My water broke around 2:15am Christmas Eve. Talk about a rude awakening! Richard and I had spent eight weeks preparing for natural (unmedicated) birth as we went through Bradley classes together. From this I knew that once your water breaks, the baby will most likely be born within 24 hours. Since we had been told that it is rare for the water to break before going into labor, this was rather unexpected and caused me to panic just a bit. I called the doctor and he encouraged me to go ahead and go to the hospital. About this time, my contractions started. We had planned to stay at home for most of the labor experience and only go to the hospital for the final couple of hours of labor and the delivery. This was the first of a whole sequence of events that flew in the face of our carefully laid plans.Richard proved to be a great coach. I checked into the hospital and labored naturally for nine hours with his assistance. Two funny things which happened: Our Bradley instructor had often reminded us to pack mints or gum for the coach (Richard) because often a laboring mother will not tolerate bad breath. To his credit, Richard's breath was just fine until my mom brought him a sausage and egg bisquit (after all, he had been without food for quite a few hours by that time.). As he finished his sandwich, I went into a pretty hard contraction. His sausage-breathed reminder to relax my forehead actually made me cry: "Don't breathe on me, your sausage breath is awful!" Now and then, my parents would pop in from the waiting room to check on me. At one point, mid contraction, my parents were chatting back and forth. That too made me cry: "Don't talk during a contraction!" Labor can do funny stuff to a girl. ;o)
At this point, more things started to go in counter to our plans. I'll spare you the details, but my labor was not progressing as the doctor would like. After contractions, on several occasions, the baby's heart rate would plummet causing a flurry of hospital staff activity in the delivery room. The doctor informed us that if this continued, he might have to do an emergency C-Section. If I did not elect to get an epidural at this time, and a C-Section were eventually necessary, I would have to be put under general anesthesia and Richard would not be allowed in the operating room for the delivery. We prayed together about it and decided to get the epidural.
Sure enough, the baby's heartrate decels continued periodically. So, after more prayer and the doctor's advice, we decided to go ahead with the C-Section before it became an emergency situation. This was hard on us because here we had spent months praying about and preparing for an unmedicated childbirth. Instead, we were now progressing to an epidural and finally to the dreaded C-Section!
After the epidural was administered, I remember shaking horribly. This continued on into the operating room. This is evidently a very normal phenomenon, but I remember worrying that all this uncontrollable shaking would cause the doctor's scalpel to miss its mark. The shaking turned out to be my least favorite part of the whole experience. Richard later told me that he thought this was probably because it signified my final loss of control:
- The labor had not gone as I had hoped, the baby was having problems, which worried me.
- Because of the decels in the baby's heartrate, I was made to lie on my side, instead of laboring how I felt best. This derailed my pain management and caused it to get out of control.
- I had to get an epidural.
- I had to have a C-Section. I thought this was the final straw in my loss of control of the situation. Little did I know...
After I was prepped for the operation, Richard was called into the operating room. He stood there with me as our daughter was quickly born. Richard was allowed the honor of being the first to announce, "It's a Girl!!!" Evie was then cleaned up and we were all taken back into the delivery room for recovery.By this time, all three grandparents (my parents and Richard's mom) were in the waiting room and Richard was able to announce to them that we had a baby girl. In a few minutes, they were allowed to come into the delivery room. Richard called his sister, Ruthie, and we announced to all of them at once the name of our baby: Evangeline (meaning "good news" and a reminder of our prayer that she would serve the Lord faithfully) Patience (Richard's mom's name is Mary Patience. This name also signified our struggle for patience as we tried to conceive for over a year while many of our friends conceived and had children. Little did we know that our need for patience would continue in the days to come.).
-Mom
