Birth Story, Part I: The Onset.
May. 20th, 2007 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
same_skyI have a feeling that if I try to do this in one superlong entry, I'll leave out more than I want to, so I'm going to try breaking it apart. The whole birth thing was kind of traumatic, and although I know that it doesn't matter, I am having a really hard time getting over it, so I want to write it down in as much detail as I can. It might help. I also don't want to forget anything later on, which I know I will--the details already are getting fuzzy.
By Friday night, I was bored senseless after having laid around the house all week taking it easy. When M got home, I was whiny and ready to do something fun. The weather was looking stormy, so I didn't want to go anywhere or leave the house, so we curled up on the couch to watch The 10th Kingdom (which is six or seven hours long, so how's that for optimism?) Less than an hour into it, I got up to go to the bathroom for two reasons--one, my bladder being the size of a peanut, I had to go, and I was also hoping that the baby would shift if I moved around, because she was pressing down pretty hard on my cervix. I was getting up from the toilet when I noticed the blood--bright and dark. We called the Labor and Delivery hall to ask what that might mean, and they told us that we should come in. By the time I was ready to leave, the bleeding had mostly stopped, but I was a little too afraid of all of those things that I have read about on the internets to just stay home. The decision to go in is perhaps the one thing that we possibly could have done differently, but then again.. staying home may not have necessarily been a change for the better for a bunch of different reasons. I think we may have been in there later that night or weekend anyway--I had been having contractions, but I had been having them for weeks, so what I had going on when we actually left for the hospital was not too unusual, but I did have stronger, more regular contractions as the evening wore on, well before they started with the drugs.
So anyway, we threw the last-minute stuff into the hospital bags and headed off. M was the first to think we should go in, but he was more convinced than me by the time we left that we wouldn't be staying. They put us in our room, hooked me up to a bunch of monitors and checked my cervix. I hadn't been checked since week 35 so they had no baseline to tell them if it had changed any. It was between two and three. My blood pressure was pretty high, which they weren't too thrilled with. I got my first-ever catheter (yay.) temporarily to obtain a non-bloody urine sample, and they drew some blood to run some pre-eclampsia tests. Then they had me walk for fifty minutes to see if things had progressed any. Around this time, I talked to my mom again. I had let her know we were going in, and strangely, they were eating at Outback in Lexington after a long day of shopping with the girls... exactly like it had been the first time we went in to L&D for a false alarm seven weeks before (and had not been doing one time since then.) She had decided they were all coming to the hospital, and my blood pressure jumped twenty points, which our nurse was less than happy about. (I heard her bitching at the nurse's desk while walking.) It wasn't my mom stressing me out, it was just the whole group coming for something that we still thought was a false alarm, plus two babies which were not going to be allowed back at all, and I was afraid that there would be chaos and confusion in my room for the rest of the day. (About this, incidentally, I worried too much. They were all fabulous, and mainly stayed in the waiting room, and I was glad they were there.)
So M and I set out to walk the hallways. We were the only ones in L&D at that point, and there were about three rooms filled in the rest of the floor, and it was midnight, so it was a pretty quiet walk--I theorized that they would want to keep me just because they were bored. :) I hadn't been allowed to walk that much in a while so it was somewhat of a novelty to actually move around. After my walk, I was rechecked, and had dilated to a full three. They called the doctor, filled him in on my cervix change plus the climbing blood pressure. It also happened to be the big-baby doctor on call, who had already talked about inducing me the week before. He wanted them to admit me, start pitocin at five in the morning and he would be by around eight to break my water if it hadn't already. Since it seemed that labor had already started, we decided to stay put. She wanted to start an IV, which I respectfully declined, and she put in a saline lock instead. Believe me, if you looked at my feet at that point, giving me more fluids would probably not be what YOU thought I needed, either. I guess medical professionals are a little different that way. :)
My family arrived sometime in there, and I walked out to the waiting room to talk to them for a few minutes. I slept for about forty minutes through rising contractions--the bed was pretty uncomfortable, and the monitors kept slipping around if I moved. My back had hurt throughout my pregnancy in a very odd, indescribable sort of way, and the worst thing for it was to be on my back. M stretched out on the chair pull-out bed and slept more than I did. They couldn't find another chair for my mom, so she sat in an upright chair, awake, all night. I felt bad about this but the nurse who couldn't find another chair did volunteer to set up my post-partum room for her so she could lay down if she wanted, but she didn't want to leave me, so she didn't. M and my mom became utterly fascinated by the contraction numbers, and grew fond of telling me when they started, ended and how bad each one was. I hated to break it to them, but I actually knew quite well when I was having contractions, and their analysis of how bad it was? Not always correct. ;)
Things were pretty much the same at five. I can't remember if they re-checked me or not before starting the pitocin. I angsted over letting them start it, but they were becoming more worried about my blood pressure, which had stayed consistently high (I believe it was something like 160/110 at one point, though it was generally not quite that high.) I could have held out had it been about convenience or suspected big baby or an arbitrary whim, but it really did seem like the best thing for me and the baby to get her out at that point. I am not trying to justify an induction because.. well, it's my business, right? But I have gone over this a thousand times since then, and I still arrive at the same conclusion. It was the right choice at the time, and technically, I was already in labor anyway, so calling it an induction is really not quite accurate. Anyway. The contractions picked up and became more painful. I sent M home while there wasn't much going on to get the cooler full of drinks and a few little things that we forgot to pack, and he posted that we were staying.
