President's day started out as no other had. When the dog woke me up at 3:30 am, wanting to get under the covers, I knew something was different. I got up early that morning to discover that my water had broken 6 days before my due date. It was time to have my baby!!!
It was the classic scene waking up my husband. He sat straight up, got dressed the fastest I have ever seen him get dressed and started to warm up the car.
The ride to the hospital was uneventful, after all it was almost 4 o'clock in the morning. I got the hospital and they confirmed that indeed my water broke, which meant that I got to stay and have a baby!
At 6 in the morning, I started the phone calls. I called everyone I knew telling them that I had been in labor of a few hours and it was a piece of cake.
The doctor came in about 7 am and started and evil drug called Pitocin.
At 10 am, I was begging for the drugs. I had dialated to whopping 1/2 centameter. Things were not going as well as I wanted them to. I was given a shot of Stadol and fell fast asleep. Exactly 55 minutes later, I awoke to awful contractions. The nurse told me that I needed to sit on a ball. Looking back it is all very humorous. Due to the medication that they gave me I couldn't hold my head up, much less sit on a ball. My loving husband held me on the ball hoping to get things progressing much quicker. When I was checked at noon I was only 2 centameter's but I was begging for an epidural. The nurse felt pity on me and called in for the doctor.
At 3 pm when the doctor still hadn't shown up and returned calls, another shot of Stadol was adminstered. Like before, a glorious nap followed.
Only 10 minutes into my nap the doctor showed up to give me my epidural. I was so out of it I don't remember it at all. I do remember telling my husband to stop putting his hands out of the sunroof for fear he would catch a bird. My husband told me later that the epidural kit was incomplete and he had to go the cart to get another so the doctor could finish.
After the epidural, I slept and slept. I awoke and kept asking my husband what his mother was doing there. It was a Monday and she lived 4 hours away. But it was President's day.
I slept until 7:30. I know that because that is when the epidural wore off and the pain came back. The doctor came in and gave me a half a dose, which I compare to taking 2 Advil after having Morphine, it really didn't do anything at all.
At 9:30 I was ready to start pushing. It had been a long day and now I really had to work.
I pushed for an entire hour and at 10:30 my son, John F. McQuay IV was born. He was 8 lbs, 8 oz and the only thing I heard from the doctor was, "He has a cleft."
