A C-section is not the way I would have chosen to bring my boy into the world; it was not very pleasant, but it was what it was and now I have a delightful baby boy.
On Sunday, October 27, I woke up having regular contractions about ten minutes apart. I got really excited; I wasn’t due for two weeks, but all my measurements and US scans had indicated maybe I was further along than we thought. So I thought this might be it! I woke my husband up and told him about the contractions; he said, “Let’s go for a walk!” While I was walking, the contractions got stronger and closer together – about six minutes apart – but when I stopped walking, they slowed down again. So we walked a lot. Slowly through the course of the day, they got closer together and I started to have a pretty bad continuous backache. The contractions were surprisingly easy to deal with; I had been expecting to really be bad at labor (I have been known as the biggest pain wimp in my family for as long as I can remember; I really don’t handle pain well!). I went to bed thinking tomorrow might be the day I met my baby!
I got up Monday morning to contractions that were still regularly 7-10 minutes apart, lasting about a minute, and stronger, plus a killer backache. My husband started to get ready for work, but after being up for a while and having a harder time dealing with the contractions, I told him I really wanted him to stay home – he worked two hours away. He agreed, and said “Let’s go for a walk!” While walking the contractions were four minutes apart and required all my concentration – I would stop and close my eyes and breathe with them. I discovered I didn’t like to even be talked to during the contractions, much less touched. I called my doctor and told him what was going on, and the nurse told me to go on to L&D. When we arrived at the hospital, they told me I was only a fingertip dilated, and the contractions were showing up irregularly on the monitor (even though I was still feeling them every four to six minutes). So home we went; my dh was more prosaic about being sent home than I expected him to be. I was doing okay, but disappointed. I thought we’d be back at the hospital in the next day or so.
But no. Contractions continued from 10-15 minutes apart, consistently, along with the miserable backache, until Wednesday – only occasionally getting any stronger or closer together. I’ve never walked so much in my life! The contractions weren’t that difficult to deal with, but they did require my concentration and didn’t let me sleep well. The backache, on the other hand, was horrible. I had a doctor visit on Wednesday, where I found out that I had yet anther kidney stone (my fifth of this pregnancy), which was the cause of the backache (you would think I would have recognized that pain, wouldn’t you?). He told me that could be what was triggering the contractions, but the contractions weren’t productive – I was still only a fingertip dilated. He gave me Vicodin for the kidney stone pain (like I said, I’m an utter wimp about pain) and sent me home. He did say before I left that “I hope you deliver in the next week or so, because we look like we’re getting a big baby.” He didn’t want to induce me though, because he told me that would really increase my risk of a C-section.
So all it week it was the same story – four to eight contractions every hour, plus a horrendous backache. I walked my feet off, spent lots of time on my hands and knees rocking back and forth, and lots of time in the bathtub. On Sunday, November 3, I woke up at about 6:30 to contractions that were every four minutes like clockwork and significantly stronger. I timed them for about an hour and then woke up my husband and my sister, who had come into town the day before – she was the second half of my labor support team, and just as vital to me as my husband. My sister and I went on a walk while my husband fixed us breakfast. We walked for about an hour (in the rain!) and while I was walking, the contractions were about two minutes apart. I was still handling the whole contraction thing very well; I was proud of myself. We got back to the house and had breakfast and then decided to go on to the hospital.
We got to the hospital around 10:30 am. They got me hooked up to the monitors, which this time showed my contractions like I was feeling them – every two minutes. Unfortunately, I was still only a fingertip dilated!! At this point, I started crying – I was tired of dealing with contractions, and I was tired of my back hurting – I felt like I’d been in labor for a week and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to deal with it much longer. Then the nurse took my blood pressure – 152/94. Uh-oh; bad news. It had been creeping up for quite some time and it was VERY high for me. I’d shown lots of bad symptoms – gained 18 pounds of fluid in a week, headaches and seeing spots, nausea – but no protein in my urine, so they hadn’t been worried about it until my diastolic hit that magic number “90.” Now, suddenly, it was a big deal. I was told to stay in the bed until they talked to the doctor; I couldn’t walk around like I had been doing.
