Anyway, Caitlyn was originally due to arrive on Sunday, November 21 but all of my ultrasounds showed her arriving on Saturday, November 20 (same difference). My parents were flying into town to be there for the birth and since my siblings and I came several days after our due dates we figured that if they came in on Thursday the 18th and stayed for 2 weeks we should be all set. I had a doctor appointment on Friday, November 12 and wasn't showing any signs at all that a baby would be coming out of me so I was worried that I would end up delivering really late and the baby would miss out on her own party.
That weekend I tried my best to finish all of the tasks on my to do list but I just didn't have a lot of energy or motivation. Eric had a pretty bad cold that he had been dealing with for about a week so I thought maybe I had caught his cold and just needed to rest. I was still worried that I hadn't felt any real contractions so on Monday night I went to the pharmacy down the street and bought Evening Primrose Oil pills since I heard that they could help start the dilation process. I was hesitant to take them and didn't talk to my doctor about it but thought I would try it for a few days leading up to my next appointment that Friday. Well, I took it that night and again on Tuesday and I felt my first contraction on Tuesday night around midnight shortly after going to bed. I guess I will never know if the pills played a roll in the start of labor or if she just decided that she was ready for things to start rolling. Anyway, the pain wasn't too bad and the contractions were coming like every 20 minutes so I did my best to get some sleep. I was still working at this point and wasn't planning on starting my maternity leave until Friday the 19 after my parents arrived. I woke up Wednesday morning around 5 am and went to soak in the bathtub to see if the contractions would slow down and I could get some more sleep. Around 8am the contractions were starting to get a little more painful and were coming about 5 minutes apart. I knew that a lot of women spent days in active labor and since at my last appointment I was zero dilated I just assumed that this was my body starting to get ready and thought to myself that I would for sure have some progress when I went to my hopefully last prenatal appointment that Friday. I debated about whether or not I should go to work since it is a 40 minute drive in traffic across a long bridge across the bay to get from my house to where I worked in Tampa and I didn't want to have to deal with contractions while driving. Around 9am I decided to just go into work and if it got too painful I would come home or have Eric come and get me. On my drive to work I had three pretty intense contractions but they were getting farther apart so I figured I would be ok. On my way I talked to my mom for the first time since the contractions started and described what had happened overnight. She told me then that she was pretty sure that she was going to miss the birth since her flight didn't leave until the next morning. I told her I had some really fun things planned for her and my dad for when they arrived like going to the beach and seeing the dolphins and manatees so I was confident that the baby wouldn't come until they atleast had a day or two to see a little of Florida and have a real vacation. However, I was more confident that she just might arrive right on time later that weekend and was starting to get excited!
I arrived almost an hour late to work but explained that I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before and was having some pains but that I was okay. Everyone was joking around that I was going to have to have Herb, one of the attorneys I worked with, deliver the baby if I wasn't careful but I assured them that that was the LAST thing that I wanted and that I would go home if I felt it was time. Also, a client was in the office for a meeting that day who also happened to be an OBGYN so I felt that no matter what I had my bases covered :)
Luckily, I was training the temporary employee that was going to be filling in for me so I had to spend the whole day explaining different programs and tasks and was so busy that I was distracted from most of the pain. I knew I was still having contractions but they weren't too painful and were really far apart. I left work at 5pm and told everyone that I would see them tomorrow.
I got home around 6pm and by that time the contractions had started getting intense again. Eric had just finished his pediatric rotation and had the day off to study before his final exams the next day. I wasn't really hungry but ate a little dinner and then I went to soak in the bath to try to ease the pain. I spent a couple of hours in the bathtub trying to relax but the contractions had started coming every 2-3 minutes and were getting extremely painful. I called my mom to try to distract me and called my sister Hilary to wish her a happy birthday. I got out of the bath around 9pm and tried to do a little work around the house. My parents would be coming the next day and I still wanted to wash the sheets and clean the bathroom. But at this point each time a contraction came I was doubled up in pain and having a hard time breathing through it. Eric was at his desk studying through all of this and didn't really know what was going on. He was stressed because of his finals the next day and had told me that I could have the baby anytime I wanted to after he was done with his tests :) Around 9:30pm I finally broke the news to Eric I thought it might be time to go to the hospital. I could tell he wasn't too thrilled with the idea as he was just getting ready to call it a night to get some rest before his exams the next day. We called his dad who is a doctor and explained how I was and he said if I thought it was time then I should go to the hospital. I didn't really want to call my doctors office because I would have to page the oncall doctor and figured they would just tell me to go to the hospital to see how far a long I was so around 10pm we threw some things together and headed out the door. Eric didn't believe that anything was really happening and figured that we would be coming right back home. He kept recording me with his iPhone on the way to the hospital while I was contracting and I kept yelling at him while he made