OUI OUI WELCH'S!!: Ezra Emile

It's only been ten days, so I am hoping that I haven't forgotten too much of what happened yet to give an accurate account of Ezra's birth.

I was having a really hard time trying to figure out when to ask my parents to come out, because when Anders was born I asked my mom to come a week before my due date. Since he was 10 days late, she was there a whole 2 1/2 weeks before he was born. In retrospect it was a blessing because it gave her time to spend with grandpa, who passed away 6 weeks after Anders was born. Anyway, I was waiting until my 39 week appointment to tell mom and dad when to come. I had basically decided that in order to be safe, I would have them come the weekend before my due date (mon, july 28) and after I went to my appointment I called them and told them that it still seemed like a good plan. The next day Clay had a little field trip with work, and was going to be about 3 hours away by car the entire day. Monday night I started stressing a little thinking about what I would do if something happened. I figured 3 hours was still enough time for him to come home if he needed to, so I told him to go ahead and go. That morning however (after he already left), I starting worrying even more about the situation. We have only been in San Francisco for 2 months, and the 3 people that I would have been comfortable leaving Anders with were all out of town, and going to be for the next 2 weeks. I decided then and there that the safest thing to do was to call mom and dad and ask them to come. I told them that I didn't feel like they needed to jump in the car that minute, but that it just felt like a good idea to have them come sooner rather than later. Mom bought a ticket and flew out the next day. I picked her up at the airport wed afternoon (around 4 o'clock). I was feeling a little silly that I had acted so dramatically and made her fly out at such short notice, but it was definitely a relief to think that we were covered in case of anything. I felt completely normal all day, and we made plans that night for what we would do to kill time for the next few days while we waited for something to happen.

I woke up at about 3:30 and realized that I was having a contraction. I laid there in bed for a few minutes, and after the second one I decided to download an app to keep track of them. (The first two were about 5 minutes apart.) I killed a few minutes reading online about how you can tell if you are really going into labor (remember with Anders I was induced, and got an epidural from the get go. I never felt a contraction or paid attention to how far apart they were, or how strong they were, etc) and after about thirty minutes I talked myself out of getting into shower and trying to pass time, and decided instead to wake clay up so that I didn't have to hang out alone. I woke him at 4 and asked him to please fill out the pre-registration for the hospital (I had been meaning to do that, but just hadn't) gotten around to it yet). After just a few minutes I knew that we were giving to be heading to the hospital soon, though I didn't know whether or not they would be admitting us. I just figured, why not go ahead and get that epidural before the pain starts getting bad. Clay finished the registration, packed a few things for us, tried to help me find the paper my dr had given to me that told me all the people I was supposed to call when I thought I was going into labor (we never found it), gave me a blessing, and out the door we went. We did wake mom up before we left to tell her that we were leaving and that she needed to listen for Anders in case we were admitted into the hospital and didn't come back. Walking to to car, the contractions were getting stronger and closer together. We had originally planned for clay to run into work and grab his laptop to bring to the hospital with us since we had to drive right past his office, but as we got close I very politely let him know that this was not a good idea. (Total sarcasm. By this time I was in a lot of pain and not quite as capable of being nice). So we sped by the office, got on the freeway and headed to the hospital. We pulled up a little after 5 am, clay ran and grabbed a wheel chair, and up we went to the maternity ward. We arrived there at around 5:15, sat down at the registration desk, and started answering questions. The lady was just clicking away at her keyboard for what felt like a eternity, and finally she said that she couldn't find us in the system. We explained that we had just barely done the pre-registration, and so figured it probably had not yet gone into the system. She started asking clay all sorts of questions while I sat there in quite a bit of pain. I think I had about 4 contractions while sitting there, and on the 4th I felt myself dilate, like a lot! I felt the baby move down, and I felt my water break. I told them, and a nurse (not sure where she came from... It Felt like she appeared out of nowhere, but that's probably because if had my eyes closed almost the whole time :) ) came over with a wheelchair and said "let's go ahead and take you back to the room and we can finish this registration thing later". As she was pushing me back to the room she was asking all sorts of questions that I couldn't answer because at this point the contractions were hardly letting up. I'm sure she was just trying to gage how far along I was. They got me in the room, and nurses were flying around pulling things out of cupboards and setting things up. Clay stripped me down, laid me on the bed (cuz I couldn't move) and they checked me and said I was dilated to a 6. I had one more contraction, and was dilated to an 8. I started asking for medicine of ANY sort at this point, because I was becoming very afraid of what I knew was about to go down. They were nice and said "ok, we will see what we can do". But that only lasted a minute. Then they weren't so nice and said " sorry Hun. It looks like this baby is coming too quick and we will not be able to give you an epidural. I said "Nope. You can, and you will". Even though I knew it was a lost cause. I did ask if there was anything else they could give me, and they said no, because they baby would be born sluggish and depressed if they gave me anything else, and it wasn't worth the risk. I was TERRIFIED, and kept telling clay that this was most certainly NOT the plan, and that I didn't want to do it. He was really sweet and tried to comfort me but I was pretty much a crazy person at that point. I have never felt so completely out of control before. If I had had anytime between contractions to pull myself together a little, I would have been completely embarrassed of the way I was acting and the things I was saying. But that just was not the reality of the situation. They kept telling me not to push, and I kept thinking "what the *#%! Makes you think that I am doing this on purpose! I am doing everything in my power to NOT push" because I was still quite certain that someone would figure out a way to give me some drugs before The baby came out of my vagina. All in all, I think we were in the room a total of ten minutes when the dr walked in and said "Hi, I'm dr so and so. I'm going to deliver your baby. Relax your legs so I can check to see how dilated you are (I couldn't relax my legs because the contractions were not stopping). She checked anyway, and the said "time to push". I pushed 3 times and it was over.

