Wed Sept 12...It started off like any other day. I got up, had breakfast, fed Jax and decided to take him down to Alouette river for a swim since the weather was so warm. I too felt like getting a splash in and swam around for a couple of hours. After a quick lunch I headed off to my massage appointment and finally my 36 week checkup with my midwife, Tamara. Oh, we discussed the usual things... including how to recognize labour contractions and I jokingly said that I wouldn't mind if I was early, I could get back to hockey sooner :) Tamara shook her finger and told me I would jinx myself.
Well, after a few minutes I started to get a funny, uncomfortable feeling and realized that I felt wet. So I said, "Tamara, I feel wet." And she said, "What do you mean wet?". So I stood up from her leather couch and my shorts were absolutely drenched through. Hmmmmm. She checked me out and sure enough my water had broken and my cervix was soft and starting to open. "Here we go", she said, "You'll probably go into labour on your own sometime in the next 18 hours. Call me when your contractions are 5 min apart and 1 min long."
I was shaking. For all the bravado and jokes I had made, I just wasn't prepared for an obedient, early child. I shook all the way to the jeep and called Rem as soon as I was behind the wheel. "Rem, my water broke!"...pause... It was about 5:40 and he had missed the 5:30 train home so he had to wait until 6:20. To be honest he was a bit frantic. I also called Jeanine on the way home and got her to come out to help out getting us ready for the hospital and take care of Jax.
When I got home I was still feeling fine. I called the moms and my sister to tell them the development and was starting to feel really minor cramps. Oh, and of course logged onto facebook to update my status. Rem came barrelling in at about 7 ready to take me to the hospital but I still felt fine. I was just finishing a small dinner and resting on the couch watching a movie. When Jeanine arrived I was starting to feel the cramps more regularly so I got her to time some for me and we were already at 7 min apart, 45 seconds by 8ish. The rest of the evening is kind of a blur things happened so fast. I packed to go to the hospital and Jeanine drove us there around 9:30 or so. When I was checking in, the admitting nurse told me not to worry, false labour was really common around 36 weeks... then I told her my water had already broken! Tamara met us there and hooked me up to the monitors for the baby's heart rate and contraction strength to see how things were progressing. Because I hadn't been tested for Strep B we decided I should take a dose of antibiotics just in case so she called the obstetrician on shift to check me over. He too came in thinking it was just false labour or really early on but when he checked me my cervix was already dilated 4-5 cm. So they hooked me up to an IV for the antibiotics and sat back to watch. The contractions were hitting stronger and stronger and getting quite close together by this time. I kept grabbing Remy's hand, shirt.. anything I could get my hands on to squeeze and I just had to move around. I went to the bathroom a couple of times and sitting on the toilet was actually one of the most comfortable positions for when a contraction hit. It's funny but I really didn't want to have an "accident" on the floor or bed and could relax through the contractions much better when sitting on the toilet where I wouldn't make a fool of myself. I had a couple waves of nausea and at one point I was on the toilet, throwing up and had squeezed the toilet bar so hard my IV popped out. Very soon they transferred me to a delivery room and I was able to stand in the shower, leaning over a chair while Remy sprayed hot water on my low back to ease the back labour. I don't really know how long I was there but the contractions were pretty intense and didn't seem to ever stop. That was about the point that I was whimpering but I didn't take any drugs at all.
