This Tuesday, October 30th, I was sitting in the waiting room for my prenatal appointment and the phone rang for the receptionist. From what I heard of the conversation- someone was coming into have their baby. Before I could contain my thoughts, my eyes welled up and I started to cry. Everyone gets to have their baby but me. The longer peanut stays inside the more I have a nagging feeling which isn't rational- maybe I'm not having a baby at all, maybe I'm just getting taken over by something else.... The words, "I am so jealous" where whimpered out and it led to a good conversation with the lady sitting next to me. I know people are trying to be encouraging but hearing "Don't worry, it will eventually happen" at least 15 times a day, feels patronizing.
Fast forward to Wednesday morning, I'm trying to sleep on the couch, it is 4am-ish and I start having cramps and stomach hardening with a back ache. When I did finally get up, the first signs that labor is in my near future was here! My excitement to not be pregnant soon and to get to see the baby were great to carry me through the day, even though my nesting is done, it made my motivation to do other chores easy. At 3pm, I slept for about 2 hrs, woke up to rush to make dinner. This was the last time I was to honestly sleep for a long while. 6:30pm while cleaning up dinner, the contractions started. It was tolerable, but regular at 5min intervals, they lasted for about an hour and a half and tapered off. While at the airport later that evening to pick up a friend, they picked back up in full force but still manageable, kind of took my breath away. 1am I decided to try and sleep, laying down- for whatever reason created a wave that crashed on top of my drowning me in pain. Not only did my contractions jump from a 2 on the pain scale to a 9.5, they were constant, one on top of the other, less then 5 seconds of a break in between them. I stumbled into the living room and tried to deal with the pain while letting Mike sleep.
At 3am, I couldn't take the pain anymore and filled the bath tub up with water and decided to use it to get rid of some of the pressure. Surprisingly, I didn't wake anyone up doing this, the bath is pretty noisy when it fills. The pain increased and by 5am I was having contractions lasting at least a minute and were 3 minutes apart and I was crying, praying, hugging a towel and shaking during the contractions. Often I had 1 strong one, another strong one, a weak one, (5 second gap) a supremely strong one which I can only imagine having my spine ripped out as being more painful...and then the cycle would continue. There was a mild urge to push also. Time to wake up Mike and call the midwife. Oddly as soon as I get out of the tub and wake up everyone, the contractions start to slow down and almost stop. I have an amazing husband who did not complain with I woke him up at 5:22am but made me breakfast and was supportive and affirming and loving. He helped me get dressed and loaded the car full of our stuff and off we went to the birth center.
Once at the birth center, they checked me and I was 1-2 cm dilated, I got the choice to go home. It was very discourage to have suffered all night by myself and to have been in that much pain and to have it been for only 1-2 cm. Mike gave me acupuncture, canceled his clients for the day and went back to bed. I can't lay down, however, something about laying down makes my contractions constant with 8/10 pain. I watched Tangled (napped on and off though the movie) and then Legends of the Guardians. If I was still having contractions they were not noticeable- hurt less enough to ignore them....Around 2pm they started sporadically again and Mike gave me another treatment tonight to get things moving again. At this point I cannot count how many hours I have been awake, I'm not counting napping, it feels like such a long day. It is weird to see Mike go to bed again and I sit here, unable to sleep but in less pain, most of the time, then yesterday, at least for now. All I do know is that labor started 30 hrs ago and still for now...no baby.
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The above was written during labor, and the rest is now written now that the baby is here--reflectively.
On Friday at 11:09 my mucus plug came out, was a gross thing, looks like a mix between a slug and a gummy worm. So gross. Today is my friends birthday, we continue to show her around town, she gets a massage at Mike's work and we run errands, go to the visitor's center, etc. Lots of in and out of cars, I can't drive, the contractions are strong, 5/10 pain and going in and out of the car through 10 degree weather makes my contractions worse. That night Mike needles me again and stays up with my as my labor progresses once again into active labor, and I spend about 3 hours in the bath tub, which takes some of the pressure off of my back but doesn't decrease any pain around 3am we decide to try and sleep in bed. Mike instantly falls asleep, I can finally lay down without the pain increasing and I 'rest' on the couch but cannot sleep all night.
