Ben was due December 26, 2010. He decided to make his grand appearance on December 30th, 2010. Let me just say this, December 26-30 were NOT fun days for me. It all started on my due date. The day after Christmas I woke up with a relatively bad backache, but nothing really that horrible. My parents were in town so, of course, I was getting stares from every direction from people eagerly wanting me to go into labor. I was huge, bloated, felt like s**t, and everyone was staring at me. It was a real joy (I hope you can sense my sarcasm). When I woke up the morning of the 26th my mom suggested that we go somewhere we could walk around (she was hoping to get me to go into labor) . Since it was freezing cold, with snow on the ground, Southpoint Mall was the consensus. Picture this, a HUGE pregnant woman waddling through the mall with her husband's button down shirt on. Talk about people staring. I think everyone in the mall was terrified my water was going to break on their feet. Going to the mall the day after Christmas is not, I repeat, NOT the ideal location for a pregnant woman on her due date. I should have been SLEEPING at home. But, unfortunately, at this stage of my pregnancy, sleep was not on the menu. So after walking (waddling..slowly) around the mall for a few hours we decided to head home. I was NOT going into labor.
The back pain continued to get worse throughout the rest of the afternoon and evening. I was having contractions, but they were all those annoying Braxton-Hicks ones that get you all psyched out thinking you're going into labor, then about the time they're steady and coming every 2-3 minutes, they stop. To a first-time mom these contractions do fool you, but believe me, whenever we decide to have baby #2 I won't be fooled again, because real contractions are HORRIBLE- and CANNOT be confused with the wimpy, fake ones. Meanwhile, the back pain was steadily getting worse.
All day on the 27th I was miserable. I couldn't walk. Getting around was a huge challenge. It felt like someone had stabbed by back with a knife. Still, I wasn't feeling any steady contractions. I know at some point Evan's parents came to town, but looking back, I can't remember exactly what day. All I can remember is that from the 27th-30th I felt like a freakin' freak show because I was in pain, and there were so many people around. Don't get me wrong, I was grateful to have help around the house, but it was still hard to wallow around in pain with everyone watching.
On the 28th, the pain had gotten unbearable. Still, I didn't really feel like I was in labor. I just thought my body was so damn big that it was hurting. No fun. So, that night, Evan and I went to sleep. At around 11 I woke up to a bad contraction and got up to go use the bathroom (every pregnant woman has to pee 324543 times a night). When I stood up and walked to the bathroom, I felt a SPLASH. I screamed for Evan. My water had broken! My mom ran upstairs, so excited, and we got everything together and headed out the door. We were so excited. On the way to the hospital I started feeling a little more pain (in my stomach) and my back still hurt- I think the word that I would use is excruciating- it was that bad. They checked me into triage and I put my glamorous hospital gown on and waited for a nurse to come check me. This was going to be the night! (So I thought). When the nurse came in she checked me and said that she didn't think that my water had broken, she thought I had peed! I started bawling. I tried to reason with her that I knew the difference between peeing all over myself and my water breaking. This sort of lead to an embarrassing situation, because Evan had texted ALL of our friends saying my water had broken. Great. Now I have to tell everyone I peed in my pants.. way to add insult to injury. But, we'll come back to this little detail of the story later.
They put the monitor on me and I was having contractions every 7-8 minutes, dilated 3 cm, and 100% effaced (I still don't really know what effaced" means, and honestly, don't care, so you can Google it if you're curious- haha). The stupid on-call doctor then walked in, looked at me and curtly said, "you're not in labor, there's no evidence your water broke, you can walk around to see if it changes anything, or you can leave". That was it, he then turned around and left. Evan and my mom were PISSED. My mom did not understand why they wouldn't just induce me right then and there. I was over my due date and clearly in terrible pain. WTF?!?
They sent me home with an Ambien. Really? Ambien for the screaming-in-pain-overdue pregnant girl? I guess they wanted me to be drugged and loopy while I was miserable (I still am not really sure what the logic is in giving out the Ambien). This was at 5am the morning of the 29th. My doctor's office wanted me to come in at 8am. So, one ambien, 3 hours of tossing and turning in pain, and Evan and I were in the car headed to the doctor's office. At this point we were on a solid 24 hours of no sleep.