The doctor on call told the nurse to draw blood and check my liver enzymes, and if my pressure was still that high in an hour to start mag sulfate. Yuck! So I concentrated on being calm and serene and we started filling out paperwork. After about 20 minutes and one more bp reading over 90, my doctor showed up. He told me that it looked like I was in latent phase labor, which could go on for a while (no kidding!!). I could just wait it out – but he’d want me to stay in the hospital because of my blood pressure, and I wouldn’t be allowed to walk around for the same reason – or he could go on and start Pitocin to kick-start progress, if I was up to that. At this point, yes, I was.
They started the Pitocin about 11:15 am. Right away, the contractions got stronger and closer together. I had about a thirty second break between the end of one contraction and the beginning of another. Still surprisingly, I was coping really, really well with the contractions. I was playing cards with my husband and sister, and just had to pause to breathe and relax through the peaks. My backache had backed off a little, and I was excited that I finally felt like I was getting somewhere. At 5:00 pm, the nurse checked my again and I was only 1.5 cm. My sister asked about breaking my water, but the nurse said that because of the position of my cervix and the baby’s head, it would be very difficult to do. She had stopped increasing the Pitocin because my contractions were so close together and she didn’t want to overwhelm me or my body, but the doctor told her to keep going so she turned it up again. She was a fantastic nurse and very, very encouraging of me – kept telling me what a great job I was doing. My parents and my mother-in-law arrived, so I socialized for a while. At about 7:30 I started having a really, really hard time staying on top of the contractions and got in pretty bad shape – I was tired and overwhelmed and really just wanted a break – I felt like if I had just a little bit more time between contractions, I could get back on top of things. And then my backache started back up with a vengeance. I got some Nubain at about 8:00, hoping it would help me rest and get back on top of things. It did, and I started feeling pretty good again, even though I had the backache. My sister decided to go with my parents to get something to eat, and my husband and I had a nice relaxing half-hour or so. Then when my sister got back, dh left to go grab some food and go home to feed our dog.
At 9:30 my doctor came in and checked me and I was 3 cm. But he decided that now he could break my bag of waters. My blood pressure was still worrisome and they were getting really anxious for things to progress – my liver enzymes had come back slightly elevated. I was desperate not to have any mag sulfate, so they’d held off on that, especially since it would have slowed the labor. So the doctor broke my water. This, because of the position of my cervix, was extraordinarily painful. It was the first time during the whole labor that I cried from the pain. I had enormous amounts of fluid – it gushed and gushed immediately, and then again with every contraction. I was amazed at how much there was! Somehow, I’d just never imagined there’d be quite that much water in the bag of waters. After the doctor broke my water, he really wanted me to get an epidural. He thought it might help bring my blood pressure down and might help me rest, because he was afraid I was getting worn out (this was quite true). I accepted the epidural because I thought he might be right about the blood pressure, and I was very scared about the whole pre-eclampsia idea. I also still believed in some corner of my mind, in spite of how well I had been doing, that I was too much of a wimp to actually make it through labor without an epidural.
At this point, the contractions got hard to deal with. I remember clearly thinking “If I could just get out of the *#&)ing bed, I could do this!” I asked my sister to call my husband because I really wanted him back to be with me for the epidural – I was scared of that whole experience. My mom came in and rubbed my back and held my hand, reminding me to breathe with each contraction because I had started holding my breath. Her touching me really bothered me, so I shot my sister a look and she said “Mom, hands off!” I had wanted my sister there because I knew she would stick up for what I wanted to anyone, and I was right. Mom kept saying “You can yell, or make noise if you want, Carrie Lea, it’s all right.” I just moaned really, really low and softly and told her I didn’t want to make noise. My sister got right down in front of my face and caught my eyes and said “I’m so proud of you. We’re gonna have to rethink the whole ‘Carrie’s the wimp of the family’ idea.” This was the only HARD stretch of labor for me, and it didn’t last long – and it wasn’t even that hard!
