The little lady has arrived - her arrival

So as I mentioned in my previous post, our daughter arrived on May 2nd. It took me a while to organize my thoughts surrounding her birth and figure out what exactly happened. I guess I was pretty shell shocked and the resulting fatigue didn't help me organize my thoughts any faster. Ha!

My original due date was May 1st but then was changed to May 6th due to her growing slowly. So the weeks leading up to her birth I had the pleasure of going to the hospital on a weekly basis and getting checks to see what, if any, progress had been made. Every time the doctor checked me, there was only the slightest change and I was still carrying her really high. All my pregnant friends were talking about these "braxton hicks" contractions which I never had throughout my pregnancy which made me think labour was very far off. Needless to say, I was getting frustrated. My doctor recommended long walks and squats. One week I did over a thousand squats - no progress. I read online that eating dates helps prepare the cervix for labour - I ate hundreds, little progress. Yoga, squats, Pilates, walking and stairs - nothing.
So on May 1st (I was 39 weeks and 3 days going by my May 6th due date) I went in for another check up and was only at 1.5cm and still carrying high, I left the doctor's really frustrated and sobbing to my husband that the baby would never come and I would be pregnant until she turned 20. We made jokes about seeing the baby move a couch into my belly and that she was opening a night club. Getting comfy. We went home and decided to go for a long walk - so long that I actually changed into athletic clothes and runners for it, on the walk we stopped by our favourite asian market and bought some drink that is supposed to help jump start labour so we bought four of those. That evening we did our nightly ritual of rubbing all the labour inducing pressure points and using this type of acupuncture that uses fire and wicks instead of needles on the same pressure points. Feeling frustrated, I went to bed.
At one in the morning I woke up to the first contraction, I assumed it was gas until the next one came three minutes later, and then another. After about twenty minutes of quietly laying there with contractions steadily coming every three minutes I decided to wake up hubby and let him know. He jumps awake and we both wonder if it's the real deal or just false labour, since our hospital was a good 45 minute drive away and we were going to be taking a very expensive taxi, I didn't want to make the trek unless it was the real thing. So I looked online how to make sure - I took a shower and tried walking around (which can make false labour stop) and the contractions kept coming steadily every three to four minutes and lasting for a minute. Our hospital had told us since I was a first time mum I should head to the hospital when contractions were 10 to 15 minutes apart with this in mind I naively thought I might be having my baby quickly. At around 4:30 we decided to head to the hospital, hailed a cab and texted some family members to let them know.
Once we arrived at the hospital I was hooked up to monitors to check the baby's heartbeat and my contractions, this lasted for an hour and then finally they checked me to see how I was progressing. 3 cm. Bloody hell. They gave us the option of going home and labouring there for a while or staying and labouring at the hospital. We decided not to trek home and eventually back again and stayed at the hospital but were warned I would probably not be having the baby anytime soon. My labour was slow going and by 9 am I was only at 4 cm. I was getting really frustrated and started panicking because if contractions at only 4 cm felt that bad, 8 cm must be unbearable! At this point, my husband saw my despair and really stepped it up a notch. He remembered what our mid wife had taught him during our birth classes about coaching me through the contractions. From then on, he helped me remember my breathing and was invaluable. When he wanted to pee or go to the vending machine, I got really worried and even walked to the vending machine and back with him - much to the shock of the midwives. The midwife told us that even though my contractions were really strong they weren't making much progress - ouch, how discouraging! The pain was getting really intense so I asked for suggestions on how to manage it better (at that point I had just been crying) so the midwife suggested the bathtub. Before I could get in, we had to wake up the baby and monitor her heartbeat - lucky girl got to sleep through contractions. For a while I laboured in the bathtub which is when contractions got so intense I broke down and asked for pain medication which I luckily never ended up getting!  My husband said during this time I went crazy and had a weird look in my eyes - very intense and crazy. At one point while he was coaching me to "breathe, breathe, breathe" I growled at him "what the fuck do you think I'm doing?!!" and then true to Canadian form, apologised profusely.
Soon after getting out of the bathtub, around 11 or 12, my water broke and contractions felt very different. My urges to push came but I wasn't fully dilated so I had to try not to push which was tough. During this time, my husband says I regained my sanity and was cracking jokes with him and the midwife and apologising for all my foul language.
Around 1, I was wheeled into the delivery room and started pushing. The baby was still really high up and I ended up pushing for two hours with almost no progress. I tried pushing in a bunch of different positions to try and encourage the baby to engage in my pelvis with no luck. At this point the midwife seemed to be concerned about my energy due to labour starting in the middle of the night and lasting so long and decided to get the doctor to decide what to do.  It turns out, the baby was facing sideways instead of towards my back or stomach which made it difficult for her head to drop into my pelvis. The doctor tried spinning her head and then decided she had to come out soon. Instead of giving me pitocin to make my contractions stronger, he tried pushing on my stomach while I pushed a few times with no results. At this point they decided to vacuum her out while someone pushed down on my stomach. I was given an episiotomy and then they sucked her out which only took a few minutes and two tries with the vacuum. Our sweet girl arrived at 3:11pm on Friday May 2nd. She wasn't too big, 7 pounds exactly and 19.1 inches long. We named her Chloe.
I had to spend five more days in the hospital and recovery for me was tough. I was given boatloads of stitches and conveniently, no pain killers. For the first two days I could barely walk, sitting was hard and picking up Chloe took me about five minutes. Eventually my husband asked the nurses why the pills they gave me weren't helping me with pain -- they weren't painkillers! What a terrible mix up! So I was finally given something to help me with the pain which made it a lot easier to pee, shower, sit, stand, walk, sleep... Everyone told me to get as much rest as possible while I was in the hospital... what a crock of shit that is. I was put in a room with three other women who had just given birth and all four babies were also in the room. It would have been ok if one of the women had at least tried to calm down her crying baby. The sound of 24-7 howling from her baby really did my head in and lead to many text messages to my husband where I begged him to let me leave the hospital early - he did not. Looking back, I'm pretty impressed that I managed to do it without an epidural or laughing gas or anything. Leading up the birth all our foreign friends told me giving birth without pain meds was impossible and I'm glad my stubborn ass was able to prove them wrong. My mum had three children without and pain meds - and I used that for inspiration to get through it.
Chloe is now 7 weeks old and we are getting to know each other better every day. She is a really sweet baby and has just figured out how to coo and smile which is really sweet to see after she wakes me up at 5am to eat. My husband is on cloud nine with his daughter and I can't take enough photos of them cuddling and sleeping together.
Would I do it again? Probably. Not for a while. I think I need to emotionally heal from the trauma and also enjoy my new sweet baby, get to know her and help her grow up a little.