Elijah’s Birth Story: Part 2

At this point, it was kind of surreal. I said yes, and one of his nurses walked us over to the hospital registration desk. There, the German-only speaking nun got us registered in between the incessant phone calls she was taking. It seemed that the registration took forever. We then went upstairs to the labor and delivery ward, and rang the doorbell at the Kreisssaal (labor & delivery) door. A midwife named Irene greeted us and said she would need to do another CTG, so she hooked me up to the machine. John needed to go grab our things and move our car, so I told him to go then while I was hooked up to the machine and filling out paperwork. I a few contractions while he was gone, and I’m glad he wasn’t gone longer. I thought it was kind of scary to go through that alone. Once the CTG was over, Irene needed to do a pelvic exam, during which my water broke. It wasn’t’ a big gush or anything, but it broke nevertheless! At that point, it had been about an hour since I had been at my doctor’s office. She told me I was about 3-4 cm. She sent us to our room (the recovery room, where we would be for the rest of our hospital stay after the baby arrived) and told us to come back to the Kreisssaal in one hour (at 4:30). We  hung out in our room and called our family to let them know we were at the hospital and things were progressing. I also used the time to sit on the hospital’s exercise ball.

At 4:30, the midwife checked me again and I was 4 cm. There were also some other less than desirable things that were done at that point that are TMI for this story. She then told me I could take a bath at that point if I’d like, which sounded nice to me. She filled the bath with warm water and a rose scent, which was nice. I stayed in the bath for about 25 minutes, during which time John fed me some yogurt. It ended up being the only dinner I had that day, so I’m really glad he got it for me!

At the end of my bath, I realized how much more pain I was in. After a little discussion, I decided that I wanted the epidural (I didn’t go into labor with any expectations either way). We rang the midwife and let her know I’d like to have the epidural. After I got out of the tub and made my way to the delivery room, they started working on the epidural process, which started with administering an IV. I’d never had one before and was pretty nervous.

I was also nervous, because my contractions were coming so quickly and I couldn’t stay still through them. I was afraid of getting the epidural and not being able to stay still through a contraction. The poor woman who administered my IV had to pause her work through three contractions. At this point, I was in so much pain, I couldn’t really think straight. I couldn’t keep my eyes open during the contractions It was just too much. The midwife asked me to go to the bathroom one more time before they administered the epidural, so I walked the short distance to the bathroom with John and the midwife but realized I was feeling faint. After getting settled in there, I told John I was about to pass out and sure enough, I lost my sight and started to fall over. John grabbed me, yelled for help and splashed water on my face, which miraculously kept me from completely losing consciousness.