Camryn's Birth Story

Camryn's birth -
4:00am water broke in bed. Just enough to soak my underwear. Checked in to hospital at 8am. No contractions. Walked around the property until 11, still no contractions. They started pitocin around noon.

Had solid contractions every 3-4 minutes until 11pm when my doc decided she wasn't sure my water had really broken. She took a swab, and looked under a microscope, and saw one tiny little "fern", so it looked like I had a high leak, which still meant I needed to proceed with labor because of that 24 hour window after water breaking.

That hour that I wasn't hooked up to pitocin while she was swabbing/testing was great. I got to walk around. Contractions were way more manageable. But, they stuck me back on Pitocin because I was still only dilated to 2cm, and needed to get things moving. Finallly, at about 3am, I was dilated to 2-1/2cm, so they gave me an epi.

Immediately the medicine made me sick, and I started vomiting. They gave me anti-nausea stuff that helped. I slept for about 2 hours. I was woken up by Carrie who had flown in from Arizona to surprise me during my delivery! I was so happy she was there!

They checked me and I was 10cm, and let me start pushing. I started pushing around 5am. We tried many different set ups (pulling on the sheet that was tied on the bar over the bed was the best for me). With each push, Camryn would drop down to where they could see the top of her head, and then at the end of the push, went right back up, out of sight.

My body was out of control. I was shaking so bad that my mom had to lay across me to hold me down. If she wasn't there, I would shake so hard that my body was bouncing off the bed. My legs were completely numb, so I had two people holding each one, while I pushed. It took a village!

I heard the doctor start talking about prepping an OR, and I got pissed. I hadn't been through 28 hours of labor to end up with a c-section. Apparently getting mad helped, because during my next contraction, I pushed when they counted to 10, and just kept pushing, and nobody around me noticed.

Camryn all of a sudden tore the hell out of me internally and externally, and flew out. Nobody caught her. Luckily they hadn't dropped the bed yet, so there was a safe place for her to land. The doctor screamed from the doorway "somebody catch it" as he turned around and saw what was happening. The nurse put her hand out and slowed her down while scooting across the bed.

It ends up my pelvis is funnel shaped, while most are bowl shaped, and Camryn was stuck at the top of the "funnel", which explains why she never dropped.

I was in so much pain I wasn't even able to open my eyes to look at her for a few minutes. Then my doctor had to start the internal stitches. He told me I needed to mentally "go somewhere else" because the pain was going to be worse than the labor. He was right. It was excruciating. The recovery from that was terrible.

My sister grabbed the video camera right when Camryn was born. You can hear everyone sobbing and screaming and laughing. Then a little while later, you can hear Jeff and I pick out her name on there. We had it narrowed down to Emma Rae or Camryn Ann. We thought she definitely was a Camryn. Emma seemed too sweet and innocent for the entrance she had just made.

Camryn Ann Jewell
5-19-04
8:17am
6lb 2oz