Saturday, June 6 2009
6am Woke up with period like cramps, thinking maybe this is something. So I got up and got some breakfast, plus a paper and pen to mark things down in case there was any pattern. Nothing really, except being a little uncomfortable. Just spent the rest of the morning hanging out.
Noon My Dr. called to tell me that they were taking a group of women in on Sunday to assess them for induction and wondered if I wanted to be a part of the group. I said sure, so I figured we'd be getting things rolling on Sunday.
5-8pm Feeling a little more uncomfortable, but still nothing special. It was the hockey play offs so we just hung out and watched the game. A few times I would have to stand up to deal with a contraction, but they were still only a few an hour.
10pm Had a few really painful ones, but it was hard to tell when they were starting and finishing, because I guess I was having back labor, which kind of just made it feel like continuous pain instead of a start and finish. I decided to get in the shower, and felt great while in there. So I figured maybe I would go lie down and see if I could sleep for a while. About five minutes after lying down I had to jump up out of bed to deal with a contraction. So I came downstairs to talk to Greg. He thought we should just go to the hospital, but I was waiting for the whole 4-1-1 thing to occur and didn't want to get sent home.
11pm I decided to call the birth unit and ask what they thought. After listening to what I had to say she thought I sounded like I was in labor. So we packed up the car and headed to the hospital
The whole way I kept thinking that this probably isn't really it and they are going to send me home.
Sunday June 7 2009
12:15 We got the the assessment unit where they hooked me up to monitors. Lying on the bed was the most painful thing ever, all I wanted to do was stand up. Greg rubbed my lower back with helped a lot.
She checked and told us that we were 3cm and that we should discuss pain options. I told her I was open to anything, and she said that if I wanted an epidural this would be a good time to get it. So we were send down to the delivery room and I got changed into my snazzy gown while dealing with some nasty contractions. We only had to wait about 10 minutes for the anesthesiologist to get there. I told Greg he didn't have to watch, so it was just me and our amazing nurse dealing with things. The worst part was dealing with a contraction while sitting curled over on the side of the bed, it seemed to take forever!
It took a while for the epi to kick in, so there were a few more nasty contractions, plus it didn't really cover both sides equally so I was still feeling pressure on my left side for quite a while. It did finally kick in though.
Now the fun began!
2pm My nurse called for the head nurse to come in, who wanted to check me again. I wasn't aware of it at the time, but it was because her heart rate had dropped. Once they got there they couldn't get a good read on it so they had to put a monitor on her scalp. At this time they noticed there were no membranes...even though I had no idea the my water had broke, there was also excessive bleeding. So my Dr. was paged along with the head Ob resident.
The OB said that I had little to no fluid so that they would have to start pumping saline into my uterus (yeah...didn't know they did that either!) but that the bleeding wasn't a worry, something to do with the way by cervix was dilating. Although from the bloody towel they held up to show him how much blood there was I would hate to see what 'too much' would have looked like.
My Dr. showed up and checked everything out. Said I was still just over 3 cm and that if all went well we would be pushing by 10 am and have a baby by 12. So she went home again.
The rest of the actual timeline gets a little foggy at this point. The heart rate took a dive several times (now we knew where it was on the monitor) and nurses were in and out each time.
At one point I told the nurse that I had a feeling like but butt had fallen asleep. She said that was pressure, and sure enough I had gone from 6-9 cm in under an hour.
They were getting concerned that things didnt seem to be balancing out so they called my Dr. back. We then started a really scary moment. Greg tells me that within 2 minutes we had 15 people in the room and all I remember is the stupid oxygen mask, alarms going off on the monitors and talk of forceps. First they said we were going to the OR, but then there was no time. I had to start pushing, in the delivery room with all these people, and I was bawling my eyes out trying to get someone to tell me that the baby was okay. Finally a nurse leaned in and showed me on the moniter that the hr had come back up.
So, everything stopped and they decided to let me push on my own for a while. We were back to just me and Greg, 1 nurse and my Dr. They said pushing was going well, but that maybe we could try the squatting bar. I tried but by legs just couldn't support me. My Dr. was saying this isn't going to work, lie on your side. I thought she meant the squatting, I didn't realize the hr had dropped again.
In rush all the people again, and this time they are handing Greg scrubs and telling us they are taking us to the OR. I was in hysterics bawling, but all of a sudden a calm came over me and I just started praying that everything would be okay, and kept asking my nurse what it going on.
When we got to the OR they upped my epi so that now I felt nothing. I think they used 2 or 3 different forceps, and there was lots of noise and light and all I wanted was to hold Greg's hand and hear that the baby was going to be okay. There was one nurse who stayed less than a foot from my face and kept telling me everything was okay, I just stared at her and Greg and kept on praying. When they told me to push I pushed so hard, and was so scared but I needed to see my baby.
I have no idea how long I pushed, but I'm guessing it wasn't more than 20 minutes. And at 10:07am The words 'It's a girl' absolutely stopped my heart. I was bawling my eyes out, waiting for them to take her over to me. It took a while for who I assume was the NICU team to check her out, but they brought her over to me and I just couldn't believe she was mine. I kept saying to Greg 'I can't believe she's ours...we have a baby girl'.
There was quite a bit of repair time in the OR. The Dr. explained that they had done an episiotomy, but that on top of that I also had a 3rd degree tear...fun stuff. There were 3 or 4 Dr.'s working on me, but I just didn't care.
They took us back to our delivery room where we got to start breastfeeding right away. But it would take a long time for the epi to wear off, and when it did they had to start me on Morphin. I was taken to the family/newborn unit still in my bed, I had a 24 hour cathetor put in and was pretty drugged up for the next 24 hours.
There's lots more to the story of the past 4 weeks, but I think that's all I can handle for today.
Love you baby girl!
