Okay so I guess this is kind of old news now, but it's been hard to find time for tasks that require two hands.
I had a baby!
Three
and a half weeks later, I am still in a state of disbelief over this
fact. Everything happened so quickly and unexpectedly (yes, after almost 9
months of pregnancy I still wasn't expecting an actual baby), that I
hardly had time to think. But I figure I should write it all down before
too much more time passes and I start to forget.
Friday,
September 13th was my last scheduled day of work (after the HR fiasco
that sent me back to work for 4 weeks of this school year despite my
approved plans to take the whole year off). I said goodbye to the kids,
the teachers, and to my wonderful principal. On the way out the door, my
principal asked if I was ready. "Nooooo!" I responded vigorously. I had
a hospital bag to pack, a car seat to install, a nursery to organize
and finish decorating, a baby monitor to set up, essential baby items
like diapers to purchase, etc. etc. etc. Definitely not ready, but thank
goodness I was going to have two weeks before my due date to finish
preparing. I was feeling good and quite confident that this baby wasn't
going anywhere any time soon.
So I went home, ate some
dinner, and headed upstairs to watch some TV in bed just after 9
o'clock. About 10 minutes into Burn Notice, I ran for the bathroom.
"What's wrong?" Inquired my dear, sweet husband.
"Um,
I think I peed myself," I replied. "I guess I didn't escape the dreaded
loss of bladder control that goes along with pregnancy after all."
It
was an awful lot of pee, though. In fact, I was quite proud of myself
for not getting any on the bed, given how much I had peed. But then I
peed again. And again. And every time I stood up or moved around.
"So... I'm not sure this is pee." I called from the bathroom.
A
quick phone call to the on-call doctor later, and T and I were
frantically trying to pack a hospital bag and head out the door. I kept
telling him that surely this was a mistake -- it couldn't possibly be my
water breaking at only 37 weeks and 4 days. I wasn't even in labor! Due
to my firmly held convictions that I would be laughed out of OB Triage
and sent home, I didn't think too much about what I was packing. Things
like a laptop power cord and clean clothes for leaving the hospital
didn't seem super important when I was operating on the assumption that
I'd only be there a few hours. Oops.
On the way to the
hospital, I attempted to time my non-painful, totally ordinary
contractions (the same kind I'd been having since I was 24 weeks
pregnant). Three minutes apart, then nine minutes, then 5 minutes... no
particular pattern, which is what they say to look for to distinguish
Braxton Hicks practice contractions from the real thing.
We
arrived at around 10:30 PM. They had me put on a hospital gown, and it
quickly became apparent that I wasn't going home. While I hung out in
Triage, T ran out to the car to install the car seat by himself. I think
he did a stellar job operating under pressure! He also picked up some
Ben & Jerry's Americone Dream ice cream, which was smart thinking
for a man whose wife is about to go into labor.
It
was
12:30 before a doctor came to check on me. I was just 1 cm dilated and
still
not having painful contractions. They told me that as soon as a labor
and delivery room opened up, I would be getting pitocin to kick-start
real contractions. I finally got a room around 2 AM, and had been having
painful contractions for an hour at that point. Rather than do another
cervical check to see if I'd progressed on my own, the nurses insisted
that I start pitocin right away. I was really hoping to avoid it, but
since I had already ruptured they wanted to move things along as quickly
as possible to avoid infection. We asked if it was our decision and
were basically told no.
Oww. I lasted about 20 minutes with the pitocin before the nurse convinced me to get an epidural. I knew I was going to get one eventually, but I was trying to hold out for a while. She basically pointed out that it was silly to wait, given that I couldn't get out of bed anyway now that I was hooked up to the pitocin and about to get a catheter.
The epidural was awful. I was expecting it to hurt, or to be freaked out by the needle, but neither of those were my issues. When they put it in and gave me the test dose, my blood pressure dropped and I became extremely nauseous. I threw up a couple times and pretty much felt like I wanted to die. I was far preferring the painful pitocin-induced contractions to this horrible feeling. They gave me Zofran and did something with the epidural to help, and it was soon feeling bearable again. Based on my reaction to just the test dose, the anesthesiologist decided to give me just half of what she usually gives. Unfortunately this didn't do much and she had to come back to increase it a short while later.
The epidural started working, but primarily on my left side. My left leg was completely dead and I couldn't lift it at all. My right side was mildly tingly, but I could still feel everything. The nurse told me to lay on my right and let gravity do the work of evening out the medication
At 5:30 AM a doctor came to do a cervical check and found that I was 5 cm dilated. When she left, I was able to somewhat drift off despite still feeling the contractions on the right. At 6, the nurse came rushing in because the baby's heart rate had dropped (when I looked at the computer screen after I realized what was happening, it said 100). She had me roll over to my left side and gave me an oxygen mask. I asked about the gravity theory of the epidural, but it was clear that the heart rate issue trumped my desire for the epidural to even out. Fortunately the shift worked and the baby was fine. T miraculously slept through this portion of the evening, and was very confused to wake up and find me with an oxygen mask.
Somewhere around 8 AM, Dr. P (the on-call doctor I'd spoken with the previous night) arrived and said it was time to start pushing. T was charged with the task of holding back one of my legs and counting to ten during each big contraction. He was so focused on being supportive, that he kept stopping mid-count to tell me what a good job I was doing. The nurse holding my other leg took over the counting, probably fearing for T's life should his counts of 10 continue to take more than 10 seconds!
At some point when it felt as though I'd been pushing forever and making no progress, Dr. P asked if Dr. B and I had discussed episiotomies. I said no, but the reason we hadn't discussed them was because Dr. B said she pretty much never does them! Freaked out, I continued pushing and apparently made some progress after all.
At 9:10 AM, Raeyn Drop finally made it all the way out and they put her on my chest. For a moment, nothing hurt and everything was utterly perfect. I have never felt that kind of complete happiness before.
I suppose after that absurdly long post, I'll leave it there and write about our postpartum experience another time.
