{No pain, No gain}

31 for 21 blog challenge day 3.

At 1:00 a.m. we pulled up to the front doors of the hospital.  Kurt left the car running (thinking he'd get me checked in and zip back out to move it) and quickly hopped out and was ready to walk me in (as any good man would do-hurrying to help his lady).  I told him that he can't leave the car running while we went in, and waited for him to park it in the lot. 

We took the elevator to the 2nd floor and found the check-in counter.  All of the nurses were sitting around listening to the the nurse with the long blond hair go on and on about how she was losing her hair and was going bald.  One nurse left the conversation to help me.  The girl just kept talking and talking oblivious to the fact that the other nurses didn't really look like they cared.

The nurse had me sign a bunch of papers and told me that they would call the on-call Dr.  "Yes, tell Dr. Burgett that I am ready to have this baby."  "Oh, he's not the on-call Dr. tonight."  "Yes he is, he told me he was on-call until Sunday."  "Well he is, but he's already been on-call for the last 3 nights and has been up for 4 days straight, so he asked someone to take his shift for tonight."

Great.  I didn't get my Dr. the last time I had a kid either.  What's the point of having a Dr. if they aren't going to be delivering your baby?

They took me to my room and had me get situated. 

 

I had Kurt snap this shot to get one last photo of me being pregnant. 

 

Little did I know that this photo would be the last photo that we took of the normalcy of our lives as we knew it.

 

"Let's do this," I said.                                                                                          

 

I had Kurt set up my tunes.  I was really wishing that we were up to date on our technology and had an ipod of some sort (yes, we are that far behind on the times).  My method of coping with contractions is to mute out the pain with the volume of music.  Headphones are good.  You can turn it up as loud as you want and everyone doesn't have to hear it.  I swear it works.  Or at least helps.  The worse the contraction gets the louder the music goes.  I compare it to getting hurt.  If you hurt your hand and then someone kicks you in the shin, you forget about your hand.  (Well you forget about your hand for little bit.)  Same thing.  The music is so loud that you can't hear your contractions.  And by hear, I mean you are concentrating on your music that is muting out the pain.

 

As the nurses came in they all mentioned how pleasantly surprised they were when the music they were hearing wasn't Enya, piano music, or ocean waves.  Ocean waves!?  How do ocean waves pump you up?  We gots some serious work to do, I'm not trying to goto sleep!  Kid #5 Song List consisted of Pink, Blink 182, The Killers, Snow Patrol, and Metro Station.  Because I only had access to my laptop, it wasn't convenient to have it close and so I couldn't use my headphones.  And therefore had no control over the volume.  Which bugged me and was distracting for me.  But it was ok, because things went pretty quickly. 

 

The nurse checked me and told me that I was dilated to a seven.  She also told me that I needed to decide (quickly) if I wanted an epidural or not.  I went back and forth.  My pain was bearable. I was going to have to pay out of pocket for the epidural.  I've had 2 other kids epidural free (not by choice). 

 

I said, "Let's do it.  No epidural."  My thinking was, if my pain is this manageable and I'm at a 7 (and I go fast), I think I can handle the pain at a 10. 

 

STUPID.  IDIOTIC.  WHAT WAS I THINKING!

 

I progressed quickly to a 10.  It was go time.  Kurt was feeling a little light headed (from not eating) and asked if he could sit.  He sat.  It got INTENSE.  The nurse kept singing along to my songs (which was a little distracting/annoying) as I was trying to birth a my baby. 

 

The pain was crazy!  Like super crazy.  I seriously thought I could handle it since I was doing just fine at a 7......what in THE HELL was I thinking?  Don't do it.  If you are thinking about it.  Don't.  Ok... Do it once, just to say you did; but NEVER do it again. 

 

I'm sure the on-call Dr. thought I was an idiot for not getting the epidural.  I could tell at one point she was getting flustered with me, because I wasn't cooperating with what she was telling me.  It was at that point that I had to talk myself back to reality.  "There is no going back.  You cannot go back and undo this pain.  The only way to get rid of this pain is to go forward.  Go through the pain only to get rid of the pain.  It sucks, but it's the only way out." 

 

And that's what I did-pushed through the pain.  And by 2:14 a.m. I gave birth to a baby boy.....