COOPER HANES ROSSETTI
August 11th, 2020 | 5:26am
6lb 14oz | 19.5in
The details of a long day/night I’ll never forget. This is how our sweet Cooper came into this world ❤️
I. ARE THESE REAL CONTRACTIONS OR BRAXTON HICKS?!
The day started early. I woke up at 5:00am… not because I had contractions or anything… but because pregnancy insomnia was at an all time high. Yikes I was TIRED. I got up, showered and went to my 39 week appointment at the hospital. I was 3cm dilated and 50% effaced. Things were progressing, but not super quickly. My midwife asked if I wanted her to strip my membranes. This is basically just a term meaning she’s going to push on my cervix to get things moving along. It has a high success rate of going into labor within 24 hours… so I was fully on board! It was beyond uncomfortable and painful but within 30 minutes after my appointment..I was contracting. No joke, only 30 minutes! At first I thought I must be making up the pain… but nope they were full on contractions that kept getting closer together and more painful as the day went on. The stripping of my membranes had worked and it worked FAST. I instantly began to freak out thinking “omg the house is a mess… I need to clean before I have this baby”. Of course my OCD/nesting instincts kicked it. So that’s what I did while Clay worked all day. I cleaned through the contractions, packed my hospital bag and mentally started to prepare myself for the long day ahead of me. I was so beyond ready to meet our little boy!!
Later on that night we dropped landon off with my mother in law and then headed back home for a couple hours and watched Friends till we felt it was “time”. Clay was a total mess of nerves. It was really cute honestly. He was so excited and nervous about the unknown. I on the other hand was so calm knowing what we were about to experience would be one of the greatest days of our life. It was 9pm when we decided to head to the hospital. I was unsure they’d keep me there since my contractions were still only 3-5 minutes apart.
(I know a lot of people are wondering how giving birth during covid is… so I’ll try to give y’all a rundown of all the protocols that we had to obey.)
II. TO THE HOSPITAL WE GO
When we got to the hospital our temperatures were taken, we were given masks (to wear during the entire process… laboring, pushing and all) and hand sanitizer. We were then escorted to the desk and checked in. Then we got to my labor and delivery room. My nurse quickly gave me a gown and checked my cervix. I was 5cm dilated. There was no going home at that point!
I got my covid test (ouch…) and I decided I wanted to labor as long as possible before getting an epidural. For the next 3-4 hours I breathed through the contraction pains. It was about 2 in the morning when we decided to speed along the process… my obgyn came in to break my water and the contractions instantly began to accelerate and become absolutely unbearable. The anesthesiologist soon came in to start on my epidural… this is when things went south…
III. THE DOWNFALL
(Let me start by saying… I’m no stranger to an epidural. I had one with my first pregnancy and had no complications. I was pretty much paralyzed from the waste down and never felt a thing during pushing. It was honestly so easy and painless.)
At this point I was dizzy with pain and the contractions were pretty much coming one right after the other. The nurse had me sit on the edge of the bed to prepare for the epidural. I hardly remember the face of my anesthesiologist… he came in and got straight to work. I’m no doctor and of course have no idea how an epidural works… but whatever this man did… he did it wrong. Once the epidural was in place in my back, I almost immediately started to feel numbness. Although the numb feeling was not in the places it should be. I felt the coldness go all the way up my back to the top of my shoulder blades. I felt lightheaded, had tunnel vision, was nauseas, had chest pains and started to have trouble breathing. My whole body began to shake uncontrollably and I felt like I couldn’t get my words out when trying to speak. I ripped my mask off and threw it on the bed. The machines I was hooked up to began to loudly alarm the nurse. “BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.” My blood pressure had dropped to a very dangerous level. The anesthesiologist kind of just looked at me like “oh shit”….Everyone in the room had wide eyes and blank expressions as these symptoms flooded my body. Clay started to panic and puked out of fear and anxiety… and my only thought was “please don’t let me and my baby die”. They pumped me full of blood pressure medication and luckily it slowly started to go up and I became more stable. After what seemed like an eternity, my breathing was better and my chest pains subsided… along with the rest of the symptoms. They continued with the blood pressure medication every 15 minutes or so and took my vitals every few minutes to insure I was okay. I remember playing Bon Iver through the speaker to calm me down. Within an hour or two, the numbness was gone and I was back to feeling the contractions full on.
