The Long Awaited Birth Saga!

WARNING: This is insanely long... just a heads up. =) 

The first rule of being induced is to expect the unexpected. I knew this going in and was prepared for things to change, but it still caught me off guard.

We got to the hospital a little late, both nervous and excited. We were quickly settled into a room, an IV was started, and tons of paperwork was filled out. Initially I was hooked up to a monitor that had no room for movement and my nurse at that time was not quite as happy to be relaxed about things. She did go find us the monitor that was on a transmitter so we could walk around, but kept saying over and over that a lot of times it had issues. I think she was utterly shocked when it worked so well. The midwife on call showed up and they started the pitocin. I felt fine, walking around, drinking juice and other fluids (as well as a little illegal food) and trying to generally keep myself entertained. They slowly upped the pitocin levels and for a while the contractions did start to feel a bit stronger, but then I felt nothing again. That’s not to say I wasn’t having contractions… according to the monitor I was having them quite regularly and frequently. I just wasn’t feeling anything. The nurse shift changed at 7pm and I met my new nurse, who I liked MUCH better. She was personable and friendly and made me feel relaxed.  At about 8pm my midwife came in to check me, but as she came in I had a contraction that actually felt painful and felt a pop which turned out to be my water breaking.

At first after my water broke I still felt pretty good… but things VERY quickly went downhill. Each contraction became stronger than the one before and soon I was having them every 1 – 2 minutes apart and screaming in pain because they were so intense. My midwife checked me about an hour and a half after my water broke to see how much progress had been made. In that hour and a half I had gone from almost a 4 to a 4. I knew then my hope of natural labor was gone and begged for drugs. The epidural I didn’t want was now reality. Thank god the anesthesiologist came VERY quickly. Unfortunately he had the worst bedside manner ever. He never said a word to me, he was gruff and down to business and directed all his comments to my midwife and the nurse. No “its okay it’ll be quick” nothing. Thankfully it was quick, and not as bad as I feared. My midwife was amazing talking me through the entire thing. Sitting perfectly still while having intense insane contractions is almost impossible… but I did it. Before long as promised everything started to go numb… so numb in fact my legs were dead. I have to say while people rave about epidurals I personally hated the fact that I couldn’t feel my legs. It drove me insane.

The positive thing is I did actually get a little sleep. I dozed between blood pressure cuff readings. There was one spot where my epidural did not reach that was a horrible back spasm so I kept having to hit the button for more drugs to alleviate it as I couldn’t move. The midwife that had been with me left and a new one came in. They checked me in the morning and found things had been progressing overnight and hopefully not too much longer. Slowly the morning went on, but finally we were told “maybe at 10 we’d start pushing!” At this point we were getting more excited. At 10 my midwife checked me and said he was still high up so they’d let me labor down for a while, which was okay. Around 11 the nurse (a new nurse who I was not as fond of) came in and said we could do some practice pushes. So, we started to push. They also turned down my epidural so I could feel the contractions more. At first things weren’t so bad, but with the epidural slowly weakening the pitocin contractions became stronger and stronger and my pain became worse and worse. By 12:30 the pain was getting unbearable. We tried different pushing positions but found that still nothing was changing. His head was the wrong way and he wasn’t moving anywhere until that straightened up. Another hour of pushing and no change in movement meant I was spent. I had begun to throw up from the pain and exhaustion and I had nothing left to give. I tried… I tried pushing but I knew my options were changing. At 1:30 I gave in… I was done.

I cried. I bawled in fact… sobbed. It didn’t help that everyone who was in the room, from the NICU nurse to the anesthesiologist was sweet and encouraging to me because they knew this was not what I wanted. Quickly things were put into motion and before I knew it I was being wheeled down the hall and into a freezing cold operating room. I was petrified and still having contractions and shaking uncontrollably. The anesthesiologist was amazing encouraging me, getting me warm blankets, asking me how things were. My midwife went in with me as well as my husband. They kept asking me if I could feel pain or pressure and finally I said pressure. Then I felt a little pressure and suddenly I felt this huge release of pressure and I heard “it’s a boy”. I didn’t even realize they had cut me and he was already out. Then I heard him crying and it felt so surreal and amazing. I had told my husband to go be with him, my midwife would stay with me. Soon they bought him over and put him on me… it was the most amazing moment ever to look at him. I know people say instant love… but it’s almost like he was always part of my life. I feel like the second I saw him it felt normal and natural to think of him as my son… as if that’s what he always was and would never be anything else. Sadly he was quickly taken away to recovery and I was sewn up. It honestly didn’t take much time at all before I was being pushed down the hall and into recovery.