At 10:00 the anaesthesiologist arrived. He made everyone leave the room – and they met my husband on the way out the door. He’d made it before I got the epi, but I didn’t even get to see him because the doc wouldn’t let him in the room. I was so angry and absolutely terrified. The nurse had me sit on the edge of the bed and curl up. Every time I had a contraction, water would gush out onto the floor. I kept apologizing to the nurse. She just laughed and said it had been a long time since she’d had anyone with that much fluid. The epi doc was a real prick and the whole experience was really scary, but I got through it. My husband was very, very upset that he didn’t make it back in time, but it was a moot point anyway since the doc wouldn’t let him in the room. I felt almost disappointed about losing the feel of the contractions with the epidural, even though they had gotten difficult, but I almost immediately got really sleepy, and I was very ready to rest. My parents got a hotel room close by, and my husband, my sister and I all went to sleep.
At about 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, I started having really, really bad back pain again. I told the nurse, and told her that it might be kidney stone pain. She checked my cervix and told me I was at 4-5 cm. She called the epi doc, who told me that he couldn’t do anything to help with non-contraction pain – but then upped my epidural anyway. I’m still not sure how much of the back pain was from labor, how much was from the kidney stone, and how much was being stuck in that damned uncomfortable hospital bed!! But the epidural helped very little, and I begged the nurse to do something. At that point, I really wanted one of the Vicodin that I’d been taking for the kidney stone, but I knew that was a bad idea since I didn’t know when the baby was going to be born. She called the doctor, and he said to give me another dose of Nubain, which I got around 3:00, and then I was able to go back to sleep for awhile. At around 7:00 am, a new nurse checked me after shift change and I was still about 5 cm. I wasn’t very happy – I’d thought surely I’d have made more progress. I got another shot of Nubain for the kidney stone pain (which was, by this point with not being able to move, horrendous).
My parents came back, and we all talked for a while again; I was feeling pretty good since the kidney pain had backed off. The nurse came in and told me the doctor wanted her to start increasing the Pitocin again; they were really concerned with how little progress I was making, and my blood pressure was starting to creep up. I was tired, and decided to try sleeping again. The next thing I knew, the nurse was running in the room and ordered me to get off my left side and turn over on my right. I assumed there was something strange with my blood pressure, but then she put an oxygen mask on me. I asked two or three times if the baby’s heartbeat was okay, but she didn’t answer me. My dh – who’d stepped out of the room while I was sleeping – came back in and the nurse said, “The oxygen isn’t for her; she’s fine; it’s for the baby.” I was crying at this point and asked him “Is the baby’s heart rate too low?” He asked the nurse and she said yes, it had dropped into the 70s once they upped the Pitocin, and then when I turned over, it jumped up to over 170, but he was still having late decels.
After about half an hour (at noon or so) my doctor came in and checked me again – I was still at five centimeters; I’d made no progress for hours, and my blood pressure was still creeping upward. Since they had turned off the Pit, my contractions had all but stopped. The doctor told me he was very worried – the baby was not handling the Pitocin or the contractions well anymore, his heart rate was very high. He said it wasn’t an emergency yet, but it could get that way soon – he really didn’t think it would be good for me to labor much longer. He wanted to do a C-section. I was scared and exhausted, in unrelenting pain again from my kidney stone. My dh and I discussed it for a little while, and he really wanted me to have the surgery, so we said okay. I started crying again; by this time, I was really scared. My little sister was bawling and my dh kept saying “It’s okay. This is the best thing we can do.” My mom came and held my hand and told me “It’s not the end of the world – I had two and we all came out okay.”
