Oliver's Birth Story in Pregnancy

It has been an incredible, exhausting, exciting week and I am just now finding myself the time to sit and write while Little Squish is taking a nap. Here is Oliver’s Birth Story:

On Wednesday, September 23rd, I was woken up at 6:30am to my water breaking. I woke up my husband, waddled to the bathroom, and sat on the toilet for what felt like hours as my waters just poured out of me. I had Tim grab my phone and call my best friend because she and him were going to be in the delivery room with me. Once he called her, I called the midwife. I wasn’t having contractions or anything so she told me there was no rush for me to come. She also told me that my midwife was going to be the midwife on call from 8am that morning until 8am the following morning. Ginny was going to deliver my baby! Yes! I tried to stifle a squeal of joy as she told me the news and she said they would call me back around 10 to see if anything had started to happen. I put on a pad and waited.

Chelsey (my friend) showed up about an hour later. We had McDonalds for breakfast and decided to go to the mall. Since my water broke a week early, I had expected to have time to hit Target for some nursing tops before he arrived. We fed the cats, loaded up the car, and left the apartment for the last time as a single couple. The next time we walked through those doors, we’d have our son with us.

We got to Target and I immediately had to change my pad again. I was wearing ratty sweat pants, flip flops, and a maternity tank. I’m sure I looked lovely waddling through target. I bought my tops and a large bathrobe to wear around the birthing center and started walking laps. I was beginning to feel a little crampy but aside from that I was still contraction free. I called the midwife around 11 and she told me to come on so I could get hooked up to the monitor to check for contractions. We left the mall and headed over.

Now, I work at the hospital that this birthing center is in so as soon as I walk through the doors everyone is SO excited to see me there. The room I had initially wanted was taken so I ended up in a very large room all the way down at the end of the hall. I found myself rather thankful for this later on. I get into my room, triaged, and hooked up to the monitor. It’s around noon at this point. Everything looks good, but I’m still not contracting. They unhook me and tell me to get up, move around, walk, bounce, anything to try and get contractions started.

Around 2pm Ginny comes in and sits down. She says she’s going to check my cervix. She didn’t JUST check my cervix. Once she was in there, she told me that I was 1 1/2-2 and that she was going to stretch me to the 2. She told me to take a deep breath, because, “This is going to hurt” and holy fuck did it hurt. She had her fingers inside of my cervix and with another HUGE gush of fluid, successfully stretched me to 2 cm. Once I’d relaxed and recovered, she then explains to me that because it has been nearly 8 hours since my water broke that we need to start talking options to get labor started. I outright refused Pitocin unless there was an absolute need for it. She looked at me and said, “How about Misoprostil?”

I looked at her for a second with a small pain in my chest. Misoprostil was the medication I took to induce my missed miscarriage. It is the medication that helped me “deliver” my first pregnancy. She told me that all it would do is soften my cervix, and, if we were lucky, get labor started. I said okay. It seemed kind of fitting that one year later, this medication would be bringing something positive into my life instead of taking it away.

It was a small white pill and I took it orally. It was almost 3pm at this point and after taking the medication I had to be on the monitor for 4 hours. During those 4 hours, my son decided it’d be funny to grab his cord and make his heart rate drop into the 80’s. Nurses came rushing in, flipped me over on to all 4’s, threw oxygen on me, and told me to start rotating my hips. I’m trying not to panic as they’re trying to get an IV in me and Ginny decided she wants to probe Oliver’s head so we can better monitor his vitals. After 3 excruciating, failed attempts, his numbers went back to normal and they decided it wasn’t necessary at that moment. If it happened again, we’d try something else. I spent the next 2 hours with my eyes locked on the monitor that was tracking his HB and absolutely terrified that I was going to lose him. Thankfully, after 2 hours his numbers were still fine and I calmed down.

I started having contractions about an hour after taking the medication. They were mild to severe at times, but never regular. After the 4 hours were over I was checked again and incredibly disheartened to discover that I’d only dilated to 3cm. I asked Ginny if I could get off of the monitors and work on stimulating labor myself. She said she’d keep me off for an hour and then recheck me. In the meantime, I was instructed to get into a hot shower, walk, bounce, and play with my nipples. So, for an hour, I was up and down the halls, in and out of the shower, bouncing on the yoga ball, and constantly tweaking my nipples. My contractions started to get really painful and long, but still never regular. I found that the best way to keep them coming (so I was consciously putting myself through contraction after contraction) was standing in the hot shower and pinching my nipples. After 2 hours of going through this, with the pain just getting more and more intense, Ginny checked me again.

By some amazing power I had dilated, on my own, to between a 6 and 7. The Miso had worn off at this point and Ginny told me that if I were to get into the birthing tub, it would most likely slow down my labor. It had been over 16 hours since my water broke and the last thing I wanted was to endure labor any longer than I had to, so I opted out of the tub and continued to go in and out of the shower and walk the halls, gripping to the side rails in the hallway every time a contraction came along.

When my body entered transition, about an hour or two later, my entire world changed. I was convulsing uncontrollably, and each contraction felt as if the core of the universe was grabbing my insides and pulling them down deep into the earth. The only way I could make it through a contraction was to be standing up. If I was in the shower, the water had to be on my back. If I was in my room, my husband had to be behind me putting pressure on my hips until it went away. It got to the point where I was falling asleep in between every contraction because I was so completely exhausted. Oh, yeah, and all of this was back labor. And entirely unmedicated.

I hit 9 1/2 centimeters around 1am. Ginny stretched me to the 10 (fucking ow.) and had me get on all fours again. At this point, every contraction brought along with it the need to push. I pushed like that for a little while, and when she could feel his head in the birth canal, she had me get on my side. Chelsey was up by my head and Tim had my left leg bent and up on his chest. Pushing was the worst part. It felt like, as they say, I was taking the largest dump of my life. I don’t remember much of this stage, but I do remember screaming that I couldn’t do it anymore over and over again. I think the reaction was more panic than pain, but I suddenly heard my midwife next to my ear. Her voice was like the Goddess decending from the heavens and all she said to me was, “Chelsea. You cannot lose it now. The only way you’re getting this baby is by pushing him out. Put your hand down there, you can feel his head.” I didn’t open my eyes. I just reached my arm down and sure enough, I felt it. Full head of hair. I remember thinking, “Thank God” because my husband is bald, haha.

I suddenly had an energy I didn’t have before and in the next 5 contractions I felt my son move down through the birth canal, I felt his head leave my body, and with a quick twist and one final push, Oliver James Rogalski was born at 2:45am on Thursday, September 24th. He weighed 7 pounds, 10 ounces, and was 19 inches long. He was and is perfect in every way. 22 hours from start to finish with 12 hours of active labor.

I didn’t have the exact birth that I wanted. I didn’t labor in the tub. But I had my son almost completely on my own (aside from the Miso) and my midwife, who had been with me since the loss of my first pregnancy, delivered my child.
And I didn’t tear. Not even a little bit.

His one week birthday was yesterday. We had issues for a few days getting him to latch to the breast, so I had to pump and bottle feed him for a little while. I am so happy that now he is latching like a champ and we just had our first 24 hour stretch with no bottle. He is a boob fiend and going through a growth spurt right now. He is my perfect Little Squish and I never thought I could love anything as much as I love my son.