(Fair warning: the following is long and not terribly well thought-out. Mostly I just wanted to get it all written down... maybe someday I'll edit it down, but for now you can read it at your own risk. Do not operate heavy machinery while reading it!)
June 6, 2006, 8:30 pm:
My husband and I were on the couch, watching a little TV when I felt something not quite normal and ran to the bathroom. By the time I got to the toilet, my shorts were quite wet and there was definitely a small gush of fluid when I sat down. Being in denial, I figured I probably wet my pants or something. As the leaking continued, I though of how to tell my husband what was going on. It took me a little while to get cleaned up and changed into new pants. I walked into the family room and said, “I don’t want to alarm you, but I think my water just broke.”
I had no other signs of labor, but I called my doula first. She agreed that it sounded like my water broke and told me to call the doctor and let her know. Conveniently, my OB/Gyn was on call that night. She also agreed about the water breaking and said I could come in after labor starts. I asked if I could stay home as long as possible, since I stood a better chance of getting labor to progress that way. She said she didn’t mind if I went a few more hours at home. She also said labor “normally” starts within 3 hours of the bag of waters breaking, so by midnight I should be having contractions.
Well, midnight came and went, still no contractions. Around 1:30 I finally started noticing cramping. Of course, I’d been too excited to sleep much up to this point. I stayed in bed and eventually started watching the clock and timing the contractions. Around 3:30 they were five minutes apart and I couldn’t stay in bed anymore. I got up, posted a blog entry, ate some cereal, and dealt with the contractions. I foolishly believed that this was a fast labor progression…
I got my husband up eventually and told him we should start thinking about heading to the hospital. I called the doula and she agreed to come over within the hour. By the time we were all ready to go, it was about 7:30.
I remember the ride to the hospital as being somewhat surreal. It was the same feeling as heading out on the road early in the morning for a vacation. Everything looked bright and clean, and we were off on an adventure!
We checked into the hospital, and chose our room. (Room #7,
because we figured we were having this baby on the 7th. Ha!)
June 7, 2006, 7:45am:
We settled into our room - a bright, spacious room close to the nurses’ station. My nurse was a man, John. This was a small shock to me – besides the stereotype of nurses being women, I also had never had a man examine me down there while I was conscious. (A male RE assisted with my egg retrieval, but waited until I was unconscious to start work.) I very briefly thought of requesting a female nurse, but decided quickly that this guy was smart, thoughtful, nice enough that I didn’t mind his gender.
After a brief interrogation and berating about my water
breaking so long ago and the lolly-gagging about getting to the hospital, he
tried to find some evidence that the bag of waters had indeed ruptured.
Unfortunately, I was quite dry at that point. I told him plenty about the
gushes of fluid that had been leaking since the previous evening. He said my
story sounded legit, but they needed to do a more “scientific” evaluation – a
speculum exam. While waiting for a doctor to arrive for that exam, I was hooked
up to blood pressure and baby monitors. My blood pressure was quite high (for
me) at 149 over 89. (I think…) John made me stay in bed to try to get it to
come down. In the mean time, we watched the contractions come and go. At one
point I tried lying on my side, but that made the baby’s heart rate dip. I
think it was just a bad connection of the monitor, but in any case, I stopped
lying on my side.
The doctor came in for the speculum exam, and holy shit, that was painful. Because of the position of the baby, and my general discomfort, I could not relax those muscles. She couldn’t see my cervix, but she did find a big pool of fluid to collect on a giant Q-tip. I thought for sure this was plenty of evidence. Oddly enough, that liquid didn’t appear to be amniotic fluid when they examined it. Luckily, my story and the amount of fluid made them believe that at least the chorionic sac had ruptured. (There are two sacs in the uterus, apparently.)
I guess at some point they believed that I would be having a baby eventually and decided to keep me there. This was all confusing to me, since I was so obviously in labor by my standards. It turns out that the reason the nurse didn’t really think I was in labor was that I was in too good a mood. I should have explained to him sooner that my main coping mechanism is smiling and joking around.
Because of the ruptured membranes, they didn’t want to do a cervix check. Anything stuck up there had the potential to introduce an infection. Without the nice bag of fluid, the baby was vulnerable. Based on my rate of contractions, they determined they needed to speed things up in order to get the baby out before an infection could set in. This meant Pitocin. I was dreading this… John tried to make me feel better about it by saying they’d start with a small amount to try to determine how much my body was doing on its own. Of course, this meant starting an IV.
The last time I’d had an IV was my egg retrieval. It took two nurses, an anesthesiologist and four nasty holes to start it. I left with four large bruises and little confidence in my veins.
