Birth story and questions!
Henry Leonard was born February 21 at 9:20 PM via unplanned cesarean. This is the complete opposite of the birth I had planned, i.e. water birth at home.
My water partly broke at home the morning before. When my midwife checked me out, his head was still very high and she could swear she still felt a membrane. We took a trip to the hospital to consult with the OB about the possibility of cord prolapse, and she agreed that my water had not REALLY broken, so I was clear to go back home and labor, as mild contractions had started at that point.
I went home and labored all day while my husband set up the birth tub in the living room. By evening I was having steady, but not terribly painful contractions. We called my midwife again, who felt uncomfortbale with the possibility of my water breaking if the baby's head had not engaged. Back to the hospital, where the OB agreed that it was too dangerous to stay home with unbroken membranes with a floaty head and possible cord prolapse. I was admitted to the hospital and got some relief from the pain by laboring in an awesome bathub.
By 2 AM, I was only at 3cm, and my labor was stalling. We made the decision to do a "controlled rupture of membranes" in the OR to eliminate the risk of cord prolape, whereby one person would have their hand inside to control the descent of the head, another would be pressing on his bum from the outside, and a third would do the actual rupture with an amniohook. I finally got hooked up to an epidural (necessary in case the cord DID prolapse and they had to do an emergency cesarean) and Oxytocin around 7 AM - at this point I'd been up for 24 hours, 16 of which had been without food.
Around 8 AM they finally started detaching me from various monitors and devices. When the nurse unhooked the fetal monitor, I felt this really strange POP from inside and felt liquid gushing out. After all that, my water broke on its own. Immediately a rush of people came in while the nurse quickly lowered the upper part of the gurney and shoved her hand up inside me to make sure the cord hadn't come down. (Thank god for the epidural.) After a few frantic minutes they determined that his head had come down and there was no more risk of prolape. Yippee. They upped my epidural and finally I was able to sleep in fits and starts while my cervix s-l-o-w-l-y dilated.
It took until about 5 PM (7 cm at that point) for someone to realize that there was something not right about the way he was coming down. It took several more people to realize that he was deciding to enter the world face-first, a rare presentation that is apparently almost impossible to deliver vaginally. (This prompted no less than a dozen doctors and nurses coming into my room and bashfully asking if they could do a vaginal exam, since they'd never felt a face-first presentation. I figured hey, I've got an epidural, I can't feel anything; who am I to hinder medical science?) Luckily, I had an OB who was nice enough to let me try everything possible to avoid a c-section. I rolled over to try to turn him, but by 8 PM, after reaching 10 cm and allowing me to push for an hour, he was stuck fast and not budging.
Did I mention that, at some point during the pushing, the epidural catheter slipped out, so I started feeling contractions again? And that the anaesthetist was in the OR with someone else? So I went from feeling mild contractions, to nothing, to 3rd stage labor contractions for two hours before they wheeled me into the OR. And I'd been without food for over 24 hours, and maybe three hours of sleep, at this point. Moaning and groaning like I'd never have imagined myself doing, they finally gave me a spinal that made my body melt in about 5 seconds. It was bliss. A bunch of shivering, pulling and tugging later, Henry was born, with a full head of hair and a face that looked like it had done several rounds with Muhammad Ali.
- How long before these stupid strips came off? Am I supposed to pick them off or what?
- For anyone who had a section and/or PUPPPs, did you find the skin of your belly was very sensitive post-partum? It's all I can do to not walk around without pants; any fabric rubbing on it is exremely irritating.
- How long did you take tylenol and/or ibuprofen to deal with post-partum pain?