Birth Story

On Thursday, July 26th, my friend Lindsay and I drove 2 hours north to our friend Susan's house to spend some time with her. She was due with her baby in a week but was thinking she was going to deliver early. It was a very normal day for me. I was not comfortable but hadn't been for a while so it didn't seem that strange. I went to the doctor on Wednesday and everything was good. Right on track for a Sept 13 due date. My ribs had been hurting most of pregnancy and had quit hurting a couple days before so I told Adam I thought the baby had dropped. I was happy to be more comfortable and thought he would just hang out down there for 7 more weeks. While we were at Susan's house, I asked her how I would know if I went into labor and how to know if my water broke. She said she didn't know because she was induced. Ha. I would know very, very soon! Lindsay and I got back to Atlanta about 7 and met our husbands for dinner at a Mexican restaurant. Again, I was not comfortable but also not worried at all. We enjoyed our dinner and got home around 9. Adam was really tired so he got in bed at about 9:30 and was out cold. That is totally not like him. He usually stays up pretty late. I got in bed at 10 and started reading. All of a sudden I felt my water break. I didn't know what it was going to feel like but I was fairly confident it had happened. We had some mild panic because, like I said before, we still have 7 weeks left to prepare! I called my doctor and she asked me lots of questions not fully believing my water had broken. But, she said to come on in. Adam asked me if I had read anything about what to bring to the hospital. I had actually that day but couldn't remember a single thing. We just kept looking at each other laughing because this can't be really happening yet. I might add our birthing class was 2 days away on Saturday. Nice. We were literally clueless. We did our best to pack and got to the hospital at 11:30. I got checked in and headed to my room. We knew my water was broken now. We saw our doctor at 1 and formulated a plan. She was confident he wasn't coming right now because I was not having any contractions. She set up meetings with our doctor, a specialist, and the NICU for the next morning.

I had some contractions through the night but nothing terrible. I didn't sleep much because of contractions and of course I was in the hospital about to have a baby! Adam slept like a log. :) I started timing my contractions at 5 am because they seemed closer together. That's what they do in the movies so I thought I should too! I called the nurse at 7 am to tell her my findings and she thought they were close too so they ordered terbutaline to stop my contractions. They were much better and that worked for a couple hours. We had all 3 meetings by 2 o'clock and the consensus was that we were going to be on hospital bed rest for a week then induce on Friday if he hadn't come by then. That was when my risk of infection was higher and Liam would be more developed at 34 weeks than 33. We still knew he would have to go to the NICU but we would have a better chance of him being healthy. I also got a steroid shot to help mature his lungs. We decided Adam should beat traffic since it was a Friday and get clothes and books and movies for our week's stay in the hospital. At that point I was having "back cramps" and wanted him to hurry because I wasn't super comfortable. I had a monitor on though and they weren't picking up as contractions but just Braxton Hicks. My doctor gave me a stern talk about how they were moving me to a different floor to free up their delivery rooms and to not my tell the nurses I was always having contractions because they were just my uterus warming up for labor. She was really nice but firm. I feel like the motto for this whole expirience was "my birth class is tomorrow." I felt like I needed to justify everything with, "I have lots of books to read and classes to take to be ready to birth this baby but I have 7 more weeks!" I hated not having any clue what was going on. So, Adam went home with a promise to return as quickly as possible. My pain got worse and closer together but weren't picking up on the monitor still so I didn't tell anyone. At the risk of too much information, I was also having bowel issues so I was running to the bath room a lot too. So, I called the nurse to get me something to help with that. It was shift change, so I had a new nurse. She came back to tell me she had something ordered and saw me having a contraction. I would say it was about 4 o'clock but I had no sense of time at this point. I was in major pain and by myself. I texted Adam to hurry up but I couldn't be clearer because I didn't have enough time between my contractions that I felt like I could talk. My new nurse hooked up my monitor and sure enough nothing picked up. I texted Adam "NOW" in the middle of one contraction because that's all I could get out. He was in the parking garage but I didn't know that.  Luckily, the nurse asked my doctor, who happened to be right outside at the nurses station to check me. They didn't do that before because it could introduce infection since my water had broken. She came in and I was 5 cm. Whoa. I'm so glad I'm not that big of a woos. I thought if this isn't labor, I'm in for something crazy. Adam came walking around the corner with all our stuff for the week about that time and saw some commotion around my room and found my nurse. He says he whispered asking how I was and that he was my husband. She responded, "she's in labor." What? So Adam got there at 4:30, about the time they ordered my epidural. Holy cow was I ready for that thing. I was nervous though because all day everyone had been talking about how he wasn't ready. No turning back now though. Liam was coming really fast so there was lots of discussion about if we were going to deliver him in this non labor and delivery room or try to move to another. I got my epidural in the current room and whoa was it fabulous. I had been nervous about an epidural when I was pregnant because I've heard it's a big needle and painful and stuff. Let me tell you, it was nothing compared to labor.  As soon as he finished it, I was rolled to the new room. My feet were up and we were ready to push but my epidural wasn't working yet so I was trying to delay them so it could kick in totally. Adam kept texting to update people what was going on. I remember yelling at him to stop it and go get me a cold rag for my head. He would rub my back and text and the same time and I could tell because he would quit rubbing. You family and friends better have loved those texts because they came at a price! Other than that :), Adam was wonderful. My doctor was explaining to me to push and again I asserted my class is tomorrow so I have no idea what I'm doing. She calmly helped me and we were off. Again, even in the delivery and on different monitors, my contractions weren't picking up. They finally disconnected them and just felt my stomach to know when a contraction was coming to tell me to push. Liam Setter Garner arrived in this world at 5:38pm on July 27th at 4 pounds 10 ounces and 18 inches long, an hour after his daddy got to the hospital. I got to hold him for a couple minutes before he went to the NICU with Adam. It was a wonderful experience and I had great care on all levels. I'll update on our NICU stay if I ever get the motivation to do it. If not, we loved Northside and all the nurses and support staff in our 3.5 week stay. It was truly phenomenal.