joking comments about false alarms. He was just trying to be funny but at that point I was beyond humor. We parked at the hospital and left our bags in the car. We had to wait for the security guard to let us into the building and when we got to the labor and delivery floor we walked up to the desk where the nurse looked at me blankly and asked if she could help us. I thought that was a pretty odd question since I was very obviously pregnant and in pain and felt that she could have made the assumption that I was there to have a baby ;) I had to fill out a bunch of paperwork even though I had preregistered and then they showed us to a room. From here on out I felt like I was in the twilight zone. I didn't really know what was going on half of the time and felt like I was in a dream and so unprepared. The nurse checked me and I was dilated to 3.5 cm. I thought that was pretty good since last week I was 0 cm and had only been contracting for 24 hours but assumed they were just going to send us home. She said they would let me stay for an hour and then check me again to see if I had progressed. Around 1am they came in to check me and I was 4.5 cm and they decided to officially admit me. Up until that point I was really uncomfortable with the contractions. Eric was laying on a cot next to my bed and seriously you would have thought he was the one going through labor. He kept tossing and turning and groaning about how hungry he was and how he needed to sleep and how he was not happy. We hadn't taken any birth classes so I didn't expect a lot from him but this was just a little too much for me to deal with. So when the nurse came in to ask me if I wanted an epidural I didn't have to consider it much. I told her that I was probably only a 7 on a scale of 1-10 for pain because I knew that the pain was going to get much worse. At this point I was only 5cm dilated and I wanted to wait a while before I got the epidural but she told me that she would recommend that I get it now if I wanted one so that I could get a little rest before it was time to push. I hadn't really decided for sure whether I wanted pain medication up until that point. My mother told me that childbirth for her wasn't that bad and all five of her kids came really quickly. Since I was so exhausted already I decided to just go ahead with the epidural. The nurse anesthetist came in about 10 minutes later and got everything ready. I sat up and she began to prepare the epidural. Eric was back behind me watching her and I was scrunched over trying my best not to move while another nurse held me during contractions. I am not sure what the problem was but she had to stick me 12 times before she found the right spot. It hurt quite a bit and I could feel the blood dripping down my back but it was nothing worse than the contractions. Also, there were two emergency c-sections that came up right at that moment so I had other doctors and nurses barging into my room telling her to hurry up because they needed her immediately. Needless to say, I started to seriously doubt my decision to get pain medication at that point. When she left the room Eric came around and for the first time seemed to realize that we were having a baby :) He was so worried and wanted me to move my legs and make sure I wasn't paralyzed. He had been watching the whole time and was convinced that we were at some second rate hospital where they didn't know what they were doing and that I was going to have horrible side effects from the epidural. Five minutes after she was done the pain from the contractions was gone, my husband was slightly more attentive and for the first time all night I was able to relax a little. One of the doctors from my OBGYN's practice came in and broke my water and told me that she would be back in a couple of hours to check on me. At that point, even though I was more relaxed, I was also more aware that a baby would be coming out of me soon and I couldn't sleep at all.
Around 5am I had dilated to 8 cm and thought I would have the baby within the next few hours and Eric might even still make it to his final exams. At 7am I was still at an 8 so they decided to give me some Pitocin to hurry up the last 2 cm. They didn't even ask me if that was okay and I wasn't very thrilled. Eric called his professor to let them know he wouldn't make it to school that day and I called my parents who were just about to leave to go to the airport to let them know I was in the hospital and would be having the baby soon. Not long after they gave me the Pitocin I started to feel naseous. I figured that I was just tired from not sleeping or eating anything. Around 9:30 am the nurse checked me and I was almost a 10 so she paged the doctor to come and check me. It took the doctor over an hour to get there since she was with another patient and when she checked me she realized that the baby was head down but her face was up and part of her elbow or hand was stuck up by her head which was preventing me from dilating completely. I am not sure why they didn't realize this before but at the time I had no idea how significant this would end up being. The doctor left and told me to start pushing with Eric and the nurse. I thought that was weird that she would leave right when I started pushing since I waited over an hour for her to get there to tell me I could start pushing. The whole time the nurse was telling me how the baby was going to come right out because of how low she was and even told me to be prepared for a major conehead baby girl :) The baby had actually been pretty low for several weeks and the doctor would always have to go around her head to check if I was dilated or thinning. Anyway, I was pretty confident that we were almost done and with a couple pushes I would be holding my little baby girl! I started pushing around 11 and after about an hour of pushing I started to think that the baby was never coming out of me! This was definitely not how I had pictured it. Eric was AMAZING through the whole pushing part and if it wasn't for him encouraging me I think I would have given up. I was so exhausted and still feeling nauseous. The doctor came in around this point because she heard me screaming :) I was almost ready to quit when I felt super sick and began throwing up all over myself. I am pretty sure it was a bad reaction to the Pitocin. Apparently my doctor