They told me the surgery would start at 1:00. My dh called his mom and she hurried to the hospital. At this point, my back pain became worse than it had been at any time — excruciating, agonizing, hellish. Far worse than contractions had been at any time. This was the only time during the whole process where I lost control – I was begging them to do something for my back, nearly screaming from the pain, but there wasn’t anything they could do at that point. My daddy held my hand while I cried and begged and my dh paced around.
They had an emergency C-section come in, so 1:00 came and went. Finally, it was time, and the anesthesiologist (a different doctor, who was great, and incidentally four months pregnant with twins) came in and fiddled with the epi – which had apparently almost run out of medication. Then they wheeled me back to the OR. When we got there, the doctor started poking me with a pin and found that my epi wasn’t very effective on my left side. So she added more medication, then tilted the whole damn operating table to the left. (That was bizarrre.) She kept poking me, and I kept feeling it, but no one seemed concerned. At least my back pain had been reduced a good bit, though it wasn’t gone I could at least think through it. Finally, I didn’t feel her poking anymore, and she gave an okay. They let my husband in the room and the doctors got started – I felt a sharp pinch with the first cut and said “Ow!” Dh looked down at me with a panicky look – he told me later he was afraid I wasn’t numb and was going to feel the whole thing – but I didn’t feel any more of the cutting.
Dh watched the whole surgery, occasionally looking down at me, but holding my hand the whole time. There were a few minutes of pushing and pulling then the doctor said “Okay, you’re going to feel lots of pressure now.” This was not an accurate statement – more accurate would have been “you’re going to feel like an elephant is sitting on your torso now.” My husband said “oh god” and then said “he’s definitely a boy” and then said “oh wow he’s very blue.” The doctor said, “nah, he’s not bad at all.” Nathaniel was born at 2:09 pm on Monday, November 4. The doctor held him up over the curtain, but all I saw was one very blue hand that flopped over the curtain.
They took the baby over to the warmer and he started screaming. Dh went and watched and I tried my hardest to see my baby. I kept catching glimpses of him, and he was plenty pink. All I could do was cry, and kept saying “oh . . . oh. . . oh . . .” I wanted to hold him so badly and he was so far away! Dh kept telling him it was okay, everything was alright, and kept touching him. (He even told him “Nate, I am your father” in his very best Darth Vader voice, which he’d been saying to my belly for months. The nurses cracked up over that.) Finally, he was all swaddled up and dh brought him to me and helped me hold him and kiss his little face. I don’t remember much from this point, other than dh saying how small his nose was, and that it was definitely my nose. He was so precious and beautiful. . . they didn’t stay for nearly long enough before the nurses took them away to the nursery.
Stitching me up was problematic – there was some kind of problem with my bladder; it was distended and apparently in the way, in spite of the catheter. Also, my uterus is apparently abnormal – someone told me the doctor said it was “wispy” – and hard to stitch. Also, I must have continued to say “ow” though I don’t really remember feeling any pain other than in my back, because the anesthesiologist mentioned it to the doctor and asked if it was okay to give me Toradol. The doctors were all the sudden very frantic, and it got very loud for a little while, but I don’t remember really anything that was said or what was wrong. After what seemed like forever, I asked the anesthesiologist how long this part took, and she told me they were almost done. Finally, they were done, and transferred me back to a rolling bed. Someone said “Isn’t anyone going to come back and tell us how much that baby weighed?” Another nurse said, “No, don’t let daddy back in here; we don’t want him to see all that blood.” So of course I had to roll over and look, and there was blood everywhere. Someone asked the doctor if I was going to need a transfusion, and he said we would have to wait and see. (I didn’t; the doc told me I was right on the borderline, but he didn’t want to do one if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.) I still don’t know what happened; why I lost so much blood or what was wrong with my bladder.
Anyway, they got me to the recovery room and almost immediately my baby was there. They told me he was 9 lbs and 21 3/4 inches long – I was surprised at how big he was; I’d never really expected to have a big baby. It was a little past 3:30 at that time; I got to hold and cuddle my baby for the first time, and put him to my breast. He started nursing well right away. I instantly and fell head over heels in love with him, and I’ve been having the time of my life with him ever since.