I don't really remember a whole lot of note about the hours between five and nine, which is about when the doctor showed up. M came back. I ate a lot of ice (I LOVE hospital ice) and wished that I could eat something. I disallowed all mention of food topics in the room, and perhaps that's when I began to be a bit cranky. Everyone claimed that I wasn't mean, but I bitched a lot about my back and my blood pressure cuff and my saline lock, which was both uncomfortable and painful in turn. Still, we were making jokes and laughing for the most part. I finished the last few pages of my book and went through my mom's stash of Tums. My dad and niece showed up around six. I remember eventually feeling a little stressed that they were in the room--not because I didn't want them there, but the contractions were getting worse, and I didn't want them to know it. The rest of my family stayed in the waiting room except for an occasional solitary visitor coming back for a few minutes. At some point, I asked for pain medication... you know, the heavy stuff. Tylenol. In my defense, I wasn't asking for my labor pains, but that place in my back was killing me, and I knew from experience that Tylenol would help. Still, everyone was teasing me about asking for Tylenol instead of an epidural or something. I was on oxygen for a while, but I don't really remember exactly why right then. I do remember asking my mom if she wanted a hit. There is almost a touch of foreshadowing there.
The doctor arrived sometime between eight and nine, and that is where things get a lot less pleasant. I'll pick up here with Part II: The Drugs.
By Friday night, I was bored senseless after having laid around the house all week taking it easy. When M got home, I was whiny and ready to do something fun. The weather was looking stormy, so I didn't want to go anywhere or leave the house, so we curled up on the couch to watch The 10th Kingdom (which is six or seven hours long, so how's that for optimism?) Less than an hour into it, I got up to go to the bathroom for two reasons--one, my bladder being the size of a peanut, I had to go, and I was also hoping that the baby would shift if I moved around, because she was pressing down pretty hard on my cervix. I was getting up from the toilet when I noticed the blood--bright and dark. We called the Labor and Delivery hall to ask what that might mean, and they told us that we should come in. By the time I was ready to leave, the bleeding had mostly stopped, but I was a little too afraid of all of those things that I have read about on the internets to just stay home. The decision to go in is perhaps the one thing that we possibly could have done differently, but then again.. staying home may not have necessarily been a change for the better for a bunch of different reasons. I think we may have been in there later that night or weekend anyway--I had been having contractions, but I had been having them for weeks, so what I had going on when we actually left for the hospital was not too unusual, but I did have stronger, more regular contractions as the evening wore on, well before they started with the drugs.
So anyway, we threw the last-minute stuff into the hospital bags and headed off. M was the first to think we should go in, but he was more convinced than me by the time we left that we wouldn't be staying. They put us in our room, hooked me up to a bunch of monitors and checked my cervix. I hadn't been checked since week 35 so they had no baseline to tell them if it had changed any. It was between two and three. My blood pressure was pretty high, which they weren't too thrilled with. I got my first-ever catheter (yay.) temporarily to obtain a non-bloody urine sample, and they drew some blood to run some pre-eclampsia tests. Then they had me walk for fifty minutes to see if things had progressed any. Around this time, I talked to my mom again. I had let her know we were going in, and strangely, they were eating at Outback in Lexington after a long day of shopping with the girls... exactly like it had been the first time we went in to L&D for a false alarm seven weeks before (and had not been doing one time since then.) She had decided they were all coming to the hospital, and my blood pressure jumped twenty points, which our nurse was less than happy about. (I heard her bitching at the nurse's desk while walking.) It wasn't my mom stressing me out, it was just the whole group coming for something that we still thought was a false alarm, plus two babies which were not going to be allowed back at all, and I was afraid that there would be chaos and confusion in my room for the rest of the day. (About this, incidentally, I worried too much. They were all fabulous, and mainly stayed in the waiting room, and I was glad they were there.)
