So many wires... definitely scary!
After much thought, I have decided to share with you how my labor went. A lot went wrong with my delivery and I and hoping to share this experience with you and you can prepare yourself. In no way do I intend to scare anyone. I know during the last few months of my pregnancy everyone thought this was the best time to share their horror stories with me. Most were just women complaining they had the WORST contractions ever, and how I would be miserable etc. But looking back, those were not true horror stories, and I found that most women have a true horror story, don't walk around telling their story. I also found that sometimes, going through something really hard like a horrible labor and then your child spending time in the NICU can make you friends that are more important than anything.
I am going to start this off by telling you that I wanted a natural birth, with no medical interventions. My entire pregnancy I wanted no pain medications, I really wanted nature to take it's course. However during my second trimester I began to have complications. Little miss had a cyst on her brain and I was having problems with keeping hydrated. Then around 31 weeks I began having contractions. Over the next 8 weeks, I was in and out of the hospital with regular contractions, each time they would monitor her and make sure she was doing okay, since this could have put too much stress on her little body. Around 33 weeks I was put on complete bed rest, only allowing 30 minutes to get food and pee a day. Once I hit 35 weeks, my high risk doctor was concerned the cyst was still there, so my OB decided to have me going in every five days or so for a NST (non-stress test, or fetal monitoring).
One of the many NST's
I went in on a Thursday morning for a check up, I was 39 weeks and 5 days. I was only 1 cm dilated and had been having string contractions since the previous night; my doctor was highly concerned. When she checked her heart rate it was slightly low. Between her heart rate being low, the contractions that had been going on for almost 10 weeks, and the fact that they were not helping the labor progress had her concerned. She decided that it was time to induce me. Now since I wanted my labor to be natural she suggested we start with the Cervidil pill, and that should help speed things along. We discussed that since her heart rate was low she wanted to keep me in the hospital until I gave birth. After the pill, if it didn't work we would go to the gel. I was never okay with Pitocin, as this can bring the contractions on too suddenly and can harm the baby. I went home, made a few phone calls and then it was off the the hospital for me. That night was the hardest to get sleep. Between the uncomfortable bed to the nerves coursing through my body, I was wide awake. If you don't know anything about Cervidil, once administered you can not walk for the first 4 hours, and they take it back out after 12 hours and check your dilation to see if it helped or not.
At 4 AM my nurse came in and removed the pill, and I had no progress. She then went out to the nurses station and called my doctor. When she came back in she started to adjust my IV, and before I realized it (it was about 4:30 AM and I was only half awake) she was administering Pitocin. So now as you can imagine I am extremely upset since that was the last thing that I have ever wanted. By 8 AM I am at maximum dosage and there is no progress. My doctor comes in and tells me she wants to break my water. I have my concerns but I ask her why she wants to and what the benefits are of having this procedure done. She told me that my daughters stress was starting to show and that by breaking my water that it would help speed labor along naturally as it would just move her down father in my uterus against my cervix and help to dilate me. My biggest question was, is there a time limit that once expired I would have to have a cesarean? She talk me that there was not a time limit, but that once my water was broken I could not go home. She kept hounding and hounding so I finally gave in. At 9 AM Friday she broke my water.
Throughout the day she increased my dosage of Pitocin until it was double the maximum dosage. My contractions were hard and strong, yet they were not doing anything. I tried breathing through them, I tried walking, I tried my labor ball. Nothing was working or helping. I was running on 2 hours of sleep and the exhaustion was setting in. My contractions were 2 minutes long and I was only getting about 15 to 20 seconds between each one. Normally they should last about one and a half minutes and you should get about a minute between when you are 7-10 centimeters and ready to push. I was only 2 centimeters. At 8 that night I finally gave in. After almost 48 hours of labor, I told the nurse to call for the epidural. Before you give me grief for giving in too soon and everything else, let me explain my reasoning. I had no sleep under my belt, keeping my mind off the pain was becoming harder and harder to do. It was consuming me. I was also only 2 centimeters. I had hours to go before I was ready to push, and even if I magically jumped to 10 centimeters I had no energy to push. I knew that I needed sleep.
The anesthesiologist came with the epidural, and I was terrified to say the least. I am petrified of needles, and I knew how big that needle was and where it was going. I have to say, he was such a sweetheart, trying to crack jokes to keep my mind off of things. Right as he administered the local anesthetic I began to have a contraction. I was screaming in pain, I could feel the medicine burning at the same time as the contraction. He then told me he was going to put in the epidural needle. He missed the spot the first time and I was in searing pain. He backed out the needle and tried again, this time with success. With each contraction, the pain got less and less. I climbed back into bed and once my contractions were only able to be seen on the monitor and no longer felt, I passed out for about 4 hours. When I finally woke up, I was hoping to have progressed some. I was still just 3 centimeters. I felt distraught. As the night progressed nurse after nurse checked me. I slowly climbed; 3, 4, 5. I finally felt like things were coming along.