This time wasn’t much different. John tried twice to start the IV and gave up leaving a pool of blood and two huge bruises behind. As is policy most places, he called in somebody to help. This ended up being the anesthesiologist, since he could use lidocaine. Just like during my retrieval, I got a nice injection of lidocaine in my right forearm, and the IV was set deep in there. Quite inconvenient, being my right arm! I quickly became adept at using the bathroom with the IV, though.
Pitocin started, I had to hang out in bed for a while so my contractions could be monitored. I didn’t notice a huge increase in intensity at that point. Still chipper, and claiming to be handling the pitocin well, John doubled the dose. He really wasn’t convinced that I was in active labor.
June 7, 2006, 1pm:
My regular OB came to visit! Finally I’d be getting my cervix checked. I was convinced I had to be at least 5cm by then. After an extremely uncomfortable check, she claimed I was only 3cm dilated. I don’t remember how effaced. I wasn’t too happy. By this point it had been 17 hours since my water broke. It used to be that the rule was to get the baby out within 24 hours. Nowadays, I was told, it was mostly important to keep labor progressing. Unfortunately, I wasn’t really progressing, which meant more pitocin.
At the nursing shift change, I got one of my favorite nurses. I can’t remember her name, but she was very sweet. Unfortunately, when she checked my cervix, she declared me only 3-4 centimeters. She also said that my doctor was way too generous with the station of the baby. The new nurse, let’s call her Betty, said the baby wasn’t all that low yet. Grrr. She said something like “hopefully we’ll have this baby before my shift is over!”. That meant 11pm. Did I mention my husband thought we’d be having the baby by lunchtime? Ha!
With my still reluctant cervix, she got the order to double the pitocin again. By this point the contractions were very close together, and I was in a lot of pain. All my pain management techniques involved being on my feet, but I was so exhausted that this was becoming increasingly impossible. My feet swelling to the size of balloons aggravated the situation. For a few hours I had been thinking “epidural” during each contraction, but this was the first time I said something out loud about it. If they had to increase the pitocin, I needed pain relief. I was done being stoic, I’d put in my 12+ hours. Obviously I wasn’t anywhere near ready to push. I needed rest. This had always been part of my contingency plan. I would have loved a perfect natural birth, but the moment I started pitocin, it was not natural.
So, after a brief consultation with my husband and doula, we called the nurse back in to get the anesthesiologist. It was funny that once I made that decision, I couldn’t WAIT for that guy to show up! It seemed to take forever. When he arrived, I told him my concerns about epidurals. He told me those concerns were valid, but also told me some of the worse things that could happen. I guess they have to do that…
The process of starting the epidural was fine. They started me on a low dose to see how I tolerated it. Before long I could tell that it wasn’t working properly. My left side was good and numb, but my right side wasn’t affected at all. My leg was rendered useless, but I was still feeling the contractions on my right side. I could also feel everything on my skin. We called the anesthesiologist back, and he explained that “sometimes” this happens… which I knew, as a girlfriend of mine had had a similar experience. He gave me a bolus of drugs to try to remedy the situation, and also told me to roll onto my right side so that gravity could help get the medicine in place. This helped briefly, and I got a short nap. Unfortunately, then my left side started to come back to life. I continued the roll-to-side (with much assistance), call for more drugs, roll-to-other-side routine for the next nine hours.
During those nine hours, we all tried to get some rest. I had some nice conversations with the nurse. I told her that this was an IVF baby, and she told me all about her own infertility issues. She’d been through one fresh IVF cycle and was about to start an FET. I can’t imagine being a L&D nurse and going through infertility. Ugh.
By this point I’d completely lost track of time. The sun went down, and I was still in bed experiencing contractions and pain. Betty checked my cervix again before the end of her shift, and I was at 7cm. Finally I felt like I was making progress! She predicted I’d be pushing by 1am. I remember being shocked by that prediction – I really thought we’d be done well before then.
We bid farewell to Betty at 11pm. Our next nurse was Janice, who initially rubbed me the wrong way. I suppose the night shift isn’t really fun, but still – I was miserable and needed a nice nurse.
