So here’s what happened at labor and delivery room.
Arrival
The day has passed and now the first day of week 39 on 10/17/2020 at 6 am. We finally arrived at labor and delivery room. Luckily the morning traffic on Saturday was not bad at all. During which, I had several contractions but somewhat I managed it.
When we arrived at the entrance of ER, the lady at the window offered me a wheel chair. Although, I don’t know what I was thinking, I told her I can walk to the L&D room and so I did LOL Once we walked into the L&D room, about 3, 4 nurses saw me carried in and led me to the closest delivery room. While walking to the room, one nurse had to ask about typical Covid questions. It’s still a rule. I told her I just took the covid test “today”. Why quotation mark? Because my husband and I kept telling them “today”, but in fact, it was already the next day. That much I couldn’t keep up with the date due to my contraction. I felt like it was just few hours ago when I took the test. She understood what we meant though.
Once we are in the room, they gave me a robe to change. It’s a simple task but took me some time because the contractions hit few times and I had to pause. I laid down on the bed and wait for nurses to come back inside. Then, they started asking some questions and asked me to sign some documents. I still don’t remember what it was for lol Again, it was a quite hard task to focus and complete while suffering from pain.
My Super Hero
My main delivery assistant was Allison. She, then, finally asked me what I was dying to hear, Epidural!! Yes, yes, and yes!! I’m so up for it and need it right now!!! She proceeded to make a call for it. While waiting for the anesthesiologist to come in, she checked my cervix. God, who knew?! It was already 6-7cm dilated. Everybody in the room was surprised and endorsed me how strong I was. Oh so it’s not normal to suffer this much? LOL That’s when I knew I could come in earlier and ask for epidural way before my pain started.
Other nurse put an IV into my wrist and they started measuring my blood pressure constantly.
Epidural Injection
It was pretty quick although I felt so much longer from the pain: the anesthesiologist has finally arrived for the epidural. My husband, then, had to hide behind the curtain during the injection. The specialist explained what he was doing for every steps, but I couldn’t care less. I was just hoping this would finish as soon as possible and wanted to be relieved from the pain, yet, I was so scared of the operation.
He used a numbing thing before putting a needle into my spine, I think. The sensation of needle inserted into my spine wasn’t hurting much but weird, more like something is coming in and uncomfortable. I still had to hold a pillow to keep my back steady though. The operation was pretty quick. He explained how to add additional epidural using a device. I didn’t need to use extra though. Soon after that, I didn’t feel my contractions at all and my legs were so numbed. I could finally rest.
Easy Labor Progress
After the epidural was pretty easy. Allison also added an urinary catheter as I won’t be able to stand up and use restroom. It sounded really hurting, but since epidural was working pretty good, it wasn’t bad at all. Then, we waited for some time until the dilation reaches 10cm. They kept monitoring my blood pressure as it tends to go lower after epidural as well as my contraction and baby’s heartbeat rate. At that time, it was already around 9 – 10 am. The dilation was about 8cm. They brought breakfast for my husband and clear liquid for myself. We both finally started falling asleep. It was surely a long night and made us super exhausted.
Last Episode
It was around noon or so. Allison came back to check my NST sensor locations. She checked me once in a while before that, as the sensors shifted or she wanted me to change the position.
Since I didn’t add any extra epidural, I had a weird feeling down there. It was like something’s stuck kind of sensation. It was for a while since she checked my cervix last time, so before changing my position, she said she would check how much it dilated.
Boom!
She goes, “Oh my!”. She said I’m so ready to push now. The baby’s head was already poking out. She told my husband to come around and yes it was. He told me he could see our baby’s hair. That’s what I was feeling. Something’s got stuck. She called my primary OBGYN doctor to come down for help. While waiting for him to join us, she taught me how to push while, you know, you don’t feel anything a half down of your body.
Push 3 times after each contraction – push like when you poop.
It was a bit hard to tell when the contraction was happening, although I could do what I was told. About when I pushed 3 times, Allison told me to stop and wait for the doctor. I was too good at pushing. haha When he joined, I pushed twice more, then he pulled our baby out! Allison called a time of birth, 12:57pm on 10/17/2020.
When the baby’s out, the doctor sucked liquid out from our baby’s mouth, then here we go! I heard my baby son’s first voice!! A nurse took care of him washing, weighing and stuff and my husband attended alongside her and our baby. In a meanwhile, my doctor started stitching my tears from the birth. I could feel some pinches. That was actually the only time I thought I would add extra epidural, but I didn’t.
Conclusion
When everything was done, a nurse let me hold our baby for a long time to have us privacy for skin to skin time. Then we moved to a postpartum room. Luckily the room had 2 patient beds, and my husband could sleep on it for 2 nights. Our baby stayed with us all the time 🙂
It was 39 weeks long and my pregnancy was pretty mild and easy overall. Not to mention, but the Covid-19 thing helped me quite a bit as I could work from home the last 7 months. That was my first labor and delivery experience, and I’ll conclude my pregnancy blog.