As I mentioned in Maverick’s birth story, childbirth terrifies me. Feeling contractions for 2 hours then getting an epidural did not make me any less scared to do it all again the second time.
Ruby’s pregnancy and birth were very different than Maverick’s. With Mav, I never thought I was in labor until I was actually in labor. With Ruby, we had MANY false alarms. I walked around at 4 cm dilated for 2 weeks but I wasn’t in actual labor yet.
We went to the doctor/hospital several times because I thought I was in labor. One time I even had my mom come up at 11pm because I KNEW I was in labor... I wasn’t. Mainly, I was afraid of those contractions and wanted to get there and get an epidural at the earliest time possible. Like maybe get an epidural and just wait there for a couple days, I was that scared.
But this is how it went down.
At around 2:30 am 5 days before my due date, I woke up with a pretty painful contraction. I had another one 12 minutes later. Then another 8 minutes later. Then another 6 minutes later. Then another 3 minutes later. I texted my mom, she was driving up 40 minutes to stay with Maverick, and woke up Arrmon. He was sleeping on the couch because he was sick and didn’t want to spread his germs to me. Also, he had taken a Theraflu PM at midnight. He was really groggy.
At this point my contractions were very painful and 1-3 minutes apart. My water broke around 3:30 am. We were waiting outside for my mom when she got there. I had a contraction while getting in the car, one while on the way to the hospital, and one as I was getting out of the car once we got there. We live one mile from the hospital, and Arrmon ran a red light on the way!
As we walked to the labor and delivery desk, I glanced at a clock and it said 3:47 pm. The nurses at the desk had me fill out some paperwork, sign some stuff, weigh…. And I was struggling. Like they actually made me stand on a scale as I as having these terrible contractions. I got changed into a gown, peed in a cup, and got into the hospital bed. Still majorly struggling. Contractions were way worse than they ever felt with Maverick.
I kind of felt like the nurses weren’t really taking me seriously and they thought I was just being a baby. I’m lying in this bed crying, struggling, yelling… and they are still having me fill out more paperwork. A nurse checked me and her face got really serious. She said I was 7 cm dilated. I panicked and said “I’M NOT GONNA GET AN EPIDURAL AM I?”. She calmy told me, “we might still have time” but I knew we didn’t. They tried to give me an IV, and it wouldn’t take. I have amazing veins. Nobody has ever had any trouble sticking me with a needle but in this time that I thought I desperately needed some relief in the form of IV drugs, my veins would not work.
The next few minutes were a blur. Nurses were running around getting things ready, I was kind of breathing, whining, crying through contractions. Keep in mind, Arrmon is sick and in a fog of cold medicine and trying to help me through all of this.
Then my body just started pushing. I told the nurse and she told me to try to breathe and not push but I couldn’t. I never say literally but my body was literally pushing by itself and I had no control. The nurse also said “this doctor doesn’t like for babies to be born before he’s in here” and I told her she better get him. At one point I heard her yell out into the hall “she’s complete!”…. and I’m still just pushing with nobody down there to catch her or watch or whatever they do down there.
The doctor gets there while I’m pushing and baby is out within a minute. I haven’t screamed or really even made a very loud noise probably since I was a baby but I was screaming at the top of my lungs. Like the pushing, I couldn’t control the screaming. I also didn’t realize I was about to break A’s hand from squeezing so hard. He later said that I reminded him of a lion roaring. Mama lion.
Ruby Love was born less than 45 minutes after we got to the hospital, with no epidural or any kind of medicine. She weighed 7 lbs 6 oz and was 18.5 inches long (we later determined that they measured wrong and that she was probably 19.5 inches long). She was also perfect and beautiful and looked like her brother in some ways but looks like herself too.
Ruby is now almost 2 years old and as I reflect on her birth story, it’s still amazing and terrifying to me. She kind of matches her birth story… wild and fierce. She’s pretty tiny but she for SURE stands her ground when her brother is bullying her.
I’m still amazed daily that I birthed a baby with no medication. I never would have expected that of myself.