June 8, 2006, 1am:
Three hours later, at 1am, I was finally 10 cm dilated, and got the go-ahead to push! Around this time, the doctor on-call came to introduce himself. Yes, another man exploring my nether regions! I knew who he was, as he’s my hairdresser’s doctor. I was struck by how calm and nice he was. We started pushing with the nurse, which was initially not very productive. The epidural worked well in the actual spot I needed to push. Before too long, I could feel what I was supposed to be doing. Of course, I was still exhausted… By this point I had also developed a constant pain in my left side. There was no relief between contractions, and I really had a hard time determining when they were starting and stopping. I pushed and pushed and pushed, receiving lots of encouragement from my people, but I just couldn’t get the baby to move down much. It seemed like before too long they could see the head, but it didn’t really go beyond that point. I was in pain, lots of it. I couldn’t help but think “c-section”. I wasn’t the only one thinking that. After two hours, the nurse went to find the doctor to get his advice. I’d been pushing “really well”, but not making significant progress. The doctor was in a C-section at the time, so we pushed again until she could talk to him. After another half hour, he had a chance to advise her to have me stop pushing and rest for a while. I guess I rested about another half an hour, and then the doctor came in and gave me some choices. He asked if I would like him to try the vacuum. Seriously, at that point a C-section sounded like a better option because it would mean better pain killers. I didn’t say that, however. I voiced my concerns about the vacuum, like the increased chance of tearing (silly me not even thinking about the effect of the baby!). He did say that there could be some tearing, but it had a good chance of working. He wanted to try it a few times and then we would need to discuss a C-section. I asked if this was the logical step to take, and he said yes. I guess it didn’t make sense to keep pushing without it. So, we tried.
Those “two or three” tries turned into about 6 or so. A couple of those attempts were botched because he lost suction on the baby’s head. The first vacuum the used was broken, so they swapped it out. (I also think the nurse handling the suction part of the apparatus didn’t know what she was doing.) By this point, the fever I’d been developing was getting quite high. The last pre-delivery temperature I remember was about 101. I was exhausted, and just relying on all my support people to get me through it. Did I mention the puking? During the pushing I had at least three bouts of vomiting. I puked on both my husband and my doula. I didn’t have anything in my system to puke, so it was pretty annoying.
The doctor was encouraged by the progress being made with the vacuum and told me that we could have the baby on the “next” contraction. As it turns out, it took two more contractions. After one big push, everybody was quiet and I could hear little suction noises. I didn’t know if this was the vacuum or what. Then my husband leaned over and said quietly, “the head is out”. He tells me I said “Oh my God.”
Based on the knowledge I’d gained from watching baby shows, I knew the next obstacle was getting the shoulders out. Just a few days before I’d seen a show where the baby had to have it’s clavicle broken to get it through the birth canal. Luckily our kid had narrow (enough) shoulders and before I knew it, I saw a big slimy baby being held up in the air! I’m pretty sure I said, “I don’t believe it”. I looked down at my deflated belly – it was bizarre. We got the great surprise that it was a boy – I was wrong all along!
June 8, 2006, 4:29 am:
My husband and the baby went to the warming table. Somehow the details of my birth plan asking for the baby to be placed on my chest right away were lost. At that point I didn’t mind. The excruciating pain in my lower right abdomen had receded, and I just wanted to rest. Of course, I needed to get stitched up. The nurse took my temperature again – by then it had reached 103. I had been shivering through much of the pushing phase, and after delivering it got even worse. I had to keep my legs up in the stirrups while I got my stitches, and I couldn’t stop shaking.
The stitches seemed to take forever, but the doctor explained that it wasn’t that there was a lot to sew, he just went back and forth a few times. I felt somewhat reassured. Of course, he also told the nurse that there was a second-degree tear. I waited until now (3+ weeks post-partum) to google that… I suppose it could be worse, but still. Ugh. The good news is that I feel basically normal now.
There are some things they don’t tell you about in the childbirth classes. The so-called “massage” they do on your uterus to make it contract feels more like a brutal beating. I don’t know if it was because my epidural was useless at that point, or because they were massaging right on a fresh stretch mark, or what, but MAN did that hurt. And they kept coming back to do it some more! Ouch! The other thing nobody tells you about an epidural is how much it hurts when they rip the tape off your back afterwards. As if having a baby wasn’t painful enough, you have to do all this horrible stuff immediately after.
Anyway… I anxiously anticipated his weight and length. I was a little surprised he wasn’t bigger, but at 9lbs 7 oz he sure impressed the staff! There was something of a collective “no wonder that was so tough!”.
The policy at the hospital was to leave the family together with their newborn for two hours after the delivery. However, since I needed an antibiotic in my IV to combat the fever, we ended up getting an extra half hour. In that time, we decided on Axel’s name, and I held him and nursed him. I couldn’t believe how beautiful he was. Of course I’m biased, but really, he didn’t look like your typical wrinkly red newborn to me. After this time, Janice’s shift was over, and the sun was up. Our families were all notified, and my husband got to take him over to the nursery for the rest of his bathing, tests, shots, etc. I welcomed the rest it would give me.
June 8, 2006 7am-ish:
Once settled in my maternity ward room, I thanked the doula and let her go home. I then demanded some good drugs from my nurse. I got a vicodin. I think it worked well, but I still had quite a bit of pain in the ol’ perineum.
An hour or two later my husband returned with Axel. He reported that he enjoyed the bath and was very well behaved for his shots. I was happy to have them back, but still exhausted.