On Sunday, October 27, I woke up having regular contractions about ten minutes apart. I got really excited; I wasn’t due for two weeks, but all my measurements and US scans had indicated maybe I was further along than we thought. So I thought this might be it! I woke my husband up and told him about the contractions; he said, “Let’s go for a walk!” While I was walking, the contractions got stronger and closer together – about six minutes apart – but when I stopped walking, they slowed down again. So we walked a lot. Slowly through the course of the day, they got closer together and I started to have a pretty bad continuous backache. The contractions were surprisingly easy to deal with; I had been expecting to really be bad at labor (I have been known as the biggest pain wimp in my family for as long as I can remember; I really don’t handle pain well!). I went to bed thinking tomorrow might be the day I met my baby!
I got up Monday morning to contractions that were still regularly 7-10 minutes apart, lasting about a minute, and stronger, plus a killer backache. My husband started to get ready for work, but after being up for a while and having a harder time dealing with the contractions, I told him I really wanted him to stay home – he worked two hours away. He agreed, and said “Let’s go for a walk!” While walking the contractions were four minutes apart and required all my concentration – I would stop and close my eyes and breathe with them. I discovered I didn’t like to even be talked to during the contractions, much less touched. I called my doctor and told him what was going on, and the nurse told me to go on to L&D. When we arrived at the hospital, they told me I was only a fingertip dilated, and the contractions were showing up irregularly on the monitor (even though I was still feeling them every four to six minutes). So home we went; my dh was more prosaic about being sent home than I expected him to be. I was doing okay, but disappointed. I thought we’d be back at the hospital in the next day or so.
But no. Contractions continued from 10-15 minutes apart, consistently, along with the miserable backache, until Wednesday – only occasionally getting any stronger or closer together. I’ve never walked so much in my life! The contractions weren’t that difficult to deal with, but they did require my concentration and didn’t let me sleep well. The backache, on the other hand, was horrible. I had a doctor visit on Wednesday, where I found out that I had yet anther kidney stone (my fifth of this pregnancy), which was the cause of the backache (you would think I would have recognized that pain, wouldn’t you?). He told me that could be what was triggering the contractions, but the contractions weren’t productive – I was still only a fingertip dilated. He gave me Vicodin for the kidney stone pain (like I said, I’m an utter wimp about pain) and sent me home. He did say before I left that “I hope you deliver in the next week or so, because we look like we’re getting a big baby.” He didn’t want to induce me though, because he told me that would really increase my risk of a C-section.
So all it week it was the same story – four to eight contractions every hour, plus a horrendous backache. I walked my feet off, spent lots of time on my hands and knees rocking back and forth, and lots of time in the bathtub. On Sunday, November 3, I woke up at about 6:30 to contractions that were every four minutes like clockwork and significantly stronger. I timed them for about an hour and then woke up my husband and my sister, who had come into town the day before – she was the second half of my labor support team, and just as vital to me as my husband. My sister and I went on a walk while my husband fixed us breakfast. We walked for about an hour (in the rain!) and while I was walking, the contractions were about two minutes apart. I was still handling the whole contraction thing very well; I was proud of myself. We got back to the house and had breakfast and then decided to go on to the hospital.
We got to the hospital around 10:30 am. They got me hooked up to the monitors, which this time showed my contractions like I was feeling them – every two minutes. Unfortunately, I was still only a fingertip dilated!! At this point, I started crying – I was tired of dealing with contractions, and I was tired of my back hurting – I felt like I’d been in labor for a week and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to deal with it much longer. Then the nurse took my blood pressure – 152/94. Uh-oh; bad news. It had been creeping up for quite some time and it was VERY high for me. I’d shown lots of bad symptoms – gained 18 pounds of fluid in a week, headaches and seeing spots, nausea – but no protein in my urine, so they hadn’t been worried about it until my diastolic hit that magic number “90.” Now, suddenly, it was a big deal. I was told to stay in the bed until they talked to the doctor; I couldn’t walk around like I had been doing.
