I realize this is late. I’ve posted it other places, but wanted to make sure I had it here where it will be easy to find again should I ever want to go back and remember – not that it’s going to be easy to forget an experience like this.
On Sunday, July 19th I was trying to fall asleep and dealing with my usual insomnia when I realized… I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt M kick. Now a lot of people say this is a horrible horrible sign, so we went rushing to the ER and A and I were both in a panic. Hook me up to the monitors, M’s heartbeat is strong, but it’s not changing the way it’s supposed to even through the contractions I was having that I couldn’t feel – every 6 minutes like clockwork. They ask me if I want apple juice or soda – I say apple juice… they bring me a diet gingerale. I HATE diet drinks, but I struggle through half of it before realizing – what the heck is a diet drink going to do for me? The whole point is to get some sugar (which by the way I had tried at home) to wake the baby up and get him moving around. Eventually they find some apple juice and give that to me and M moves and we get sent home.
Monday July 20th I wake up, and disappointed to be returning to work get up to get in the shower. I turn the water on, turn around to brush my teeth and clear liquid goes running down both my legs to the floor. I call A, call my mom, call work – tell all of them it’s time then I calmly get in the shower so I’ll be nice and clean when it’s time and wait for A to get home. At this point I’m not feeling any contractions, but hey – my water broke – it can’t possibly be a false alarm! A gets home, I’ve had 2 more dribbles since then. We head into the hospital and they have a tough time finding my chart until we tell them we were there under 12 hours ago because the baby wasn’t moving. They run some tests and tell me it’s not my water, but not to fear – I probably just peed myself. The midwife asks my OB if she wants to keep me there and just induce seeing as how I’m already past my due date. They check me, I’m a fingertip dilated and about 50% effaced… no progress from my check up the week before. We get sent home. I am hysterical at this point. A is unhappy, my Mom has taken the day off work, I’ve told my boss and a few co-workers that maternity leave is starting and now? Now I’m going to have to show my face and explain to everyone that I’m just too stupid to know the difference between having my water break, and pissing myself. (I swear to you the stuff was not pee. I don’t know what it was, and I’m OK admitting that I peed myself a few times while pregnant when M hit my bladder at just the right time… but this WAS NOT PEE) Anyway, A heads back to the office (to tell all his co-workers about his wife with the incompetent bladder) and I head over to my Mom’s to cry. A lot.
Towards the middle of the day my Mom suggests I call the Dr. I’m not sure, but I think my Mom was more just tired of hearing my sob story about “why wouldn’t she induce, we were there, we were ready, blah blah blah, I hate being pregnant” than anything else. Regardless, I call the Dr. and get all hysterical on her, so she tells me she’ll change my 41 week appointment that is scheduled for Thursday to an induction, and to come in tomorrow for a sonogram. Finally my tears subside. There is an end in sight, a light at the end of the tunnel, and I know – I won’t be pregnant forever. I’ll only be pregnant 3 more days AT MOST.
A came home from work and joined us at my parent’s for dinner. We got some nice spicy Chipotle and wouldn’t you know I started having contractions. This was nothing too new for me, since I had been having very strong contractions ever since M had kicked my spine out of alignment (which is another story). I was still able to talk through the contractions, and was laughing at the good natured jokes my Dad, brother, and A were making. Until 6:47 – I know the time exactly because I had started saying the time of each one outloud about an hour before, and I said to A “6:47 how long since the last one?” A responded innocently “I don’t know, I’m not keeping track” and I oh so lovingly replied with “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK I’M CALLING THE TIME OUT FOR, MY HEALTH? YOUR ONE JOB IN THIS WHOLE THING IS TO TIME MY CONTRACTIONS!” Yes folks, this is what labor is. When everyone kept telling me “you’ll know” they were right. I knew. This was it. And yet, as any pregnant woman that’s gone through it can tell you – getting sent home from the hospital is THE WORST, and I had already done that twice in 24 hours… so we waited, and I doubted myself.
