Birth Story
This Little Bug was born on March 7, 2018.
I was one day shy of 41 weeks pregnant and so ready to be done. While pregnancy was kind to me, my belly was so sore and the anticipation of meeting her was driving me crazy. I worked all the way up until the day before I was induced.
My doctor decided to induce me the next day at 6am, after our last OB appointment.
I could NOT sleep. At all. And they had me NPO after midnight, so like the
Mr. Lumberjack and I arrived to the hospital at 5:30am and discovered that even though I couldn't feel them, I was actually having regular contractions and would probably have gone into labor spontaneously that day anyway, had we chosen not to induce.
They started the pitocin at 6am and the contractions got more intense. By 9:30, my sweet nurse said "You know, I can see these contractions are really mounting on you and you're quite uncomfortable. Would you like me to get the Dr. to get your epidural?"
Not 10 minutes after I was back in bed following the epidural, I was ready to push. The epidural didn't work correctly and only my left leg went numb, but it was surprising how little pain I felt. I remember for some reason all I could think about as I felt this giant bowling ball pressing to get out was a whopper from Burger King. I wasn't even hungry, I didn't want one. For some reason I was just preoccupied by burgers.
Baby bird came out about 45 minutes later, after having to stop pushing for 20 minutes in the middle because there was an emergency next door. I had my whole self splayed out on the bed, my mother in law holding one leg and Lumberjack holding the other. I was joking and laughing at the ridiculous feeling of having all my parts out to the world like this.
She came out floppy and blue and I wailed for the minutes they were trying to resuscitate her. Something looked bad on the monitor and the Dr took a moment to snatch her out of me, which caused some pretty significant tears. Afterwards, I would have a few panic attacks about them because I was terrified all my guts were going to fall out my butt.
But then she was okay. They said her umbilical cord was small and wrapped around her neck twice, which caused her heart rate to drop into the 40's and the delay in her breathing. But she was alright. And beautiful. In my arms, her movements felt the same as they did in my belly - just outside now. So warm and pink. She latched immediately, hungry and gumming my breast with ferocity. Almost two years later she still has wonderful tenacity for life. That's when she became my little bird. I don't know why, but as I watched her little cheeks as she nursed, she reminded me of a bird and so that's what she was. Since then, it has evolved to "chicken" (which was one of her Halloween costumes this year) and "bug", but she'll always be my sweet little bird.
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