That first hour after the epidural was honestly the scariest hour of my life. Maybe I’m being dramatic… but I thought that I was going to die. Full on thought I was going to have a heart attack and that was going to be the end. I already have so much anxiety around medical stuff so this really put my fear over the top. I went into labor thinking I knew what an epidural would do… then realized how easily things could go wrong if not done right. I never got answers after all was said and done. The doctor mentioned it was a high block and that’s about it. In my opinion… it was too much anesthesia inserted in the wrong place on my back. I feel extremely grateful for all the nurses and doctors that handled that situation with calmness and made sure Cooper and I were okay. Looking back, I obviously wish I never opted for an epidural in the first place.
IV. TIME TO PUSH!
Once I started to feel normal again (when the anesthesia fully wore off) the nurse started me on Pitocin (a hormone to help speed along labor). I remember they gave me Pitocin during my labor with London and within 30 minutes I was ready to start pushing. Like clockwork, the Pitocin worked within 20 minutes this time around and I felt that heavy painful “he’s going to pop out of me right now” kind of feeling. My nurse checked my cervix and sure enough I was 10cm dilated. It. Was. Time. Cooper was ready and so was I.
They called in the OBGYN and started to gather the supplies/set my bed up to start pushing. It was like a scene straight out of a movie. I remember looking at Clay and holding his hand feeling so overwhelmed with emotion. Since the epidural wore off completely by this point, I could feel EVERYTHING. Every stretch, every pain… I felt it all. With clay holding one leg and the nurse holding my other… we started the process. With every contraction, I started to push in 10 second intervals. Each push felt like my vagina was being ripped open from all sides (this is the only way I feel like I can describe the pain). After less than 15 minutes of pushing as hard as I could, Clay said he saw the head and cheered me on. I remember thinking I had to “get this baby out of me right now.” I was screaming so loudly in pain that I’m sure the whole labor and delivery unit could hear me. Only a few more pushes and I felt his head finally slip out me and the doctor helped pull the rest of his little body out after. Then there he was.. this perfect tiny human loudly crying and being handed to me to hold. I was a mess at this point and looked at clay as tears also streamed down his face. We did it. We made this perfect beautiful child and went through the ups and downs of pregnancy and labor… together this time. I’m crying just writing this because we’ve been wanting this for so long and we finally got here to this point.
V. THE AFTERMATH
Labor was not what I imagined in my head. There were low points, scary encounters, moments of doubt and times of uncertainty. (Not to mention… I had to wear a fucking mask the whole damn time when I felt like I could hardly breath. Thanks covid!). No it wasn’t my happily ever after I day-dreamed about… but oddly enough it was better than that picture in my head. Although painful, I pushed out a baby unmedicated and I’ll never be the same because of it. My adrenaline spiked and took control over my whole body in that moment. Being able to feel everything as it happened (as painful as that may have been) was beautiful, raw and emotional. Afterward, I felt so empowered, strong and proud as hell to be a woman. I went into labor with an open mind and a positive mindset and I think that’s why I feel so grateful for my experience. It doesn’t matter how many rings of fire we had to jump through to get our second child to this earth… Cooper was worth it all.
On another note: Those long 18 hours would have never been the same without Clay there to reassure me everything was going to be okay…. how lucky am I that I got to bring Cooper into the world with the love of my life standing right next to me?? I got to go through some of the most beautiful months of my life with the one person I love the most. I’ll never be able to fully express how much that means to me.. but I’m sure you get the point. He’s my rock, my biggest supporter and greatest love. Regardless of the complicated delivery, Clay and I were still smiling and laughing through the whole night. Constantly keeping things light as the situation became dark. I think it’s because we were just so happy to be doing it together this time around. We were both on cloud nine and just feeling so much gratitude for life and that moment in time.
VI. POSTPARTUM & COVID
The rest of the hospital stay was pretty standard. I had one teeny tiny tear that the doctor put one stitch on. Once I was stitched, we waited for our postpartum room to be ready. Once we were in our postpartum room we stayed there for a little over 24 hours. They checked my vitals every hour since I had complications during labor. They checked out Cooper every couple hours and he passed all his tests with flying colors. During the stay, we had to stay in our room and wear a mask each time someone came in. Clay was allowed to go get food in the hospital food court whenever necessary and was allowed to leave the hospital one time if needed. He used his one leave to go home and shower (lucky guy since the hospital shower was pretty bad) and also to grab us food and Starbucks. We were also allowed to have clays mom drop off food at the front and Clay was able to go grab it from her. Other than that we were pretty much quarantined inside our room the whole time. The nurses were so helpful and nice but I was ready to gtfo of there ASAP. Overall our experience with labor/postpartum at the hospital wasn’t horrible. It’s definitely much more strict and a weirder vibe with covid protocols but everything they do is for the safety of everyone there.
