A baby in an hour or less, or the birth story of Asher Gene Jacobson

Well, in case you didn't know, I had a baby. It's quite the story. Buckle up and hang on tight, because I sure didn't and I was almost derailed, and I lived it!

I kind of had a faint inkling in my mind that this baby was going to come a bit early (I was 38 weeks if my original due date was right, which I'm starting to think that it was not) but I didn't want to get my hopes up in case this wasn't the case, so I tried to squash the inkling the best I could. The only concession I did make was to ask if my mother-in-law would be able to come out a little earlier than she planned, which she graciously agreed to do. All my other pregnancies had either been late (Evelynn) or induced a few days early, so I didn't really think I had much of a shot of going early. But babies are fickle creatures, wouldn't you know.



Monday morning around 2:00 am I started contracting. Nothing spectacular, just hard enough for me not to be able to sleep and different enough for me to recognize that this might be the start of early labor. I told Doug when he got up to go to work about 6:00 am, and suggested that since I didn't know how long this phase would last that he just stick around and go to my doctors appointment with me and see where the day led. My weekly appointment was with another doctor in the office since Dr. Baxter conveniently picked this week as his vacation week, for the whole week. To be fair, he has to be the guy on call for all of Thanksgiving holiday, but still, ironic right? Doug skimmed off to the dentist first (he had an extremely sore upper gum which needed looking at and cleaning out, which left him as sore as I was at the end of the day, poor guy) and then went to class and the end of work when nothing special seemed to be happening with me. I still contracted throughout the day, but it was fairly mild and only happened two or three times an hour, with things stopping completely from about 12:00-3:00 pm. Dinner came and went, then clean up and bed time.  Doug and I watched a few shows and called it a night early, or at least he did. I went to bed but spent about an hour or more reading blogs and conference talks to make sure I was really tired and would fall asleep quickly instead of tossing and turning. So lights out for me about 11:45.

As I lay down to sleep, I thought about my water breaking. I wondered if it would happen, maybe in a sneaky way like a slow trickle so I wouldn't catch on right away. But I was like, yeah, that'll never happen to me. Well....

At 12:00-ish I was violently awakened by a HUGE contraction ripping across my abdomen. At the highest point of pain, I felt something pop. After the contraction subsided I thought, I wonder what that was? Then I thought, I wonder if that was a fluke or if I'll have another one? A few minutes later, another monster contraction, one that left me moaning out loud.

Doug woke up. "You ok?"

After I could talk again, I said, "I think it's time to go. Yep, there goes my water."

Out came the gush. I recognized it because I've had my water broken in labor before. I also realized, as did Doug, that we could have a serious problem on our hands. When I've been induced in the hospital and had my water broke, things start to happen to my body quickly. Like really quickly. I gave birth to Eloise about 30 minutes after having my water broken, but I had safely been in labor in the hospital for 3.5 hours prior to that, and I had an epidural. They broke my water with Michael after I had been on pitocin for 30 minutes or so, and he came 1.5 hours later. But now I had been fully launched into hard, real labor away from the hospital, and my water was broke. I knew I was a ticking time bomb. I grabbed my contact case, glasses, slippers and a sweater shirt and "ran" to the car (read as I walked quickly but I had to stop twice for contractions and to wait for Doug to get back from informing my brother that we were off to the hospital and would he please come upstairs and sleep on the couch while we were gone). I had started to shake during and between the contractions not because of the pain I think but just because of the suddenness of it was a bit too much for my body to handle. Doug texted the parentals to let them know we were off (his text was "It's go time!"), and we got a phone call from Doug's mom at 12:17 telling us good luck, right as we were pulling out of the driveway. The 10 minute car ride to the hospital was fun. Luckily at 12:20 no one is on the road and Doug hit all the lights green AND he was driving rather quickly, so I think we made it in about 5 minutes. We parked, waited through the next contraction  and walked into the hospital to the front admissions. The lady and the front desk looked at us coming, looked at me while I paused to lean on the desk to work through yet another contraction, and asked in a bored voice, "What can I do for you?" Seriously? Oh well, all I really wanted was a donut. Come on! I don't care how many pregnant ladies you've seen come in, if one of them can't talk to you because she's gripping the counter and moaning, panting and shaking, you take notice and hurry your butt up! If you then proceed to verify her name and address in the computer, and then have to start AGAIN because you spelled Jacobson wrong (Oh, it's not EN? Let's try again), the least you can do is take her seriously when she says as nicely as she can "I'm here to have a baby." We finally got a real reaction when Doug mentioned that my water had broken. Then she stopped fiddling with her computer and said, "Oh, then come right in," and pushed the button to unlock the doors right as another contraction hit. She held the button, buzzer blairing, for about 15 seconds, then noticed I had not moved and said, "Oh, well when you're ready." Still trying to think nice thoughts, I went in the door and she walked us down the hall to my room. When the delivery nurse walked in I mentioned to her that I tend to labor quickly,especially when my water had already broken. She said something like "Ok," and went back to being a little too casual for my comfort, but at least I was in the hospital. I wasn't going to give birth at home or on the road. As I was getting my first very uncomfortable exam to determine how far along I was ("Oh, you're at 5 cm, how nice), another nurse walked in. I heard Doug say, "Oh, hello Zandy!" I looked up. Yep, it was Zandy.