By 8am, my contractions are consistently 3 minutes apart and it doesn't matter what I do- they do not stop. Finally time to call the midwife again. She said she would meet us at the Birth center at 11am. I was 4cm dilated and 100% effaced. We go, but almost as soon as we get there, my contractions slow down again, but the intensity of them remains the same. Around 3pm, I got an IV port in my arm for the antibiotics since I am Group B Step positive, for whatever reason finding my vein was an impossibility- I had to get stabbed 5 times before they could get a vein. I have always had great veins, I am not sure what the problem was, but every stab caused and intense contraction.
The last time I ate anything was 4:00, I had a few crackers and half of a banana.
Sometime around 8pm (I think) the midwife checked me again and there had been no progression. She gave us the choice to go to the hospital or to try homeopathy to try increase dilation, we agreed to check again at 11pm and see if there was any progress and to reevaluate the hospital option. We did the homeopathy, it made the pain 9/10 and increased the frequency.
Based on the baby's position, the entire labor was back labor. Each contraction caused the lower ligaments of my uterus felt like it was on fire, and the pain in my lower back ripped through me and made it feel like I was being cut in half. Every contraction causes uncontrollable shaking over my whole body and jaw.
The homeopathy worked and as I was being checked at 11pm, my water broke, it is clear, 5 cm dilated, after that the labor becomes more of a blur. The contractions quickly become 3 minutes long, 10/10 pain, 1:30 in between the stop and start of another contractions (so says Mike), I start to pass out from the pain as soon as they stop and I wake up again to scream when it starts again. As a result, my sense of time is skewed. As I'm screaming, I find there is not enough air for me to let out all the scream I have inside of me, I'm sitting backwards on the toilet, a position that is supposed to help with the back labor, with a heating pad on my back and I can't think, all I can do is embrace the tearing apart feeling and try to relax so my body can do what it supposedly knows know to do. (The midwives have a saying- "Your body will know what to do" but clearly mine lost that memo. I can no longer talk, but barely make out hand gesture for yes, no and ok. The hours pass. At 5am, the midwife checked me again. NO further progression. My contractions, still intense, start to become further apart again. 82.5 hrs of labor so far and only 5 cm dilated, I give up, the pain is too much and now that my water has broke, the baby has to come out soon for things to be safe. Time to give into go to the hospital for pitocin to keep labor moving and for an epidural for me. A nurse at the hospital later told me that the passing out in between contractions is normal for pushing the baby out because of the body's exhaustion, not when you are still 5cm dilated.
Unfortunately, transferring to the hospital is not as easy as it sounds. Because of my dehydration, I will need 2 saline bags and 1 more antibody bag before the hospital will even think about giving me an epidural. Also we are just about at a shift change of hospital staff. The midwife hooks up a dual IV and pushes it through as Mike and my friend pack up the stuff we have skewed around the birthing room. I'm terrified to go outside, the cold makes my contractions worse, if that is possible. Mike preheats the car for 20 minutes, it is around 0 degrees outside. Finally, we are on our way at 6am. We drive the 1 mile to the hospital, I can't get my seatbelt on around the IV tubes and my jacket and my shaking which now rarely stops, even when I am not having a contraction. Mike pulls up into the emergency room entrance and the midwife hops out the car to get a wheel chair for me. I can barely walk but I consider making a run for it as the cold makes me feel like passing out and I don't want to be dead weight on the sidewalk. Mike parks the car and the midwife and my friend and I start the check in process, I don't remember most of this except telling my friend where to find my ID, the few people in the waiting room for the ER and looking at me very strangely. Mike catches up to us and a maternity ward nurse comes to walk us up to my room for the next few days.
I quickly get told to change into a hospital gown with a belly band that has 2 monitors- one for tracking contractions, one for the baby's heart rate. I think my friend and the midwife help me change, I can't remember, all I see is the bed which I'm leaning on wishing I could sit. As the nurse finishes the check in process, Mike sits in a chair in the room and instantly falls asleep, in this time, I have 2 more intense contractions, I am screaming the loudest I can, there is no point in holding back now, I'm too tired to think about who I might be waking up or bothering. Mike doesn't move through either of those contractions. The midwife is sitting in a chair next to him, I ask her to see if he is breathing after those 2 contractions, he still is, she gets him a blanket, a day and a half of intense labor support is his breaking point and he is now out for an hour.
