Elijah Matthew Bordon was born on Saturday, June 2 at 3:39 p.m. He weighed 7 lb 4 oz, 19 3/4" long. He has blond hair and blue eyes,
which is funny because Christian and Miles both had black hair and gray
eyes. :) I said, "Is this OUR baby?" I am pretty sure Alan caught me saying
that on video. :D HA! My birth story is a little interesting, so read on if you dare... ;)
Saturday morning sometime, 10 am at the earliest, I started having contractions. I had been having contractions off and on the past week, but not very painful ones. These were painful, but I still wasn't sure if they were the real thing. We took Christian to his game at 12 pm and the contractions started getting closer together. That's when I started thinking they were the real thing. I would talk to other kids' moms and pause for a contraction. They'd say, "Uh, does your husband know you're having contractions?" I'd laugh and say yes. :D Hey, beginning stages of labor take time. Might as well spend the time out and distracted by other things. ;)
We made it home at around 1:45 pm. A wonderful woman from my ward (church congregation) named Jane came over and stayed with the boys while we walked across the street to the hospital. People we knew cheered us on our way. We checked in at 2 p.m. and were sent to an "observation room," a tiny room the size of a closet where I put a gown on and they asked me 5,000,000 questions.
This is Hershey Med Center; a learning hospital, so you have a resident doctor come in and do their thing then a doctor comes in and does the same exact thing. A little frustrating, but whatever. I stressed that I went quickly (Miles was a 4 hour labor total) and that I wanted an epidural.
Now I was contracting 2 minutes apart when I arrived at the hospital. The resident doctor checked my progress and announced I was 5 cm and 80% effaced. An attending doctor came and started asking questions but got distracted by a loud beeping sound and left. Another woman came and asked the rest of the questions. By this time my pain was really increasing. She left and nobody came in for an hour.
During that hour my pain got so bad I started writhing and moaning with each contraction. I've never felt such heavy ones before; I'd always had an epidural by now! Alan was leafing through a magazine across the room and I could hear the nurses--5-10 of them--chatting and laughing right outside our door. I chastised Alan for being a poor coach (hey, we've never trained for this) and he came and held my hand. The pain was surreal and when I started feeling intense pressure I would cry out to the nurses such things as, "Help!" and, "The baby is coming! He's coming, I can feel it!" Nobody came. It was the most frustrating thing ever. I wasn't in the right mind to think of pushing the nurse call button, but there were 500 of them right outside my door. I really needed someone to tell me what was happening. I didn't know exactly because I'd never transitioned before. I was angry because they hadn't listened to me--I was going fast, like I'd told them, and I had a feeling it was too late for the epidural I had wanted. Overall, I was worried and scared and felt alone.
I finally told Alan to ask for a Dr to check me. A nurse came in and stood me up to walk to the labor and delivery room. As soon as I stood, my water broke. After the contraction ended I walked to the labor and delivery room and a couple of doctors rushed in. I was 95% effaced, 10 cm, and baby was at -1 position. I had 2 more contractions and then my body took over, pushing that baby out. It took 2 or 3 pushes and it was all over. It was all around INSANE. It might have been "cooler" if I wasn't annoyed by the whole experience.
So I got to hospital at 2 p.m. and had the baby at 3:39 p.m. ALAN almost had to catch the baby in the observation room!!! It might have been cool in the end if he had (he'd wanted to deliver the baby anyway), but I felt I deserved to be treated better than to be left alone for so long, transitioning and in such pain without really knowing what was happening and my cries for help being ignored (they are definitely getting a colorful evaluation from me). :)
In the end--now that it's all over and the emotions have died down--I am glad I had a natural birth. With Christian my water broke and contractions started slowly after that. With Miles I was induced. Now I've had a natural birth and know what it's like. It was intense and let me tell you...I am definitely a fan of epidurals. I don't feel like I've crossed some cool barrier or joined a club. I feel like everyone should be able to choose how to deliver your children. The most important thing is that the baby is healthy.
I sure love my little Elijah. He doesn't sleep well at night and it's making me a little crazy, but I know things like that fall into place as they grow older. In the meantime I will continue to stare at his cute little face and enjoy each little moment, because I know it all passes too quickly.
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