Labor of Love (really long post)

On March13th, 1997, I was one week from my due date, sitting at my desk at work.

My office was full of older middle-aged men and here I was, a 24 year old woman and 9 months pregnant. They were like a bunch of worried mother hens - it was quite cute and endearing. My supervisor (another middle-aged man) poked his head in my cube "Are you ok? Your water hasn't broken or anything, has it?" he jokingly asked. "Not yet, Wayne!" I shot back.

About an hour later, I felt the urge to pee YET AGAIN, so I waddled to the bathroom in the hall. When I pulled down my pants and panties, I noticed they were wet. Not much, but a little. Hmmm...

I knew this could be my water breaking... and I was having Braxton Hicks contractions, but I had been having those since I as 6 months along. I was still a week from my due date and this was my first baby... there was NO WAY I was going to be early. I decided to check again later.

(The day before I had wiped off what looked like a bunch of snot - with no blood. I had no idea this bloodfree mess was the "bloody show" and birth was imminent. I was a dumbass.)

So half an hour later, I checked. And they were even more wet than they were before - and I had dried them off and put on a panty-liner. Hmmm...

So I mosied up to Wayne's desk. "Uh, Wayne... I think I need to go. I think my water broke a little." He jumped up so fast he knocked his chair over. "Are you ok? Are you having labor pains?" I assured him I was fine and that I may be wrong, but I thought I needed to be checked out by my doctor anyway.

I called and met my husband at home. We called the hospital and told them what was going on and they told us to come in so they could check me. But since I felt perfectly fine, we took our sweet time. We straightened up the house. C did the dishes while I took a shower and shaved my legs. We finally hit the road and went to the hospital.

When we got there, I still felt fine. No labor pains, no more leaking than there was before. A nurse came in and put me on fetal heart monitor and a contraction monitor and did a litmus test to see if the fluid was just pee or amniotic fluid. He said he'd be back in a minute. My husband and I talked about what we were going to do for dinner that night, because I still felt perfectly fine and was expecting to be told to go home when the nurse came back.

Dumb. Ass.

The nurse came back in and smiled and said he hoped I brought my bag because we were having a baby! And I was indeed in labor - contractions were 3-5 minutes apart! I was dilated 2-3 cent. and 100% effaced! And since I didn't know how long my water had been broken and the chances of the infection increased exponentially as the minutes ticked by, I was being put on pitocyn (labor inducer/intensifier) and IV penicillin too!

Surprise!

You know all those shows where they show the mom walking the halls and taking a shower to ease the pains of labor? Yeah, I wasn't allowed to do that. But I didn't mind. I was comfortable. I was just sitting in the bed, hooked up to monitors and the IV, watching TV. I could feel the pressure from the contractions, and see my stomach tightening into a hard little ball every few minutes, but it still didn't hurt. I knew pitocyn was supposed to make your contractions 3 times as hard and more painful then normal, but it didn't seem to be hurting me. I didn't need pain meds. All those other women are wimps! This was easy!

A couple hours later, a doctor came in to check me and said I was 6 cent. dilated, but that the baby's heart rate was dropping a little with each contraction which is normal in most cases, but they wanted to put in a fetal scalp electrode to monitor her heartrate better. Ok! No problem!

The doctor bent over to insert the electrode and splllooooooooooooooosh - the rest of my water broke. All over him. (I peed on him when I was pushing later, too. Poor guy.)

And whhhhhhhhooooooooooooa nelly! Where the %&@%$#!!!!! did all this pain come from?

Apparently, the amniotic fluid CUSHIONS the contractions and when it is all gone, the pain takes over. And BOY did it take over.

I curled into a fetal position and clamped onto C's hand for dear life. I puffed and breathed for all I was worth. I clenched my teeth. I wimpered. And then I asked for an epidural. I puffed and breathed and clenched my teeth and wimpered some more. And some more.

Until FORTY-FIVE minutes passed.

FINALLY the anesthesiologist strolled in, with his little red cart in tow. Then the nurse announced that I was dilated to 10 cent., and the anesthesiologist strolled right back out. @&%$#!!!!

The nurse told me to sit up and push. I sat up and pushed as hard as I could. Right as I felt something tear, the nurse yelled at me to stop pushing and to try not to push anymore.

Then about 15 people ran into the room.

The baby was in distress - her heartrate plummeted from 140 bpm to 60 bpm when I pushed which only meant one thing... the cord was wrapped around her neck and each push made it tighter. She may be strangled to death by her own cord if they couldn't get her out immediately.
A nurse stuck her hand between my legs and held the baby's head in to relieve the pressure of the cord from around the baby's neck. The doctors tried to use the suction cup on her head to pull her out as I pushed, but it was too slick from my blood, so it wouldn't stay attached. Then they grabbed the forceps. Normally the doctors give you an episiotomy to accomodate the forceps, but I had already torn so much that they didn't need to. But as they inserted them into my vagina and around her head, I felt myself tear some more. They told me to push one more time while they pulled. They delivered her head and saw the cord was wrapped around her neck not once, but TWICE.

So they unwound the cord from around her neck and suctioned her mouth and nostrils and delivered her the rest of the way. But there was no crying from my baby. She was blue and limp. They carried her over to the incubator and started to work on her.

And, Thank God, she pinked right up and started wailing.

I have a picture of her with about 5 pairs of hands working on her - rubbing her down, listening to her heart, etc., and her little face is crinkled up and she looks PISSED. It's so cute.

I, on the other hand, was still a mess. I had a 3rd degree tear, meaning I had torn from the vaginal opening all the way up to my cervix and almost all the way thru the vaginal wall to my rectum. The forceps tore up the sides. I spent the next 45 minutes getting stitched up on a local anesthetic THAT NEVER TOOK EFFECT - I felt EVERY stitch.

THAT was fun.

But... all is well that ends well.

I found out there is such a thing called the "husband stitch" (ahem) and healed very well.

The baby, Lauren, was fine, minus a black eye from the forceps. She took to breastfeeding like a pig in a trough.

And the result is the lovely girl you see in the post below. She just turned nine on Monday.

She was worth every stitch.