Labor & delivery nightmare...ehem, I mean story...
Sooo...not sure if I've implied this already, but I did NOT have an easy labor and delivery.
It's funny because in the weeks leading up to the date, I always though that if I was meant to have more children, that a sign would be an easy labor. Then I would be encouraged to go through it all again. I think God heard me up there and pulled a Marshall Erickson from How I Met Your Mother: "Oh, honey sweetie baby." and gave me the craziest labor, so it would be crystal clear that I wasn't meant to do this again.
Let me start at the beginning. Please keep in mind that my post-partum memory loss combined with the trauma of the experience and the sheer exhaustion has kept me from remembering a lot of details, but I will try to jot down what I do remember.
Tuesday, March 7th, I had a doctor's appointment. During the last trimester, I had weekly stress tests and doctor's check ups. Those were loads of fun. Not. So I went to do my test first, then was going to talk to the doctor after. The stress test part was fine, baby responded and all was good. Then before sending me over to the doctor's office, they check my fluids to make sure all was well. The tech did say they were a little low before sending me over, but I thought nothing of it.
We head over to the doctor's office and sit and wait (which we did a lot with her), and her assistant came in and sat down and said "It's time." And I'm like "time for what?" And she says "Time for the baby to come out!". I started laughing and crying, and looking at my husband in disbelief. I was in shock. We weren't expecting that. The doctor had talked about inducing me, and it was my belief that that Tuesday is the day they would schedule the induction, not the day they would start it. We hadn't even brought our hospital bag with us, something I wanted to kick myself for. We carried that thing around for weeks, and the day we needed it, decided to leave it behind. We forgot it actually, and just decided it wasn't a big deal not to go back for it. Boy were we wrong.
Immediately after our appointment, we were directed to go check-in at the hospital. So at around 11:30am, we were sitting there, waiting for our room to get ready. We were in disbelief. We informed our relatives, still in shock, and we each let our bosses know, still in shock. Between 12 - 12:30pm, we were let into a room. It was a nice, big room, one of the bigger ones the hospital had, so we got lucky in that respect. I put my gown on and was strapped to a million and one monitors.
Side note: I despised the fetal monitors. I get their purpose and their importance, but they had to continuously come by and adjust and move me and fix the straps, it was such a pain in the butt. I was drifting off to sleep and they had to come in and wake me to adjust the straps. There was no comfortable position in that bed thanks to those monitors.
Oh, another side note. My baby was born Friday, March 10th. That's right. I was admitted on a Tuesday and gave birth on a Friday.
So here's bits of what I do remember:
My last meal before they put me on liquids was chicken parmesan from this awesome place by my old house.
The rest of the time I ate chicken or beef broth (tasteless), jello and apple or grape juice. They also gave me ginger ale, but I think it's gross.
I was started on Pitocin that same Tuesday, because I was only dialated 1 cm.
Getting my cervix checked was one of the most painful things aside from the baby actually popping out. I hated it.
We donated cord blood, so my baby was generous even before he was in this earth.
The Pitocin wasn't dialating me, so a balloon was inserted to help me open more.
My water was broken by a nurse, since it wasn't breaking on its own.
My contractions (thanks to the Pitocin) got strong enough that I asked for an epidural which felt amazing at the time, but am now regretting due to back pain.
Sometime on Thursday, the doctors and their team walked in to have a talk with me. It seemed serious based on their demeanor. They said that my cervix wasn't dialating as quickly as they would like and that I may need to have a c-section. At that point, I was exhausted and welcoming of a c-section. That's when they dropped the bomb on me: these two littel fibroids that they located during ultrasounds that they said were normal were apparently located right at the spot where the incision would have to be for a c-section, therefore requiring them to make the incision elsewhere. This would put me at a risk of bleeding out, and possibly having to have my uterus removed and being unable to have anymore children. They left us with this news and walked out.
I, of course, cried. I mean, I was already exhausted and for that to be the moment I first hear about this was really hard. My mom, sister and husband got emotional too. That's when we decided that a c-section was out of the question then. Luckily, we had an amazing nurse at that time, Brenda. She walked in and tried to calm me down, said doctors can be dramatic and that I was having this baby on her shift. All she asked was that I don't have the baby at 6:40am because her shift ended at 7 and she didn't want to deal with the paperwork.
Brenda put me to work. Because I had an epidural I couldn't get out of bed, so she brought me all sorts of stretching devices that I could use from the bed. My favorite was called the bean. I was sitting up and stretching on the bed, and putting these devices in between my legs to further my stretches. Around this time, I was also feeling the urge to go #2, which she said could be one of the signs that it was time. I paged her and told her so. She got the doctor to come in to shove her hand in me, which hurt like heck, and they declared me not ready yet.
I kept stretching and having contractions until around 4 in the morning, when the urge to poop was getting stronger. I paged her again and told her that I had to go poop and that I was going to do it on the bed if something didn't happen soon. All of a sudden it was time.
The team all came in and gathered around my end. My husband was to my left and my mom and sister to my right. And it was time to push.
I will continue this loooooooong story in my next post. Sorry for the cliffhanger, but really, we all know the ending to the story, he's waiting for me at home, ready to not let me sleep.
