I can entertain the masses for hours with my childbirth stories. 

With my first, I was at Shoney's and had gone to the ladies room for the 18th time that night.    On the way back to the table, the cook passed me on his way to the men's room. 

ME:  waddle waddle waddle waddle (I was 12 months pregnant at this point and looked like I had swallowed a hippo.)

COOK: (irritatingly cheerful)  "Hey!  You are gonna have that baby any minute!"

ME:  "Ha Ha."  (looking at him like I would pluck his eyeballs out with my spoon once I got back to my table)

Then I took 2 steps........and my water broke.  Yes, ladies, right in the middle of Shoney's.  Right after he said that.

I hurried back to the ladies room and sat on the toilet.  "Now what do I do??"  I am stuck!  Every waddle brings some water.   

So I sit.  And sit.  Finally, a lady comes in and I call out to her.  "Um.  Excuse me?  My name is Shay and my water just broke.  Can you go get my husband for me?  He's the one sitting alone with two plates at the table."

I can tell the moment she relayed the message because utter pandemonium broke out in the restuarant.  Apparently, the message of "my water broke" tranformed into something close to "I'm giving birth and the head is crowning!!!  Boil water!!!  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!"  The entire (male) crew went crazy.  My husband burst into the ladies room like he expected to catch the kid upon arrival. 

So we get to the hospital going Warp 9 and I end up not even having contractions until they induced me the next day.    I was up all night, so when they gave me the epidural, I zonked.  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Then they woke me up, I pushed and the rest is history. 

The next installment will chronicle my darling daughter's arrival..... 

I am going to post a link to a summary of my childbirth story.  That way, if you are a new mom to be and don't want to read about a tough situation with a tough labor, then you don't have to!  http://saintseestersays.saintseester.com/?p=233

That is sooooooooooooooooooo true!  Guys think that when your water breaks the baby is literally falling outta ya RIGHT THAT MINUTE!!! 

Seriously, when I was in the bathroom waiting for that lady to tell my husband (now my ex), I could hear the whole restaurant start to panic.     I heard. "Call 911!" and all kinds of other shouting.  (You have to understand - it was rather late and the staff was almost entirely made up of teenage and almost teenage boys.)

Marquise....

Your story is beautiful and heart wrenching....It brought tears to my eyes! 

I can relate to the birth part of the story (failed epidural, induction....) Except I was induced because my daughter was so big that she separated my pelvis at the front where it's joined by ligaments a week prior. If I didn't have a separated pelvis...I would not have got her out vaginally With all the damage she did...the doc's said afterwards that I probably should have had a C-Section!   

Obviously couldn't have been that bad....I when on to do it again two more times!

"But it isn't time yet."  That is what my husband said when I walked in and told him we had to go to the hospital so I could be induced the next day.

I ended up having a c-section and I loved it.  I know that is weird but I didn't have a bit of trouble with recovering from it. 