My family and I went on a walk around the block and we got about 3/4 of the way when I started having to stop walking during a contraction. My Dad started keeping track (probably because he feared for A’s life) and it was clear they were nowhere near regular. A and I went home pretty convinced that these contractions, as they had in the past, would just go away. Around 8 I toddled up to bed to lay there and watch The Bachelorette. Contractions were getting strong so I took pen and paper with me – still nowhere near regular, and usually at least 6 minutes apart. I watched TV and laid in bed and by 9 had started groaning through the contractions. A came up, and started to hold my hand when I had bad ones, and would rub my back or just sit there inbetween. I kept telling him to go to sleep because I was SURE this wasn’t it, and if it was he needed sleep anyway. Funny though, he never did get any sleep because I quickly progressed to LOUD groans and cries of “help me” during contractions.
I had heard that taking a shower would help you through the pain and decided this would be a good idea around 10:30. I got up, grabbed my towel, headed for the bathroom, and dropped to the floor in pain. I’m not totally sure where the next few hours went. I do know that I got back in bed, still holding my towel. I also know A called the Dr. to ask if we should head to the hospital since sometimes my contractions were 2 minutes apart, and sometimes they were 7. I also know A is the one that finally said “it’s time.” I told him I didn’t want to go by myself, that he needed to go get my Mom and bring her with us because I would just die if I had a contraction on our way and didn’t have anyone to hold me through it. So like the good husband he is, A went to get my Mom. Which I immediately regretted – because I had contractions – multiple contractions – on my own – while he was gone. My parents live 5 minutes away if you hit every red light, but those 10 minutes he was gone were pure hell. When they finally got back, we piled into the car with one quick stop for me on the front porch because of a contraction and headed into the hospital. Mind you, for some reason I STILL had my towel in my hand. I refused to let it go. I felt like it helped to bite it during contractions, so my towel came along with us to the hospital.
We got there and they wheeled me up to L&D for my third trip to triage. As we got close, I could hear that someone else was in there and I looked at A and said “oh god, I hope she’s in labor too because if she’s not I’m going to scare her.” Thankfully for that poor woman, the midwife took one look at me and said “admit her”. My butt didn’t even leave the wheelchair before I was being taken to my L&D room. I was admitted to the hospital at 1:20AM on Tuesday July 21.
I get to the room, get checked and told I’m at 3cm and 100% effaced. I’m shocked. I believe that is the only time I uttered an “adult word” while at the hospital because I was then offered an IV, epi, and catheter all three of which I happily accepted. Getting the epi sucked. They made A and my Mom leave the room. I bear hugged the nurse and bit her shoulder (she told me I could!) and squeezed the life out of her ribcage through 2 unbearable contractions while the anesthesiologist stabbed me in the back and applied an obscene amount of tape. He explained to me that I should keep some slack in the very thin little wire he draped over my shoulder so as not to pull my epi out. I laid back and within seconds it was bliss. Absolute, complete, bliss. I felt nothing, zippy, zero and my contractions were literally off the charts.
Several hours went by. I eventually was able to tell when I was having contractions because there would be a tremendous amount of pressure. I kept explaining to my Mom by saying “it feels like my crotch is about to explode everywhere”. I was checked a few times and was progressing perfectly. A caught some sleep on a very uncomfortable looking chair, and I kept the room just above freezing. At some point in the early morning, my Dad, brother, and in-laws all came by and were hanging out in the room with us for awhile.
Around 4:30 or 5AM I must have made a funny face because the following conversation took place:
Mom: What’s wrong honey?
Me: Nothing, my stomach just hurts a little.
A: Hurts like you ate something bad?
Me: No, kinda like I’m going to throw up. I’M GOING TO THROW UP GET ME A BUCKET.
