Baby Mugster's Birth Story
Jul 14, 2016 12:26:54 GMT -5
Post by mugster on Jul 14, 2016 12:26:54 GMT -5
This is a little overdue, but every time I think about my labor experience I cry... so, we'll see how this goes.
I had an irritable uterus, so I was having lots of Braxton Hicks contractions in the days leading up to labor. I kept wondering if I was going to be able to tell the difference between fake labor and real labor, since my contractions were always timeable (they loved to happen every four minutes and stick around for a couple of hours even when I changed positions). On June 29th, I had my first painful contractions. They were crampy and four minutes apart. They didn't last very long though, maybe 20 seconds? But I knew something had changed. Suddenly I went from thinking, we have at least a week till this kid arrives, to "he'll be here by the end of the weekend." I still didn't think that his arrival was imminent.
Then I got an email that stressed me out and I decided to go for a walk to burn off my anxiety. It was 95 degrees, and I walked for three miles. I didn't feel any contractions while walking, but when I got back, they started up again instantly. By 4 o'clock they had intensified to the point that I was sure I was in labor. They stayed close together (between three and four minutes) but lengthened to about 45 seconds and got progressively more painful. I stayed at home until about 10 pm when, after the second shower, I decided it would be less stressful to be near the hospital. In retrospect, I wish I'd tried to stay home that whole night... but I'm not sure I would have made it.
We went to the hospital and all the triage rooms were full. So I spent thirty minutes having contractions in the waiting room. I got back to triage and was 1 cm dilated, 90% effaced, and my blood pressure was high. They said because it was high, I couldn't walk around, and needed to lie on my left side. The second reading was also high, but it happened in the middle of a contraction! They told me that they wanted to monitor me for an hour. If my labor progressed, they would admit me. If it didn't they would give me a shot for the pain and send me home. I think we all thought I would be going home at that point, but after an hour I was 3 cm dilated and fully effaced, so they admitted me. By this point, I was exhausted and laboring in the bed on my side hurt a lot. I was also a bit demoralized by how little progress I had made, so I said yes to the iv narcotic in the hopes of sleeping a little. For the next hour, I slept between contractions (still 3 minutes apart) and then the pain came back and it was three more hours until I could have more. Basically, my labor was too advanced for the narcotic to be effective and it was epidural or nothing. I didn't need the epidural at this point, but was freaked out that I wouldn't be able to hold still for it if the pain I was in got much worse, and before I knew it I was agreeing to the epidural. Again, hindsight being 20/20, I wish I had held out longer. I think at this point they would have let me move around the room at least, and as soon as I sat up for the epidural, I felt so much better.
With the epidural though, I got some sleep, and we made some progress. Eventually we added in the tiniest bit of pitocin and by 10 am I was fully dilated, but still at +1 station? They made the bed mostly vertical and left me for an hour for gravity to do the work. Nothing changed. They left me for another hour, nothing changed. So I pushed. For two hours, and nothing changed, except I was pushing out his scalp (but not his skull). I hated having the epidural at this point. One of my legs was very numb and tingly and I wanted to feel the contractions more. I think I could have pushed more effectively if I had felt more, especially because the external monitors weren't picking up the contractions. They put in internal monitors, but at a certain point removed them in case they were impeding my progress. So we were relying on me to tell them when I was contracting. I also think that we might have been able to get him out if I could have moved more or tried more positions.
