I should start by saying that I did not enjoy my pregnancy. Oh sure, her little kicks and movements were a riot and I enjoyed talking to her while she was cooking, but that was it. All other parts of pregnancy were horrible. But nothing prepared me for the last month where I went from this:
to this:
That last picture was taken on my due date. Those last 2 weeks I was kicking myself for not really paying attention to all those "wives tales" on how to get your baby to come out early. It was something that I thought was silly and not for me until it got to the point that nothing fit me, including shoes. Walking was too difficult and I couldn't fit behind the wheel of my car! When my due date came and went I was getting rather desperate and if you are my friend on facebook you'll know this, a little bit whiny.
Finally at 3:30am on June 1st on one of my many trips to the bathroom, I noticed that things were a little different on this go around. There was some wetness that could not be explained as normal.
I had tested positive for Group B strep so my doctor had ordered me to come right into the hospital. I woke up the husband, called the hospital to let them know we were coming, and off we went! As soon as we got there I had to undergo some tests to make sure my water had actually broke. Uh... yea, it had.
I was given the antibiotics that I would have to get every 4 hours and a whole lot of fluids through an IV. I was not having any contractions at this point, so Brian and I settled in for the waiting game. I gave the nurses a bit of a scare when the monitor for Evelyn slipped and picked up my heart beat. One of the nurses came racing into the room and then was a bit annoyed with me.
At this point I'm still not having contractions, but I totally feel like a beached whale! My doctor came in to see me and check on the dilation, but I was at a 3 and not moving. Also, it turns out that my water breaking had not happened in the correct spot. It had been a forward breakage so the water sac was in tact for where my baby needed to come out. My lovely doctor decided that we needed to break that. So she did! Let me tell you ladies, that was the weirdest and the messiest thing ever. I had a ton of amniotic fluid and it all came rushing out. So much so that it flooded the hospital bed and started spilling onto the floor. My nurse, who was awesome and who I will call Good Nurse tried not to giggle, but since Brian was laughing, she couldn't help it. I went to the bathroom while Good Nurse cleaned everything up.
After that I was allowed to walk around in between antibiotic doses. Brian and I did several slow laps around the building. I was getting contractions but not really close together and not painful. Just enough for me to stop walking, lean against the wall and breath through them.
Still no big contractions so I started getting some Pitocin and that helped out. About this time as well, there was a decision made that I needed to have internal monitoring of both the contractions and the baby. Let me tell you, having the internal monitors hooked up was the most painful thing I had experienced up until that point. I was hating life. Even with my awesome Doctor and Good Nurse working as fast as they could, having monitors hooked up to me and to my baby hurt and i'll admit I was crying when they finished. Then I just had to deal with cords coming out of my vagina and having to be unhooked from all the machines every time I had to pee.
Brian's mom was flying into town so she got to the hospital by then. I also had some visits from my brother and sister-in-law and our good friend Andy stopped by. He was awesome and took care of our dog that morning and also drove Brian's mom to our house from the hospital so she could drop off her stuff and pick up my car for her use.
About this time our Good Nurse said goodbye and got off shift and said she'd come visit us and the new baby tomorrow when she came back. In walked Bad Nurse. Ugh... We would spend the next 12 hours with Bad Nurse. She kept making Brian sick with her attitude and my Mother-in-law, who is a nurse, kept double checking everything Bad Nurse did to make sure it wasn't going to hurt me. Bad Nurse started our relationship by saying that she had informed the anesthesiologist that we didn't need him. That was very much NOT TRUE! Now to be fair, we had been at the hospital for 14 and a half hours by the time her shift started, I had progressed from 3 to 4 cm. I was tired and starting to hurt and I was worried that it was taking so long. I started to ask Bad Nurse to communicate to my doctor that if we needed to do a C=Section, we could. At about 10 pm I got my epidural put in. Wowza! That was another painful experience, but I was happy to have it because things started hurting.
