Thea's Birth Story

Thea Belle Adelai Johannsen was born at 6:10 am on Friday August 27th. I started having regular contractions at 9:45 pm in the evening and at 11 pm we decided to call my sister Rebekah who we knew was out with a friend (i.e. still awake) to come over to stay with the boys. By the time we were approaching the North Memorial Hospital the contractions were 3 minutes apart and very strong. Brad was delighted to be pulled over by a policeman a few blocks from the hospital. He called out the window -- "My wife is in labor!! Her contractions are 3 minutes apart!!" The officer waved him on and said "Try to drive safely..." By the time we got up to the birthing room I was 5 centimeters dilated. Since I was Strep B positive I needed to be hooked up to penicillin for 4 hours...or Thea would be at a greater risk for things like menigitis and other awful/deadly things for newborns. We weren't sure if we had enough time, but then, voila! Thanks to my very crazy body, my contractions just dropped off to almost nothing. We decided to try to sleep for awhile. Brad got an hour in, though I laid there very awake. Suddenly I had 5 crazy-hard contractions in a row, my water broke, and the nurse checked me -- 8 1/2 centimeters. I ended up getting an interthecal shot for pain and to slightly slow things down to give the penicillin enough time to get to the baby. At 5:10 we hit 4 hours. I was completely dilated and effaced. I started pushing. Thea was face up so my contractions were basically like stabbing back spasms -- which the interthecal couldn't "cover". The other bad thing about her being face up was that with every push I was only pressing her forehead into my pubic bone instead of out the canal. The good things were 1. She didn't appear to be in any distress -- good heart rate and 2. The pain let up when I was in the pushing/exertion part of a contraction -- meaning I got a break from the pain when I was doing my job right. Finally after about an hour of pushing the doctor came in, put me in a more vertical pushing position and gave me some stirrups to push off of -- Within three or four pushes Thea had spun around and came into the world.