But, there was no way to undo the epidural. I had been in labor for 24 hours, complete for 4, and I was hungry and exhausted. Also, I was running a fever, Roar was somewhat distressed during contractions, I was tachycardic, and there was no reason to believe that pushing longer was going to change much. The OB still gave me the choice to push for one more hour, but he said the odds of it working were "10% and he was an optimist." We went for the suprise/urgent c-section. They re-dosed the epidural and my blood pressure dropped precipitously. I think they gave me something to raise it at that point? I shook uncontrollably for the whole procedure and for hours after. I also could barely keep my eyes open during the surgery. But Ror.ic arrived safe and sound at 5:20 pm on June 30, with just a fever to show for his troubles. My husband was able to be with me in the operating room, and he took lots of pictures of Roar getting measured and weighed. As soon as they had me on the gurney, they put him in my arms. But I was shaking so badly that I was terrified I would drop him. In recovery he latched no problem and we had some skin to skin until I begged my husband to hold him. I was in and out for the next few hours, and woke up fully to find that my blood pressure was high and that they wouldn't move me out of the pcu until it stabilized. That was never going to happen. The door kept opening and shutting, there were people in and out, and monitors beeping, and nowhere to put the baby that wasn't my arms or my husband's. I was exhausted and frazzled and desperate to be alone, and my blood pressure reflected how I felt. Finally I got them to call my doctor who was like, let that woman have a room, she's had enough. As soon as I was in a room, they checked my blood pressure and it was normal. Because of my blood pressure issues, I got to have my blood pressure checked every four hours for the rest of my stay, but it was only high one more time, on the day I went home, and nobody was worried at that point.
Because I had run a fever during labor, I had to be dosed with IV antibiotics, and since Roar also ran a fever, they gave him two different antibiotics for the next 48 hours and ran all kinds of labs on him. Some of those came back a little off at first, but ultimately nothing was seriously wrong. It still broke my heart to see him poked and prodded and to watch him try to stick his right hand (splinted with the iv) into his mouth.
My hospital stay was all kinds of miserable. It was the fourth of July weekend, and I had some seriously crappy nurses who did things like comment that my baby seemed hungry five times in the two minutes that they were taking his vitals. When I asked for pain killers, one of my nurses told me that "most new mothers prefer not to be groggy so that they can welcome visitors." Also, the clock in my room was broken, so time didn't move. I didn't realize this the first night, when the nurse told me that they had to take him out of the room to give him antibiotics and set up the iv and that they would bring him back around midnight. So I fell asleep, and when I woke up, I looked at the clock and it said 12:40. I was terrified that something had happened, and they'd had to take him to the NICU or worse. I tried to wake up my husband, but he didn't hear me, and I didn't even think of hitting the nurse button. I lay there for an hour freaking out until he was back in the room. Everything was okay, but extra hard, which is kind of how the whole stay went. As soon as the pediatrician cleared Roar, we got out of there and went home.
So not exactly the labor I wanted, but this kid is worth it:
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I had an irritable uterus, so I was having lots of Braxton Hicks contractions in the days leading up to labor. I kept wondering if I was going to be able to tell the difference between fake labor and real labor, since my contractions were always timeable (they loved to happen every four minutes and stick around for a couple of hours even when I changed positions). On June 29th, I had my first painful contractions. They were crampy and four minutes apart. They didn't last very long though, maybe 20 seconds? But I knew something had changed. Suddenly I went from thinking, we have at least a week till this kid arrives, to "he'll be here by the end of the weekend." I still didn't think that his arrival was imminent.
Then I got an email that stressed me out and I decided to go for a walk to burn off my anxiety. It was 95 degrees, and I walked for three miles. I didn't feel any contractions while walking, but when I got back, they started up again instantly. By 4 o'clock they had intensified to the point that I was sure I was in labor. They stayed close together (between three and four minutes) but lengthened to about 45 seconds and got progressively more painful. I stayed at home until about 10 pm when, after the second shower, I decided it would be less stressful to be near the hospital. In retrospect, I wish I'd tried to stay home that whole night... but I'm not sure I would have made it.
We went to the hospital and all the triage rooms were full. So I spent thirty minutes having contractions in the waiting room. I got back to triage and was 1 cm dilated, 90% effaced, and my blood pressure was high. They said because it was high, I couldn't walk around, and needed to lie on my left side. The second reading was also high, but it happened in the middle of a contraction! They told me that they wanted to monitor me for an hour. If my labor progressed, they would admit me. If it didn't they would give me a shot for the pain and send me home. I think we all thought I would be going home at that point, but after an hour I was 3 cm dilated and fully effaced, so they admitted me. By this point, I was exhausted and laboring in the bed on my side hurt a lot. I was also a bit demoralized by how little progress I had made, so I said yes to the iv narcotic in the hopes of sleeping a little. For the next hour, I slept between contractions (still 3 minutes apart) and then the pain came back and it was three more hours until I could have more. Basically, my labor was too advanced for the narcotic to be effective and it was epidural or nothing. I didn't need the epidural at this point, but was freaked out that I wouldn't be able to hold still for it if the pain I was in got much worse, and before I knew it I was agreeing to the epidural. Again, hindsight being 20/20, I wish I had held out longer. I think at this point they would have let me move around the room at least, and as soon as I sat up for the epidural, I felt so much better.