Since he was a c-section, he was overude, and he had muconium they had to do a bunch of testing and bloodwork on him. I lay there staring at him as he looked around. Before long they had him laying on my chest to see if he’d breastfeed. He was on in seconds sucking away. It was at this point I finally found out just how big my son was… born 10lbs 3.8oz 21inches long. WOW. After a short while of laying there, recovering we were all taken upstairs to our final room. They had given me some pretty good pain medication so thankfully I was still in no pain at all. I had my son… and that was all that mattered to me. It was such a whirlwind amazing experience… seeing him, holding him, realizing that he was my son. It felt strange to me that in that moment I turned into a mother. He was perfect. I’m almost positive every new parent says that about their child, but it was the only thing that came to mind when I saw him. He was perfect and adorable and he just stared at me with these beautiful eyes… even thinking back on it now makes me tear up.

That first night was a rush of so many conflicting emotions…  between him being wide awake and alert, me not knowing the first thing about what I was doing, and still being upset over the entire c-section saga it was quite a night. First rule of business was to update people as much as possible. To our disappointment we discovered the free wifi isn’t that good and does not work in our room... so that was out. I called a few people and ate “dinner”: A lovely liquid dinner of juice, jello, water, and broth. Yum yum yum. I hardly got any real sleep that night because Eirik was awake and alert and wanting to feed quite regularly. My night nurse that first night was amazing however… she was very helpful with breastfeeding and took great care of me. She made sure that I was comfortable and even took Eirik out with her for about an hour so I could get a little sleep.

Tuesday was another trying day. I had experienced a few very bad latches and Eirik has quite a strong suck so my nipples were already becoming VERY bruised. He actually slept quite a bit during the day, but I didn’t really get to nap. All morning my room was a buzz of people checking me, checking the baby, asking if I was okay, taking his picture, doing his hearing test and then Cara came to visit me. By the time Cara left and I was getting ready to feed again they told me that he was now slightly jaundiced and we really needed to make sure he was eating enough. Easier said than done! We had quite a fight with him to wake up and eat. Of course at this point the lactation consultants had left but we did eventually get him on and eating something. At this point I was fairly exhausted so we both lay down and decided to sleep. Of course at this point the phone rings… it’s the pediatrician who had seen him earlier in the day. Since he was so overdue and my water was broken for so long before the c-section they had been running regular lab tests on him all day and were concerned he was showing signs of an infection. His white blood counts were all high as well as his CRP and instead of going down they were going up. They wanted to give him IV antibiotics but to do this meant a trip to the NICU. Scott went down with him when they came up and I quickly followed behind in a wheelchair. There is nothing more heartwrenching then watching your child helpless being hooked up to monitors and stuck with needles. I cried… not a lot, but I sat and cried watching him. I still wasn’t moving to well at this point so I couldn’t stand with him so Scott stood next to him instead. He had more blood taken for bloodwork as well as a blood culture. The results of the culture take 48 hours and those have to come back negative before we can bring him home. If it comes back for positive he needs 7 days of antibiotics… that’s a 7 day stay in the NCIU. We talked with our night nurse before going back to our room alone. We decided that since he is very stable and that I would be down every 2 ½ hours to nurse anyway it would be better for us both to get some sleep. They offered to give him IV fluids that night if I wanted to sleep, but I knew that was just a slippery slope to go down. Even though I was exhausted and sore, better to go down regularly.

So, every 2 ½ hours down I went. The first time scott went down with me but the second I let him sleep and had a nurse take me. He had to go teach lessons that evening and it would be better for him to have sleep. I could play catch up during the day and while he is out teaching. By now I was slowly but surely making progress. They gave me a compression band which worked WONDERS. Instead of slowly limping I was actually walking. I actually pushed the wheelchair down to the NICU instead of going down in it. I also started makings sure to keep track of when I took what pain medicine and when to take it again. After both breast feeding experiences the night before I had horrible cramps which made me realize I needed to be more vigilant. I also got the OK to shower, which felt amazing. Even though I just sat in the shower it felt so wonderful to clean my hair and really helped me feel like a normal person again.

Just as I was getting ready to scarf down some lunch before my next feeding the NICU doctor came upstairs to talk to me about Eirik. They said while he wasn’t really showing signs of infection he was now showing signs of jaundice. Really this didn’t shock me because most infants seem to end up this way. Of course though she then bought up formula supplements because “my milk wasn’t coming in yet and if he got much higher they would have to keep him in the NICU for treatment”. I started crying. A combination of hormones and EVERYTHING else going wrong already just made this little setback seem 100X worse. She talked more and gave me all the things I’d heard given to people before … all the “its not going to prevent breastfeeding” and “we just want to make sure he’s okay” etc.  After a lot of thinking we agreed to talk more about it when we got downstairs to the NICU and after my consult with a lactation specialist.