I get to the doctor's office and see the nice nurse practitioner. She checks me. At this point I am now 3.5 cm dilated and in so much pain that I have to take each step so slow. It takes forever to get around. At some points, I have to grab the wall for support. The NP doesn't want to admit me to the hospital yet because I wasn't really having steady contractions and hadn't progressed (dilated) too much. But she does promise me that she thinks I'll be in labor by that night. Fingers crossed at this point. She tells me to come back at 3p and she will check me again, and hopefully give me the go-ahead to head to the hospital.
--- Small mid-way disclaimer.. I'm not trying to be dramatic in the retelling of this story, In fact, I'm probably not being detailed enough- because honestly, it was really hard.
So... Evan and I get home after the doctor's office. I am delirious, I'm so tired. I hesitate to take the second Ambien they gave me because I'm in so much pain, that I didn't want a repeat of the morning, and just be loopy and miserable again. For the rest of the day, with my mom and Evan's mom there, (My dad and Evan's dad had decided to go back home, and just wait to come whenever I actually went into labor) I walked around, moaned a lot, and I think at one point was on my hands and knees in the middle of the floor, crying. I felt like I wild animal... it was kind of humiliating. We went to the doctor that afternoon, and I had made no progress. We were ordered to go home and wait it out. After returning home, I remember at one point trying to take a shower, thinking that the hot water hitting my back would ease the pain, and just bawling while in there. My poor sister walked in on me and the look on her face was pure sympathy. She felt so bad, and I felt so helpless.
At 1am on the morning of the 30th I had had enough. I had not had any sleep in 36+ hours, and I was absolutely miserable. I started freaking out that if I was already this tired that there would be no way I would be able to make it through actual labor plus pushing. I jumped (well, waddled, pulled and hoisted) myself out of bed and told Evan that we were going to the hospital. He was hesitant to agree because he was so scared they would turn me away again, and we would go through everything all over again, taking even more wind out of our sails. But, he could tell by the look in my eye that if he wasn't driving me then I would drive myself.
We walked in, my eyes bloodshot from a combination of no sleep and crying. I was admitted to triage and told to put on a gown and wait for a nurse to come check me. At this point I was having contractions, still, every 7-8 minutes. I was also on my hands and knees, on the bed in triage, crying and throwing up from the pain. On a scale of 1 to 10 the pain was a 30. The nurse checked me, and low and behold I had dilated to a 4. HOLY PROGRESS!!! But, that being said the nurse still didn't know if they would admit me or not. But, the good news was that my contractions had gone from every 7-8 minutes down to every 4-5 minutes. I was still crying and vomiting when the nurse called the on-call doctor from the hallway. Apparently (thank God) the doctor heard me crying because when the nurse came back in she said, and I won't forget this for the rest of my life, "Congratulations, you are going to have a baby today!". I burst into tears and Evan, I kid you not, jumped out of his chair and hugged the nurse around her neck.
We then walk to a labor/delivery room and wait for my epidural. To be honest with you, my initial plan (before the onset of labor torture began) was to hold off on the epidural until I really, really needed it. But, at this point I was ready for them to administer that sucker ASAP. Seriously, someone could have stabbed me with a damn knife at this point and it wouldn't have rivaled the back pain I was experiencing. Bring on the epidural!
I'll give you a quick timeline here: We went to the hospital at 1am, admitted into L/D at 2:30, and I had an epidural + pitocin by 3:15am.
Let me just tell you ladies... the epidural was the best thing that could have happened to me at that moment. I went from literally puking from pain to resting nicely. After the epidural my doctor, the WONDERFUL, AWESOME, SAINTLY Dr. Gray, came to check my progress and break my water. She then discovered that 1- Ben was turned around, he was head-down, but his back was on my back, which explained the back labor. 2- When she went to break my water, she said "oh wow, your water is partially broken already! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?! I had gone 24 hours thinking I peed on myself just to find out that I was right, and my water had broken (even if not 100%). 3- There was now merconium in the water, meaning that Ben had had a bowel movement while in my belly. This scared me a little, but the Dr. assured me that everything would be fine, but Evan would probably not be able to cut the cord because they would have to quickly suck out his mouth and nose to prevent him from aspirating anything.
