Birth Stories

Matthew's overdue birth story (long)

I was at 41 weeks 2 days when I went in for my scheduled induction.  I had woken up that morning having contractions, and went in at midnight that night to be induced.  When I checked into my room, my nurse asked me what my goals were.  I said ?Have an epidural, have a baby.?  She added ?Be happy? to my list.

They inserted Misoprostol tablet up by my cervix, as I was neither dilated nor effaced and still somewhat posterior, and put me to bed.  At some point a couple hours later I woke up with bad contraction pain and called the nurse.  She gave me Ambien to help me rest in the hope that I would sleep through the beginning and end of each contraction, and went through some breathing/vocalizing techniques with me to help make it through the pains.  No such luck.  It wasn?t long before I was in horrible pain and practically screaming for something to help.  They gave me Fentanyl through my IV, which relaxed me (yay) but didn?t do a whole lot for the contractions (boo.) 

I got some sleep in between until the pain became stronger than the Fentanyl.  A different nurse came in as I was practically climbing the walls from the pain in between massive bouts of diarrhea in the bathroom (awesome), and said ?Oh, I?ll fill up the Jacuzzi tub, I bet that will help a lot!?  and walked out.  I said to my husband ?seriously? I have ****ing narcotics in my bloodstream and she thinks a ****ing bath is going to work better??  (I was desperate at this point.)  About three minutes later my nurse came in and said ?Nevermind the tub, your epidural is on its way.?  I would have hugged her if I could have moved.

Epidural = awesome.  I think this was about five hours in?  It turned my painful labor into a relaxing, happy experience and I am really, really glad I got it. If I have another baby, I will have another epidural.  However, I will not combine it with Ambien and Fentanyl.  I got some sleep and when I woke up I was ready to push.  I was so sleepy though from the above combination, that I wasn?t pushing very effectively.  I pushed for what I think was a few hours, and they decided to turn off my epidural and add a small dose of pitocin to help me push more effectively.  They put up the squat bar and tied a sheet around it, which I my upper body up on during pushing.  Eventually I could feel my legs again and got into a squat using the bar.  Squat bar = also awesome.  I pushed so effectively that when he finally came out, he came out all in one push and really fast.

This is where it got scary.  Someone said ?Honey, we?re not going to be able to put him right on your chest.?  I looked down and saw the midwife working on him, heard someone calling for extra help, and then he was suddenly on the other side of the room.  He was pale and not moving or crying.  Then they were sticking a tube down his throat, and some kind of oxygen machine on him.  I remember them shaking him and calling his name, and still nothing.  DH actually got all this on video, though it?s a video of me watching horrified as they work on him but you can tell it took them a long time to resuscitate him based on the audio.  Finally he started crying and pinked up.  His first apgar was a 1- the only point they could give him was that he had a heartbeat.  However, his second was a 9, so obviously he recovered well.

I had a partial 3rd degree tear- my son had a 14 inch head.  The midwife and I were laughing afterward because you could tell by the ?ahem- splatter on her gown that he had come exploding out of me and she pretty much had to catch him like a football.  He was born at 11:35 AM, about eleven hours after they started the miso pill.

The hospital stay was wonderful.  However, the day after we were discharged we ended up back in there because the baby wouldn?t stop vomiting horribly.  They did a chest xray, stuck tubes and dye down his gut, all kinds of stuff that just makes me feel sick to think about.  We spent the night in the hospital with him while he was hooked up to monitors, something I never want to see again.  It turns out that he was eating beyond when he was full, and I have an oversupply and overactive letdown issue.  Thank God it was something as simple as that, and we were released the next day.

 

Re: Matthew's overdue birth story (long)

  • Wow, what a story!  Congratulations on your little one and I am glad everything is ok!

     

  • Great story, glad that you are recovering! My experience with Ambien was not restful at all (I spent the whole night hallucinating about little green men building furniture in the floor of the room and wondering why on earth I hurt so bad...).
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  • Congratulations! What a great story. I'm so thankful the nurses acted so quickly for you and your little one. He's precious.
  • Congratulations!  I love the part about "catching the baby like a football!"  Also, I have heard that squatting is SO much easier.  Now I have a new term to add to my questions list....squat bar!
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