My Life, As Told Between (Baby Cakes') Naps

As most of you know, Baby Cakes, aka Little Man or Baby J, was born exactly on his due date – Saturday, December 4th! Despite being exactly on time, he still caught T and I by surprise.

During the week leading up to BC’s birth, T and I watched a video on childbirth preparation (having opted out of taking a class) and I lamented the fact that I was showing very few of the pre-labor signs. I was convinced Baby Cakes was going to be days if not weeks late. (Doctors will generally let you go up to two weeks late before they insist on intervention.) However, the evening before BC’s due date, I was excited to find myself showing more pre-labor signs, which generally indicate that actual labor is hours (or sometimes days) away.

Sure enough, my contractions started at 11 pm that night and were about 20 minutes to 30 minutes apart for 2 hours. I was convinced they were false contractions though and went to the other room to allow T to sleep (he was fighting a bad cold). Then they started coming more frequently and hurting more. Still convinced they were false and/or that I wasn’t far enough in the labor process to merit a trip to the hospital, I labored at home until 4am. Then I decided it was worth it to wake T up and go to the hospital even though I was pretty sure we’d be sent home.

T reacted very calmly…I think because he had bought into my deluded conviction this was a false alarm. I was so sure that when we got to the hospital I made T look for a metered spot rather than
valet the car! Turns out I was 3 (out of 10) cm dilated and almost fully effaced (i.e., definately in labor) and would be having my baby that day!

Since it was my understanding that it was better to labor as much as possible before getting an epidural (which can halt labor and require additional drugs to restart it although the drugs sometimes cancel each other out), I labored for several more hours without any drugs (unfortunately by the time I wanted the epidural the anesthesiologist was busy).  The contractions got longer and stronger, but over all not as bad as I had feared. I didn’t get the epidural until 10:30am, at which point I was 4 cm dilated. I had labored for almost 12 hours naturally. The epidural totally made me numb but it also slowed down my contractions so the nurses had to use pertosin to jump start the contractions again. I “labored” with the drugs (ie, napped) until 4 pm. However when the doctor next checked, I hadn’t made any progress.  It appeared the baby was too big to deliver without a C section. So some 17 hours of laboring was for nothing and we headed into surgery.

I was wheeled to the OR around 6pm and Little Man made his appearance at 6:39pm, although it took an additional 45 minutes to sew me back up. T was there the entire time and was amazing. As it turned out, thank good for the C section!  BC had an undetected knot in his umbilical cord.  Had he been born naturally, the doctors said there was a high likelihood he would have been stillborn because the birthing process would have tightened the knot and cut off his air supply.  So Little Man is our our personal miracle and we’re thankful every day for him..even when he’s wide awake and crying for no reason at 3am.  🙂