Baby is Here! (Part 3)

Just after 10am, they decided it was time for me to push. I wasn’t very good at it for a long time. They said my epi was too good. I laughed at that. But eventually as the pressure got stronger I could understand what they were telling me to do. Mike had to remind me to tuck my chin every single push. I don’t know why I couldn’t remember that, and I don’t know how he did remember it every time, but he did. There was lots of time between pushes at the beginning. When we got to the hour mark I asked how much longer and they said for first time moms with an epi the average was 2 hours. After that was when I got better at the pushing. They continued flipping me from side to side and on to my back sometimes. I was fascinated that I could tell I had legs, they were just really heavy. I could move myself around in the bed more than they thought I should be able to, but I had to use my hands to move my legs because they were like giant logs. At some point everyone got excited because they could see the head and that meant I was close. I remember thinking, “Yay! If they can see the head I’m probably going to do this w/out needing a csection!” But who knows if that’s really true.

I’m guessing that all the monitor looking and quiet conversations meant more than I realized at the time because right around the 2 hour mark, the room started getting busy. Previously, it had been me, Mike, my nurse & her student, and occasionally the doctor. After the doc and nurse both made a phone call, we gained I think 3 nurses plus the on call pediatrician. The warmer for the baby had been in the room for awhile, but they brought in a giant tool box thing with baby stuff, the plastic bassinet thing that baby would be living in, and a giant scale. The doctor disappeared into the closet and came out fully gowned with a mask instead of in her scrubs and hoodie like she had been all day. The nurse explained that the baby needed help getting out because his heart rate was starting to show that he wasn’t tolerating the contractions as well anymore. I got a little worried and asked what kind of help. She explained they were going to use the vacuum (I was glad we had seen the tiny contraption at baby class so that I wasn’t visualizing a Dyson or something.) Luckily, after one set of pushes with the vacuum, only 25 seconds or so, the baby was out!

They gave me the wiggly baby and I did ask, “Is it still a boy?!” and it was. They let me hold him for awhile while he screamed and they sucked stuff out of him and rubbed him down. Then they took him to the warmer so the pediatrician could check him. Since he kept screaming and peed 4 times in less than 5 minutes, the pediatrician laughed, did his checking, and said he was fine. Due to the vacuum, they had to measure his head and make sure he was ok, but they weren’t concerned since the vacuum wasn’t on for very long. Finally they gave him back to me clean and dry and snuggly.

The only real down side is that around then I realized that the doctor and nurse were still busy working on me. It took them about a half hour to fix me up and I’m still dealing with some issues 9 days later. That part isn’t fun at ALL. I feel like I will be able to be more of a parent once I can walk, sit, and generally not be in a lot of pain. Thankfully, Mike is awesome and is doing pretty much everything baby related (other than food of course) and my mom is doing everything household related and Mike’s parents have brought dinner a couple times and now that my dad is here he’s doing some shopping and errand running. So that means all I have to do is lay on the couch and feed the baby on demand. That part seems to be going reasonably well. I set low expectations since my body rarely does what I ask of it but I think we’re surviving. And that’s that!

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....

Baby Is Here! (Part 1)

Saturday, March 2nd was the local chocolate festival. It was yummy! Then my mom and I ran walked around and did some errands at Target and a couple other places. That evening, Mike's parents came over for dinner. We headed down to an Italian place in HdG. I had some tummy issues throughout the day, but nothing terrible. Enough to put the thought in the back of my mind that maybe my body was getting ready! A few days earlier, Tuesday, I thought I had the stomach bug so I stayed home from school. I never got sick, but I had to lay really still or I got dizzy and gross like being carsick. Some people say that's a sign of your body getting ready too, but with all the sickness at school who knows. ANYWAY. I ate a regular sized dinner and then had a giant piece of chocolate cake for dessert while everyone else watched. It was good.

When we got home, Mike's parents stayed for awhile and then they left. Then my mom went to bed and Mike was playing on the computer so I sat on the couch and played on the computer and read a book. Since my mom had been coming to school with me for 3 days, it was the first time since Tuesday I had been alone with nothing to do. I stayed up til 1am which is incredibly unusual for me, especially during pregnancy. Most of the time I went to bed around 9 even on the weekends. I remember having one cramp, not even really as strong as the contractions I was having 10 days ago at the dr's office. Definitely not anything that made me believe labor was imminent.

At 3:30am, I partially woke up and noticed my hips hurt. This isn't new because they've been hurting for months. I had PT on Friday so at first I thought we just did something during my weekly adjustment. But then, it HURT. And then a few minutes later they hurt again. I got up and walked around, trying to get my blood pumping. I kept an eye on the clock and realized the pain was coming just about every 5 minutes. I wasn't noticing any cramping, any tightness in my stomach, or anything like that so at first I completely dismissed the idea that it could be labor. But since the pain was coming in waves with totally fine moments in between, I started getting suspicious. Supposedly if it's fake labor or braxton hicks, changing your activity should change the feeling or pattern. So I paced and walked and at some point woke up Mike to let him know what was going on. Then I took a shower to see if that helped, because that often helps with my pain. It didn't make a difference, and the pain started getting worse. Instead of just being "yowee - that isn't right" it started becoming "my hips are going to separate from my body!" 

I remembered from baby class that if the baby was pointing a certain direction, it would cause back labor. I didn't feel like this was in my back, more in my hips, but hired Mike to push my hips together every time the pain happened. It didn't make it go away, but it made it slightly better less agonizing. At one point I tried bouncing on Mike's exercise ball but that wasn't really helping either. Although it did help me get through a phone conversation with the doctor. I decided to call the doctor at 4:30 and get his opinion. He thought that since I didn't have any stomach pain or cramps, it was probably just early labor. Luckily he gave me permission to come in and get checked if it got worse. Just in case, Mike grabbed some things that we couldn't pre-pack because we use them frequently. We both had clothes and stuff packed but I had a list on top of the bag with things like phone charger, iPad, camera, etc. At some point we woke my mom up and she came down, but I sent her back upstairs because I didn't want to yell and scream in front of everyone. The cat was all out of sorts, so I guess he figured something wasn't right too. (Plus it was almost 5am at this point, and we were downstairs, so he thought it was breakfast time!)

I think I made it another half hour before I decided that we needed to go to the hospital. Even if it wasn't labor, I was hoping they could help me out or help me relax because I was in so much pain. It probably only took us 10 minutes to get to the front door of L&D, but that was a long 10 minutes. I had 3 waves of pain in the car, so they were pretty close together by then. When we got buzzed in, I was very very thankful that I had been in triage a few weeks ago because I was already in the system and they only needed my SSN to get me a room. Two nurses saw me through the door and came out to get me while I was huffing and puffing. They checked me and poof - I was 7 centimeters so I knew we were going to stay!