Zandy was Doug's very good friend from high school. They were super close. She wrote him his entire mission. She was his first date when he got home from his mission.

Turns out Zandy was awesome. When we got settled she asked if I was going to have an epidural, which I foolishly said "I don't know yet." If I could have seen the future I would have been yelling out from the parking lot "Get the needle ready, I'm coming in!" but even then I might not have gotten it in time. But Zandy ran me through some good labor relaxation tips and helped me through some positions to ease the pain before we started the 20 million questions and IV stuff. The whole time they were getting set up, Doug and I were both thinking, they are going way to slow. They are being way to casual. This baby is coming faster then they think. I think part of the reason for this is because when I first got there I was able to manage my pain fairly well. I wasn't screaming, yet, and I was able to joke and talk with the nurses in between contractions. Things started to change after about 20 minutes though. We arrived in the hospital room at 12:25. By 12:50 I was not doing so well. Contractions were coming harder and closer together, sometimes with no rest in between. My slow breathing and position changes weren't cutting it any more. I held on to Doug's hand as tight as I could and shook and moaned and started saying "I don't want to do this, it's hurts too much! I don't like this!" Doug reminded me that I had done it before, it would be over soon, everything would be fine, but this was different than Michael's labor. With Michael's labor there has been a rhythm, contract, relax, contract, relax, all the way until the end. Even when I was pushing with Michael, there was a respite between contractions. Not this time. At the end I was having one contraction right on top of the other one, and I felt like the little control and composure I had was rapidly slipping away.  At the very end instead of feeling the urge to push I felt immense pressure. It took me a minutes (really about 3 seconds, but things seemed longer) to realize that what I was feeling through all the pain was the need to push and not just a new level of pain. I cried out that there was too much pressure and the nurse checked me and was like "Oh, we need the doctor!" In came the on call doctor, the poor man. He was probably asleep up until 3 minutes prior to this, and he got to walk in to a room with a screaming woman to deliver one of the 5 babies he had that night. Doug assures me that I was not screaming, but I felt like I was. I was definitely loud, and crying. I was really losing focus at this point because of the pain and constant contractions, so one of the nurses snapped me back into focus with the command of "GENEEN! Look at me!! Breathe!! You can do this!" and then started doing some huffing pants with me to back me away from the edge of hysteria. Finally the doctor was ready, but I'm sure it was merely a minute later. He finally said his first words to me, or at least the first I could remember, which were "I need you to pull your knees up. Pull in your knees! Grab them and pull them in!" I wanted to tell him, but couldn't at the time, that I was TRYING to do as he wanted, but my body was locked in so much tension that I couldn't make myself pull my knees up. I even tried grabbing them and pulling back, but I couldn't do it. Finally another nurse caught on and she and Doug helped pull them back. When I finally got to push, Doug said there was no delay. The baby popped out, head shoulder and all, in one go. I did feel that. It didn't feel too good. I don't know how women who have birth naturally can go any slower than the absolute fastest that their body can handle. The baby needed to be out of there, like yesterday. After the baby popped out, I lay back and panted and cried, so relieved to have that over with. Then I looked up and saw a sight a little strange. There was my baby, and it was upside down, but I did notice one feature. Testicles.  "It's a BOY!" I exclaimed. People laughed. Honestly, even though I didn't really have a guess on the babies gender, I was mostly prepared for a girl because Doug and I had spent so long going back and forth over girl names, and we were still undecided. But we had the boy name figured out for so long that I just hadn't thought about it actually being a boy. But there he was, upside down because he had the cord around his neck like the ultrasound said, and I guess the way doctors rectify this is to turn them upside down post birth to unwrap the cord. :)

