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Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Pregnancy Chronicles - He's here!

That's right! The baby is here. I'd say finally, but he came a few days early. I'm absolutely thrilled to meet my son, and I don't think I could love anything more. However, labor did not exactly go the way I wanted it to. You know that birth plan you have? Maybe even wrote it down for the doctors? Yeah, throw it away. It ain't gonna happen like that.

I guess it started 4:30 am on Friday. Maybe sometime before that, but I was too sleepy to think about contractions. I thought maybe it was terrible indigestion. So it wasn't until 4:30 that I had a big one, nasty enough that my husband woke to find his wife writhing in pain.

He got up and started packing a bag for the hospital. I told him he was nuts and that it was just false labor. All the signs for false labor were there. Inconsistent contractions, contractions that lessen when you change position or drink water, no blood, no mucus plug, etc. We started to keep track of the contraction time and duration because it's not like either of us were going back to sleep.

For the next couple of hours, that's what we did. I had contractions, he wrote it down, we did some laundry, packed the bag. The contractions remained inconsistent. Sometimes they were 20 minutes apart, sometimes 5. Sometimes they lasted for a few seconds, sometimes 30 seconds. You aren't supposed to go to the hospital until your contractions occur every 5 minutes for an hour. Everything pointed to false labor. I ended up convincing the hubby to go to work because I was confident the contractions would stop.

Two hours later, I asked him to come home. They had gotten bad. BAD I TELL YOU. Every 5 minutes, increasing intensity each time. I called the doctor, but the office is closed from 12-1:30. I called the emergency line but the unhelpful woman said to call the office. I told her the office was closed you dingbat and basically she provided NO help. That's okay because I had a few things around the house to finish up - which sounds crazy, but if you're going to the hospital for 2-3 days, you have to prepare a few things. We didn't end up leaving until 1:30 anyway, but at least I finally did get in touch with the doctor's office to let them know I was in labor.

I was dilated 4cm when we arrived at the hospital. It takes 10cm to give birth, 5cm to get an epidural. Within a few minutes, I was 5cm. Contractions were coming every 3 minutes and were insane. You want to know what it felt like? Have you ever had a leg cramp? Or a foot cramp? Where your muscle tenses and bulges and constricts for a few seconds and there ain't a damn thing you can do to help it? That, except for all over your abdomen and lower back.

Oh and here's a fun tidbit they didn't tell you in labor class: you can't get an epidural until you drain one complete IV bag of fluid. That fucker did not drip fast enough, I tell you. With the contractions 3 minutes apart, it was just a blur of pain. I'm not sure how women do this naturally. They kept asking me on a scale of 1 to 10, how bad was the pain. It was a 10, 10 I tell you! Stop asking stupid questions and get the epidural.

Hooray when it finally did come! I'm not sure I had a normal reaction to it. One, I could still move my legs pretty well. Even put weight on them. Two, I went a bit loopy. I don't remember much from this time except a few happy texts to family members and a feeling of sweet, blissful relief from the pain. Hubby and I started watching the machine I was hooked up to. We giggled as the contractions started coming 1 minute apart. Hehe, the peaks and valleys are so cute! Seriously, I was out of it.

My doctor arrived to break the bag of waters. Things went downhill from there, sorry to say. The baby's heartbeat decelerated. The doctor thinks he was leaning on the umbilical cord or grabbing it. The bag of waters that provided cushion between baby and cord was gone. They kept flipping me around in bed trying to find a position that would take the weight off the umbilical cord. We found one - on my side, with my leg up on a table. I've been in more comfortable positions. The thing is though, I had to lie there and not move an inch. I tried shifting my shoulder around once and the baby's heart rate dropped again.

I stayed there when I got pins and needles. I stayed there when it all went numb. I stayed there until I thought I would never regain feeling again. And I would've stayed there until my leg fell off. Unfortunately, labor was not going well. I had reached 7cm and plateaued.

An hour went by, still 7cm.

Another.

And another.

In total, I stayed at 7cm for 5 hours. Then my nightmare come true. The doctor said the baby's head was too swollen from the constant pushing against my cervix. And my cervix was swollen and didn't look like it was going to progress to 10cm. I had no choice but to get a Cesarean.

