Téa's Birth Timeline

Yes, I will be posting the pictures from our weekend at Beaver Lake but before I do that post I feel I must post Téa's birth timeline (less detailed than a birth story) before it gets any fuzzier than it already is. Hard to believe that details from such an intense experience can fade with time, but they really do. Probably that is not an accident, if they didn't no one would ever have a second child (jk).

We had a perfect timeline from the text messages Alain sent our Moms during the process to keep them updated. Unfortunately, our phones overwrite the messages as they get filled up and before we could write them down, they were erased.  But it went something like this:

Thursday, December 1st, 2011

All day I had been having painful contractions, but no real pattern or rhythm forming.

I had been having them since my actual due date, 4 days before. Two nights in a row, I had a consistent enough pattern of 1.5min long contractions, 5 min or less apart, that I actually got up and woke Alain up to go to the hospital. Both times, I thought well I'll just take a quick shower to see if it's real labour and if it is, then I will be nice and clean when we go to the hospital. Both times the shower stopped the perfect pattern and labour eased off. Argh!

Around 5:00pm we went out to eat at McDonalds with Mom and Dad. We joked about how one of Mom's co-workers swore that her labour started after eating at Wendy's. We finished supper, tried out their new Mochas, which do not come in decaf, and joked about how if the baby comes tonight we've already had our caffeine fix to get us through.

We had to drop off a piece of furniture at a coworkers house, so we all drove over there and Alain & Dad helped them get it in the house. The ladies came out and asked if the baby was coming, I said nothing much had changed so probably not.

Around 7:00pm, we were back at Mom and Dad's house finishing our mochas and seeing some new dress up clothes they had gotten for the grandkids. All of sudden I was like "Oh, I think my water might have broken but probably not." Then a few seconds later, "Yep, pretty sure my water is breaking".

Mostly at that point I was irritated that things were starting similar to Esme's delivery but a couple hours later in the day, so we would have even worse exhaustion to look forward to if I had to spend 24 hours delivering Téa, like I did for Esme's birth.

We had our hospital bag packed and in the car but we needed to get Esme's sleep stuff from home.

7:15pm  - Alain went to our house to get Esme's overnight stuff and suitcase. I was in no rush to get to the hospital because last time the labour and delivery were long and slow.

7:20pm  - Mom called the sisters to say my water broke, so the baby was on the way. I was debating whether I would shower at Mom and Dad's before leaving for the hospital. Erin was on the phone with Mom, urging me to 'Get to the hospital because second babies come faster than the first'. I knew that her second delivery was about half the time of her first but didn't want to hope for the same. Mom reminded me that if my water was broken I needed to be at the hospital for the baby's safety. That was the deciding factor for us to go as soon as Alain was back with Esme's stuff. I realized I needed to be sure Téa was safe.

7:40pm  - We said goodbye to Esme, realizing the timing worked out perfectly as far as getting her settled at Grandma and Grandpa for the night while we went to have a baby.

8:00pm -  Alain dropped me off at the Emergency Room entrance and went to search for parking.

8:20pm -  I was checked in, Alain was parked and we headed up to Labour & Delivery.

8:30pm - Nurse confirms, water is broken and I'm 3-4cm dilated. I get moved to a Delivery Room and I am the only one labouring on the ward. Contractions are intense and strong, coming fast but aren't lasting very long. Still don't seem to be having a good pattern. The contractions were getting increasingly painful though. I was starting to feel like I would not be able to do this. I couldn't remember the breathing patterns from last time and I didn't see how I could do 24hrs of this intensity.

9:30pm - I asked for some painkillers. They checked dilation again to see if I can have fentanyl. I am 6cm dilated. The nurse calls the doctor to get the fentanyl for me and tells the doctor she should probably come from home to check me out. I realize that I can only have a set amount of the meds and that if I use it as often as they let me, I will have used up all of my painkillers in 35min.

Things are getting really intense. I try to stretch out the time between doses, still thinking I have to last 24hrs like this.  The contractions are still really short but so strong and painful. I keep saying to Alain "I don't think I can do this".

10:20pm - Anaesthetist comes in and says "I'm heading home for the night, anyone in here want an epidural?" At this point, I was starting to feel some pressure, like maybe I needed to push but the contractions were so painful, I just wanted to make it stop. I could not face a night of that much pain with no epidural (that's how I felt), so I said "yes, I want one now". Again they had to check dilation and I was now 8cm dilated.

10:23pm - Alain texts the Moms and says they should probably come to the hospital now.

10:25pm - Anaesthetist says to hold still because he is putting in the epidural and I had the longest, most painful contraction. I think it was a full 5 minute contraction.

10:30pm - All of a sudden I had to push. I couldn't control it. The epidural had just been placed, he'd barely pushed a tester shot of painkiller through and he just had to walk away. (All of that holding still and having an epidural placed for nothing because it takes about 20min for the painkillers to take effect and he didn't even have a chance to hook me up to the drip.)

They called in the doctor, who found I was now 10cm dilated and ready to push.

10:50pm - Téa Marie Oenema was born. Before the Moms (mine and Alain's) even made it to the hospital, Téa was out and ready to be visited.

So it turned out to be more of a birth story than a birth timeline but that's ok. It was a pretty short story, thanks to Téa.

I still find it hard to believe that, after Esme's 24 hour long ordeal (drama on every level of that delivery), Téa's labour from water breaking to delivery was under 4 hours. Crazy!

I'm glad I listened when my Mom and sister urged me to just get to the hospital, otherwise who knows where Téa would have been born. :)