Birth Story Part II: The Drugs
May. 21st, 2007 11:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
same_skySaturday, May 12
When the doctor came in, he checked my cervix yet again to find that I was still around three. I was, however, fully effaced (50% when I came in) so there was something, at least. While he was still doing his thing, he asked if I wanted my water broken. I didn't, really, but they were recommending it strongly, and so I agreed. I don't necessarily think it was the wrong thing to do--but I do know that it really upset me. I had a lot of water, and it felt so completely awful, and all I could think was that there was no going home now without a baby. That wasn't actually so comforting because I suppose I had been thinking before that it wasn't real. They attached the internal monitors, which would have bothered me more if I hadn't been bitching for hours about how I was strapped to the bed already with the pitocin--exactly how I didn't want to be. M and my mom probably enjoyed the new, more accurate statistics, though. ;) M was the only one with me when the water was broken, though my mom and cousin and.. whoever else was hanging around in the little doorway behind a curtain. Mom saw that I was more than a little upset, and she got them all (herself included) out the door for some breakfast so I could spend some time with just M, which I needed desperately. My belly was small, and lumpy, and missing the familiarness of Baby, and I was horrified by how.. gone.. it seemed. M kept reminding me that Ducky was still there and.. I just don't really know how to describe it, but it took me a while to regain my composure. M talked to my mom on the phone and told her that when she came back, it was probably time for just her to be in the room. She had pretty much already been telling them that, I think.
Predictably, the contractions became stronger and more painful. By 10:25, I was in a lot of pain, and having a hard time getting through them. They kept asking me if I wanted any pain medication, and I kept saying no. I obviously have never had fully naturally contractions at that stage of labor, but I cannot believe that what I was feeling is what I would have felt without the pitocin and the water breaking. It felt.. inorganic. I had been awake for 27 hours at this point and hadn't eaten in 15. I finally gave in on the epidural after a long while. However, the anesthesiologist was in surgery, so they were going to have to call in the other one, and it would take half an hour for him to get there, plus twenty minutes for it to kick in, not counting the time it was being administered. My mom went out to the waiting room to update the family on the progress and the upcoming epidural. While she was gone, the nurse asked me if I wanted some Stadol in my IV. Everyone had been telling me that it was completely worthless, but the nurse pointed out that it was different for everyone, and it would at least take the edge off. She also promised that it would take effect instantly. I watched her put it in my IV and then she left, and I made a joke about how it sure wasn't instant. M walked across the room for something, and as he headed back, I lifted my head off the bed and watched him waver before my very eyes. By the time he made it back to my side, I looked at him and said, "I am so stoned, y'all." And we were off and running from there!
Apparently, I have a pretty strong reaction to Stadol! I should have known, since Benedryl makes me loopy and knocks me out. Within minutes, I was sharing my hallucinations with M and my mom, in between passing out and having contractions. It actually did help a lot with the pain, though, and it reduced the pain to a grinding pressure. I wasn't completely gone, just.. mostly. Sometimes I didn't hear people when they talked to me, and sometimes it didn't occur to me to answer, but I mostly knew what was going on, when I was awake. The anesthesiologist came in. He seemed a bit irate that they had called in the other guy when he was there, and pointed out that I had refused one earlier. He was also extremely, extremely unhappy about how completely knocked out with drugs I was, because he didn't feel I could properly give my consent. Mom and M were explaining exactly what had happened, that they said it would be a long while, I consented, they gave me the Stadol to tide me over and then he came up immediately, etc. Honestly, I think what kind of convinced him that I was not as far gone as he thought was when he asked me if I was allergic to anything, and I told him that I was allergic to an antibiotic called Factive. He hesitated, not knowing exactly what it was. (It's not terribly common. No one knows exactly what it is, and I can only remember the brand name generally.) So I looked up at him and said, "I think it's a fluoroquinolone," and he blinked and said, "um, yes, if you came up with that word just now, I'd say it is." His name was Brad, and at first, we were all a bit leery of him because he seemed so put out by being there, but in the aftermath of the day, I have raved about how fantastic he was more than anyone else. I'll get there eventually. I also apologized to the man for being so stoned, and assured him that I wasn't usually. ;) I believe he was a bit upset with the staff rather than us.
I am really not so sure I would have been able to handle the whole epidural thing without the Stadol. As it was, I came back to myself enough to concentrate heavily on not moving and following their instructions. I leaned forward on M, whose poor back may never be the same after the last few weeks of pregnancy, the labor and delivery experience and then the first few days afterward. Anyway, as much as I was upset by having one, it was just as good as they always say it is. Glorious numbness. I could still feel my contractions, but only as pressure. Things are pretty fuzzy again in my memory. I remember a lot of things happening that I won't get into, but the sense of chronological order is messed up a bit. Speaking of pressure, though, my blood pressure did not exactly take to the epidural, and it plummeted. I was more or less unconscious during most of this, and I think that M and my mom didn't realize exactly what was going on until it was almost over or they would have been freaking out much more than they did, but it fell drastically, and there was a whole lot of rushing around trying to fix me.
A new doctor came on duty at one, and he's the one that ended up delivering the baby. He's the one who I saw relatively recently who was very interested in M's Swedishness, and wanted to talk about the Strongman competitions and the competitor named Magnus. I was checked again at some point, and was at 6.5. I think he checked me again and found me to be about the same. He also told me that due to my blood pressure issues, the baby's heart rate was not doing too well. It wasn't going up and down like it was supposed to. That's the first time a c-section was mentioned, but we decided to give it a little bit of time and see if it fixed itself. And it did! After half an hour or forty-five minutes, they came in and turned on the pitocin again because she was doing fine. And that's the first time I really thought.. hey, maybe I'll be able to have this baby without a c-section yet!
Which, we now know was completely wrong, but I felt better about it for a little while, anyway. Stay tuned for the next episode, Part III: The Cesarean.
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Date: 2007-05-21 03:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-25 02:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 03:56 pm (UTC)I have no doubt that the length of time without sleep and food was a big factor. I know that when Ingrid was on the way, I hadn't really slept the night before and I really felt like I could have handled it without drugs if I hadn't been so tired. But I did love the sufentanil block they gave me.
I am one of those for whom Stadol did nothing. I guess I should have known that since Benadryl, Nyquil and the like, do not have the desired effect on me either. Ah well.
It's gripping reading, the Ducky birth story!
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Date: 2007-05-25 02:24 am (UTC)I've never thought it makes sense that you can do something as monumentally taxing as give birth without eating. I guess there are reasons but it seems pretty uncivilized to me. :)
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Date: 2007-05-21 04:13 pm (UTC)When living in New York many years ago, I was hit by a car while crossing the street and taken to the hospital. The doctor wanted to determine if I had any head injuries from the accident and asked me to name U.S. vice presidents backwards from the then-current veep. When I got to Nelson Rockefeller, I ended up in a major argument with the doctor who did not believe that Rockefeller had been anything more than the governor of New York. I finally snapped at him that if he'd wanted me to only name elected vice presidents he could have damn well said so, at which point he decided that I didn't have a head injury.
I hope you're feeling better. The baby is just beautiful.
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