Now, I knew throughout the whole pregnancy that I did not want a Cesarean. I remember when we made our birth plan, I said to my husband, "Make sure they do everything possible before they slice me open." I don't like the idea of being cut into. I don't even like needles or IVs. All along, the ultrasounds and doctor appointments looked good. The baby was in position. No chance of a breech birth. Baby's weight was between 7 and 8lbs; doctor said I should be able to deliver that no problem. There was never any foreshadowing this might happen to me.

Which made this day the happiest and the most horrific of my life. I had an hour to prepare for surgery. One hour to come to terms with my fears, accept the fact they were going to cut into me, and mourn the loss of the labor I wanted. I'm not going to tell you the things I thought during that hour, but lets just say I was in a dark place.

See, there's a big difference between pushing life into the world and having it surgically removed. I was cheated out of a life experience that should've been mine. I WANTED to push, as crazy as that sounds. I wanted the physical challenge; I wanted to look at my son and know "I did that." The Cesarean took that all away from me. I had a few contractions, got an epidural, then got sliced up. You can't even call it labor. I certainly don't.

First they shave you. Then they inject more pain killers so you can't move at all. I could move my head around and my arms if I really tried. I remember being freezing cold (because the fluids and medications being injected into my veins were room temperature) and shaking uncontrollably. They put scrubs on the hubby and wheeled me into the operating room. All the doctors and nurses were really nice and calm, but I knew they didn't want to deal with my tears.

They set you on a table under really bright lights, arrange your arms spread eagle out to the side and expose everything breasts down. A curtain is placed in front of your face, which is a saving grace. Though at one point during the surgery, it become blood-splattered. I wondered if the curtain was for my piece of mind or just to minimize the cleanup.

The hubby was placed almost directly behind my head. He could watch the surgery even though they tried to shield him somewhat. It was awful. The doctor used a hot knife to cut my skin; I could smell my flesh burning. Hubby tried to distract me by pretending they hadn't started, but deep down in my drugged out state, I knew better. I knew what that smell was. I asked the nurses NOT to narrate for me or tell me a damn thing about the procedure. I just didn't want to know. It took every ounce of courage I had just to be in that room. But I was doing it, for my baby.

At some point, it occurred to me that this was a bigger test. Yes, I wanted the physical challenge of labor. I wanted to beat it and deliver my son into the world. I was always afraid of a Cesarean, so maybe this was my thing I had to face. I clung to that idea throughout the surgery and it helped. However, it's not true. I still feel cheated and still feel like a failure. A healthy pregnancy for 9 months and my son had to be delivered by scalpel. I didn't even get a chance to push.

Again, I think I had a weird reaction to the pain killers. The doctor said she was going to apply pressure on my diaphragm area to get the baby into a position where they could grab him. She said it was going to feel like "an elephant standing on your chest". I felt her moving around a little and wondered when she was going to get started. About a week later, the hubby told me the two doctors were yanking on my abdominal muscles as hard as they could to expose the baby. Turns out, all those hours of yoga did NOT help. Weak abs make surgery easier. Anyway, so I was waiting for this elephant to arrive when hubby pointed to our baby in the incubator next to us. I was too drugged out and weak to see him or touch him. They took Baby away, with the hubby, while they closed my incision and cleaned me up. It took about an hour until I saw him again. Yet another thing taken from me.

I finally did hold him and it was one of the happiest moments of my life. Then the pain killers from the surgery started to wear off. My incision felt like it had been lit on fire. The nurse wasn't exactly snappy with the pills; I had to call for her twice. The pain got so bad I couldn't enjoy my son in my arms. And he was so beautiful. With gooey crap in his hair, little upturned nose, an overbite, and a chin exactly like his daddy's. I just wanted to stare at him, but the pain kept returning me to the planet Earth. It shouldn't have been like that.

The first night was kinda terrible. It took the nurses a few hours to clean me up, manage the pain, and track my vitals to make sure I was okay. They sent hubby to sleep in another room while they took care of me. Eventually they wheeled me to his room and brought the baby to stay with us.We stayed there for 4 days until I was strong enough to go home. I'm still not allowed to go up or down stairs, or do normal things like cough and sneeze. But at least I'm home and I have my son.

He was born at 12:56am. 7 lbs, 7oz, 20 inches long. Perfect in every way.






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