Losing the urge - but not to push.

I know, I know, I haven't updated for a while. I just haven't had the urge, sorry. I've had plenty of things happen, but I just haven't felt like blogging. I'll try harder, I promise.

Yesterday was Numbah Twoo 'ling's 14th birthday. It's odd, it seems like just yesterday that he was giving me all kind of hell, not wanting to come out for ages but then deciding that yeah, it was time to make his grand entrance RIGHT NOW.

I'd had contractions for 2 days and had been up most of Friday night with them coming every 6 minutes or so. We were living in the UK at the time, and the USAF hospital was a good 45 minute drive away. We made the trip Saturday morning, only to be told that I was not really effaced any and was only 2cm dilated. They gave me something to allow me to get some sleep, and sent us home.

We napped for a couple of hours, and then got up and farted around Saturday afternoon and evening. I woke up Sunday about 8am with regular contractions that had me hanging onto the headboard of the bed and having to breathe through them. They were still pretty well spaced apart, about 7 or 8 minutes, and I really didn't want to make another hour and half round trip because I wasn't dilated. So, at lunchtime we called the Sunday clinic at the satellite base - a 10 minutes drive away - and asked if we could come in so I could get checked. They said yeah, c'mon over, so we did.

In the exam room, the doctor's face was something I'll always remember. He asked how long I'd been contracting for and what I was at the day before, and after I'd told him he gloved up and had a feel. His face fell, and he asked whether I was still planning on delivering at Lakenheath - because if I was, we needed to leave NOW. "DO NOT GO HOME, DO NOT STRAY OR STOP, GO NOW. You are a stretchy 6cm dilated and 100% effaced. GO NOW, unless you want your baby born here on the floor, or in the back of an ambulance, or in the car. I'll call Lakenheath and tell them what you're at and that you're on your way".

Did we follow his advice? No. Urbaner wanted to go home to change into the cowboy boots he'd graduated in, enlisted in, got married in. HAD to have those boots on. So, we went 10 mins in the OPPOSITE direction so he could change.

AT the time, we owned an original 1980's Mini Cooper. A tiny, tiny car. There's me in the front, contracting away, yelling at Urbaner to hurry up...and there's him, flinging that little car at top speed around the curvy English country roads, some of which were no wider than my current driveway. About 2/3 of the way there, the contractions slowed down, but when they did come they were much more intense. I couldn't handle sitting in the seat, so I unbuckled and hung myself over the back of the seat, moaning - and we went through the gate at Lakenheath like that. Urbaner stopped to show the guard his ID and the guard just waved at him, yelling at him to keep on going.

We got to the hospital and checked in to OB. I was 7cm, so they broke the amniotic sac and told me to walk. When that didn't bring the contractions any closer together, they gave me a whiff of pitocin - and half an hour later, I wanted to push. I called for a nurse to check my cervix, and when she did she said I was at 10 and that we needed to go to the delivery room. I remember thinking that I'd been gypped because I hadn't had the chance for any pain medication, and I also remember being in the middle of a contraction, rolling down the hallway yelling at people to get the fuck out of the way because this kid was coming...

In the delivery room, I pushed twice before his head crowned. It was painful, but what was coming turned out to be more painful than his big ol' melon head.

His shoulder got stuck under my pubic bone. The doc was yanking, I was pushing, and when he finally came out it made a sound like a wet cork coming out of a bottle. As his shoulder unstuck, I tore; grade 2 and 3 lacerations that would take 45 minutes to repair and that would, many years later, require an A&P surgical fix.

9lbs and a couple of ounces. With no pain medications. Yeah, I'm tough :)

He has a cone head; it was so pointy that the little beanie they put on him didn't even come down to his eyebrows.

I was worried about Urbaner fainting - I hadn't been able to get him to watch any birth videos with me (Future Trauma Surgeon was a C-section because she was a footling breech) without him squealing and shuddering and making gagging noises with his hands over his eyes - but as it turned out, he was jockeying the doctor out of his spot so's he could get a good view of his son's ginormous cranium coming out of my hoo-hah.

Today, Numbah Twoo is taller than me and has a voice as deep as his dad's. He's a good kid; a firm believer in random acts of kindness who paid for an elderly man's order in Starbucks yesterday (he gets his love of coffee from me, I think) who is academically gifted but doesn't wear that fact like a badge. I'm proud of him. Very proud.

I still harbor resentment that he didn't give me the chance to get any Demerol, though. :)