So M and I set out to walk the hallways. We were the only ones in L&D at that point, and there were about three rooms filled in the rest of the floor, and it was midnight, so it was a pretty quiet walk--I theorized that they would want to keep me just because they were bored. :) I hadn't been allowed to walk that much in a while so it was somewhat of a novelty to actually move around. After my walk, I was rechecked, and had dilated to a full three. They called the doctor, filled him in on my cervix change plus the climbing blood pressure. It also happened to be the big-baby doctor on call, who had already talked about inducing me the week before. He wanted them to admit me, start pitocin at five in the morning and he would be by around eight to break my water if it hadn't already. Since it seemed that labor had already started, we decided to stay put. She wanted to start an IV, which I respectfully declined, and she put in a saline lock instead. Believe me, if you looked at my feet at that point, giving me more fluids would probably not be what YOU thought I needed, either. I guess medical professionals are a little different that way. :)
My family arrived sometime in there, and I walked out to the waiting room to talk to them for a few minutes. I slept for about forty minutes through rising contractions--the bed was pretty uncomfortable, and the monitors kept slipping around if I moved. My back had hurt throughout my pregnancy in a very odd, indescribable sort of way, and the worst thing for it was to be on my back. M stretched out on the chair pull-out bed and slept more than I did. They couldn't find another chair for my mom, so she sat in an upright chair, awake, all night. I felt bad about this but the nurse who couldn't find another chair did volunteer to set up my post-partum room for her so she could lay down if she wanted, but she didn't want to leave me, so she didn't. M and my mom became utterly fascinated by the contraction numbers, and grew fond of telling me when they started, ended and how bad each one was. I hated to break it to them, but I actually knew quite well when I was having contractions, and their analysis of how bad it was? Not always correct. ;)
Things were pretty much the same at five. I can't remember if they re-checked me or not before starting the pitocin. I angsted over letting them start it, but they were becoming more worried about my blood pressure, which had stayed consistently high (I believe it was something like 160/110 at one point, though it was generally not quite that high.) I could have held out had it been about convenience or suspected big baby or an arbitrary whim, but it really did seem like the best thing for me and the baby to get her out at that point. I am not trying to justify an induction because.. well, it's my business, right? But I have gone over this a thousand times since then, and I still arrive at the same conclusion. It was the right choice at the time, and technically, I was already in labor anyway, so calling it an induction is really not quite accurate. Anyway. The contractions picked up and became more painful. I sent M home while there wasn't much going on to get the cooler full of drinks and a few little things that we forgot to pack, and he posted that we were staying.
I don't really remember a whole lot of note about the hours between five and nine, which is about when the doctor showed up. M came back. I ate a lot of ice (I LOVE hospital ice) and wished that I could eat something. I disallowed all mention of food topics in the room, and perhaps that's when I began to be a bit cranky. Everyone claimed that I wasn't mean, but I bitched a lot about my back and my blood pressure cuff and my saline lock, which was both uncomfortable and painful in turn. Still, we were making jokes and laughing for the most part. I finished the last few pages of my book and went through my mom's stash of Tums. My dad and niece showed up around six. I remember eventually feeling a little stressed that they were in the room--not because I didn't want them there, but the contractions were getting worse, and I didn't want them to know it. The rest of my family stayed in the waiting room except for an occasional solitary visitor coming back for a few minutes. At some point, I asked for pain medication... you know, the heavy stuff. Tylenol. In my defense, I wasn't asking for my labor pains, but that place in my back was killing me, and I knew from experience that Tylenol would help. Still, everyone was teasing me about asking for Tylenol instead of an epidural or something. I was on oxygen for a while, but I don't really remember exactly why right then. I do remember asking my mom if she wanted a hit. There is almost a touch of foreshadowing there.
The doctor arrived sometime between eight and nine, and that is where things get a lot less pleasant. I'll pick up here with Part II: The Drugs.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 04:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 03:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 03:34 pm (UTC)My friend keeps trying to talk me into being a midwife because I'm interested in birthing. I love to read other people's stories.