A and my mom had about .3 seconds between that last announcement and me clamping one hand over my mouth to keep my puke from going everywhere. Unfortunately, my Mom wasn’t there, and A apparently wasn’t paying attention when we went on the hospital tour and learned that there were puke buckets in the bedside table, so with one hand over my mouth, and puke dribbling out of my fingers I pointed with the other hand to the drawer. It was opened, I was given a bucket, and I promptly filled the bucket, and a second one, and A’s hands, and the floor, and my sheets, and my hospital gown. At this point, my in-laws decided I could probably use some privacy and left the room. I only noticed this about 10 minutes later and realized they probably saw a lot that they really could have done without… although it was OK with me, they didn’t come back in the room and chose instead to hang out in the waiting room… I can’t imagine why!
Within the next few hours M’s heartbeat started acting funny and I was given an oxygen mask which made everything better except my attitude. The thing itched, and smelled like plastic, and made me look stupid. Also, M thought it would be fun to slow his little heart unless I was laying on my left side… which was really inconvenient for me since my epi was working about 10 times better on the left – to the point where when they came to check me I would have to get A to hold my left leg to keep it from flopping off my bed, but I could use my right leg to push myself up off the bed.
At 7:30 I was checked and was 7cm. At 9:45 I was checked again and was 4cm. I went backwards. I was told something about how M’s head was pinching my cervix, it was swelling and I’d be getting a c-section. Now. I freaked. I started telling my Dad, my Mom, A how much I loved them because I was 100% certain I’d be dead before the day was done. I cried, I sobbed, I begged my body to just cooperate and go back to where it was supposed to be, I apologized to A because I thought I was disappointing him. At 10:15 I was wheeled into the OR. Since I already had an epi, everything was going to be done through that. The anesthesiologist pumped me full of meds and took God knows what to my side and told me to tell him when I could feel it – I would swear to you it was a scalpel but since I was already strapped down to the table I couldn’t see what he was using. On my left side, he was able to get all the way up to my armpit before I even knew he was touching me… on my right, he touched my thigh and I literally jumped. Like I said, working way better on the left. After my jump he said “oh wow” and flipped the entire bed so that I was facing the wall, trying to get the epi to drip down my right side instead. Not 10 seconds later my OB asked if we were ready and he said “Yep” without even bothering to try his little scalpel poke trick again. I swear to you to this day that I felt them cut me. It hurt. I panicked. Which is why, when A and my Mom were permitted to enter the room they came upon me screaming “I CAN FEEL THEM CUTTING ME” over and over and over again.
The anesthesiologist told me he’d give me some anti-anxiety meds because he was pretty sure I was having a panic attack. Looking back, I’m pretty sure I was too since these anti-anxiety meds did nothing to cease me from screaming about how I could feel them cutting (even though at this point they were pretty close to being finished cutting me). At this point – because of the anti-anxiety meds, things get pretty blurry. I remember the anesthesiologist telling me that if I truely could feel them cutting, that he’d have to knock me out and I wouldn’t be awake for the birth… which shut me up real quick. I also remember A saying “do you hear him?” and then (as I had instructed him to do) leaving me to go check on the baby. A brought him over to me and I remember being overwhelmed at how perfect he was. He was beautiful, he was perfect, and he was MINE. At 10:32 my wonderful 8lb 4oz baby boy was born. After 17 hours of labor, 3 fake me out trips to the hospital (2 in the past 2 days, and one for my back about 2 months earlier), and a surprise c-section, my beautiful baby boy came into the world and made my life.
Recovery from the c-section was easy, but rather frustrating. I hated not being able to bounce back and do things right away. I hated being tired, I hated needing help getting up out of the bed, and most of all, I hated not being able to carry my baby boy up the steps to change a diaper. A did almost all the diaper changes at the beginning… which now I’m not sure why that bothered me, but then it did… a lot.
I’m not sad about my c-section anymore, but I can totally understand and relate to people that are. For a long time I wondered what I could have done differently. I wondered why my body had failed me and my baby. I apologized to A for “not doing it right”. Eventually I realized – I did do it right, just not the way we expected. Our goal was to produce a healthy baby, and that’s what my body did. Just because he didn’t come out the way we expected doesn’t mean I failed at my job.
But I did feel them cut me. And I did not pee myself – that time.
