To start, I think it's fair to talk about the newest addition to our little family. Penelope Grace Tu joined us on 1/10/15 at exactly 5:09 PM. Her arrival was defined by many ambivalent starts and stops, slow progression of labor. I arrived at the hospital at around 3:30 AM that day. I had already been having 1 minute long contractions every 4 minutes for close to 2-3 hours. However, with Matthew, my contractions rapidly progressed to becoming VERY uncomfortable within that span of time. With Penelope, the contractions simply came along and then went on their merry way, and I was still simply...waiting. The reason I finally decided to come to the hospital though was that I was passing bloody mucous, much more frequently and much more copiously than I can remember with Matthew. I figured, I must be in early labor, even if it's still not uncomfortable at all and I was curious as to how dilated I may be. I thought, this being my second full term pregnancy, I should be progressing fairly rapidly.
I arrived at the hospital, thankfully having made arrangements with a sweet family friend to stay over with us to watch Matthew. We had a very friendly nurse in Observation settle us in. I wish she could have been my nurse all night. Then the Ob came in, and unfortunately, I was only found to be 3 cm dilated at that point. However, based on the tocometer, my contractions were actually every 2-3 minutes apart. I was told to just wait another 2 hours (this became a running joke and recurring theme that day - "wait another 2 hours"), but was encouraged to walk around the unit. Which I did with Jason, one of the many waddling laboring women, slowly making a promenade and having to stop every few minutes due to contraction pain or shortness of breath. Two hours later, I had advanced 1 whole cm. The kind OB decided to admit me, it was a judgment call and completely within her rights to tell me to go home. But thankfully she did admit me, because by then, the contractions were getting more uncomfortable.
So I continued to truck along, waiting for my labor to progress. By 8 AM, my pain was fairly great. I finally gave in and asked for epidural. I held out for as long as I could because I know getting an epidural may slow things down more, but the pain was getting to be fairly intolerable. Of course, by the time I requested the epidural, the anesthesiologist was otherwise occupied elsewhere. It would be another hour before I could get it. Meanwhile, my nurse gave me a 50 mcg of fentanyl. I felt its effects immediately, in the form of becoming very pleasantly woozy, everything started to come to me at a much slower warped pace. I didn't mind the drugged out feeling, as it dulled the pains, but made it hard for me to respond coherently to my nurse. Even in my drugged out state, I wondered if I would start to get nauseous, or experience other side effects of fentanyl.
When I finally got my epidural, a curious thing happened...again! My pain was utterly controlled on the left side, but I continued to feel pain on my right. This had happened with Matthew too, which I told the anesthesiologist. She told me it's likely to be an anatomical issue, I wondered if I had a septum in my spine. She set me up with a PCA though and told me to lie on my right side for gravity to work on the medication. It worked! I was able to gain relief on both sides and relax into sleep.
From 9:30 AM then, until about 4:30 PM, every few hours or so, I would get checked out by the OB, and was told that I was progressing, cervix effaced, baby descending, etc, but the dilation is still taking its sweet time. Thankfully, the baby's heart rate remained strong the entire time, and I had no other signs of distress. Finally at 4:30, right when the OB came in again for a checkup, my water broke, I was 100% dilated, and ready to go. Things moved quickly from then on, and before I knew it, I was asked to push hard hard hard. For some reason, when it's pushing time, inevitably it reminds me of being in sports. It's game time and the spotlight is on me, there are these people surrounding me, egging me on, coaching me, telling me to push push push and I'm complying as best as I could, with one very singular goal in mind. This part was easy with Matthew and thankfully easy with Penelope as well. I birthed her in about 15 minutes and this beautiful little floppy screaming thing was suddenly on my body.
The whole process was so prolonged that Jason was able to savor it more this time. He scrounged up enough courage to see Penelope delivered and also cut the cord. My daughter came out into the world very distraught at losing her cozy warm womb. She was inconsolable for a good 30 minutes, it seems like. But she finally calmed down enough to get her measurements. At birth, she was 6 lbs 11 oz, though I still have trouble seeing how she's 2 oz heavier than Matthew when her head is so much smaller, she's shorter, and she's not noticeably chubbier. I think it was all meconium, personally....
With Matthew, everything happened so fast that emotionally I had no time to process his birth. When he came out, I remember being very calm, methodical, checking to see if he has his ten fingers and ten toes. I didn't have nor even felt close to having an emotional outburst of any sort. However, that doesn't mean I was not emotional, I think it just took much longer to catch up with me and did so in the days that followed. With Penelope, I simply felt gratitude and relief that we are safely done with the birth process, but I had no illusions the coming days will be any easier.
So this is my birth story of Penelope.
