(no subject)
Since Ethan has been born, I have had 6 IV's, and have had my blood drawn 5 times. Ugh... I just want to be better. The worst part is that I am on bed rest and I have a million things to do... like pick up a breast pump and put Ethan on Medicaid and these are things that I think I need to get done now. Greg is trying to tell me to sit down and relax and not worry about it... but I am, as my son has to have insurance. And my breasts neeeeeed to be pumped every now and then, and that was per the doctor so that I can take an accurate temperature. I think I am tired of being couped up. I want to go out and do things again!
I walked into my house and looked around, things were different somehow. It felt like a year since I had been here. It was Sunday afternoon and to just think that last week at this time I was complaining about being pregnant. Yet now, I kind of missed my round belly. I looked around at the mess that was everywhere. I had tried to frantically to get everything cleaned up before he came home but just ended up making the house worse. Something was different, I just couldn’t figure out what it was.
* * *
I woke up on the 14th of August at around 4:00am because I felt strange. I realized that I needed to throw up, something that I can’t remember doing since I was a small child. I ran to the bathroom and threw up the best that I could then lied down on the floor almost in tears calling for Greg because my stomach hurt. He ran to get me some water. I got back to sleep and at around 8:00am I felt a contraction. I ignored it as I had been having these contractions for weeks. Then I had a couple of more. Suddenly I felt a lot of pain and jumped out of bed to the bathroom. I had diarrhea. I still tried to go back to bed but told Greg, “I really think that I may be going into labor.”
Greg, who has only had a few hours of sleep at that point, didn’t seem to comprehend what I was saying. I just tried to go back to bed but kept having contractions. I started timing them myself and they were about 12 minutes apart. They kept getting closer and a bit more painful. I finally, just nearly screamed at Greg, “You need to get out of bed now and help me time these.” I just couldn’t do it myself.
I ate four pieces of toast and had I known what would be in store I would have eaten some more. Honestly though, I started thinking, “Well, I am thinking he should be here by midnight.” Right now I had to wait. I sat on the birthing ball, took a shower, made a couple of phone calls, updated my journal, and tried to keep my mind off of the contractions. When they were about 4 minutes apart I called the hospital and was told to come in. We took our time getting ready to go as I knew that even when we got there it would be awhile.
The car ride was miserable. Of course, Greg had to stop to buy cigarettes but I needed a bottle of water so I couldn’t complain too much. I tried to listen to music and focus on that as opposed to my comfort level. I just remember pushing on the roof of the car and feeling really sick watching the traffic on the freeway.
We got to the hospital and had to check in with antenatal. They had me pee in a cup which was hell as my mother called me and would not leave me alone. I was in the middle of having a contraction when I told her I would call her when we got a room. I ended up hanging up on her as she just wouldn’t stop talking. I noticed that I was starting to lose my mucous plug. My mother ended up meeting us in antenatal as I was hooked up to monitors. My contractions were coming at about 2 minutes apart and I just hated being strapped to the bed. Finally the midwife came in to check me and I was at 4 cm. I was pleased to know that as that was my goal for arriving at the hospital. I was being admitted to a room about 2:00pm.
At this point, Greg’s mom, Glenda, had arrived and we all got settled into room 127. I immediately tried out the rocking chair and that helped my contractions immensely. I sent Greg back home for pillows as I really wanted my own. Of course he came back with them but with no pillow cases. It’s amazing at what is going to really annoy you when you’re in labor. Thankfully Glenda had her husband bring me some pillow cases.
The nurse came in to get me settled and it was back to the monitors. This annoyed me greatly as I felt that I just got off them. I felt like I was sitting there forever when finally she came back and drew me a bath. That felt good. Really good. I sat through several contractions. Thankfully there was never ending hot water as I think I was in and out of the bath 5 or 6 times. I handled the contractions but hadn’t expected them to hurt that bad. I always had debilitating periods and just thought that contractions would feel similar. At one point I thought that I should explore my pain relief options but was afraid that using drugs would cause a panic attack or make me feel funny. The midwife came in to talk to me about it and I decided to just wait and see how dilated I was. She told me to call her when I was ready to be checked. I decided to wait it out as long as I could. Everyone told me I was breathing through the contractions well so I figured that I could make it.
Shift change came and the next nurse sent me walking around the track. Walking was better than sitting in the tub. Greg and I walked so often that he got tired! I didn’t notice my contractions strengthening but it was easier to breath through them. The moms were starting to get on my nerves. I really wanted them there; I just didn’t want them to say anything.
Every hour they monitored me then they needed to monitor me on the bed again. That was the worst. It sounds ridiculous, but I had developed a fear of the bed. They strapped me in but this time noticed that there was a dip in Ethan’s heart rate. This was of course a problem but at the time I just didn’t think about it. I just didn’t want to be stuck laboring in the bed. The nurse kept switching my position but there was still a dip in his heart rate at times. It was looking like I was going to have to be stuck in bed. At this point, I started talking about an epidural. If I had to stay in bed there was no way that I could sit through these contractions in bed.
Suddenly the anesthesiologist couldn’t come soon enough. Greg filled out my consent form for the epidural and at one point I yelled, “I just want some drugs.” Greg yelled back, “The sooner I fill out this form, the sooner you get the drugs.” Men will never understand labor.
All of my fears of being poked in the back went away. I just remember staring into Greg’s eyes and at that moment I saw all the love in the world. I was going to make it. I couldn’t even feel the whole procedure and the anesthesiologist talked the whole time telling me what he was doing but I couldn’t hear him.
The epidural was in place and things got a lot better. The midwife really wanted me to try and take a nap but it was still really hard. Instead mom and Greg fell asleep. The lights were off and I just tried to relax as much as possible. I probably relaxed a little too much. I had made it to 7 centimeters before I had an epidural and the epidural kept me at 7 centimeters. The midwife came in to break my bag of waters. She did it in the dark but later I wished she had turned the light on as we would have known that Ethan had passed meconium.
Breaking my water didn’t help anything so they started pitocin. I was a little worried about it but at that point I was in labor for nearly 24 hours that I just didn’t care. My labor still wasn’t progressing, and the midwife decided to put on internal monitors. I wasn’t thrilled with it, but was in no mood to argue and at the time she had a reason for it that sounded good.
Either the pitocin or the epidural wore off. I kept re-dosing my epidural but nothing would happen. The nurse called anesthesiologist to re-dose the epidural. I only helped for a little while. About 8:00 I asked the new nurse if I could re-dose it again and she was going to do that when I started to complain that I felt constipated and that the contractions were really starting to hurt. She told me that she was going to go get the midwife. It felt like an eternity but a midwife came in to check me and I was complete!!! Unfortunately Ethan was barely at 0 station and the midwife warned me that it was going to take awhile to push him out but she wanted me to start pushing! I was so excited! I called out to Greg to wake up (my mom had been up for awhile and unfortunately Greg’s mom had gone to work). Greg lifted his head than fell back asleep. I was a little irritated but then he says, “Well, your not pushing now, I’ll get up when you start.” I had to let it go and just accept that he was tired.
The nurse came in to get me started pushing. She kept telling me what an excellent pusher I was and that he should be here sooner than I think. I pushed him from 0 station to +4 in about 45 minutes. I felt him moving down the entire time. All I could do was imagine that I was having the largest BM ever and it seemed to work. Pushing felt good in some ways as the contractions were easier to deal with and even when told to “rest” through one, I couldn’t fight the urge to push.
Then I felt like he just stopped and wouldn’t go any further. I pushed so hard and she kept moving me into different positions. Then two different midwives came in and had me pushing in all kinds of different positions. I was on top of the birthing ball, against a squat bar, on each side, in a “cat” position. It took so much energy and I just kept saying, “He’s not going to come out.” I was really getting frustrated as everyone kept saying that he was right there practically coming out. Apparently what was really going on was that I would push him a little out of my vagina and then he would slip back in. The reason for all of this is that he was face up. Now, I know the important difference between anterior and posterior.
After two hours of pushing, one of the midwives suggested a vacuum. I was a little apprehensive and started to ask questions and she started to answer them, then it occurred to me, that I just wanted this over. “Just do it.” She left and came back a little bit later and things got very hectic. I saw a new woman come in and she was putting some major scrubs on with gloves and everything. She was an OB. I remembered in my birthing class, being explained how the birthing center works. Normally midwives deliver the babies and that there is always several OBs working in case of any complications. I knew that this was getting serious.
They rose up my bed really high so that all I could see were the tops of people’s heads. People just kept coming into the room. I think that there were about 15 people. The OB sat on a stool and started to position the vacuum. With the next contraction I was told to push as hard as I could. I did. Still he wouldn’t come out. The OB said she’s get him out on the next contraction. That was a relief. I went to push with everything I had and then I felt something pop. The vacuum had popped off. The OB then said, “It’s a safety feature, its okay.” We tried again with the next contraction. At this point I started just screaming, “He’s not coming out, I can’t do this.” And the vacuum popped off again. Now the OB was getting frustrated. I heard her say, “Get me a vacuum that works.” I also heard her say, “If we had forceps here we could get him out.” On the fifth attempt I was pushing so hard and I heard her say, “Has she had an epidural?” And I saw her grab the scissors and felt her cut me. However, I was so stressed and worried that it didn’t matter. I was starting to lose myself. I felt like he was never coming out. His heart rate was dropping and I saw some man in a suit fly in the room telling everyone to move that he was the pediatrician. Things were starting to get very ugly. I saw my mom crying and Greg looking very nervous. Then one of the nurses said to me, “Push for a count of ten and we’ll get him out.” I asked her to count for me. On the sixth try, I pushed for ten and nothing. I kept pushing with the contraction and then kept pushing after the contraction had ended. That’s when his head came out. The nurses yelled for me to push some more that he was almost out. Then the OB hushed everyone and yelled, “Don’t push, don’t push.” The cord was around his neck. She cut the cord then when she finished, contraction or not, she told me to push and I did. I felt this release and just yelled, “Thank God!”
I saw him come out and get carried to the warmer. The whole time I looked forward to having him on my chest but I also knew he wasn’t crying and I kept looking over to see what was going on. He looked black and blue when he came out.
Everyone had shifted from between my legs to the baby warmer. The OB worked carefully to deliver the placenta. I was numb. I kept trying to figure out what was going on and all I could think was, “Where’s my baby?” The OB then told me that she had some major repairs to do. There were so many people and commotion that I couldn’t figure out what was going on. And no one seemed to tell me. Finally, Greg came over and said, “We have a baby boy and he’s beautiful.” His eyes were red and it looked like he had been crying. I finally relaxed.
They wrapped him up and let me hold him for a second and the pediatrician came over and told me what was going on but I just couldn’t hear him for some reason. Later I found out that he came out nearly dead, not able to breath and barely a pulse. His apgar score was one because he was practically dead. They let Greg carry him to the nursery because he had to be watched but the pediatrician promised that he would get us back together as soon as possible. My mom came over and asked if she could leave me and go to the nursery. I let them go as I was stuck being stitched up. After finding out my baby was okay I snapped out of my numb state and screamed at a sharp pain. The epidural was completely gone. I got three injections of lidocaine and was worked on for over an hour. I had a fourth degree laceration.
Finally when it was done I got lowered down and I wished someone had cleaned the room because there was blood everywhere. It made me a little sick. I saw the OB and she was covered in blood. Greg even had blood on his shirt. My mom came back and told me that everything was fine. Somewhere in the commotion lunch had arrived to my room. Greg came in later and had Ethan with him. I finally really got to hold my baby and he was okay. I was okay and he was okay. He was born August 15, 2003 at 11:43 am. He was 7 pounds 12.2 ounces and 22 inches long.
* * *
I was home with my baby boy in my arms. I had endured 27 ½ hours of labor and a hospital stay of four days. The strange thing was that I thought just what every other mother has said, ‘I would do every bit of it again.’ At that point I realized that of course there was something different, this was no longer me and Greg’s house but our family’s home.
I walked into my house and looked around, things were different somehow. It felt like a year since I had been here. It was Sunday afternoon and to just think that last week at this time I was complaining about being pregnant. Yet now, I kind of missed my round belly. I looked around at the mess that was everywhere. I had tried to frantically to get everything cleaned up before he came home but just ended up making the house worse. Something was different, I just couldn’t figure out what it was.
* * *
I woke up on the 14th of August at around 4:00am because I felt strange. I realized that I needed to throw up, something that I can’t remember doing since I was a small child. I ran to the bathroom and threw up the best that I could then lied down on the floor almost in tears calling for Greg because my stomach hurt. He ran to get me some water. I got back to sleep and at around 8:00am I felt a contraction. I ignored it as I had been having these contractions for weeks. Then I had a couple of more. Suddenly I felt a lot of pain and jumped out of bed to the bathroom. I had diarrhea. I still tried to go back to bed but told Greg, “I really think that I may be going into labor.”
Greg, who has only had a few hours of sleep at that point, didn’t seem to comprehend what I was saying. I just tried to go back to bed but kept having contractions. I started timing them myself and they were about 12 minutes apart. They kept getting closer and a bit more painful. I finally, just nearly screamed at Greg, “You need to get out of bed now and help me time these.” I just couldn’t do it myself.
I ate four pieces of toast and had I known what would be in store I would have eaten some more. Honestly though, I started thinking, “Well, I am thinking he should be here by midnight.” Right now I had to wait. I sat on the birthing ball, took a shower, made a couple of phone calls, updated my journal, and tried to keep my mind off of the contractions. When they were about 4 minutes apart I called the hospital and was told to come in. We took our time getting ready to go as I knew that even when we got there it would be awhile.
The car ride was miserable. Of course, Greg had to stop to buy cigarettes but I needed a bottle of water so I couldn’t complain too much. I tried to listen to music and focus on that as opposed to my comfort level. I just remember pushing on the roof of the car and feeling really sick watching the traffic on the freeway.
We got to the hospital and had to check in with antenatal. They had me pee in a cup which was hell as my mother called me and would not leave me alone. I was in the middle of having a contraction when I told her I would call her when we got a room. I ended up hanging up on her as she just wouldn’t stop talking. I noticed that I was starting to lose my mucous plug. My mother ended up meeting us in antenatal as I was hooked up to monitors. My contractions were coming at about 2 minutes apart and I just hated being strapped to the bed. Finally the midwife came in to check me and I was at 4 cm. I was pleased to know that as that was my goal for arriving at the hospital. I was being admitted to a room about 2:00pm.
At this point, Greg’s mom, Glenda, had arrived and we all got settled into room 127. I immediately tried out the rocking chair and that helped my contractions immensely. I sent Greg back home for pillows as I really wanted my own. Of course he came back with them but with no pillow cases. It’s amazing at what is going to really annoy you when you’re in labor. Thankfully Glenda had her husband bring me some pillow cases.
The nurse came in to get me settled and it was back to the monitors. This annoyed me greatly as I felt that I just got off them. I felt like I was sitting there forever when finally she came back and drew me a bath. That felt good. Really good. I sat through several contractions. Thankfully there was never ending hot water as I think I was in and out of the bath 5 or 6 times. I handled the contractions but hadn’t expected them to hurt that bad. I always had debilitating periods and just thought that contractions would feel similar. At one point I thought that I should explore my pain relief options but was afraid that using drugs would cause a panic attack or make me feel funny. The midwife came in to talk to me about it and I decided to just wait and see how dilated I was. She told me to call her when I was ready to be checked. I decided to wait it out as long as I could. Everyone told me I was breathing through the contractions well so I figured that I could make it.
Shift change came and the next nurse sent me walking around the track. Walking was better than sitting in the tub. Greg and I walked so often that he got tired! I didn’t notice my contractions strengthening but it was easier to breath through them. The moms were starting to get on my nerves. I really wanted them there; I just didn’t want them to say anything.
Every hour they monitored me then they needed to monitor me on the bed again. That was the worst. It sounds ridiculous, but I had developed a fear of the bed. They strapped me in but this time noticed that there was a dip in Ethan’s heart rate. This was of course a problem but at the time I just didn’t think about it. I just didn’t want to be stuck laboring in the bed. The nurse kept switching my position but there was still a dip in his heart rate at times. It was looking like I was going to have to be stuck in bed. At this point, I started talking about an epidural. If I had to stay in bed there was no way that I could sit through these contractions in bed.
Suddenly the anesthesiologist couldn’t come soon enough. Greg filled out my consent form for the epidural and at one point I yelled, “I just want some drugs.” Greg yelled back, “The sooner I fill out this form, the sooner you get the drugs.” Men will never understand labor.
All of my fears of being poked in the back went away. I just remember staring into Greg’s eyes and at that moment I saw all the love in the world. I was going to make it. I couldn’t even feel the whole procedure and the anesthesiologist talked the whole time telling me what he was doing but I couldn’t hear him.
The epidural was in place and things got a lot better. The midwife really wanted me to try and take a nap but it was still really hard. Instead mom and Greg fell asleep. The lights were off and I just tried to relax as much as possible. I probably relaxed a little too much. I had made it to 7 centimeters before I had an epidural and the epidural kept me at 7 centimeters. The midwife came in to break my bag of waters. She did it in the dark but later I wished she had turned the light on as we would have known that Ethan had passed meconium.
Breaking my water didn’t help anything so they started pitocin. I was a little worried about it but at that point I was in labor for nearly 24 hours that I just didn’t care. My labor still wasn’t progressing, and the midwife decided to put on internal monitors. I wasn’t thrilled with it, but was in no mood to argue and at the time she had a reason for it that sounded good.
Either the pitocin or the epidural wore off. I kept re-dosing my epidural but nothing would happen. The nurse called anesthesiologist to re-dose the epidural. I only helped for a little while. About 8:00 I asked the new nurse if I could re-dose it again and she was going to do that when I started to complain that I felt constipated and that the contractions were really starting to hurt. She told me that she was going to go get the midwife. It felt like an eternity but a midwife came in to check me and I was complete!!! Unfortunately Ethan was barely at 0 station and the midwife warned me that it was going to take awhile to push him out but she wanted me to start pushing! I was so excited! I called out to Greg to wake up (my mom had been up for awhile and unfortunately Greg’s mom had gone to work). Greg lifted his head than fell back asleep. I was a little irritated but then he says, “Well, your not pushing now, I’ll get up when you start.” I had to let it go and just accept that he was tired.
The nurse came in to get me started pushing. She kept telling me what an excellent pusher I was and that he should be here sooner than I think. I pushed him from 0 station to +4 in about 45 minutes. I felt him moving down the entire time. All I could do was imagine that I was having the largest BM ever and it seemed to work. Pushing felt good in some ways as the contractions were easier to deal with and even when told to “rest” through one, I couldn’t fight the urge to push.
Then I felt like he just stopped and wouldn’t go any further. I pushed so hard and she kept moving me into different positions. Then two different midwives came in and had me pushing in all kinds of different positions. I was on top of the birthing ball, against a squat bar, on each side, in a “cat” position. It took so much energy and I just kept saying, “He’s not going to come out.” I was really getting frustrated as everyone kept saying that he was right there practically coming out. Apparently what was really going on was that I would push him a little out of my vagina and then he would slip back in. The reason for all of this is that he was face up. Now, I know the important difference between anterior and posterior.
After two hours of pushing, one of the midwives suggested a vacuum. I was a little apprehensive and started to ask questions and she started to answer them, then it occurred to me, that I just wanted this over. “Just do it.” She left and came back a little bit later and things got very hectic. I saw a new woman come in and she was putting some major scrubs on with gloves and everything. She was an OB. I remembered in my birthing class, being explained how the birthing center works. Normally midwives deliver the babies and that there is always several OBs working in case of any complications. I knew that this was getting serious.
They rose up my bed really high so that all I could see were the tops of people’s heads. People just kept coming into the room. I think that there were about 15 people. The OB sat on a stool and started to position the vacuum. With the next contraction I was told to push as hard as I could. I did. Still he wouldn’t come out. The OB said she’s get him out on the next contraction. That was a relief. I went to push with everything I had and then I felt something pop. The vacuum had popped off. The OB then said, “It’s a safety feature, its okay.” We tried again with the next contraction. At this point I started just screaming, “He’s not coming out, I can’t do this.” And the vacuum popped off again. Now the OB was getting frustrated. I heard her say, “Get me a vacuum that works.” I also heard her say, “If we had forceps here we could get him out.” On the fifth attempt I was pushing so hard and I heard her say, “Has she had an epidural?” And I saw her grab the scissors and felt her cut me. However, I was so stressed and worried that it didn’t matter. I was starting to lose myself. I felt like he was never coming out. His heart rate was dropping and I saw some man in a suit fly in the room telling everyone to move that he was the pediatrician. Things were starting to get very ugly. I saw my mom crying and Greg looking very nervous. Then one of the nurses said to me, “Push for a count of ten and we’ll get him out.” I asked her to count for me. On the sixth try, I pushed for ten and nothing. I kept pushing with the contraction and then kept pushing after the contraction had ended. That’s when his head came out. The nurses yelled for me to push some more that he was almost out. Then the OB hushed everyone and yelled, “Don’t push, don’t push.” The cord was around his neck. She cut the cord then when she finished, contraction or not, she told me to push and I did. I felt this release and just yelled, “Thank God!”
I saw him come out and get carried to the warmer. The whole time I looked forward to having him on my chest but I also knew he wasn’t crying and I kept looking over to see what was going on. He looked black and blue when he came out.
Everyone had shifted from between my legs to the baby warmer. The OB worked carefully to deliver the placenta. I was numb. I kept trying to figure out what was going on and all I could think was, “Where’s my baby?” The OB then told me that she had some major repairs to do. There were so many people and commotion that I couldn’t figure out what was going on. And no one seemed to tell me. Finally, Greg came over and said, “We have a baby boy and he’s beautiful.” His eyes were red and it looked like he had been crying. I finally relaxed.
They wrapped him up and let me hold him for a second and the pediatrician came over and told me what was going on but I just couldn’t hear him for some reason. Later I found out that he came out nearly dead, not able to breath and barely a pulse. His apgar score was one because he was practically dead. They let Greg carry him to the nursery because he had to be watched but the pediatrician promised that he would get us back together as soon as possible. My mom came over and asked if she could leave me and go to the nursery. I let them go as I was stuck being stitched up. After finding out my baby was okay I snapped out of my numb state and screamed at a sharp pain. The epidural was completely gone. I got three injections of lidocaine and was worked on for over an hour. I had a fourth degree laceration.
Finally when it was done I got lowered down and I wished someone had cleaned the room because there was blood everywhere. It made me a little sick. I saw the OB and she was covered in blood. Greg even had blood on his shirt. My mom came back and told me that everything was fine. Somewhere in the commotion lunch had arrived to my room. Greg came in later and had Ethan with him. I finally really got to hold my baby and he was okay. I was okay and he was okay. He was born August 15, 2003 at 11:43 am. He was 7 pounds 12.2 ounces and 22 inches long.
* * *
I was home with my baby boy in my arms. I had endured 27 ½ hours of labor and a hospital stay of four days. The strange thing was that I thought just what every other mother has said, ‘I would do every bit of it again.’ At that point I realized that of course there was something different, this was no longer me and Greg’s house but our family’s home.