The night anesthesiologist finally comes by and is very hesitant to want to give me an epidural, which makes me lividly angry. Apparently, during my first visit to the midwives, someone said that in the past I have trouble clotting, this is true but it has been a LONG time since this has been an issue and was more of an issue with small cuts then larger ones. She starts asking me questions about nose bleeds, bleeding gums, how many times I change a pad during the day for when I used to have my period. These questions are stupid, who doesn't get nose bleeds in a dry desert climate during winter, whose gums bleed sometimes after not flossing for a long time and it is hygienic to change your pad more then twice a day. Still she freaks out, consults with the other anesthesiologist and refuses but says the other dr is on his way into the hospital....more delays for pain relief. I ask the nurse if there is anything else I can have which could make me a little more comfortable until the dr arrives. I'm not sure what she gives me but its effect is instant, my vision goes blurry and I lay back and relax, I still feel the contraction but I just don't care as much. At 9:30, Dr. Quirk, the amazing anesthesiologist comes and gives me the long awaited for epidural, he is AMAZING- those epidural needles are super big, I feel nothing except a small tingle when the medicine starts to flow which feels like a funny bone feeling. Finally I can relax. I'm given the option of a bed pan or a catheter, I opt for the catheter.
As a husband of a patient, Mike is supposed to get a free meal ticket for the day, he misunderstands how to get the ticket though and went to the front desk of the hospital instead of the Women's Center to try and get one.
The midwife leaves and takes my friend back to our house so she can sleep. Mike stays with me in my room and sleeps in the corner in a bed that folds out of a chair. My nurse- Heidi, checks my vitals very carefully and uses a "peanut ball" to manipulate my legs to move the baby into a position which isn't back labor and she is looking for a certain response in his heart rate being consistent- although I can no longer feel it, it will be easier for delivery if he is lined up correctly to come out. I'm hungry but denied food, I am allowed as much juice and water as I want. As Heidi continues to monitor me, she notices my oxygen level goes to 90 and during contractions, the baby's heart rate is declining. She brings in my doctor, Dr. Miles and he says to monitor it and things improve when they give me an oxygen mask to wear. The oxygen makes me feel euphoric, which causes me to wonder when I felt like I couldn't get enough air to scream during the night--if the lack of oxygen in my blood had something to do with it then also.
We didn't want to tell family about being in labor because it puts extra pressure on me "Has the baby come out yet?????" But Mike and I decide that since this is day 4 of labor, it is worth telling people what is going on, so they at least know we moved to the hospital. I update facebook too, as I am, I am noticing nurse Heidi is bringing a large cart of stuff into the room which is covered. She finishes setting up, checks me again and says that it is time to push. I ask if she is joking. She said no. 10 months of waiting and 4 days of hell and finally I can push? Really? Really, really, really???? Awesome!
At 2:25, I start pushing, which is weird, the epidural makes from my diaphragm down feel asleep, but not no feeling but weird. She wants me to push for 8 seconds long, which gets us about 5 pushes/contraction. She doesn't want me pushing every contraction, she wants to see if the baby will move down the birth canal some on his own. She says I can take of the oxygen but I want to leave it on, I feel sick without it. She notices that with each contraction the baby's heart rate is decreasing. She calls the doctor, he says that he isn't too worried because it goes back up after the contraction. Some pushes later, she is putting lube inside me to help the baby's head come down and she says, "Oh there is a little blood, I would like the doctor to look at it." I saw her glove. I consider a little blood like a quarter size. Her hand was covered. She changes the table some to make it have a bar with some cloth thing for me to pull which helps me bare down. 5 minutes later, the doctor comes in, he watches though another contraction, says something to the nurse, tells me he wants me to change how I'm pushing to as long and hard as I can push as possible, we need to get the baby out now, and our room quickly becomes an operating room, the bed I'm in converts, the lights are changed, a special spot light comes in, but the bulb is burnt out, the doctor gets angry. I am starting to feel the back labor again, the doctor doesn't want my medicine increased, he says it will help me know when to push. The nurse asks if he wants to take me to the operating room, he says that there is no time. At hearing this, I know that both the baby and I are going to die, I fall back from pushing and start weeping. My friend and Mike both yell at me, I can't recall what they say, except they are kind of harsh but in a good way, it is what I needed to hear, something about that I am not allowed to give up. Our room is flooded with people, neonatal nurses, pediatrician, regular nurses. The baby's heart beat comes and goes on the monitor.