After laying there for a few seconds in total disbelief, and after having spent the majority of that time glaring at the dr and nurses who "made me go through natural child birth" I looked over at clay who was just standing there, half way between me and the baby, totally pale. It kind of snapped me out of my selfishness and I asked if he was ok. Then all the nurses were asking him if he was ok. They made him sit down and drink something. What I didn't realize was that not only did he have to sit there and witness me in all my craziness, but he had heard them saying to each other that the cord was around the baby's neck, and that they needed to get him out as quick as possible.

When all was said and done, we survived and everything was ok. All I could think of was how grateful I was that my mom had come that night. I can't even imagine what we would have done. If we had spent any time trying to have someone come over to be with Anders, or dropping him off at their house. I would have had the baby in the car! And with the cord around his neck, and me bleeding quite a bit, I don't know if we would have made it!! Of course this me kicking into worse case scenario mode, but seriously we were super super blessed that everything worked out the way it did. And I'm pretty sure the only way that I will have another kid is if they let me move into the hospital for the last 3 weeks or so of pregnancy so that I can have my epidural, and so that I can know that someone is taking care of the other ones.

In total, from the first contraction I felt until he was born it was about 2hrs 15 minutes. Crazy crazy. We called mom about 15 minutes after he was born. She was expecting clay to say that they had admitted us into the hospital or something along those lines, but instead he said "he was born about 15 minutes ago". I pretty sure I still haven't completely recovered emotionally. I'm having a hard time taking naps because I start thinking about it, and then reliving it all over again! I can't adequately express how straight up crazy this whole experience was. I mean, what with the screaming and the flailing, and the nurses running around (again, clay remembers it a little differently. He doesn't seem to remember me screaming, but I know that I was because the dr asked me very kindly to stop screaming when she told me to push. She said it would make me more effective :).

Anyway. He is here and safe, and adorable and we love him. And I know that I am not the first person to have given birth completely Unmedicated, and I'm sure that had I been emotionally prepared, it could have been a positive experience. But I wasn't, and it wasn't. If there is a next time, I'm definitely going for the drugs. Thank goodness for modern medicine!! For realsies though.

Look at his poor bruised face!!!