The doctor on call told the nurse to draw blood and check my liver enzymes, and if my pressure was still that high in an hour to start mag sulfate. Yuck! So I concentrated on being calm and serene and we started filling out paperwork. After about 20 minutes and one more bp reading over 90, my doctor showed up. He told me that it looked like I was in latent phase labor, which could go on for a while (no kidding!!). I could just wait it out – but he’d want me to stay in the hospital because of my blood pressure, and I wouldn’t be allowed to walk around for the same reason – or he could go on and start Pitocin to kick-start progress, if I was up to that. At this point, yes, I was.
They started the Pitocin about 11:15 am. Right away, the contractions got stronger and closer together. I had about a thirty second break between the end of one contraction and the beginning of another. Still surprisingly, I was coping really, really well with the contractions. I was playing cards with my husband and sister, and just had to pause to breathe and relax through the peaks. My backache had backed off a little, and I was excited that I finally felt like I was getting somewhere. At 5:00 pm, the nurse checked my again and I was only 1.5 cm. My sister asked about breaking my water, but the nurse said that because of the position of my cervix and the baby’s head, it would be very difficult to do. She had stopped increasing the Pitocin because my contractions were so close together and she didn’t want to overwhelm me or my body, but the doctor told her to keep going so she turned it up again. She was a fantastic nurse and very, very encouraging of me – kept telling me what a great job I was doing. My parents and my mother-in-law arrived, so I socialized for a while. At about 7:30 I started having a really, really hard time staying on top of the contractions and got in pretty bad shape – I was tired and overwhelmed and really just wanted a break – I felt like if I had just a little bit more time between contractions, I could get back on top of things. And then my backache started back up with a vengeance. I got some Nubain at about 8:00, hoping it would help me rest and get back on top of things. It did, and I started feeling pretty good again, even though I had the backache. My sister decided to go with my parents to get something to eat, and my husband and I had a nice relaxing half-hour or so. Then when my sister got back, dh left to go grab some food and go home to feed our dog.
At 9:30 my doctor came in and checked me and I was 3 cm. But he decided that now he could break my bag of waters. My blood pressure was still worrisome and they were getting really anxious for things to progress – my liver enzymes had come back slightly elevated. I was desperate not to have any mag sulfate, so they’d held off on that, especially since it would have slowed the labor. So the doctor broke my water. This, because of the position of my cervix, was extraordinarily painful. It was the first time during the whole labor that I cried from the pain. I had enormous amounts of fluid – it gushed and gushed immediately, and then again with every contraction. I was amazed at how much there was! Somehow, I’d just never imagined there’d be quite that much water in the bag of waters. After the doctor broke my water, he really wanted me to get an epidural. He thought it might help bring my blood pressure down and might help me rest, because he was afraid I was getting worn out (this was quite true). I accepted the epidural because I thought he might be right about the blood pressure, and I was very scared about the whole pre-eclampsia idea. I also still believed in some corner of my mind, in spite of how well I had been doing, that I was too much of a wimp to actually make it through labor without an epidural.
At this point, the contractions got hard to deal with. I remember clearly thinking “If I could just get out of the *#&)ing bed, I could do this!” I asked my sister to call my husband because I really wanted him back to be with me for the epidural – I was scared of that whole experience. My mom came in and rubbed my back and held my hand, reminding me to breathe with each contraction because I had started holding my breath. Her touching me really bothered me, so I shot my sister a look and she said “Mom, hands off!” I had wanted my sister there because I knew she would stick up for what I wanted to anyone, and I was right. Mom kept saying “You can yell, or make noise if you want, Carrie Lea, it’s all right.” I just moaned really, really low and softly and told her I didn’t want to make noise. My sister got right down in front of my face and caught my eyes and said “I’m so proud of you. We’re gonna have to rethink the whole ‘Carrie’s the wimp of the family’ idea.” This was the only HARD stretch of labor for me, and it didn’t last long – and it wasn’t even that hard!