can't handle vomit because she started dry heaving and had to leave the room! I was so out of it that I just kept apologizing. On a side note, I just wanted to say that I loved my doctor. The OBGYN practice had 8 different doctors that could have delivered me and I was hoping for Dr. Kant and I was so happy when she was the one that came in that morning. She had just finished her residency the year before so she didn't have a ton of experience and is probably younger than I am but I just felt really comfortable with her. Around 25 weeks I hit the the 25lb mark in weight gain that they like you to stay around and even though I was eating healthy and my blood pressure was always excellent I think they were worried I would develop gestional diabetes or preeclampsia. I didn't end up having either of the complications and was completely healthy to the end. I think my body just really loves being pregnant and decided to take full advantage :) Anyway, all of the other doctors would always lecture me about my diet and gaining too much weight even though I was eating really healthy. They even suggested I stop eating fruit which for me was not an option. Dr. Kant was the only one that told me I was perfectly fine and not to worry about the weight which quickly made her my absolute favorite ;)
Anyway, back to pushing out a baby, the doctor came back in the room after she was able to compose herself and they had cleaned me up as best as they could. After a few more tries she told me that she was going to have to use the vaccum if the baby didn't come out in the next push. She said if that didn't work that they would take me to have an emergency Csection. That was all that I needed to hear and when the next contraction came I told her to give me the episiotomy (actually I think my exact words were "CUT ME NOW!!!!" and I pushed as hard as I could and she came flying out shortly after 12:30 in the afternoon after almost two hours of pushing. I remember when they wiped her off and laid her on my chest I was just so happy she was out but almost in shock from the whole experience that I was still processing that I was actually holding my baby. I tried to nurse her a little and then they took her over to weigh and measure her and clean her up more. The doctor then stiched me up sinch I had a very significant cut and a lot of tearing (I could feel every stitch since my epidural had pretty much worn off by now) and the nurse must have given me a new clean robe and within the hour I was able to get out of bed and walk around.
We moved to another room on the other end of the hospital where I would stay for the next two days. I emailed my work to let them know that our baby girl had arrived and that is why I didn't show up to work that day (I think they had figured it out by then though) and Eric left to pick my parents up at the airport and then they all came back around 8 that night to see me and the baby for a few minutes before all heading back to our house. The first night in the hospital wasn't too bad and I was able to even get a couple hours of sleep despite being in a lot of pain. I was all alone and still didn't really know how to breastfeed and started to worry that something wasn't quite right. Caitlyn (who was still unnamed at this point) starting spitting up a lot of fluid and mucus and the nurses were pretty concerned as well. The next morning they performed a gastric levage where they basically stuck a tube down her throat and pumped her stomach. Apparently when she came out she swallowed a lot of fluid so they needed to get it out. That morning before my parents came to the hospital I was feeling really alone and started to get super emotional and freak out about being a mom and not knowing what to do. I think I was just exhausted and in pain but Caitlyn was crying and I was walking her around the hospital room and I was crying and we just stared out the window watching the parking lot for my parents to arrive. When we first got to the hospital we had left my bags in the car and I only came in with my purse since we didn't know if we would be staying or not. Well, we never got a chance to go back outside to get my stuff so I didn't have any of the things that I had so carefully packed and planned on having. It felt so good to finally take a shower when my parents got there and to get cleaned up. I felt so much more calm now that my mom and dad were there to talk to me and help me with Caitlyn. The lactation consultant stopped by to see how I was doing and gave me some advice. Most of what she said ended up being really bogus and we eventually found out what worked best for us. Eric had stayed at home with my parents the night before and most of the next day but came to visit us later that evening after getting some much needed rest.
The second night in the hospital was one of the worst I have had since she was born because she wanted to nurse nonstop and I was in a lot of pain and so very very tired and sore. Once again, I was all alone and started to feel like I wasn't going to be able to me a good mom. Finally around 4am after about 5 hours straight of nursing I stuck a pacifier in her mouth and was able to rest for about 30 minutes before the nurses came in again. The nurses had told me not to use a pacifier with her because she would get confused and not nurse so everytime they came in the room I would hurry up and snatch it out of her mouth and hide it :) The next morning I was sooo anxious to leave that I kept calling Eric and my parents to tell them to come as early as they wanted. I also needed to talk with Eric since we still hadn't decided on a name and didn't end up making a final decision until about 30 minutes before leaving the hospital.
It was so nice to bring Caitlyn home and to rest in my own bed and have my mom and dad there to help me. They were amazing and I couldn't have done it without them. Eric's family drove down to Florida from Maryland the day after she was born and were staying with his grandfather in Orlando. Eric left to spend a couple days with them and visit Harry Potter world while my mom trained me how to be a mom. Then Eric's family rented a beach house near us and we were able to introduce them to the newest member of the Fisher familiy.
We are so glad to have Caitlyn in our lives and very grateful for the love and support of our family and friends.