With the epidural though, I got some sleep, and we made some progress. Eventually we added in the tiniest bit of pitocin and by 10 am I was fully dilated, but still at +1 station? They made the bed mostly vertical and left me for an hour for gravity to do the work. Nothing changed. They left me for another hour, nothing changed. So I pushed. For two hours, and nothing changed, except I was pushing out his scalp (but not his skull). I hated having the epidural at this point. One of my legs was very numb and tingly and I wanted to feel the contractions more. I think I could have pushed more effectively if I had felt more, especially because the external monitors weren't picking up the contractions. They put in internal monitors, but at a certain point removed them in case they were impeding my progress. So we were relying on me to tell them when I was contracting. I also think that we might have been able to get him out if I could have moved more or tried more positions.
But, there was no way to undo the epidural. I had been in labor for 24 hours, complete for 4, and I was hungry and exhausted. Also, I was running a fever, Roar was somewhat distressed during contractions, I was tachycardic, and there was no reason to believe that pushing longer was going to change much. The OB still gave me the choice to push for one more hour, but he said the odds of it working were "10% and he was an optimist." We went for the suprise/urgent c-section. They re-dosed the epidural and my blood pressure dropped precipitously. I think they gave me something to raise it at that point? I shook uncontrollably for the whole procedure and for hours after. I also could barely keep my eyes open during the surgery. But Ror.ic arrived safe and sound at 5:20 pm on June 30, with just a fever to show for his troubles. My husband was able to be with me in the operating room, and he took lots of pictures of Roar getting measured and weighed. As soon as they had me on the gurney, they put him in my arms. But I was shaking so badly that I was terrified I would drop him. In recovery he latched no problem and we had some skin to skin until I begged my husband to hold him. I was in and out for the next few hours, and woke up fully to find that my blood pressure was high and that they wouldn't move me out of the pcu until it stabilized. That was never going to happen. The door kept opening and shutting, there were people in and out, and monitors beeping, and nowhere to put the baby that wasn't my arms or my husband's. I was exhausted and frazzled and desperate to be alone, and my blood pressure reflected how I felt. Finally I got them to call my doctor who was like, let that woman have a room, she's had enough. As soon as I was in a room, they checked my blood pressure and it was normal. Because of my blood pressure issues, I got to have my blood pressure checked every four hours for the rest of my stay, but it was only high one more time, on the day I went home, and nobody was worried at that point.
Because I had run a fever during labor, I had to be dosed with IV antibiotics, and since Roar also ran a fever, they gave him two different antibiotics for the next 48 hours and ran all kinds of labs on him. Some of those came back a little off at first, but ultimately nothing was seriously wrong. It still broke my heart to see him poked and prodded and to watch him try to stick his right hand (splinted with the iv) into his mouth.
My hospital stay was all kinds of miserable. It was the fourth of July weekend, and I had some seriously crappy nurses who did things like comment that my baby seemed hungry five times in the two minutes that they were taking his vitals. When I asked for pain killers, one of my nurses told me that "most new mothers prefer not to be groggy so that they can welcome visitors." Also, the clock in my room was broken, so time didn't move. I didn't realize this the first night, when the nurse told me that they had to take him out of the room to give him antibiotics and set up the iv and that they would bring him back around midnight. So I fell asleep, and when I woke up, I looked at the clock and it said 12:40. I was terrified that something had happened, and they'd had to take him to the NICU or worse. I tried to wake up my husband, but he didn't hear me, and I didn't even think of hitting the nurse button. I lay there for an hour freaking out until he was back in the room. Everything was okay, but extra hard, which is kind of how the whole stay went. As soon as the pediatrician cleared Roar, we got out of there and went home.
So not exactly the labor I wanted, but this kid is worth it:
