Memorial Day Weekend & Early Arrival
We went to Montreal over Memorial Day Weekend because Meanie's sister got engaged. We left early on Saturday morning and didn't get into Montreal till around 2pm. We caught up with a few friends and celebrated Meanie's sister's engagement as well as Meanie's birthday, which fell on Monday - Memorial Day. All in all, it was a fun weekend with some episodes of familial stress but overall, it was fun. Just tiring. We returned to NJ on Monday and arrived around 6pm. That night, I got ready for work and went to sleep around 1am and passed out.
At around 1:30am, I woke up startled. Something had woken me up - Mignon had kicked me so hard that I woke up. I figured since I was already up, I'd go and pee (which I was doing several times a night). So I went to pee...and...thought to myself. "Ok, I know I don't have THAT much pee to pee..." but I just shrugged it off. I sat there a while more and there's more fluid coming out of me and I know I'm not peeing. So I start to get all frantic and start googling things and looking up stuff in my Pregnancy Mayo Clinic book.
At this time, all the lights in the bedroom are on and I'm running back and forth to the computer. Meanie is all passed out and has no idea what's going on. Poor soul -- he spent his birthday driving back from Montreal and the next day we have to go into work. I eventually tap him on his shoulder and say, "Something's wrong. I'm leaking and it's not normal." His reply is: *shoves me away* "It's ok, just call the doctor when you get to the office tomorrow" 0_0 By this time, I KNOW something is wrong but I let it go anyway. I try to go back to sleep and lie down..and then *GUSH*. No more trickling, now there are GUSHES. Ack!! Meanie finally gets up and starts googling away and then we came to the conclusion to call the doctor.
So I call the doctor and my doctor is NOT on call. Instead, it's the doctor that my sister warned me about. [My sister referred me to my current ob/gyn and she went to him for her 2nd child - When she delivered her 2nd child, the doctor on-call who helped her deliver was a complete asshole and has no bedside manner. She had the most unpleasant experience the 2nd time and warned me to not have this guy assist in my delivery in any way. Good thing she told me because we told the doctor at the last appointment] Grrreat. He sounded so unpleasant on the phone but I'm sure it's because he's not happy getting paged at 2am. So the conversation goes like this:
Dr. Ahole: "So what's seems to be the problem?"
Me: "I am only 33 weeks pregnant [Note: Full pregnancy is at 40 weeks] and I have a clear fluid leaking/gushing out of me"
Dr.: "And..?"
*what a fucking asshole*
Me: "And I'm only 33 weeks pregnant! This shouldn't be happening now!!"
Dr.: "Go to the hospital, I'll see you there *click*"
Great....so I'm supposed to go to the hospital to see this wonderful on-call doctor. I throw on some sweatpants, grab my purse and I have my glasses on. I figured it'd be just a short visit to the hospital and I'll be back in time to go to work the next day. [Hah!] I get to the hospital around 2:30am and get all registered and everything. I get examined by the on-call intern and that wonderful doctor I spoke to never shows up. PHew! I think it's because my ob/gyn arranged for different back-up for me because of my request. *sigh of relief* The doctor who examined me was very nice and kind. They told me my water definitely broke and I will have to stay in the hospital until I give birth. Doh! It could be a matter of hours, days or even weeks! Gahhhhhh!
By this time, I am freaking out and my blood pressure is on the rise. They strap me to a blood pressure cuff that automatically checks the blood pressure every few minutes. I end up wearing that the whole entire time I'm in the hospital and it's very unpleasant. They also start stabbing me with needles for the various IV'S thru the hand! Talk about OWCH!!!! I need to go pee again and I go and as I go, I'm leaving puddles behind of broken water. Doh. After that, I am literally confined to the bed.
At this time, the doctors tell me that no one knows why my water broke and that now they're worried for the baby's risk of infection since my water broke. They're worried about the baby's lungs because it might not be fully matured since I was only 33 weeks pregnant. They decide to give me 2 shots of steroids to ensure that the baby's lungs are fully matured. The nurse administered the first shot (on my butt and sooo painful) and I was to get another one in 12 hours. So all I have to do now is wait while being confined to the bed. It's freaking FREEZING in the hospital and I am shivering in my hospital gown. The nurse that's taking care of me bundles me up in a bunch of blankets and it helps. They also strap me to these leg massagers to make sure my legs don't clot and they're really good! I wish I could have stolen it! Hehehe. And because I was strapped to the IV and strapped to the leg massager, I have to pee in a bedpan. Have you ever peed in a bedpan? I've always seen them but never known how to use them. It's quite degrading. Unfortunately, the IV passed thru me really quickly and I had to pee ALOT all the time and I needed to use the bedpan about every half hour to an hour.
How to pee in a bedpan:
Since you're horizontal, you shove the bedpan under your butt on the bed, still horizontal. And then you pee. Sounds simple, right? It's so not. My brain couldn't wrap around the idea of peeing in bed and I couldn't. I made the nurse leave and Meanie leave and then after 10 minutes, I was finally able to do it. It's mortifying and degrading but hey, what can you do. And then you clean urself off with paper towels the nurse hands you. And I need to do this pretty often and it sucks big time.
By this time, another doctor comes to see me and he tells me that they're going to test my urine to run tests to see if the baby's lungs are fully matured. But they have to stick a catheter in me because the urine from the bedpan wasn't entirely clean. Ack, a catheter??!! Total suckage. They run tests on that and they finally come back to me after a few hours and tell me that yes, the baby's lungs ARE 100% fully matured. I have no need for the 2nd steroid shot and now they're going to induce me.
HOLY CA-CAS!!! WHAT? YOU'RE GOING TO DO..WHAT?? HOLY CRAP, I'M GOING TO DELIVER MY BABY SOON. I'M NOT READY FOR THIS! THE NURSERY ISN'T EVEN READY!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! [Thoughts going thru my head during that point in time]
By this time, we start to make phone calls. Meanie calls my parents but they're not at home (at 6am on Tuesday morning) so I tell him to call my sister's cell phone. She eventually calls back and my parents are there and Meanie breaks the news. Result: everyone's surprised and frantic. I email my co-worker telling her I won't be coming into work because my water broke early and I'm going to deliver soon and I tell Meanie to call my workplace to inform them what's going on. By this time, I'm updating my status on my Facebook. :)
They induce me early Tuesday morning - May 26th, 2009 - with a Pitocin IV. The nurse will raise increments every few minutes depending how on how fast I was reacting to it. It could take a long time and by this time, my ob/gyn has come to see me. In fact, the first thing he says to me is: What the hell did you do??? My pregnancy was so normal that all of us expected a normal delivery on normal due date. =/ He tells me that even though they're inducing me so early now, I probably won't give birth till late Tuesday night or maybe even Wednesday morning. Meanie goes home to pack a bag and is running around the house throwing things in a bag like a chicken with his head cut off. He calls my workplace from home and he's freaking out (so I'm told later by my manager, hehe).
Things are slowly sinking in now. I start feeling cramping by noon and it's not so bad. There's these 2 straps on my belly hooked up to a monitor and they beep. One strap beeps the baby's heartrate and the other strap beeps when I'm going thru contractions. I'm hearing the contraction monitor beep every few minutes and I come to realize the slight cramping I'm feeling are my contractions. They aren't so bad..yet. Around 2pm, they are more noticeable and coming every few minutes. They are barely bearable but starting to be unbearable. I'm ready to have an epidural by 4pm but no one comes to give me an epidural for..2 HOURS!!!! There happened to be a crisis with one of the women giving birth and everyone was assisting her. I had to wait 2 hours for a freaking epidural and by that time, I'm in pain. Lots of it. I cannot talk when I'm being talked to because I'm concentrating on breathing. If I didn't breathe, it would have hurt more. The pain was a little bit bearable but I don't know how much longer I could keep on doing this w/o pain medication.
Finally around 6pm, someone comes to give me an epidural. It's being administered by an attending and he does it quickly. After it's done, he tells me that I should be feeling numbness in my legs...but I don't. In fact, I'm still feeling the contractions. It's not as strong as it was before but I still feel them and it's very uncomfortable. By 630, the head doctor of anesthesia comes down and gives me another one and it finally is successful. I have a slight case of scoliosis (crooked spine) so the first one wasn't done successfully. You're given this remote thingy with a button on it and you can administer yourself how much of the epidural you want. I pressed that button 2 times and I was nice and happy. I didn't feel anything. Epidurals are a freaking god-send. [The nurse tells me later that I was clutching that remote like it would save my life, lol]
After that, I pass out for a few hours. Meanie is watching cartoons and is laffing. I've given an oxygen mask soon because they fear the baby isn't getting enuf oxygen and I'm turned onto my side. I no longer have to pee in a bedpan because I have no feeling "down there". So there's a lot of pee welling up in my bladder but I have no urge to get rid of it because I don't feel that urge anymore. Oddest feeling.
Every few hours, someone comes to check to see how much my cervix [it has to be 10 cm wide to push out the baby] has dilated. You always hear that happening but you never find out HOW they do it until it actually happens to you. Well, let me tell you!! LOL Someone comes and tells you that, and then they proceed to shove their entire hand up you to check and they measure with their fingers. Ugh, that was really terrible. And they had to do it several times and I'm screeching at the top of my lungs cuz it's SO uncomfortable. Even with an epidural!
By 9pm, I feel pressure in my abdomen and is causing me to fart alot. =X The nurse on duty asks me if I'm starting to feel that and I'm like yes!! She tells me the time is soon. I think I am fully dilated around 9:30 and they call my doctor to come because I'm ready now. But the pressure is unbearable by this time. All I want to do now is to push him out but they're all telling me NOT to do it because the doctor isn't here yet. It's so bad that they actually give me a drug thru the IV to lessen the building pressure. The feeling is unbearable. It's like you have to poop so bad but there's no toilet anywhere close. =X The doctor finally arrives around 10pm and I'm starting to freak out again because omg, my baby is coming out soon. The thing I'm most scared of, during labor, is the episiotomy - Ack!! I don't want to get cut!!! Owwie!!
He pokes around in my uterus but can't feel anything because there's too much urine in my bladder. Hah! So they stick a catheter in and drain my bladder and I fill up the bedpan to the very brim! All 3 (nurse, doctor and Meanie) are like HOLY CRAP, THAT'S A LOT OF PEE! *mortification on my part* Tha'ts like 2 bags of IV worth of pee. Haha. After that, they can feel the baby moving around again cuz there's room for him to move now. Hehe.
There's like 9 people in the delivery room - me, Meanie, my ob/gyn, the attending, the nurse, 3 NICU nurses (they clean the baby and whisk him away to the NICU), the head NICU doctor so forget about privacy. LOL. My doctor tells me that he'll do everything he can at first w/o giving me an episiotomy and I'm sorta relieved at that. And then they teach me how to "push". Basically, whenever you feel a contraction coming on, you bear down with ur chin on ur chest and "push" as in delivering a bowel movement. So giving birth is literally like having a huge poop. LOL. Seriously!!!
I pushed my baby out in like 6-7 pushes but it could have been sooner. The threat of an episiotomy was looming over my head and I was reluctant but then I finally let go and finally pushed him out. He started crying the very second he left my body. Literally. All our eyes were huge when we realized that the baby was crying so loudly and that his lungs were fully matured! He didn't need any encouragement, just screaming when he came out. :)
Meanie really surprised me during the whole delivery. He was always telling me that he will only stand by my head when I was pushing because he doesn't want to watch the baby "come out". And he was always against cutting the umbilical cord because he was too squeamish. On the contrary, he was totally fascinated by the whole process. He watched the whole thing and wanted to take a picture as Carey was leaving my body but luckily he was too late. Haha. I don't want to see it! And he cut the baby's cord all on his own. Carey was born on Tuesday, May 26, 2009, at 10:33pm. 3 lbs 14 oz.
After that, the NICU nurses whisked the baby away, cleaned him and then swaddled him really quick. They brought the baby to me before they whisked him away and there's my baby staring at me with open eyes and me staring right back at him. And then they whisked him away from me. :(
And then we had to wait for the placenta to come out. I didn't have to do anything. It just oozed out of me (I didn't feel it). Meanie saw it and told the doctor "OMG, THAT'S DISGUSTING!" [I didn't really have a good look at it] and the doctor replied "I know. This is my least favorite thing about my job" LOL I have no idea what it looks like but I could kinda see from across the room (as the doctor was examining it) that it sorta looked this huge bloody mass of veins and blood. Ick. Haha. The attending stitched me up (I ripped a tiny bit) and voila, it was done. Off to recovery!
Will blog later about recovery and aftermath. This blog is insanely long already!