At 10:00 the anaesthesiologist arrived. He made everyone leave the room – and they met my husband on the way out the door. He’d made it before I got the epi, but I didn’t even get to see him because the doc wouldn’t let him in the room. I was so angry and absolutely terrified. The nurse had me sit on the edge of the bed and curl up. Every time I had a contraction, water would gush out onto the floor. I kept apologizing to the nurse. She just laughed and said it had been a long time since she’d had anyone with that much fluid. The epi doc was a real prick and the whole experience was really scary, but I got through it. My husband was very, very upset that he didn’t make it back in time, but it was a moot point anyway since the doc wouldn’t let him in the room. I felt almost disappointed about losing the feel of the contractions with the epidural, even though they had gotten difficult, but I almost immediately got really sleepy, and I was very ready to rest. My parents got a hotel room close by, and my husband, my sister and I all went to sleep.
At about 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, I started having really, really bad back pain again. I told the nurse, and told her that it might be kidney stone pain. She checked my cervix and told me I was at 4-5 cm. She called the epi doc, who told me that he couldn’t do anything to help with non-contraction pain – but then upped my epidural anyway. I’m still not sure how much of the back pain was from labor, how much was from the kidney stone, and how much was being stuck in that damned uncomfortable hospital bed!! But the epidural helped very little, and I begged the nurse to do something. At that point, I really wanted one of the Vicodin that I’d been taking for the kidney stone, but I knew that was a bad idea since I didn’t know when the baby was going to be born. She called the doctor, and he said to give me another dose of Nubain, which I got around 3:00, and then I was able to go back to sleep for awhile. At around 7:00 am, a new nurse checked me after shift change and I was still about 5 cm. I wasn’t very happy – I’d thought surely I’d have made more progress. I got another shot of Nubain for the kidney stone pain (which was, by this point with not being able to move, horrendous).
My parents came back, and we all talked for a while again; I was feeling pretty good since the kidney pain had backed off. The nurse came in and told me the doctor wanted her to start increasing the Pitocin again; they were really concerned with how little progress I was making, and my blood pressure was starting to creep up. I was tired, and decided to try sleeping again. The next thing I knew, the nurse was running in the room and ordered me to get off my left side and turn over on my right. I assumed there was something strange with my blood pressure, but then she put an oxygen mask on me. I asked two or three times if the baby’s heartbeat was okay, but she didn’t answer me. My dh – who’d stepped out of the room while I was sleeping – came back in and the nurse said, “The oxygen isn’t for her; she’s fine; it’s for the baby.” I was crying at this point and asked him “Is the baby’s heart rate too low?” He asked the nurse and she said yes, it had dropped into the 70s once they upped the Pitocin, and then when I turned over, it jumped up to over 170, but he was still having late decels.
After about half an hour (at noon or so) my doctor came in and checked me again – I was still at five centimeters; I’d made no progress for hours, and my blood pressure was still creeping upward. Since they had turned off the Pit, my contractions had all but stopped. The doctor told me he was very worried – the baby was not handling the Pitocin or the contractions well anymore, his heart rate was very high. He said it wasn’t an emergency yet, but it could get that way soon – he really didn’t think it would be good for me to labor much longer. He wanted to do a C-section. I was scared and exhausted, in unrelenting pain again from my kidney stone. My dh and I discussed it for a little while, and he really wanted me to have the surgery, so we said okay. I started crying again; by this time, I was really scared. My little sister was bawling and my dh kept saying “It’s okay. This is the best thing we can do.” My mom came and held my hand and told me “It’s not the end of the world – I had two and we all came out okay.”
They told me the surgery would start at 1:00. My dh called his mom and she hurried to the hospital. At this point, my back pain became worse than it had been at any time — excruciating, agonizing, hellish. Far worse than contractions had been at any time. This was the only time during the whole process where I lost control – I was begging them to do something for my back, nearly screaming from the pain, but there wasn’t anything they could do at that point. My daddy held my hand while I cried and begged and my dh paced around.