My nurse came in again to help me get cleaned up a bit. Since this was my first attempt to get out of bed in many hours, she had me sit up slowly, stand for a bit and move my feet in place. Once I got to the bathroom, though, I got very lightheaded. She sat me on the toilet to do my peri-care, but also called in a flock of other nurses to keep me from completely collapsing. My room was so small they kicked out my husband and the baby. She kept putting something horrible under my nose (ammonia, maybe?) to bring me back to consciousness. After a very quick cleaning, I was in a wheelchair and on my way back to bed. They reassured my husband that it’s not uncommon to have this happen.
Back in bed, I rested some more, and after some breakfast I started to feel normal. Eventually the nurse got me back into the bathroom for a nice little sponge bath. The rest of the day was spent resting and welcoming a few visitors. The night came quickly and we all settled in. At a few points during the night, the nursery called to ask us to bring Axel down for tests. The baby nurse also came by a few times to do checks. They kept him a while at the 4am test. He came back briefly, and then went back again for the 7am shift change and pediatrician visit. Shortly after 7am, the pediatrician came to my room and told me they were taking Axel to the NICU. My husband wasn’t in the room with me at the time – he had just taken Axel for his 7am check. At 4am they had run a test on Axel that indicated he may have an infection. They wanted to follow that up with a spinal tap and a round of antibiotics to identify any possible infection. I didn’t handle this news well on my own, despite the doctor’s reassurance that everything was probably fine. He left to find my husband, and I was left to freak out all by myself.
June 9, 2006, 8am-ish:
My husband quickly returned and we planned to go visit Axel in the NICU. Almost immediately, one of the NICU nurses came to the room and explained all the NICU things we needed to know. This hospital is very pro-breastfeeding, so she let us know that we could come and feed him whenever he needed it, and they would call us at those times.
Our first trip to the NICU was tough for me. It was so hard to see our little boy on monitors and with a big scary IV in his tiny hand. The hormones and sleep deprivation didn’t help, of course. We noticed quickly that they keep lots of boxes of tissues around. Our first nurse was wonderful – so friendly and reassuring. She reiterated what our pediatrician had said – chances were that nothing was wrong with him, but you don’t want to take risks with little babies.
We returned several times throughout the day to feed him and visit. In between I was still being monitored in the maternity ward. I’d been having problems getting my bladder working again following the removal of the foley catheter. They removed it, and I couldn’t “go”. So they put it back in for several hours. They took it out again and I still couldn’t go in significant quantities. I was impressed with the techniques they use to try to relax the bladder – one was pouring a small amount of peppermint oil into the little hat (that measures the urine). The vapors from the oil help relax things. Too bad it didn’t work, but at least my bathroom smelled nice and minty. The catheter was put back in and I was told there was a good chance I’d have to go home with it. Ugh.
That night we went back to the NICU every three hours to feed Axel, pee bag in tow. I was scheduled to be discharged the next morning. In yet another example of this hospital’s kindness, they scheduled my discharge for after dinner, and said I didn’t need to be out until 10pm when the room cleaner would come by. My industrial pee bag was swapped out with a much more sleek bag that I could strap to my leg. Luckily the clothes I’d brought to wear home included a nice pair of loose yoga pants that draped over it. I’d still need to empty the bag every few hours. The NICU had a couple of rooms for parents to spend the night – with preference for breastfeeding moms. That evening we transferred our things to one of those rooms and settled in on the not-so-comfy pull out chairs.
June 11, 2006
The details of the next day are fuzzy, as sleep deprivation had begun to really take its toll. We did escape out of the hospital between feedings to swing by our house. My husband got to take a shower for the first time since we went to the hospital. We ate some nice greasy fast food for lunch and high-tailed it back to the hospital just in time for the next feeding. That day we learned that though Axel’s antibiotics were done, his electrolytes were low and he would need to stay long enough to get those stabilized. My milk still hadn’t come in, and he needed food, so we reluctantly agreed to feed him formula by bottle. I was pumping after each feeding to try to get my milk in faster. At least the nurse-enforced feeding schedule allowed enough time for that! We wouldn’t be taking the baby home that day, and I was devastated. That night we stayed in the parents’ room once again. After one of the late feedings, I had a little meltdown. I was so frustrated and tired. I thought it was so unfair that nothing was really wrong with our baby, yet he had to stay in the hospital because the “treatment” he had received caused more problems. By this point I was physically beat. I was very swollen still from all the fluids pumped into me during the delivery. My ankles and feet were like water balloons. It was just bad.
June 12, 2006 9:30am
The new day brought good things, though. When I went in to say good morning to Axel and get his test results, we got the good news that we’d be taking him home! Within a couple hours we were in the car heading home at last.
And so our new lives begin!