It's funny because in the weeks leading up to the date, I always though that if I was meant to have more children, that a sign would be an easy labor. Then I would be encouraged to go through it all again. I think God heard me up there and pulled a Marshall Erickson from How I Met Your Mother: "Oh, honey sweetie baby." and gave me the craziest labor, so it would be crystal clear that I wasn't meant to do this again.
Let me start at the beginning. Please keep in mind that my post-partum memory loss combined with the trauma of the experience and the sheer exhaustion has kept me from remembering a lot of details, but I will try to jot down what I do remember.
Tuesday, March 7th, I had a doctor's appointment. During the last trimester, I had weekly stress tests and doctor's check ups. Those were loads of fun. Not. So I went to do my test first, then was going to talk to the doctor after. The stress test part was fine, baby responded and all was good. Then before sending me over to the doctor's office, they check my fluids to make sure all was well. The tech did say they were a little low before sending me over, but I thought nothing of it.
We head over to the doctor's office and sit and wait (which we did a lot with her), and her assistant came in and sat down and said "It's time." And I'm like "time for what?" And she says "Time for the baby to come out!". I started laughing and crying, and looking at my husband in disbelief. I was in shock. We weren't expecting that. The doctor had talked about inducing me, and it was my belief that that Tuesday is the day they would schedule the induction, not the day they would start it. We hadn't even brought our hospital bag with us, something I wanted to kick myself for. We carried that thing around for weeks, and the day we needed it, decided to leave it behind. We forgot it actually, and just decided it wasn't a big deal not to go back for it. Boy were we wrong.
Immediately after our appointment, we were directed to go check-in at the hospital. So at around 11:30am, we were sitting there, waiting for our room to get ready. We were in disbelief. We informed our relatives, still in shock, and we each let our bosses know, still in shock. Between 12 - 12:30pm, we were let into a room. It was a nice, big room, one of the bigger ones the hospital had, so we got lucky in that respect. I put my gown on and was strapped to a million and one monitors.
Side note: I despised the fetal monitors. I get their purpose and their importance, but they had to continuously come by and adjust and move me and fix the straps, it was such a pain in the butt. I was drifting off to sleep and they had to come in and wake me to adjust the straps. There was no comfortable position in that bed thanks to those monitors.
Oh, another side note. My baby was born Friday, March 10th. That's right. I was admitted on a Tuesday and gave birth on a Friday.
So here's bits of what I do remember:
My last meal before they put me on liquids was chicken parmesan from this awesome place by my old house.
The rest of the time I ate chicken or beef broth (tasteless), jello and apple or grape juice. They also gave me ginger ale, but I think it's gross.
I was started on Pitocin that same Tuesday, because I was only dialated 1 cm.
Getting my cervix checked was one of the most painful things aside from the baby actually popping out. I hated it.
We donated cord blood, so my baby was generous even before he was in this earth.
The Pitocin wasn't dialating me, so a balloon was inserted to help me open more.
My water was broken by a nurse, since it wasn't breaking on its own.
My contractions (thanks to the Pitocin) got strong enough that I asked for an epidural which felt amazing at the time, but am now regretting due to back pain.
Sometime on Thursday, the doctors and their team walked in to have a talk with me. It seemed serious based on their demeanor. They said that my cervix wasn't dialating as quickly as they would like and that I may need to have a c-section. At that point, I was exhausted and welcoming of a c-section. That's when they dropped the bomb on me: these two littel fibroids that they located during ultrasounds that they said were normal were apparently located right at the spot where the incision would have to be for a c-section, therefore requiring them to make the incision elsewhere. This would put me at a risk of bleeding out, and possibly having to have my uterus removed and being unable to have anymore children. They left us with this news and walked out.
I, of course, cried. I mean, I was already exhausted and for that to be the moment I first hear about this was really hard. My mom, sister and husband got emotional too. That's when we decided that a c-section was out of the question then. Luckily, we had an amazing nurse at that time, Brenda. She walked in and tried to calm me down, said doctors can be dramatic and that I was having this baby on her shift. All she asked was that I don't have the baby at 6:40am because her shift ended at 7 and she didn't want to deal with the paperwork.
Brenda put me to work. Because I had an epidural I couldn't get out of bed, so she brought me all sorts of stretching devices that I could use from the bed. My favorite was called the bean. I was sitting up and stretching on the bed, and putting these devices in between my legs to further my stretches. Around this time, I was also feeling the urge to go #2, which she said could be one of the signs that it was time. I paged her and told her so. She got the doctor to come in to shove her hand in me, which hurt like heck, and they declared me not ready yet.
I kept stretching and having contractions until around 4 in the morning, when the urge to poop was getting stronger. I paged her again and told her that I had to go poop and that I was going to do it on the bed if something didn't happen soon. All of a sudden it was time.
The team all came in and gathered around my end. My husband was to my left and my mom and sister to my right. And it was time to push.
I will continue this loooooooong story in my next post. Sorry for the cliffhanger, but really, we all know the ending to the story, he's waiting for me at home, ready to not let me sleep.
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