Okay, we got home yesterday. All is well. He's a champion breastfeeder and my milk came in on day 3 slowly. Now we've ramped up production to "leakfest".
Brief birth story. Water broke, went to the hospital and my blood pressure had spiked. They confined me to a bed so contractions were happening, but there was no real progress. They started pitocin after 7 hours of go nowhere labor. My blood pressure spiked again and I was spilling protein. A lab panel showed it was affecting my liver, so I had become preeclamptic. After 7 hours of regular labor and 8 hours of pitocin contractions, I was exhausted and in a lot of pain. They gave me fentenel and I agreed to an epidural so I could sleep. The fentenel let me sleep for 5 hours, but the epidural failed. They gave me more...and more again...and again. Blood pressure had gone to 180/110 by this point and they gave me magnesium. Removed the epidural and placed another. Nothing. I have a serious drug resistance to all -caine type pain killers/numbing meds. They just don't work on me. So they removed the other epidural and I went the rest of the way to 10cm on pitocin with no pain management. Finally I could push after a total of 30+ hours of back labor. 2 hours of pushing and he came out. He was hard to get out because he was face/brow presentation and facing my hip.
When he did come out, he was really swollen all over his face because of the fight to get through my pelvis with that presentation. They thought there might be something wrong because he looked so bad and his chin looked tiny. So they took him to the NICU. He's all fine and normal.
The doc told me that in 12 years he has only seen one other face presentation birth vaginally. All of the others have gone to c-section. My mw has never seen one vaginally.
Not the birth I planned, and I had to stay on bedrest and magnesium for 24 hours after, but I'm really grateful for all the doulas, mws, nurses, and docs I saw. I went through 3 shifts during labor and delivery so I saw a lot of them.
I'm just glad we're both home and healthy. I'll try to post pics soon.