Brian and I tried to get some sleep but part of my abdomen was not responding to the epidural. I had Bad Nurse call in the anesthesiologist again and he explained that this is called a "window pane" where for some reason the pain does not go away. He gave me a shot of something else in the hopes it would lesson the pain and help me sleep. About this time the doctor on shift came to check me out - I was at a 5. We also ran out of toilet paper in our hospital bathroom. I was hooked up to a catheter so it didn't affect me much but they told Brian that the toilet paper was all locked up and they couldn't get us anymore until tomorrow. My poor husband.
So the night progresses with me begging for a c-section or something and Bad Nurse acting like she couldn't hear me and that my husband was in the way.
By this time i'm starving and exhausted since sleep didn't really happen.
At 7 am, the shift changes and in walks Good Nurse who gives me a hug and expresses her disappointment that we don't have our baby yet because we've been here for over 24 hours. The other great thing about Good Nurse, she got things going that morning when she started shift. We got the doctor in there, upped the Pitocin, tried to get my body to stretch out to a 9 or 10 cm dilation and by 10 she looked at me and said "you'll have your baby before 3 today." I love Good Nurse.
At 11 I started pushing. Then I pushed some more. Then there was more pushing.
Brian and I had talked about where I wanted him during the delivery. I did not want him down there watching the baby come out. I just didn't want him to see me in that position. However, my legs were numb so he and Good Nurse each had to hold one in position while I pushed. He kept his eyes on mine, and cracked some jokes but the worst was yet to come.
After an hour, it was decided to cut back on the epidural so that I could time my pushes better in the hopes that it would help get my baby out. That was a horrible decision on my part. For the next hour I would be pushing at all the contractions close to tears. It hurt, a lot. The doctor and nurses and Brian were incredibly supportive but wow, that was not enjoyable. Then came the exclamation of "She's crowning!" And the doctor told Brian to look. Even in my pain daze, I still wanted to shout "No, don't look!" After that, baby did not keep moving and they brought in the "forcep specialist". She said that she could probably pull my baby out, but there was the risk of shoulder displacement. Brian and I had already talked about all the options, and thank God he was sane enough to make the decision for a c-section. I was a mass of pain and I wanted to do whatever would make the pain stop. Once we made the decision, they started to get me ready to head into the operation. This whole time i'm still getting huge contractions that I can feel and I can barely keep my eyes from crossing at how much it hurt. Brian had to stay and get changed and they wheeled me to the Operating Room. One of the longest trips of my life as I tried not to scream with every contraction.
They brought in my buddy the anesthesiologist again. Then there was a discusion because I was wearing a nightgown I had brought so I wouldn't have to wear the hospital gown. It was 4 dollars at walmart and was purchased specifically because I did not care what happened to it. So they are trying to save my nightgown and I had to finally say "I don't care about the nightgown, i care about the drugs. It was 4 dollars, rip it off if you need to." Ok, so the F bomb was littered throughout that sentence, but I was in some serious pain! They pulled it up and I got the spinal and everything went numb.
Brian was able to come in and then we just waited as the surgeons did their thing.
I have a thing I do when I get nervous, I start shaking. It's because of the adrenilin, but at this point my arms were shaking like a leaf. The anesthesiologist was great and made sure I was ok and then put me at ease when he said, don't try to fight it, the adreniline is too much for your system right now. Brian held my hand and we waited for our baby to be born.
Then she was!!! Out came a little blue smurf and then they got her cleared out and she was in the world!
Then was the hard part. After she was cleaned up and wrapped and weighed, Evelyn and Brian went to the recovery room and I had to lay there and get sewn up. It took about 1/2 hour I think. I apologized for my negative behavior when I first came into the room to which they all laughed and said not to worry about it. I was the nicest emergency c-section they'd had in awhile. Then I got to be wheeled into the recovery room to see my wonderful little girl and her dad.
So even though it was 35 1/2 hours, she was totally worth it and her birth will never be known as "boring" or "normal". Just like her!