My face after the epidural took effect
At about 3 during shift change my new nurse came in. She checked me and I was hoping for a 6, and to be finally more than half way there. To my surprise I was back to a 3! I have no idea how I can regress, she claims I was never a 5 and that the nurse must have been lying to me. She went back out the the nurses station and about 20 minutes later she came rushing back in with a handful of papers and informed me that they had decided to do a cesarean. The next thing I know there are 4 other nurses in the room prepping me for surgery. I yelled for everyone to stop. I was furious. I had no consented to this and was beyond pissed this was happening. My doctor came in and explained that I had spiked a fever and that it suggested an infection, and since my water was broken this could be bad news for baby. She was also showing signs of stress. But her biggest reason for the surgery was the fact that I had been rupture for so long. This set me off, since I was told it didn't matter how long I was ruptured for. Then we found out that they hadn't given me enough fluids, so they began pushing bag after bag of fluids just so they could up my epidural. I was shaking violently I was so terrified. My heart rate was stuck at 180, and nothing they said could calm me down. As the wheeled me off to the OR, my person was still putting on scrubs to come back to the room with me.
As they prepped me in the OR my shaking continued. My heart rate was up to 220, and I now had a new set of nurses and a new anesthesiologist. He was also a sweetheart and tried to crack jokes with me and calm me down. He allowed me to have my arms free and unrestrained since I was already a nervous wreck. They started the surgery before my person was in the room with me. Unfortunately everything after this point gets fuzzy, and I will explain why. I began to bleed uncontrollably on the table. In the haste to get my daughter out, they ripped my incision site. They got her out onto the table and everyone laughed as I guess she stretched all her limbs out. However she wasn't breathing right so the nurses whisked her away. I was bleeding horribly internally and it became extremely hard to breathe. And suddenly I felt EVERYTHING. It felt like they were tearing everything or stabbing me. I started screaming and crying in agony. My doctor wanted them to push Versed. My anesthesiologist argued, he was afraid I wouldn't remember anything and didn't want to give me it. They had to push 6 units of Versed before I was no longer in pain. I then passed out. I never got to see my daughter.
As she was starting the stretch
I woke up to my doctor talking to me, but she sounded like the Peanuts teacher. I can barely remember her making any sense at all, she sounded like, "Wah wah wah baby girl wah wah 9 pounds wah wah good job wah wah mom." Yupp, that is all I understood. I promptly passed back out and woke up in recovery with a woman yelling at me to move my feet. I asked how my daughter was and she told me she was perfectly healthy, and waiting in my room to meet me and all I had to do was be able to move my feet and that I could then go back. I struggled for the next hour to get my damn feet to move. She finally gave in and told me it was close enough (since I could only move one foot and one toe on the other foot). As she started to wheel me to my room, he shift replacement showed up. The following conversation took place between the women. "Is this room 184?" "Yea, were headed up there now so she can see her baby." "Oh! Her baby is in the NICU, didn't you know?" And that is how I found out my daughter was in the NICU. I started to freak out. We got to my room and my family greeted me with pictures of my daughter. This was one of the harder moments during this, to know everyone else had seen her and yet I hadn't.
But the hits kept coming, I started having clotting complications. The nurses then informed me that I could not go down and see my baby for a minimum of 6 hours. This meant that it was 8 in the morning now and it would be a minimum of 2 PM before I could see my daughter. I burst into tears. People were taking turns going down to see my daughter and bringing me back videos and pictures. But nothing would compare to seeing her for the first time. Finally the nurse came back and told me that if I wanted to see my daughter, that I would have to stand up and walk to the bathroom by myself to be cleared. So 6 hours after major surgery I was forced to walk. I think she was doubting my ability. But I forced myself to stand and walk to the bathroom door, tears streaming down my face the whole time. But I was cleared and down to the NICU I went.
The first moment I held her.
It was hard to see her in all of those wires. She was NPO (which means nothing by mouth) for the first day. Which of course meant no breast feeding. But I pumped for when she could start eating. She was in the NICU for one whole week. I stayed in the hospital the entire time with her. I went down for every feeding. I made friends with another girl who had her son the same morning in a very similar situation to mine. Her NICU stay was hard on everyone and I am glad she became healthy and could go home. The wait was worth it though.
I am thinking about going into the problems we ran into with the NICU in another post, let me know if you guys would be interested in it. I hope this helps someone out there. I guess what I am trying to convey is, no matter what your birth plan is, be prepared for anything. I never researched a c-section so when it came time to go into it, I had no idea what to expect or how to mentally prepare myself. I wish I had known more about rupturing of the membranes and Pitocin prior to going into the hospital. Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes and make yourself prepared for the unknown, and don't be so hard on yourself if it doesn't go your way. But my biggest word of wisdom here if things don't go as planned? You are not defective, it is not your fault, and you did not do anything wrong! I felt like it was all my fault, and I felt like a failure as a mother and just plain defective. But you can't feel this way! Stay positive! You will get through it! Much love y'all, can't wait to start blogging about baby things now!
The day we finally got to go home!
