My Labour Story

























    So for the gory labour details, that people have been dying to know. Contractions started Saturday night at 10pm. Since I was so stir crazy for the past two weeks due to the snow I was totally psyched that this might be it. And it was.

By 5am Sunday they were 5 minutes apart. I had called the BC Women’s assessment line (they tell you whether or not to come to the hospital) around 3am and they said not to come until the contractions were 5 minutes apart. I called them again at 5am, at this point during contractions I couldn’t talk and they said we should come in. So we called the ambulance (our car was stuck in the alley).

When we got to the hospital I had to go through a physical assessment, basically a nurse fingers you to see how dilated your cervix is. Mine was 4cm so we didn’t get sent home. We went straight into a delivery room. It was ugly but I really wanted to have the baby so I didn’t care that Cedars wasn’t available due to understaffing.

My cervix was opening nicely all morning. The nurse assigned to us was great, totally encouraging and positive. Spencer was very active in helping me through the labour. There was one point where he made a joke that made me want to hurt him but instead I said “Please babe, not now”. He totally got that it wasn’t the right time and he was perfect ever since. By 11am my cervix was 9.5cm. It stayed that way for the next 4 hours. Probably the hardest 4 hours of the labour. I used laughing gas most of the time, which doesn’t make things funny but does take the edge off a bit. At 3pm the doctor told me I did an awesome job so far but she suggested having an epidural so my body and I could finish the labour. At this point I’d been holding in the urge to push for about 2 hours. It literally felt like I was trying to keep my ass from splitting in half, so of course I said “YES!” to the epidural.

The epidural was put in and 40 minutes later I pushed out a baby. I cried hysterically for a few minutes. They were tears of joy, and tears of accomplishment. I’ve never done anything that’s made me feel as strong as delivering a baby.

Though Spence was not intending on watching the events unfold below my waist he did. He says he would have gotten the epidural after the first hour of labour. He also says that calling someone a “Pussy” doesn’t really make sense anymore, since witnessing the power of my vagina.

I wouldn’t have changed a thing about the labour. It was perfect and when I think back on it I start crying. Call it hormones, call it crazy whatever. I just feel really lucky that everything worked out so well for me and Eloise.

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