Allison Ann Clark entered the world one week ago at 8:37am on Monday, December 17, 2012! She was 7 lb, 12.5 oz and 20 in long. We just love her so much. Although tired, we are having a great time with the new addition to our family.
I love to hear labor stories so I'll tell you mine. With our second child we prayed that my water would not break before we got to the hospital. Our reason was because with our first child my water broke and I did not have him until 36 hours later. Yes, 36 hours. Not all of that was hard-core labor, but we still had to pay for the whole 36 hours....
Well, I kept having false labors with this pregnancy so on Sunday, December 16 I was praying and asked the Lord to please have my water break so I would know for sure that we needed to go to the hospital. On Sunday night we went to bed around midnight because Bruce was not feeling well. Matt had been at the ER with him that morning because he was having trouble breathing. I got up to use the restroom around 2am. Then, around 2:50am my water broke. Yay!
We made it to the hospital and once they got me in the bed I could not get out. I wanted to go through labor without an epidural so my recovery time would be shorter. However, I was so tired that all I could think during each contraction was, "I want that epidural!" I remembered that the contractions did not hurt so badly with my second child, whom I also delivered without an epidural. Then, I remembered that I was also a lot more rested and positive when I delivered him. So, I started telling myself, "I WANT to do this." That did help them to not hurt so badly.
I also began motivating myself with a visual. My son Wayne had his first preschool Christmas program on Tuesday morning. I thought, "If I can get through this labor with no drugs, I can probably get out of here by Tuesday morning in time to make it to his program." I kept picturing him on the stage and telling myself I wanted to suffer through the pain.
It's funny to me how each delivery is so different. One of them I wanted to hang off my husband, but did not want him to give me a back rub. The second one I had pump up music in the background and was moving around the whole time. This time I just wanted to be pampered and I wanted to see my husband the whole time. It was great because one of my friends, Bonnie Smith, came to coach me through labor so she was able to help my husband keep up the back and foot rubbing! The nurse jumped right in to rub my legs and I was feeling pretty taken care of.
One of the ways that I felt God in the room with me was through the contractions at the end of labor. You know how usually the contractions get so close together that you can hardly catch your breath? Well, my contractions got farther apart. I even fell asleep between some of them and was then woken up by the feeling of another one coming on. It was like I got a bunch of little naps in between to give me some energy to push her out because I was nervous I would not have the strength with such little sleep the night before-2.5 hours or so. I had my eyes closed most of the time through labor and did not talk much. I was just trying to save all my energy for the end.
When it was time to push, I was pretty alert. That kind of happens when you have almost 8 lbs coming out of you! I ended up pushing so hard I pooped as I was delivering her, which I totally didn't care about at that point. When I was delivering my second son, I was coaching him saying, "You can do it Bruce. You can come out." And more positive phrases like that. This time I was screaming, "Get her out of me!" With my sons I had ripped so they just shot out like a bullet out of a gun. However, I did not rip with her so her head was stuck and I got to experience the "ring of fire". I think that's probably when the screaming was the loudest.
Funny thing was my husband shushed me. Yes he did! I looked at him and yelled, "Don't shush me!" He told me later that he thought, "Well, who is shushing a woman in labor?!" Then, without thinking-obviously, he shushed me again and realized that he was the offending shusher. He could not believe himself. It was actually pretty funny.....AFTERWARDS, when we were talking about it:)
After they got us all cleaned up they were trying to get me to use the restroom. I couldn't and I heard the nurses discussing when they thought I had last peed. I interrupted them and explained that I was pretty sure I peed myself in the bed. I told them I was thinking, "This bed is going to get really messy. A little pee is not going to make it much messier and I am not getting out of this bed to go to the toilet. So, I peed myself."
They got me over to the post partum side and things went great. The after pains were horrendous, but other than that I was feeling pretty sore and tired but also so happy and blessed. We expressed our wishes to get out of the hospital the next morning and the staff was so kind to get our paperwork moving along.
The next morning, we were at the doors of the hospital with 9 minutes to get to Wayne's Christmas program which was just around the corner at a local church. Two nurses helped us load the van so we could make it on time. We got there with a few minutes to spare. Everyone was telling me how crazy I was for being there and what a supermom I was. I explained that I was high on drugs-I had just taken a hydrocodone right before leaving the hospital-and I would crash like any other mom after the program.
So, what crazy labor stories do you have?
