pain or discomfort in public, and at this point I was a raving lunatic. I was moaning, cursing, and basically making all the embarrassing noises that I had just watched other women make in the tons of youtube birthing vlogs I had been binging on. I was sitting in the main ER waiting room when all of this was going on and before Chase came back I do remember a woman coming and sitting next to me, taking my hand and asking me if this was my first baby. I said something along the lines of "No, and I am going to give birth right here if they don't take me back right now." Not only were the contractions almost unbearable, I was feeling the urge to push now. It seemed like forever and in reality it was probably only a few minutes before they brought me back to labor and delivery. Chase was literally running me down the hall in the wheelchair and to the elevator. Another random thing that I remembered was that once we got closer to the room, I told the nurse I need to push, and literally I had no control over this, my body was pushing without my permission, and she told, me "well you have leggings on." 😱 In hindsight, not the most helpful thing to tell someone that is in a state of complete and utter panic.
We got to the room, I stood up, the nurses stripped me from the waist down and I got onto the bed and in "the position" and basically waited a minute or two for the Dr and started pushing. I don't recall how many times I had to, but what I do remember is that it felt incredibly intense. I want to say painful, but it was more than that and different than that. Pain isn't the right word, I felt super intense pressure. I remember thinking that he just felt too big to be able to come out without causing me some major damage. I pushed a few more times and he was here. I thought for sure the Dr was going to tell me that I was all kinds of jacked up down yonder, but I came out of it with a few relatively small tears. All in all we had checked into the ER at 10:51 and Nolan was born at 10:57. Weird how those 6 minutes seemed like hours.
After they laid him on my chest, I assumed the worst of it was over, I was so wrong. For whatever reason, I wouldn't stop bleeding. My uterus hadn't started contracting like it's supposed to, so every time the nurses would press on my stomach, I could feel a rush of blood and I remember asking them if this was normal, and no one would really say anything at first, they just keep checking me every few minutes. After awhile they told me that they were gonna have to give me pitocin or something like pitocin to help things contract so I would stop bleeding. FREAKING PITOCIN I was pissed, here I had avoided it and done the thing naturally and now I had to have it anyways. Once they got this started I wasn't feeling contractions like I did when they gave it to me with Norah, but my back was killing me. I don't know if this was because of the medication or because of the labor, but it was pretty intense. The nurses kept checking me and things weren't really improving so the Dr came in and basically told me that she was going to need to do a manual extraction because she felt that there was a clot or something left that was stopping things from closing up and it was causing me to keep bleeding. She also mentioned that I was going to need morphine because this was going to be painful. I was really scared at this point, and I wasn't sure what to do because the last thing I wanted was to take some kind of heavy medication that was gonna make me feel out of it, or was going to stop me from being able to breast feed Nolan. Somehow I decided to go ahead and try to do it without the morphine and the Dr said she would just stop if I needed her to. I don't remember how many times she had to "manually extract" AKA shove her arm up to the north pole, but it was extremely painful and I had both nurses holding my hands and Chase up by my face telling me I could do it. I don't know how long it took and I had to ask her to stop once but thankfully she finished and felt like it had worked. I wish I could remember the exact amount they told me, but the nurses said I lost close to half my total blood volume and they weren't sure if I was going to need a blood transfusion or not. Luckily in the end, they did blood work on me and my values were good enough that they didn't feel I needed the transfusion. We stayed in that room for a few hours, Chase and I took turns holding Nolan skin to skin until our family that had waited patiently came in to meet him. Norah's reaction was priceless. She came in looking nervous and when she saw him she smiled and was hesitant but she came over and asked if she could pet him. We laughed and said yes, she was so sweet and gentle with him we all basically melted watching the two of them. Nolan was 8lb 1 oz, 19.5" long. He was a snuggle bug from day one and most importantly he completed the Thorquad 💙
We got to the room, I stood up, the nurses stripped me from the waist down and I got onto the bed and in "the position" and basically waited a minute or two for the Dr and started pushing. I don't recall how many times I had to, but what I do remember is that it felt incredibly intense. I want to say painful, but it was more than that and different than that. Pain isn't the right word, I felt super intense pressure. I remember thinking that he just felt too big to be able to come out without causing me some major damage. I pushed a few more times and he was here. I thought for sure the Dr was going to tell me that I was all kinds of jacked up down yonder, but I came out of it with a few relatively small tears. All in all we had checked into the ER at 10:51 and Nolan was born at 10:57. Weird how those 6 minutes seemed like hours.
After they laid him on my chest, I assumed the worst of it was over, I was so wrong. For whatever reason, I wouldn't stop bleeding. My uterus hadn't started contracting like it's supposed to, so every time the nurses would press on my stomach, I could feel a rush of blood and I remember asking them if this was normal, and no one would really say anything at first, they just keep checking me every few minutes. After awhile they told me that they were gonna have to give me pitocin or something like pitocin to help things contract so I would stop bleeding. FREAKING PITOCIN I was pissed, here I had avoided it and done the thing naturally and now I had to have it anyways. Once they got this started I wasn't feeling contractions like I did when they gave it to me with Norah, but my back was killing me. I don't know if this was because of the medication or because of the labor, but it was pretty intense. The nurses kept checking me and things weren't really improving so the Dr came in and basically told me that she was going to need to do a manual extraction because she felt that there was a clot or something left that was stopping things from closing up and it was causing me to keep bleeding. She also mentioned that I was going to need morphine because this was going to be painful. I was really scared at this point, and I wasn't sure what to do because the last thing I wanted was to take some kind of heavy medication that was gonna make me feel out of it, or was going to stop me from being able to breast feed Nolan. Somehow I decided to go ahead and try to do it without the morphine and the Dr said she would just stop if I needed her to. I don't remember how many times she had to "manually extract" AKA shove her arm up to the north pole, but it was extremely painful and I had both nurses holding my hands and Chase up by my face telling me I could do it. I don't know how long it took and I had to ask her to stop once but thankfully she finished and felt like it had worked. I wish I could remember the exact amount they told me, but the nurses said I lost close to half my total blood volume and they weren't sure if I was going to need a blood transfusion or not. Luckily in the end, they did blood work on me and my values were good enough that they didn't feel I needed the transfusion. We stayed in that room for a few hours, Chase and I took turns holding Nolan skin to skin until our family that had waited patiently came in to meet him. Norah's reaction was priceless. She came in looking nervous and when she saw him she smiled and was hesitant but she came over and asked if she could pet him. We laughed and said yes, she was so sweet and gentle with him we all basically melted watching the two of them. Nolan was 8lb 1 oz, 19.5" long. He was a snuggle bug from day one and most importantly he completed the Thorquad 💙