There was one more obstacle to face- During labor the nurse had advised me to roll back and forth from side to side to try to get Ben to flip over, and I assume that this motion cause my epidural to pop out. Can you say surprise??? I went from almost no pain, to excruciating pitocin-aided-every-minute contractions. OMG. How do you people do this with no epidural? After pleading with the nurse to add more meds, or do SOMETHING she rolled me over to discover that the epidural catheter had popped out of my back. So, for about 20 minutes I felt everything. Which was 20 minutes too long. Like I said before, I have no idea how people do it with no help from an epidural. That s**t HURTS!!!!! Once the epidural was fixed it was back to smooth sailing. I would estimate this was at about 5am.
I know you're jealous of how good I looked... not.
At around 6:45 am my mom and Evan's mom arrived at the hospital. Around 7:15 the nurse came to check on my progress. I was now dilated to a 5. She left, saying she would come back in about an hour, but she thought it would be a while. So, I was chatting with my mom and Evan's mom and about 30 minutes later it started feeling like (there is really no other way to describe this) like there was a bowling ball in my butt... I told you, there was really no other way to describe it... I was feeling a LOTTT of pressure. I waited it out for about another 15-20 minutes, but it was getting worse. I was feeling like I wanted to push. I remember looking at my mom and saying to her, "I feel like I need to push". I buzzed for the nurse, who came back with this look on her face like, "what now, there's no way you're ready?". I told her how I was feeling, and she hesitantly checked me. "Oh wow!" She quickly responded, "girl, you are ready to push!" It was 8:15am.
The nurse began getting the bed ready, and I started laughing hysterically. To this day I have no idea where this reaction came from. I think I was just really excited and exhausted at the same time and my nervous energy expressed itself in laughter. I was so ready for this. This was the moment we had been waiting for for 10 months. Evan and I were ready to meet our son.
I started pushing at 8:30. I know this is the most cliched expression of all time, but they do not call it labor for nothin'. Pushing was the hardest thing I've ever done. It took me about 15-20 minutes to really start pushing effectively. That plus the combination of Ben being such a big baby made it a very tough job to do. I remember that pushing was hard, but honestly, it was the in between contractions part that was really hard. That hurt pretty bad for me. The pressure was insane. I remember I would beg the nurse to let me push, and she would say wait for 10-15 seconds, and that would be the longest 10-15 seconds of my life. Towards the end I was closing my eyes in an attempt to rest between pushes because I was so physically and mentally exhausted. Finally, around 45 minutes into it, the doctor came in and she said it wouldn't be long. So I turned it on.. I wanted this all to be over. Those pushes were apparently really good because while the doctor was scrubbing up she looked at me and said (halfway joking) "Whitney, you've go to to wait for me to at least put gloves on! Stop pushing!!"
At 9:29am on December 30, 2010, Evan and I met our little boy, Benjamin Evan Wagoner. It was a completely surreal moment in my life. They rushed him over to the table to suction him so I didn't immediately get to hold him, but hearing him cry for the first time was the most amazing sound I've heard in my entire life. I think I was laughing and crying at the same time. I know I'm not a preachy person, but everyone needs to know that God is so good. The moment I became a mommy my life changed forever.
8 lbs 10 oz, 21.5 inches long
That being said, the above story, although it was SO hard for me. I would do it again right now. I would do it 10 more times. Ben is worth more than any pain in the entire world. Many people say that you forget the pain of labor as soon as you hold your new baby in your arms. I don't totally agree with that, because, honestly, I still remember the pain, and it still scares me. But, I do believe that the new love you have for your baby overpowers that pain so much that compared to your child, the pain is nothing. It's like a grain of sand.
