Her due date, June 11, came and went and still no signs of our girl appearing appeared. We weren't too surprised, so we hung out and took advantage of the last days to get things done like, hmmm, buy a car seat! make a belly cast! You know, things best done BEFORE baby arrives. And then, when things finally felt 'ready', what do you know? Things started to happen...I woke up around 2am on June 18th (could that really be only one calendar day before the date of her eventual arrival? It felt like it took A LOT longer!) with contractions that were about every five minutes, I believe.
All night and day of the 18th I had early labour contractions and although they clearly weren't that intense (went out for lunch with mom, grandfather, Amanda, Sheen, Arleigh & Ryan; went for a long walk) I also was clearly not going to be getting any sleep. The day passed and finally, later in the evening, things seemed to be picking up. We called Angela, the midwife, and she came over to check me around 9pm - I was dilated about 3cm. She left... And then it did get quite intense: the contractions were about a minute or two apart, I believe, and they were much, much stronger. I really had to breathe and concentrate to get through these and I thought to myself, "Surely, this is it. This baby is going to come tonight!" After three hours I thought for sure that the time to push would be just around the corner (I kept thinking, "Is this transition? I think this is transition. I hope this is transition!" Silly, naive girl), so we called Angela and she came again at about midnight. I wasn't quite dismayed when she checked me and I was only at 4cm, but I was puzzled. That had seemed like a lot of work to get almost nowhere. She left...
Here's the thing about pain: it's painful. And if you're not accustomed to experiencing and dealing with it, it proves difficult to 'ignore and go back to sleep' as we were advised to try to do with early labour contractions during our childbirth preparation classes. The relativity of pain is only helpful in retrospect - and since it escalates during labour you can't project to the end and tell yourself "this is nothing, just you wait"... all you know is that it hurts NOW, and it's getting worse, and you're getting tired, and 30 sleepless and unrelenting hours later you do wonder how much more you can take. Sooooo, maybe it's becoming clear how things went: they didn't.
It was a long, painfully delirious night, with Arleigh and Ryan taking turns trying to stay awake to coach and encourage me through. They were great - I was so blessed to have them both supporting me. The type of pain just was not what I had expected, with an intense aching in my hips with each contraction. I knew my body was tensing in anticipation of the pain each time and that this was likely inhibiting my cervix from dilating, but I just couldn't relax and let it come - the hip pain was just too much for me to handle :(
Morning finally came, and Angela came over at about 8am. I was worn out. My hopes for a home birth were fading as quickly as my stamina. When she checked me and my cervix was still at 4, maybe 5cm, I think I had already given up hope of staying home, but we decided to have Angela rupture my membranes in a last effort to produce more effective contractions and to move baby's head into proper position (Angela said the neck was not flexed properly and that this was likely causing the hip pain and slowing labour), so she did that. An hour or so later nothing seemed changed, so we decided to pack up and head for the hospital - Angela leaving ahead of Ryan, Arleigh and I to prepare things for our arrival (midwives are great!). After she had left, as we were packing up, and definitely on our way there in the car, my contractions definitely did enter another phases of intensity. These were pretty excruciating - poor Ar & Ryan hadn't eaten anything all night long so we stopped at the McD's drive thru, only the line-up was moving so slowly and I was in such pain, that after ordering we skipped the line and left without any food! The walk across the hospital parking lot, through the building, onto the elevator, and out on the third floor to the maternity ward, pausing for contractions the whole way, felt like the longest walk of my life.
Exhausted, hips KILLING me, I couldn't muster up the courage to face MORE INTENSE (?!!?!?!) contractions (we were there, ostensibly, to get me some Pitocin in order to boost contractions) without relief. A mantra was already rising in my mind: EP-I-DURAL, EP-I-DURAL, EP-I-DURAL. I wanted it so bad. And praise God, the anaesthesiologist was able to administer it right on time. Everything after that, I must say, was fantastic: Epidural + Pitocin = best few hours sleep of my life + waking from that sleep dilated 9cm and almost ready to push! At this point mom and dad came to visit, gave me a hug and a kiss and wished me luck, then the obstetrician arrived to check me and said we were good to go. We called mom back so she could be there for the delivery (I truly did not care who saw what at this point) and the fun part began... just 37 minutes of pushing brought Maëlle Arlynn Denninger into the world at 8:22pm, June 19, 2010. It was awesome - the biggest rush I've ever experienced (although the pictures do not convey this at all!). I'll never forget the exhilaration of seeing her head emerge... and yet, it's still so surreal to think that SHE came out of ME. I watched it happen and I still don't believe it, so I'm sure she'll never conceive of it!
Waiting to push. Not sure what my expression is all about, Ryan's I can guess at. Maybe it's scepticism on both our parts that this baby will ever come out!
Wowie zowie. There she is!
Very proud and happy daddy :)
I think that on a good day my expressions are somewhat guarded, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that these post-birth photos don't accurately convey the ecstasy that I was experiencing (the exhausted ecstasy!). In fact, as will be seen, for about a month I looked (and looked like I felt) like I'd been hit by a truck. Actually, I did feel like I'd been hit by a semi!
When I see these pics of just after she was born I'm sad that there's none of me holding her and that we weren't ski-to-skin right away. In the picture with Angela why are my hands resting in front of me instead of reaching out to hold her? Maybe I was just taking it all in, still kind of in shock. Maybe the pics just don't tell the true story - it was, as the cliche goes, the happiest day of my life.
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