Sooooo . . . Where to start . . . I'll go the chronological route. :-)
Around noonish on Friday I noticed my water had started to leak. I took a few hours a few hours at home to make sure and we headed down to Stanford to check for sure and hoped stay. After the nurse and my midwife confirm my water was leaking they admitted me. They wanted to start me on penicillin right away (for Strep B). Since it needs to be in one's system for four hours before the baby's born my midwife, Jamie, decided to wait to break my water. She also started me on a low dose of pitocin that would progress me a little but not crazy. That all worked out ok.
Jamie came back to break my water about 1am. It's was pretty massive - you could just about see my stomach deflate. :) Over the next hour-ish my contractions did finally begin to progress a lot more substantially. I then requested my lovely lovely epidural. At that time the nurse checked my dilation - which was 6cm. She then went to call in the anesthesiologist.
I then decided that it would be a great idea to empty my bladder so that I wouldn't have to "go" while I was having a needle stuck in my spine. So I waited for a contraction to end so I'd have as much pain-free mobile time as possible. I was still able to talk through the contractions at that time.
James helped me to the bathroom. I couldn't "go" though. And then another contraction started and never stopped and just got worse and worse. I was going through more and more pain and apparently getting louder and louder. This is super awkward to mention but I'm not sure how else to explain it - I thought I needed to have a BM and was having a contraction at the same time. I didn't want to call a nurse because the thought of saying "it hurts to poop" sounded pretty weird. Since poop wasn't happening I stood up to try anything that would make the pain stop. Around this point (I think) my mom went ahead a called the nurse it - thank goodness.
At that point something was happening down under. I felt and it was about half the baby's head!! This was the first point that I realized I was giving birth and that it wasn't a contraction that would go away.
I'm not sure how I heard the nurse tell me to lay down on the floor to push but I heard her and somehow did so while yelling "I CAN'T!!" (There was a lot of that line going on.) I somehow managed to kneel and roll onto my back without sitting on the baby's head. It probably went quicker than I thought but I eventually got it into my head that if I didn't push the baby would stay put and the pain would continue. I'm not sure I would have been able to push more than the one time that I did.
And so Billie was born. My first view of her was her on my stomach with the back of her dark haired bloody head in my sights - it was beautiful. James cut her cord and then they took her over to her warm bed thing to give her some smacks to get her making noise. She was pinking up but not being very vocal. Meanwhile I was still laying on the bathroom floor in what my mom described as a CSI scene. Poor James was standing then with his bloody wife and quiet baby. He was awesome though - very level and helpful and awesome.
I've never been more serious about this: I really thought I was dying and I've never been more frightened or in more pain. I'm sure the intensity would have been not as bad if I'd realized sooner what was going on. I'm told that Jamie could hear me over the phone at the nurses station when they called her.
So Billie was born about 10-15mins. after I was at 6cm. Almost while I was standing. Thankfully not in a toilet. In fitting with the theme of her birth she pooped on me twice during kangaroo care. One could say it was a "crappy" birth experience. But I was a million times better after she was out. I think we all were!
