Clear Epic

Let me formerly and properly introduce one of the most important new people in my life… my daughter, Prayse Jamesen Adams.

After 19 1/2 total hours of labor I got my lovey! Everyone has read about my “interesting evening” which started around 8:00 p.m. Friday evening with what I now know was back labor and ended at 3:28 p.m. on Saturday 7.14.07 with a sweet (albeit screaming) adorable child being placed in my arms (As a side note to this timetable: one individual, who shall remain nameless, came to visit us in the hospital commented that back labor doesn’t count. To them and everyone else who has doubts I say, obviously you have never experienced back labor, thank you for keeping your whacked out and ill-timed opinions to yourself). Keep reading if you want to hear the details of what happened in between.

WARNING: There may be what some consider to be “TMI” or too much information contained below. I have two suggestions for you: 1. Go straight to the gallery and enjoy the end result without the details. 2. Get over it. It’s my blog and I can write what I want Enjoy!

After calling L&D and deciding to go to the hospital just to get things checked out I immediately started picking up the last few items in my house that were out of place. Raymonn didn’t even question why, he just got the laundry out of the dryer to start folding and putting it away. At this point my contractions were still around 4 minutes apart. So hubby put the bags in the car and we were off! We had decided on two things: 1. the bags were to remain in the car until someone told us this was the real deal. 2. we were not going to call anyone in case this was a false alarm.

Raymonn drove very carefully to the hospital to which all I can say is, “Honey, bless you.” I’m sure that every Dad envisions getting to race and rush to the hospital because their wife is in labor. It really is the one excuse that any cop should let you off if you happen to get pulled over. But he kept his cool, and realized that bumps and sharp corners would not help. On the way to the hospital the contractions started coming on stronger and faster, about three minutes apart. When we got to Bryan LGH and parked, I had three contractions from the time we got out of the car until I got up to L&D.

The nurses knew I was coming and were amazing, they got me into a room and hooked up quickly. To our surprise the contractions were clustered at around 1 minute apart… ouchie. After those settled down for a bit they checked my cervix and I was 4 cm dialated, 100% effaced. It was then I heard those magic words, “We’re going to have a baby today.” I completely lost it and broke down. After all of those months I knew that by the end of this day I was finally going to get to meet my daughter!

I of course didn’t really know what labor would be like, but I imagined that much like all of the TV shows I would be going through contractions in the hospital and walking around for a few hours until I could get an epidural. Yeah, not so much. Just one more reason not to watch those shows.

The contractions were still clustering, I would have 5-6 contractions about a minute apart and then they would still for about 3-4 minutes. The reason is that Prayse was turned face up instead of face down (this is also why I was having back labor apparently). They assured me that most babies turn on their own right before birth but even if they don’t it will be fine, it usually just takes longer and is harder to get them out. So up on my hands and knees I went to try and help baby girl out. Raymonn was once again fantastic, applying counter-pressure to my hips and giving me back rubs.

About an hour or so after I got to the hospital Dr. Placek came to break my water in order to help things go quicker. Much to my surprise we were already dialated 6-7 centimeters. Dr. Placek asked if I was sure I wanted an epidural, I must have looked at her kind of crazy because she assured me that she only asked because I was handling labor so well. I quickly assured HER that I have no desire to handle what I knew would be coming without pain meds.

Twenty minutes later the anesthesiologist came and put in the epidural. I was actually pretty surprised, the thought of a needle going into my back makes me shudder. I think I was more scared of the epidural than of the contractions. I just held onto Raymonn as he rubbed my arms and kept assuring me. It went really well and didn’t hurt nearly as much as I had envisioned, there seemed to be more pressure than pain. God Bless that man and his education. There are so many scary stories of when they didn’t work or were put in wrong but he did a fantastic job and for any future (waaaay into the future) babies I’ll be making the same decision.

Half an hour after the epidural was put in the nurses checked my cervix again and I was already at 8-9 cm. I am still amazed at how quickly we got that point. It was here that things slowed down. I was able to get to over 9.5 cm dialated and my body wouldn’t dilate that last little bit to get over her head. For some women they would ask them to push through that but because this was our first baby we decided to labor down for awhile. I believe this was actually a blessing. Because of the epidural I didn’t feel the contractions and was able to sleep. I had no idea how much that extra energy would be needed later!

When it was finally time to push we pushed and pushed and pushed and… you get the idea. Although I did have the epidural I was still able to feel the pressure of the contractions when they were coming and was also able to use my legs to help. They ended up having to give me pitocin as well as put in an internal monitor to more accurately track and measure the contractions… once again I say God Bless the anesthesiologist and his epidural. Dr. Placek got there 45 minutes into the pushing, Prayse’s head was showing and her beautiful black hair could be seen.

Throughout the hour and a half of pushing everyone in the room (nurses, Dr. Placek, myself and Raymonn) was still guessing at how big she would be. Most everyone agreed that we’d end up with an 8 lb baby. Finally with the help of an episiotomy and forceps Prayse’s head made an appearance. All I could hear was “Woah! That’s not an 8 lb baby, with that head she’s at least got to be 9 lbs!” and everyone immediately changed their bets on her weight

We finally understood why my cervix had a hard time dilating completely to 10 and why she was hesitant to make an appearance. So here we are with our 9 lb 2 oz, 22″ long, 14 cm head baby girl. Who just happens to be the sweetest, cutest, most precious, fantastic, loving, cuddly baby ever.

Although I’ve complained, and cried and been hormonal over the past 9-10 months I feel that I really did have an amazing pregnancy and labor. There were a few nurses that commented on the “rough labor” but I have nothing to compare it with and I ended up with my little angel which is all I wanted out of it. Raymonn was amazing, he was supportive and encouraging. He helped the nurses out with making sure that we could still hear her heartbeat and moving down the monitor as she moved farther down the birth canal. Without him things would not have gone as well, he was VITAL and his little girl is completely in love with her Daddy.