A week early and 15 hours after my water broke baby Lucca had arrived. Which is the long story short. I have definitely learned after three pregnancies that every delivery is totally different. Despite what people or doctors told me, this one does not compare to the girls. “Oh your second baby was about 5 hours? This time it will probably be even faster,” The Doctor says. “Your body has been through this process two times before so this time it will be easy peasy,” your friends say. These comments are always true. I am not bitter by any means… I think I was just disappointed when I thought to myself, after my water broke, I think I want to try having this baby naturally. But since my contractions never started on their own, they had to give me pitocin which makes your contractions stronger and more intense. So four hours later full of deep breathing, sweat, and different positions with my hubs to help my back and front labor, they finally checked my dilation. I was at a FOUR. I broke into tears and quickly told the nurse to send in the epidural.
The epidural went pretty smoothly. It always feels a little weird when your back goes numb but you can still feel the pressure of the shot. Everything and anything that could go wrong with an epidural is always in the back of my mind but I have to trust and believe everything will go smoothly to get me through it. After the back labor decreases I am one happy lady. I can actually relax, sit back, and hold a conversation. My husband is my coach and number one fan through it all so I know he is finally relieved when I am able to rest for a bit.
As much as I wish to be one of the strong capable women that can deliver naturally, I guess that just isn’t me when it comes to the pain tolerance. But we do all we can do and go as far as we can go then leave it to the power of medicine and God’s hands. And that was exactly what I did. About an hour after I was given the epidural and relaxing in bed all of a sudden it felt like a HUGE weight landed on my chest and my breathing became very slow. I turned to Derek, my husband, and said really slowly, “something’s wrong.” I felt goosebumps all over my body. Then it sounded like I was in a tunnel and everyone’s voices became very distant and muffled. A few seconds later everything started to turn black. I think my eyes were closed but I remember telling Derek that I was leaving. “I’m leaving Derek, help me.” I had no idea what was going on. The nurses rushed in and set an oxygen mask on my face and filled me with fluids. Apparently I was REALLY dehydrated and my heart rate just plummeted down. Such a strange feeling. It was much different than passing out.
For some reason that lightheaded, goosebumps, hearing lose feeling came back twice and the nurses would rush in but couldn’t figure out why my body was using up so much water. By this time it was really late and they decided to check my dilation which hadn’t changed much. Apparently the epidural slowed down the contractions so they decided to bump up the pitocin again to get the party started again. We decided to try and rest again but mostly just ended up talking and watching movies most of the night. Finally after a total of 15 hours, at 5:42 am, as the sun was rising, it was time to push this baby out. At that point it only took a couple of minutes that was fairly painless considering everything else that had happened. My doctor let me pull him out once I could reach his arms and lay him on my chest. All the nurses left and Derek and I just stared at him as the morning sun rose through our window and filled our room with complete and overwhelming love for this new baby. We decided to name him Lucca months ago which is ironic because it actually means “Bringer of light.” And I know Lucca will be a light to everyone that knows him.
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