We went downstairs and met with the lactation consultant who was AMAZING. She was supportive and really helped us work on not only the latching issues but as well as the whole jaundice thing. My milk in fact was coming in so she talked to the nurse practitioner on call and they agreed that I could supplement with my own milk. So, new plan… breastfeed, pump, supplement with my milk. We wouldn’t use a bottle, we would finger feed so not to give him any nipple confusion. This was a solution we were all happy with… at least at the moment. Scott and I went back to our room much happier. The next feeding again went well so the lactation consultant left us and promised to check in the next morning.

I don’t know if anyone else has experienced this before, but in the world of medicine there is the traditional doctor and the more natural/openminded doctor and the two but heads… not directly but they tend to leave the patient in the middle. So while in the daytime everyone was happy and thrilled with me supplementing with my own milk, once the lactation consultant was gone it was another story. I went down for my next feeding early because he was wailing his head off. My friend Kerry came to visit so down we went. When I got there the night nurse instantly talked to us about what supplement we were going to use… which confused me. So, when my husband came in after Kerry left (only 2 people at a time in the NICU) the nurse practicioner came in and talked to us more about formula. Scott and I reluctantly agreed to give him “a little” formula after I had not only fed him, but pumped and given him my own milk too. Thankfully the nurse wasn’t watching as we gave him the formula because I’d say about 70% of what went in his mouth came right back out. He was not amused by this change. At the second feeding my husband drank half of it because we both didn’t want to give it to him!

The NICU is closed to everyone from 6:30am to 8am for a nurse shift change, so based on Eirik’s feeding schedule we decided to get downstairs for a quick 6am feed before going back down about 8:30 for a more normal feed. We got down at 6 and settled ourselves. He wasn’t too hungry yet, but something is better than nothing. They never gave Eirik a real room, he was in the holding area for incoming emergencies and when they want to shuffle the less serious patients around so the more serious ones can have their own room. So as we are sitting there I can hear a huge commotion on the other side and people rushing to the OR to meet a c-section. Moments later they are back and the sound I could hear almost bought me to tears… it’s a baby trying desperately to cry and all that is coming out is a mewling noise. I thought it had to be a little premie baby but then I heard someone say it was over 6lbs. I hear words like “abruption” and “blood in the lungs” and “we need an intubation kit ASAP”. All I could do was sit there and hold Eirik tightly. It put everything back into perspective about how lucky we were to have him and how even though things didn’t go the way we planned he was healthy. A few moments later a nurse came back and assisted us out the back way. It really took everything I had not to bawl the entire way back.

When we returned to the NICU for the 8:30 feeding we got good news: Eirik could come back upstairs with us! He was still under NICU care and the nurses would come visit him and do his antibiotics, but he could stay next to me. The morning nurse practitioner was very nice about the brestfeeding and said to just make sure he fed at least every 2 – 3 hours. Needless to say my entire day was spent feeding him! I think he must have heard what they were talking about because he suddenly decided to have 2 marathon feeding sessions. We were just glad to have him back upstairs with us because it meant no more having to run downstairs every 2 – 3 hours. Then that night we got the best news ever: his blood culture was negative! No infection! Provided that his billi count the next morning was still good he was coming home!

The next morning was filled with anticipation and anxiety. Would he be coming home with us? Was his jaundice bad enough to need the lights? My husband took it worse than I did, pacing around the room, getting agitated we hadn’t gotten answers yet. Soon however we were told everything looked good and a NICU nurse would be up to discharge him shortly. We had the room packed up and ready to go and then once the NICU nurse gave us the OK all we had to wait for was my nurse to come and discharge me. Before long we had him belted into his carseat and I was being wheeled downstairs and outside.

Now I have had a chance to really reflect on everything that happened it leaves me sad, angry, and mostly disappointed in myself. I know that I should just be happy he is here safe and sound, but parts of me reflect on the whole experience and wonder “did I really try hard enough?” Could I have tried pushing longer? Should I have spoken up about laboring down longer? Did I just give up because I was tired and groggy and hungry and sick? Would things have ended differently if I had spent money on a birthing class? I’ve been told by others with similar experiences these reactions are normal… and to be expected. At the moment the thought of having any more kids upsets me because it means the potential of another c-section. I know that some people have no issues with c-sections, but for me the thought of another major surgery is too upsetting to think about at the moment.

Now, as I close here I know a few people who read this blog will be having c-sections so I’ll give you a little advice:

1. Get up and moving as soon as you can! I know it’ll hurt and you’ll want to fall back in to bed, but the more you move the more it helps. Crazy I know, but all that walking to and from the NICU was my turning point!

2. Take the pain meds, and take the max they will give you. Don’t be a hero! If you take the medicine to help you up and moving at the hospital later down the line you’ll do much better.

3. Swelling afterwards is common. My legs and feet are so swollen at times that I can hardly walk! The best thing you can do is drink LOTS of water to help flush things through your system.