Oh my oh my, the tales I could tell... I don't keep a blog to link to, and I don't have 4 hours to type it all out right now, so to sum it up, 1st child born premature, took over 72 hrs and I had eclampsya (aka toxemia), she had to stay in NICU 10 days.  4 lbs, 13 oz. No pain killers, but putossin.  2nd child, military hospital, delivery staff nice, pushed so hard I broke all blood vessels in and around my eyes (they healed up) making me look like I had red where the whites of my eyes should have been... pushed and pushed even when I didn't feel like it cuz I knew that was the only way to make the pain stop was to get that watermelon OUT from between my legs!  I think I only pushed for 20 min.  He was 9 lbs.  No painkillers.  An hour later they told me I had to shower up to go to the recovery bay; I could hardly stand; DH had to help.  Then they handed me a spray bottle and said to clean out the shower b4 getting out - couldn't get it clean w/ all the blood that kept coming out so I just said F them.  They made me stay from Fri. night to Mon. morning, even though he was perfectly healthy, and we just got more and more tired.  The diet sucked and was laughable had it not induced already probable post-labor constipation.  Burgers & fries, then for dinner, fish sticks on a bun w/ fries.  Was from the hospital cafeteria, no special menu for L & D I guess.  They've shut that one down and re-built it, and women I've talked to since say it's great now.    My 3rd son was also in a military hosp, he was 2 weeks late, went in and laid there for 5 hours w/ mild inducing stuff to no avail so they hooked up the putossin.  Nothing.  So I stood up (when they left the room that is, they wanted me flat on my back - dummies!) and my water broke.  That got things moving real fast.  About an hour later I said to one of the staff "oh I feel like I have to push" and they said I couldn't have gone from 1 cm to 10 cm in 1 hr and ignored me.  Then the next time she walked by I screamed at her "I can't hold my push any longer! I HAVE to push!" so she reluctantly checked and WHADDAYA KNOW I was at 10 cm.  So Dr. comes in and says "hey if you pop this kid out as fast as you dilated I could be home in time for dinner".  I thought he was kidding.  I popped my 3rd son out, 9 lbs. 3 oz. 1 hr later and never saw that Dr. again.  While he was still in the "birth canal" they started hollering for oxygen, talking in med. jargan to one another, and not telling me why I needed O2.  Then it turned out that the little cabinet on the wall that was supposed to have the O2 was empty so they were rushing around yelling to other rooms for it, meanwhile I'm still wondering what's wrong.  Then after they get the O2 on me they say baby's heart rate had dropped to 61 and they needed to "give him some help getting out fast" so they needed to use forceps.  I, not knowing that forceps actually posed any risks back then, said "sure, the faster I get him out the better".   Once he was born they kept beating on his back for what seemed like an hour, and I kept forgetting why and asking over and over, and I just told a midwife that last night and she said that's an outdated practice and that nowdays they just give the baby O2 and it pushes the fluid out of baby's lungs.     Then, we have to stay another 3 days, and DH goes home to watch our other 2 kids 2 hrs. after this one was born.  He wasn't eating well and I really thought something was wrong, but the nurse tried to relieve my worry by telling me babies can live up to 10 days after birth w/o anything b/c they have what's called "brown fat" to live off of until mom's milk comes in, yada yada yada.  Then they didn't finish his circumcision (which I was torn about doing in the 1st place) b/c he had a hypospadia, and the stupid Dr. on call wouldn't come in to finish it (which would have involved repairing the hypospadia and then completing the circumcision), so he ended up having to have surgery a year later.  I would have sued him had I not been literally nursing 23.75 hrs. a day afterwards.  Meanwhile, when I got home w/ him and his penis finally healed to where we didn't have to put so much A&D ointment on it, I realized he wasn't peeing and that perhaps the yellow I had been seeing in his diapers was the massive amounts of A&D I was previously using to keep the wound from sticking to the diaper.  Then he "peed" dry orange pastey-dusty stuff, and I freaked.  They had sent me home w/ a dehydrated baby!  I took him to the ER and they did nothing.  I went home and called the breastfeeding consultant, who was my only help.  Had to hand-express and feed by spoon/syringe/fingertip, anything to get it in him.  He always seemed hungry and like he wasn't getting enough.  He only drank letdowns and when it stopped spraying he stopped nursing.  Then I realized his tongue was tied and I spoke w/ soooo many of those military Dr.s and none of them would clip it.  He couldn't suck hard, and his latch was so weak I could just pull him off - there was no "seal" to break, no suction to break.  I even fed him in front of them to no avail, they would say "oh he's on there, he's eating fine".  (hehe, i'm glad he pooped on that Dr.!!)  I even took him to a maxilofacial surgeon who said "oh it will stretch out over time".  That's what they all said, but meanwhile, I had to nurse him CONSTANTLY just to keep him from getting dehydrated.  Well, I guess this is turning into my breastfeeding nightmare instead of a birthing story.  In the end, my DH got re-stationed and the new Dr. clipped his tounge right away and voila!, problem solved.  Dumb@$$es.  He started gaining weight better and there was actually time between feedings, and I actually started making enough milk for him (he couldn't "up the production" b/c he couldn't suck hard enough w/ a tied tounge).  I told them.  Mom's instincts are not taken seriously enough in the medical field IMO.  All in all, my 3 kids are all totally healthy and unaffected by any of this now.  My advice to any moms-2-b:  Just stay home if you can.  That's what I would do if I had it to do over again.  Labor at home as long as you can anyhow.  Well, this turned out to be more than just a nutshell, sorry if it's too graphic and sorry for the language there, but I still get a little upset when thinking about some of it.

Normally kids don't actually come out face up, they have to turn face down or they get stuck.  Well my daughter came out face up, and popped open my pelvis in the front.  I heard a loud POP, but I didn't hurt until later.

It took MONTHS for that to heal!  I could feel the two pieces of bone grinding together if I wasn't careful.   Sick

It still hurts sometimes if I workout too long...