Then I started feeling like I needed to push so I was helped over to the bed and kind of sit/squatted on the bed to start the pushing part. It's weird cause things kind of slowed down at that point. The contractions were hard and really made me want to yell but then there were rests about a minute long between them. Tamara and the nurse helped me to get the contractions under control and use the energy I was wasting with each yell to bear down and push. Slowly but surely the baby worked it's way down. I had a little lip on my cervix that we had to get out of the way and those controlled pushes were really challenging. It took a lot of focus. I changed to a kneeling kind of squat position for quite a while for which I'm sure Rem was thankful because there were metal bars to hang onto instead of his poor hands. I kept telling myself just 2 more pushes...just 2 more pushes. I could feel the stretching as his head was coming down and knew we were close. The helped me to turn back over to a sit/squat again for the last few pushes. When his head was almost out they told me again to push lightly- kind of like puffing- to ease his head through. One more push and out he came like a slimy gooey gunshot. He had his shoulders slightly transverse when he came through so unfortunately I ripped a bit and had to have about 5 stitches put in. The pediatrician whisked him away to check over the "premie" while I delivered the placenta. Rem turned pretty green at that part and I think he gagged just a little bit. We didn't even find out the sex right away, Rem went over to oversee the examination and finally I heard - ITS A BOY! He weighed in at a whopping 8 pounds, 7 ounces and was 21 inches long. Officially he was born at 1:42 am on Sept 13. He had a slight temperature so the doctors wanted to take him to the neonatal intensive care unit (the NICU) to run a course of antibiotics just incase of an infections. I got to hold him for a few minutes while they were stitching me up and then they took him downstairs. I was totally soaked in sweat, the sheets, my nightie, and pillow were all soaked through but I wasn't really tired. Rem and I were left to hang out for a few minutes while they arranged a room for me. We detoured to the NICU to see our little boy and try his first feed. He latched on with enthusiasm and fed really well. By the time we got upstairs it was nearly 4 am. I was getting kind of rhythmic back cramps through the night so I can't say I slept really well. At about 7 am I got called down again to feed the baby and got a good look at his puffy black eyes and swollen nose. Apparently I have (or had!) very strong ab muscles. The poor kid looked like he'd been in a hockey fight. He fed every 3 hours or so and everytime we went down there the difference was astonishing. His colour improved, his swelling decreased and he started to look a little less beat up. He kept pulling out his IV tubes though and the poor kid had little bandages all over him from all the pricks. Jeanine and Adam were his first official visitors. I got in trouble for letting Jeanine hold him though and then she got in trouble for peeking in the incubators where the other premies were. They were soooo tiny!!!! The second night he ate about every 3 hours but I slept much better and was starting to feel pretty good. I was walking a bit faster to get to the elevators and I think it is a very good thing that I didn't take any of the pain medications or I might have felt too good and started sprinting Rem to the elevators. On Friday morning Jo-Ann and Doug came over to meet their first grandson. We followed the rules this time and only took one person at a time. Rem took his dad and I took his mom down. She said she didn't think she could fall in love with another baby so fast... ha! It was love at first sight and I even managed to swing her getting to hold him. They left in the afternoon and another pair of our friends, Sonja and Alun dropped by to meet the little guy that evening. We had a great visit. Most of the hospital stay we were either on the phone with people or had visitors so the time went by pretty quickly. Our biggest worry was for Friday evening. I was healthy and ready to be discharged by Friday but little Mattias had to stay until Saturday morning at the latest to finish his antibiotics. He was breast feeding so well I really didn't want him going on formula or having to pump and feeding him by bottle for the night since it would set him back. Luckily there were lots of beds available and I was able to spend the extra night there to be with my baby. It really would have sucked having to drive there and back 3 times in the night!
Friday evening I went down to feed Mattias around 9 pm and he hadkicked his IV out yet again so they were waiting for the pediatrician to come and get him back on it. That was the hardest part of the whole hospital stay watching them try to find a vein that they had not already poked to insert the needle. They tried every limb and he was really distraught. My heart was in my hands. They were about to shave his head and put the IV in his scalp! I'm glad I was there though because I asked if there was not another option - there were only 5 hours and 3 doses left of the antibiotic and his bloodsugar was great with all the successful feeding. The doctor told me he could do the last doses intramuscularly but acted as if it were a last resort measure. I was thinking .. Uh, isn't that just like any other vaccination, wouldn't it be a lot nicer than poking him in the veins for 2 hours. So in the end that's what we did. Just one little poke in the thigh and the really nice nurse managed to get him discharged early from the NICU and come upstairs with us for the night. We spent a lot of the night snuggling and rem even climbed into the tiny hospital bed with the two of us for the night.
We came home Saturday at noon and had Grandma Saville here to help us get things cleaned and prepare some meals and organize some baby stuff. We kind of wanted to keep Mattias close to us for the night so he spent his first night in our laundry basket on the bedside table :)
It's Monday now and I'm trying to catch up with everyone's well wishing emails, phone calls and messages. We're doing awesome and I promise I'll get some pics up here really soon.
