Jonas Rex Caputo made his arrival 5 days late on Sunday September 22, 2013 at 8:52 in the morning.He weighed 8.5lbs and was about 19 inches long. His birth was a bit more traumatic for me than Ellie's. Traumatic is probably a bit of an exaggeration as we are both healthy but it seemed that way at the time!
On Saturday night, I started having what I thought could be real contractions about 9pm. I decided to wait to say anything until I was sure and started timing them in my head. We went to bed about 1130 and I told Dan that I thought I was in labor but that they weren't intense enough or close enough to need to go to the hospital. I knew this time I wanted to try and labor at home a little longer than I did with Ellie because those hospital beds aren't the most comfortable. With Ellie, I was only dilated to 3cm when I got to the hospital.
The midwife said not to call the hospital until the contractions were 5 minutes apart, lasting one minute, for an hour. Well it got down to 6-7 minutes and an occasional 5 minutes but never consistently 5 minutes. Finally about 3am I told Dan we should call the hospital and just tell them they were 5 minutes apart because they were getting a lot more painful and I wanted to see if I was making any progress and have the ability to get medicine if I wanted. So we called our friends with a car and had them come get us and take us to the hospital. They got me all hooked up to the monitors about 4:30ish and the midwife came in at 5am and checked me and i was at a 6! Yes!!! The midwife then told me that Jonas wasn't moving down far enough and that my contractions weren't strong enough (HA! I'm pretty sure I gave her a look that could kill. Never tell a woman in labor that her contractions aren't strong enough!) They gave me medicine to make the contractions stronger. Cue even more intense pain. I told them at that point that I wanted the pain pump because last time with Ellie I had the medicine to intensify the contractions and they just came one right after another with no break in between and it was unbearable. So I got the pain pump and that was nice...for a little while.
About 7:30am another midwife came in and said I was at an 8 and that the baby still wasn't moving down enough, even with the contraction medicine.So she was going to let me labor longer, increase the contraction medicine and see what happens. At this point, the pain pump was not working. I kept pushing that button to inject more pain medicine but it had zero effect. At 8:30 the midwife came in and checked me again because my heart rate was going way up and Jonas's was dropping. (If you're squeamish, you might want to skip the next sentence) I was at a 9.5 and she said she was going to manually stretch my cervix the last .5 cm. That was the worse pain I think i have ever experienced. I had been laying on my side and she had me switch sides because his head was swollen from the side I was laying on and we had to get his head evened back out for him to be able to make it through the birth canal. When she was checking his position again, she felt Jonas and realized he was sunny side up/star gazer (facing up instead of down), which explained why he wasn't moving down despite the super strong contractions as well as explained his distress. So she said that we had to get him out quickly and that if we didn't get him out soon, she would have to use the vacuum. I pushed for about 5 minutes and once he started crowning, they had me pause so I wouldn't tear too much, then I pushed again and at the end of the push, she grabbed his head and pulled him the rest of the way out and plopped him on my chest. He had such a cone head because of how he was positioned in there, it was hilarious.
(Another disclaimer, if you're squeamish, you might not like this part either) I needed one stitch, which she then proceeded to tell me that they can only use an anesthetic if I need 3 or more stitches but it was "ok because you just had a baby, you'll be fine". uh thanks. So she does a stitch and then says "oh I'm really sorry but I did it wrong and I'm going to have to do it again". Uhhh. first of all, what did you stitch up that you weren't supposed to and second of all REALLY? So finally that was all over and she told me that we did a great job and a lot of births in Jonas's position end up in the OR with an emergency C-section due to the baby not moving down fast enough and the distress on the mom and baby. She also said that he was actually rotating in the birth canal while coming out. I don't even know what that means. . .but she acted like it was really rare and said she hadn't seen that before.
And in true Dutch fashion, they came in an hour later and said I could go home. Jonas was born at 8:52am and we were out of that hospital room by 11:45am. We spent a total of 8 hours at the hospital, giving birth to our son.
While I pushed longer with Ellie (an hour and a half), Jonas's birth was more painful and difficult. The actual delivery was some of the most intense pain I have ever experienced, I'm sure because of his position. Despite all of that, we were so blessed to come home with a healthy baby boy.