They had an emergency C-section come in, so 1:00 came and went. Finally, it was time, and the anesthesiologist (a different doctor, who was great, and incidentally four months pregnant with twins) came in and fiddled with the epi – which had apparently almost run out of medication. Then they wheeled me back to the OR. When we got there, the doctor started poking me with a pin and found that my epi wasn’t very effective on my left side. So she added more medication, then tilted the whole damn operating table to the left. (That was bizarrre.) She kept poking me, and I kept feeling it, but no one seemed concerned. At least my back pain had been reduced a good bit, though it wasn’t gone I could at least think through it. Finally, I didn’t feel her poking anymore, and she gave an okay. They let my husband in the room and the doctors got started – I felt a sharp pinch with the first cut and said “Ow!” Dh looked down at me with a panicky look – he told me later he was afraid I wasn’t numb and was going to feel the whole thing – but I didn’t feel any more of the cutting.
Dh watched the whole surgery, occasionally looking down at me, but holding my hand the whole time. There were a few minutes of pushing and pulling then the doctor said “Okay, you’re going to feel lots of pressure now.” This was not an accurate statement – more accurate would have been “you’re going to feel like an elephant is sitting on your torso now.” My husband said “oh god” and then said “he’s definitely a boy” and then said “oh wow he’s very blue.” The doctor said, “nah, he’s not bad at all.” Nathaniel was born at 2:09 pm on Monday, November 4. The doctor held him up over the curtain, but all I saw was one very blue hand that flopped over the curtain.
They took the baby over to the warmer and he started screaming. Dh went and watched and I tried my hardest to see my baby. I kept catching glimpses of him, and he was plenty pink. All I could do was cry, and kept saying “oh . . . oh. . . oh . . .” I wanted to hold him so badly and he was so far away! Dh kept telling him it was okay, everything was alright, and kept touching him. (He even told him “Nate, I am your father” in his very best Darth Vader voice, which he’d been saying to my belly for months. The nurses cracked up over that.) Finally, he was all swaddled up and dh brought him to me and helped me hold him and kiss his little face. I don’t remember much from this point, other than dh saying how small his nose was, and that it was definitely my nose. He was so precious and beautiful. . . they didn’t stay for nearly long enough before the nurses took them away to the nursery.
Stitching me up was problematic – there was some kind of problem with my bladder; it was distended and apparently in the way, in spite of the catheter. Also, my uterus is apparently abnormal – someone told me the doctor said it was “wispy” – and hard to stitch. Also, I must have continued to say “ow” though I don’t really remember feeling any pain other than in my back, because the anesthesiologist mentioned it to the doctor and asked if it was okay to give me Toradol. The doctors were all the sudden very frantic, and it got very loud for a little while, but I don’t remember really anything that was said or what was wrong. After what seemed like forever, I asked the anesthesiologist how long this part took, and she told me they were almost done. Finally, they were done, and transferred me back to a rolling bed. Someone said “Isn’t anyone going to come back and tell us how much that baby weighed?” Another nurse said, “No, don’t let daddy back in here; we don’t want him to see all that blood.” So of course I had to roll over and look, and there was blood everywhere. Someone asked the doctor if I was going to need a transfusion, and he said we would have to wait and see. (I didn’t; the doc told me I was right on the borderline, but he didn’t want to do one if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.) I still don’t know what happened; why I lost so much blood or what was wrong with my bladder.
Anyway, they got me to the recovery room and almost immediately my baby was there. They told me he was 9 lbs and 21 3/4 inches long – I was surprised at how big he was; I’d never really expected to have a big baby. It was a little past 3:30 at that time; I got to hold and cuddle my baby for the first time, and put him to my breast. He started nursing well right away. I instantly and fell head over heels in love with him, and I’ve been having the time of my life with him ever since.
