Life Changing, One Push at a Time

It's 5 am, do you know where your children are? Well, I know where I am. It's 5 am, I'm freshly showered, and ready to get this kid OUT OF ME! At this point in my pregnancy, it pretty much hurt to be alive. For the past 3 weeks, I would have to wake up in the middle of the night just to turn over on my other side. I felt like I was giving birth to heavy weights that were just weighing down my bladder, and my legs. I was ready.... nay... I was DESPERATE to finally get this wonderful bundle of joy the hell out of me.

If anyone ever told you that being pregnant is wonderful, memorable, and easy, they obviously:

A. Didn't have a job.

B. Their baby didn't weigh 9 pounds.

C. Someone must have slipped them drugs for them to think things were going great.

So, moving on. I have a big baggy shirt on, my "hospital bag" prepared, and my husband ready to go. Surprisingly, it didn't take a lot to wake him up this morning. He's almost impossible to wake up any other day of the week, but I guess all the excitement of our little man coming into the world was something worth waking up for.

We get to the hospital in warp speed. Now I should probably mention that I wasn't in labor in the beginning. I did an amnio just the day before because my beautiful baby was getting so big and there were no signs of me giving birth anytime soon. So let's kick it old school! We're going to pop that bubble the old fashion way and get him out.

When I was in my hospital gown, laying down in the bed, the doctor didn't exactly warn me of what it was going to feel like when she was going to break my water. In fact, all I see is a large stick, about 3 feet long, ready to go. The odd part was that it didn't scare me looking at that.... but maybe it should have. So she inserts the stick, and all of a sudden.... "Did I just pee the bed?" I thought to myself. Nope! It was a literal pop with the stick, and my water broke. I was officially in labor.

It only took 5 minutes for the contractions to kick in. They happened every other minute, and was excruciating. I started to cry each time a contraction started. How can something so invisible hurt this bad? I couldn't take it anymore. Than the nurse came in and said "You know you can have the epidural anytime you want right?" Yeah, thanks lady... I'm just sitting here in extreme pain for fun!

After that big beautiful needle inserted into my spine, it was pure bliss. I spent hours just relaxing with my family, prank calling different people with my hospital phone, and just enjoying this free ride of pain free labor. The best part is that when you laugh, the whole room could hear it in surround sound because my stomach was hooked up to the machine that could listen to the baby's heart beat. So when I laughed, it was like large breathing burps heard all around the room. Then... the fun stopped.

Okay Megan, it's time to push! First off, what the fuck! Why can't he come out. I've been pushing for over 45 minutes at that point, and other family members were telling me that his head would pop out for a second, then go back in. No one tells you that can happen. No one tells you that your own child can pretty much say "Nope, I'm going back in where it's nice and warm."

"I can't take it anymore!" I screamed. "I can't, I can'! It's just too hard and it hurts so much!" My husband is standing right beside me, cheering me on and telling me it's going to be over soon. "You can do this babe" he tells me. I secretly know he's right, but it just hurts too damn much. The doctor walks in, now mind you, I haven't seen her in over an hour at that point. Just so you know, the nurses do ALL THE WORK! They cheer you on, move you from side to side to get the baby positioned. I'm pretty sure the doctor gets paid the big bucks just to take the baby out. They get paid the big bucks for 5 minutes of hand usage.

The doctor looks me in the eye and says "He's not going to fit; we need to do a C-Section." At first I declined, pushing for another 30 minutes, but then I eventually gave up. I knew his head was way too big.... he get's that from his Dad (just kidding). I finally agree to the C-Section, but oh wait... it gets better! The epidural stopped pumping the drugs so I can push, so now I have to intentionally keep this kid inside of me to wait for the anesthesiologist to come back and give me more of the good stuff. Do you know what it's like to feel like you have to go to the bathroom, and although your body pushes on it's own, you have to keep it in? That's super painful.

So I get the good drugs back in my system, and we're off! I'm rolled into a surgery room, the first one I've ever been in. It's so cold, big, and white. There are cabinets everywhere filled with medicine and tools for surgery. As I laid there, waiting for everything to begin. I was really comfortable. The pain was gone, but I was getting really scared. "What's going to happen?" "Am I going to be okay?" It's scary because I wasn't worried about my little bundle of joy. A voice in my head was telling me that he was going to be fine, but I was scared that something was going to happen to me and I would miss out on the rest of my life being a mom.

I look over to my left, and find out there's a reflection in the glass that could see what the doctors were doing behind the curtain. My husband was way too smart to let that happen. He moves his chair to block my view, and although I was pretty disappointed, it was probably for the best.

The doctors tug... they tug hard. There's no sound coming from behind the curtain, but I feel my insides moving around. I started to wonder if my insides were now on the outside. Then, it happened. You think that the first moment a baby comes out, you hear huge cries or something. Warren was born pretty relaxed. The doctors declared him out, and bundled him up in a blanket. At this point I'm exhausted, depressed, scared, and most of all.... excited!!

They bring him over to me while I'm still laying on the operating table and that's when it happened. For every moment leading up to this, I completely forgot about it. I forgot about the pain, the exhaustion, the fear, and most of all, the last 9 months pregnancy woes. I looked at Warren, with his face very puffy and cone-head features (from all the pushing). The love and devotion you can have to someone will never compare to that moment. A wave of euphoria glossed over my eyes while I took a long look at our beautiful son.

The one thing I can say is that no matter how much pain or anguish you through that leads up to this moment, it was all worth it. To this day, I don't quite remember the realistic pain I went through during my pregnancy and child birth because the love for my child weighs a lot more heavily in my heart and memories than anything else does. That's true and infinite love.