The Birth

I had just gotten off of the phone with my parents and had gone to the kitchen to fix up some lunch. There was a gush. I waddled to the bathroom and let the rest of it gush out. It was a weird sensation. My water had broken. I had no contractions. I emailed Michael telling him that my water broke. I also texted Charity who was going to help me during labor.

Now if you ask any American OB what I should have done next was to go to the hospital. However, I really wanted to have a non-medicated birth if possible. I had done my research and had decided that it was okay if I waited for labor to start as it should. The fluid was clear; I had no fever; baby was moving. So we had a relaxing evening waiting.

I went to bed baby was still moving. I had decided that if labor didn't start over night I would go to the hospital and get started on pitocin. However, at 3:30 am I realized that I hadn't noticed baby move in a while. I got up ate some fruit snacks and drank some Gatorade and laid back down to see if that would get the baby to start moving. Still baby didn't move. I woke up Charity and Michael. We packed the car, cleaned the car from ice and snow, gave me a blessing and we got checked into the hospital at 5:07.

They hooked me up to some monitors. And Bless the Lord we heard a heartbeat. Baby's heart rate was at a good rate but it wasn't varying as it should. It also turned out that I was having contractions, they just weren't very strong.

The On-Call doctor suggested a c-section. Baby wasn't acting as baby should. And I was just so happy to hear the heartbeat, I didn't want to worry about that any more. So we got ready for the c-section.

We headed off to the operating room. It was cold in there and I couldn't stop shaking. The nurse said that they would bring me a warm blanket. I figured it was a blanket to keep me warm, but no it was a blanked that was already heated up to be warm and it was glorious. There was a lot going on in that room. Now medical things interest me and I wanted to know what everyone was doing, but it was just too much to listen and watch everyone. They then gave me a spinal tap, so I just had to focus on the nurse in front of me and ignore the rest. It was kind of cool to feel my lower body slowly go numb. They got me to lay down on this skinny plank with my arms stretched out.

At some point Charity came in and sat near my head. Then someone said "scalpel" and I turn to Charity and said something to the affect of "Things are about to start." She replied something like, "No, I think they're just gather things still." But then I felt a weight lifted off of my stomach and knew things just got done. I had seen some videos of C-sections and they can get the baby out really quick.

At 7:05 Baby Annabelle Ruth Anderson was born. (I'm not sure how 2 hours passed, it didn't seem like 2 hours.) She had a head full of hair, and pooped three times while being weighed and dried off. At that point though I was exhausted and was not showing the proper amount of excitedness. Luckily Charity was there and was doing a good job of that. She held Annabelle up to my cheek. Then they took her off to the nursery with Michael.

It was a little weird when they moved me to a hospital bed. Now normally I would help a little; move my knee up a bit if I thought that would help. But I could not move anything, so they were on their own. It kind of felt like fly/falling when they moved me over.

When they got me to my room, they offered me some water. I took a sip. Some of it went down the wrong pipe. Remember I'm still under the influence of the spinal tap and can't move anything from the chest down. It's super hard to cough without the help of your abs. From then on I had a hard time drinking anything without throwing it up. My nurse found an anti nausea medicine I could take. That helped. That was probably the worst thing about recovery the first day; trying to throw up.