Dante’s Birth Story Part 1

It’s been a month since my last blog post.  I guess you can call it a maternity leave.  Juggling two kids, a house, a spouse and working on my last semester of grad school is about as easy as I had expected it to be.  Not easy at all haha!  Just because life is not easy, does not mean it isn’t great.  I have my hands full in the best possible way.  It is taking some tweaking and adjusting, but just like all things in this life, I just roll with it and try to enjoy every moment and savor as much as I can.  After a month off, here is Dante’s birth story… I missed you guys!!!

I’ve heard time and time again that every pregnancy is different, but it wasn’t until I lived it that I can attest. I gained 10 more pounds with my second pregnancy and had completely different symptoms, craved different things, I even was different emotionally.

I swear I felt like I was in labor for the entire month leading up to the actual day I gave birth to Dante (hello false labor!). I was almost two weeks late this time which made me feel like I was a month late considering I was so early with my first. I was dilated 2 cm and was 50% effaced for almost an entire month. Torture.  I was sick of being uncomfortable and sick of hearing everyone ask if I was still pregnant.

The day before I went into labor with Dante, I ran a bunch of errands to keep my mind off of still being pregnant. Max was accepted into the preschool program at my job. If you’re new to the blog. I am an art teacher at a magnet school. It is an extremely competitive lottery to get in so we were so excited when we got the news!

I had a bunch of paperwork to fill out and submit to enroll him.  My sister was pregnant at the same time as me, so I enlisted her to help eat ice cream run errands with me. Here’s a funny pic my sister snapped of the two of us driving around that day.

My belly is the grey one. She had her son just three weeks after !!  Once I was done with that, I had a doctor appointment.  Fun times.

 

She told me I would go into labor within 12 hours. So I drove home and started having contractions. Strong-ish ones. For about 5 hours they came 4 minutes apart and got stronger.

Before things got too crazy, I read Max a bedtime book and became very emotional.  Would he feel betrayed by me for having another baby?  Could I love the new baby as much as I love Max?  So many thoughts ran through my head.

I called the doctor and said I was on my way to the hospital. As I gathered my things and began making arrangements for someone to watch Max (he was asleep) something happened.  I could not believe it.  The contractions began to slow down and lessen in intensity. I called the doctor back and said I wasn’t coming in anymore. When I hung up I began to well up in tears. Was this ever going to happen? I was mentally drained. I was so sick of everyone asking me if I was still pregnant. I was sick of being uncomfortable. With every false alarm I became more and more frustrated and in a way I was embarrassed. Each time my family and friends would get so excited and I’d have to tell them it wasn’t really happening. I know it was beyond my control but somehow with each false labor I felt like a failure, like I was letting everyone down.

That night I cried hard and went to sleep. I was mentally exhausted. When I woke up, I started having contractions again just like the night before.  Around 7:30 My husband asked if he should go to work or if he should stay home. Well after being wrong so many times, I told him to just go to work that it was just Braxton Hicks like every other time.

9:00 rolled around and they really picked up. I called the doctor and she told me to go to the hospital.  I called my husband. He was home in record time. My father in law came over to watch Max and off we drove.

The midwife came into triage to check me. I was dilated 4cm and was 90% effaced. Before I could get my hopes up yet again, I asked if I was going to be admitted. She said “Yes honey, you’re in labor” I actually let out a squeal of excitement and then looked at my husband with pure relief. Finally!!
The nurse told me that second babies come much faster and that I’d probably push for 20 minutes or so.  Sounded good to me! She hooked me up to a few monitors and within an hour I was moved into a birthing suite. I was having back labor so they had me position myself a million different ways to try to get the baby to turn because he was posterior or sunny side up. After a few hours of this, I needed an epidural. When the anesthesiologist administered the epidural I mostly felt the pressure in my right side.  They gave me a shot of some kind of pain medication and it worked immediately. Now I just had to wait. Here’s my husband during the calm before the storm.

 

To be continued on Friday…