Baby is Here! (Part 2)

Honestly, the first thing I remembered when they said 7cm was Tracie blogging about the fact that when she got there at 7cm they said "good thing you didn't want an epidural!" I most definitely DID want drugs, and started asking for them immediately. :) Several nurses asked what my pain management plan was, and I always said some version of "Drugs. Lots of them. The sooner the better!" I got assigned a real room pretty quickly. (Even in the exhaustion and the pain, I remember smiling in my head about the fact that we got room #9! ;) 

The next 90 minutes or so were awful. I wish they were a blur. I kept thinking "everyone says they go someplace else to get away from the pain. Why am I not someplace else?!!" I was so horrible and mean to everyone, but I do remember apologizing from time to time in between the contractions. Mike called our parents at some point, and I yelled HANG UP THE PHONE. I felt bad because he needed support but I was pretty inhuman. I remember the doctor coming and saying he guessed it really was labor. I remember asking for drugs between almost every contraction. I remember inventing a new form of breathing and kicking and hip movement to get through each one, and trying to make patterns with counting. At some point there didn't seem to be much space in between the contractions anymore, but I kept promising I could sit still for the epidural if they would JUST PUT IT IN. (Needle phobia disappeared quickly) :) I also remembered that my friend got a shot of something to help mellow her out before her epidural went in, but I couldn't remember the name of the medicine to ask for. I just kept asking for "something to help." Eventually they gave me Nubain and I thought "YES! That's what I was supposed to ask for!" But it didn't do much. They kept telling me I had to wait for the IV bag of fluids to finish going in before they gave me the epi so that my blood pressure wouldn't crash. Finally, at 7am the anesthesiologist showed up. He was giving me the big ole speech about side effects. I didn't care. Mike was nice enough to give my medical history with anesthesia so I didn't have to talk. Then I had to sit up on the side of the bed and survive 3 contractions without whining into the pillow. He missed slightly to the right the first time and did it again. But it really didn't hurt at all. I was aware of what was going on, but definitely no pain. They checked me again and said I was between 8.5 and 9cm at that point. I seriously can’t believe I did that! But I don’t know how I would have survived the next several hours without the pain meds, because I was exhausted. The only way I got through the last 6 or 7 once the anesthesiologist was in the room was to think “Maybe this is it. Maybe after this one I get the drugs.”

Then, magically, life was good again. I called my mom to tell her I was human again. They switched nurses because it was 7am. A teacher came in and asked if a student nurse could hang out and I said ok because at that point, what's the difference? I feel bad that I don’t remember the nurse that got me through the worst pain, because my eyes were closed and I was panting most of the time she was with us. But at 7am we got the nurse that would be with us until baby arrived. Since I was all epi’d up, I was able to have conversations and ask questions about the whole process. She explained that if you have an epi and are in the “baby is coming soon” process of labor, you get a 1 on 1 nurse. She left for a couple moments occasionally to grab something/someone or to go to the staff meetings where they brief everyone on what’s happening in different rooms in case they need help, but 99% of the time she was there. Dr. G. stopped by at regular intervals to check what was going on as well. I asked if my water had broken since I couldn’t tell and they laughed and said the doctor had done that an hour ago. Oh!

The three hours between getting the epi and starting to push are actually the most lost in my brain. I think I did some quasi sleeping. I let a couple people know it was baby time. I was excited that they let me sip some cold water. I remembered being glad I brushed my teeth and showered before I came, because I felt gross even after doing those things. I remember being surprised that I didn’t notice there was an epi in my back even though I kept being flipped from side to back to other side. And then....