A drape is put over my legs so I can't see the doctor as well. I'm pushing, my friend is counting for me, giving me some sense of time, grunting though the pushing makes the pushing not effective. I see Mike start to faint (he later tells me that he looked down and saw me hemorrhaging, the blood pouring out and knew he was going to be a widow), the doctor distracts Mike by making him help tie his extra scrubs. My friend then grabs him by the shoulder and tells him, it is not the time to faint, it is the time to pray, they start praying and the pushing continues. I catch a glance at the doctor, he is covered from his chest down in my blood. He pours a large amount of iodine over me at least 3 times. I didn't want an episomity but given the circumstances I allow them, this point getting the baby out is all the matters...I'm going to die anyway. My epidural fully wears off, in the chaos, no one noticed that the bag of it on my IV stand is gone. There is some issue with the forceps, they are not going together correctly, they are cold, terrible and my uncontrollable shaking starts once again, and the room starts to go black (though according to Mike, the lights were on the entire time, I think it was my body going into shock). The forceps don't work, the baby has moved again in the birth canal to be fully face up, the worst way to come out. Then they try the vacuum, I don't feel this one, thank God. Then the forceps again. Finally the baby is crowning, they don't tell me, but the sensation is undeniable, 3 long pushes to get the head out (Mike said Logan's arm was out before his head-like Jacob in the Bible), I do another half push and I feel the shoulders and body leave me. I fall back onto the table...it feels like I'm embracing death, the room is almost completely black. The doctor tells Mike to follow the baby to the other side of the room and there is nothing else Mike can do for me. I ask the nurse if the shaking is normal, she says yes without looking at me and when I ask for more epidural medicine please, she freaks out when she sees the bag of it empty on the IV stand. I don't know what they give me, it takes a while to work.
I've been drilled for tooth work without Novocaine before and now I can say that I have had stitches with no pain medicine. Whatever they gave me took a while to start working. I hear the baby cry and someone yells that it is a boy. At this point it doesn't matter to me, the ordeal is over...the baby is alive, which is great. He came out at 3:49pm, 6lbs 12 oz, 20 inches long (probably will shrink some because of the vacuum head). I was in labor from 6:30pm Wednesday until 3:49 on Sunday, however long that is...too long, including an extra hour of daylight savings time. My blood pressure is 80/44, no one will tell me how much blood they think I lost, or how many stitches I have to have- it takes them 45 minutes to an hour to stitch me up. Sometime in that, they bring me the baby, I almost immediately give him to Mike, I can still feel the stitching and I don't want to have my first Mom bonding moment to be one where I'm in pain. They ended up giving me 2 transfusions and lots of saline, neither of which raised my iron level much.
Later that day, one of the neonatal nurses came by to see how we were doing and to let me know that she was the one running down the hallway with the epinephrine because they thought he had no heart beat. Yet another thing you really don't want to hear as a patient.
Logan's color was bad in his limbs, so they gave him and IV, he also had very low blood sugar and couldn't maintain his body temp, I tried breastfeeding him, this was difficult, he could not be held certain ways because of his IV port, his boo boo head from the forceps, and his jaw was hurting from that as well. We ended up having to supplement some with formula given through a tube next to someone's finger to stabilize him. One of many issues which made breastfeeding complicated. Things are going better now that my milk is here. It took a while for it to arrive since my body was on self preservation mode instead of make milk for your baby mode.
We can see God taking care of us through this whole ordeal- We have the state insurance and will not have to pay for any of this care out of pocket, had labor gone normally, delivering at the birth center would have been fatal for both Logan and me, my friend who was here was an AMAZING support the entire time and I couldn't have done it without her, even though the baby was supposed to be here before she arrived. And my amazing nurse and doctor who reacted in time to save us both. Later on at the hospital, I was able to see that most of my nurses are inattentive and bad at their jobs, I was lucky to get an amazing one during my hour of need.
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