He was taken over to the side to be checked out and the doctor turned back to me to try and deliver my placenta. There we hit a snag. I don't know why, but after pushing out the baby my body had nothing left to push the placenta out. The doctor massaged my uterus, which was SO not fun, for a long time, but nothing happened, so they had to give me pitocin through my IV to get it out. When the placenta finally came out though, nothing can describe the immense feeling of relief and relaxation that came over my body. It was heavenly. It only lasted a few minutes though, because they had to keep massaging my uterus and examine me for tears (I had one small one that required a few small stitches) and stuff. I will say this for epidurals. Aside from making labor pain free, they also make post labor pain free, so all that stuff the doctor and nurses do to you post delivery don't hurt at all, while without an epidural it's like you go through all that pain just to have a little more pain. It's really annoying.

When I finally got to hold my baby, it was like experiencing deja vu. Asher Gene Jacobson looks almost exactly like his older brother Michael did at birth, except for the fact that Michael has almost no hair and his was blond, whereas Asher has dark dark brown hair and has the most out of all his siblings at birth (which isn't much if you've seen my kids as babies). He is a Jacobson baby through and through. He even has the stork bites on his eyelids and forehead. He was 7 lbs 1 oz and 20.5 inches long, and perfect through and through. The doctor recorded the time of birth as 1:17 am, which was exactly one hour from the time we pulled out of the garage at my house, which we know because of the phone call from Doug's mom. So, to recap on my labors, Evelynn was 8 hours, Eloise was 4 hours, Michael was 2 hours, and Asher was 1 hour. I think I might just live at the hospital for my next baby and pray someone is around to catch it when it falls out of me.

The nurses kept telling me that I did an amazing job, and they couldn't believe how fast I went. I guess I was the talk of the hospital for a day because most of the hospital staff I interacted with knew my arrival story. I tried to warn them, I really did, but Doug says next time he's going to be more emphatic. He was distressed at their casualness too, and was worried that they weren't taking my pain seriously. He assures me that I wasn't as loud or out of control as I felt, so that's good because it seemed pretty outrageous to me. I'm not saying I'm embarrassed about how I acted in labor because come on, that was the worst pain I've ever had in my life and I didn't swear once! But it's not in my character I guess to make those kind of noises. :)

I bleed a little more than they liked after delivery, so I had to have the IV in with some meds for much longer then I have before, and Zandy had to massage my abdomen (meaning to beat severely and repeatedly) many times that evening, and I had to be checked out more often than normal, so I didn't really get a chance to sleep until 5:30 am. Doug went home around 4 to sleep so he could take Evelynn to school in the morning. We were both pretty hashed by the end of yesterday. It seemed like the longest day ever, but considering I had been up for almost 24 hours (I went to bed last night around 11:30) with maybe 2 hours of sleep and birthing a baby in there somewhere, it really was a very long day. Today I am doing quite well and I'm anxious to get home and sleep in my bed and not be confined to just one room. The kids have been in to visit twice and they all love and adore Asher. Doug's mom got in about 10 pm last night as came straight to the hospital to see us. She's such a trooper for making the whole drive down from Seattle by herself in one day. Go Mom! We are all very grateful to have her here!

So now I have four kids, two girls and two boys. Seems pretty perfect to me. I love my family, and I love my new baby so much. I look forward to life with four kids, but I'm also a little worried. But there's no turning back now.... :)