Plan: natural child birth vs reality

so my ideal was a completely unmediated water birth. i had visualized it so many times. 

what actually happened contained so many of my fears and included so many things that i wanted to avoid to my child and myself. however everything turned out right as it should and overall i am thankful for everything. this hospital, my birth team, the surgical team, and my support network... thank you. i can not express my gratitude enough.

below is a quick version of what happened that I wrote to a friend about the labor. i will post a more detailed version of the birth story. my amazing doula Be Joy will be writing it up soon!

 

So we named him tesla. Water broke at about 2 am but I just thought I had peed. Woke back up at 3 and felt like I needed to pee again and stood up and immediately thought I peed in the floor. Finally made it to the bathroom and had bloody show so I woke up Michael who was like well I'm pretty sure  sure your in labor. He stayed calm and started setting everything up around the house just how we had planed. My doula had brought a birth tub for me to labor in so we filled it and I got in the tub and labored in here for a while. I was in text communication with Be Joy the entire time.  It took me about three hours to admit I was in labor and it was not a false alarm. Michael called our midwives and on the phone I was told to get out of the tub and do some walking to really get the labor going. This made me have contractions 3min apart and rather strong quite quickly so we left for the hospital. Got there about 10 am and when they checked me I was about 7 cm dilated and my cervix was paper thin. So I got admitted and labored in the hospital with Michael, my doula, my mom, midwife, and a nurse. Being in a birth tub seemed to slow my contractions down so my midwife did not allow me to stay in there much. I walked around, labored in the shower and mainly on a birth ball. Also the babies heart rate was having scary dips in it and the contractions were getting extremely painful. However every time they checked me they said I was only 6 1/2 or 7 but my cervex was starting to get inflamed and get all thick. Apparently I was trying to push and it was inflaming my cervix. So at abouy 6 pm they said due to the babies heart rate we needed to do something to help me progress and recommended I get pitocin. Not what I wanted to hear! I really had a strong mindset against pitocin based on everything I had read. The patocin was going to make the contractions much stronger and there was no way I would be able to keep myself from pushing and inflaming my cervix more. I was running a fever at that point too. So they gave me an epidural. Not what I wanted to have happening but I needed to make the labor progress due to his heart rate being very irregular and having very big dips when I was in contractions. So after the pitocin there was no change for a while and they kept upping it until finally at about midnight I was at 10 cm. Tesals heart rate was very high at this point and I still had a slight temp. So they said I needed to start pushing right away. After 2 hours and 45 min of pushing (with Michael and Be joy holding my very numb legs up and my mom helping me curl up into a ball with the contractions)  with ever contraction the baby made very little progress in moving. They said what looked like was happening is his head was getting more cone shaped in the birth canal and getting stretched out but otherwise kinda stuck not moving. My midwife could not get a good seance of his positioning so she called the doctor in. They were talking about the need to use forceps or a vacuum. After the md checked me he said that the baby was not in a position where we could do that. So my options were to try to push and get him to a point where they could use forceps or a c section. We were both totally against the idea of forceps and I really had no energy left at all after attempt to push for almost three hours. So I was terrified but they prepped me for the c section. Right before my surgery they had two crash calls in a row on the floor which was really making me freak out. They surgery went really well and really quick and Tesla was born at 3:53 Tuesday morning. The put him on my chest right away and breast feed like a pro while they closed me up. Michael was with me in the surgery and he held my hand cried with joy the whole time. They also found a cyst on my right ovary. They said that the could save my right ovary but the needed to remove the cyst. This makes Michael and I feel like the c section was really the right choice. The surgeon did an amazing job and I seem to be healing well. Crazy in love with my son. He's the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my whole life. He's only been here a little over 24 hours and already I can't imagine the world without him. Oh so he was 9 pound 6 oz! He's super big and strong. So we got to have him to ourselves for a little while and then the decided they needed to take him to the Nicu. Michael and I both cried when they had to come get us and told us we needed to give them an hour before we could go see him. So his sugar is a little low and they are trying to get it under control. They said this is common with big babies and also with long labors and he was both those things. So I have been trying to get over to breast feed every three hours so as you can imagine I have not really slept in the past few days. Michael was just amazing through the whole of the labor. Really like just completely amazing. He is perfect with Tesla like a compleat natural and he keeps crying with joy. This has all been so beautiful.

my son Tesla is the most amazing being i have ever laid eyes on. i can not even begin to describe to you how much love i have for him. I'm so glad he's here.