Sasha's Birth Story!!!

Katya "Sasha" Rubin
Friday, June 8th, 2007, 12:37 PM
6lbs 6oz, 19 inches

It was a long nine months and I was so ready to have Sasha. I had been through morning sickness (though in my case, it was really at night), wierd food aversions, a metallic taste in my mouth, oversensitive sense of smell, hot flashes, nose bleeds, tremendous weight gain, hormonal crying jags, and feelings of lethargy. Also, I was excited to meet my baby; I felt like I had been on the longest prep for a blind date. What would she be or look like? I couldn't wait. My doctor had changed the due date from June 8th to June 1st. She thought the baby to be huge- nine pounds and was worried that I would need a c-section if I went too much past. So she and I agreed that I would be scheduled to be induced June 8th, Friday @10:45 AM. I was having really mixed feelings about it but Jimmy and I had discussed it. We wanted what was best for Sasha and and overdue baby can have tons of problems. I had sort of resigned myself to being induced. I mean, I hadn't dropped, dilated, effaced, thinned or done anything that would indicate I was close to giving birth.

Well, in the wee hours of the morning on Friday, I started feeling these wierd menstral crampy things. I thought they were all in my head because of my fears about the upcoming day and I am a hypochondriac.  At 2:30 AM, I woke Jimmy up from a deep slumber with,"Sweetie, I'm having fake contractions. You can go back to sleep".  Needless to say, Jimmy was now wide awake. I called the hospital and they told me to wait an hour until the contractions were less than five minutes apart. We watched a few episodes of Arrested Development until they were 3 minutes apart. We went to the hospital around 5 AM because I really, really wanted an epidural. The pain was pretty intense and it was making me cranky. The nurse measured at 1 cm dilation- woooohooooo!!!! But, because my contractions were now 2 minutes apart, they said I could stay. However, I couldn't have my epidural until I reached the 3 cm mark. That did not make me happy. It took 4 hours to get there. I am sure Jimmy enjoyed me asking him every ten seconds when I was going to get the epidural. He was ok with me taking a narcotic but I refused. Once the anesthesiologist came, I knew life would be ok. The only hard part was staying still for the spinal injection; fortunately, I didn't have a contraction during that time.

Once the epidural took effect, the rest of the process was easy. My doctor strongly recommended pitocin to speed my dilation up but after 2 minutes on it, my baby's heartbeat slowed dramatically. I was put on oxygen and taken off the pitocin. Sasha's heartbeat went back to normal. However, in the next hour, I went from 3 to 9 cm....the nurse had never seen anything like it. My cervix finally got down to work!!!!! Thirty minutes later and I was pushing. Jimmy and the nurse (who was just fabulous) had to hold up my legs because they were so floppy. I couldn't work them at all. They coached when to push down; I could sort of feel the contractions which helped. Twenty minutes of pushing (the easiest part; I hated the waiting), and Sasha showed up @ 12:37 PM on June 8th, all lovely, squirmy, and wide-eyed. No tearing or hemerrhoids. I started crying when they placed Sasha on me. Not as slimy as I had seen in the birthing videos. I couldn't believe that I had given birth to this precious being. Jimmy cut the umbilical chord and helped with the weighing and measuring. They let us hold Sasha for an hour before they took her to a nursery for testing. When I held her in my arms for the first time, I really felt that life had become more beautiful and blessed.