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My Story

Jess4481Jess4481
in Postpartum Depression

Hi Ladies,

It is nice to find this board.  I'm having a rough time 8 months after William's birth.  At first I was sad, depressed, and angry.  Life was hell in our house for a long time because I was mourning the birth and having such horrible nightmares and flashbacks to being on the table with no anesthesia.  Now, it is changing to me wanting to have another baby, even though I'm not ready to replace this terrible story with a good one. That is not good at all.  I hope this all subsides over time.  Did anyone else have a similar story? My birth story is below.  Thank you for sharing your stories.

 I was scheduled for induction on Saturday morning so I was supposed to go in Friday night ( I would have been 40w3d).  Thursday night at midnight I suddenly started having contractions with no warning that were 6 minutes apart.  They got down to 5 minutes apart and I called my doctor to go into L&D at 3 am.

When I went in I was 2 cm and they had me walk for about 2 hours to make sure I was in a labor pattern and I was dilating.I was admitted and when my doctor came to check me I was 2 and 1/2.  They decided that my labor pattern wasn't going to become active so they broke my water, put in an internal contraction monitor (a little painful with no epidural) and started some pitocin.  Once all of that happened, my contractions got really intense and I labored until about 12:30 with no epidural because I was still too scared to get it. I have an intense fear of needles. I ended up getting it and it wasn't bad, but they kept hitting the nerve endings in my right legs so it took a few minutes to get it positioned correctly.  Overall it wasn't as horrible as I thought.  I fell asleep after that because I had been laboring with no epidural for 12 hours at that point and my husband who is a physician stayed up to watch the monitors.  He and the doctor realized that the baby was not tolerating the pitocin so they had to back it down to zero again because he was decelerating with each contraction.  It was still happening without the pitocin so they did an amnioinfusion, which is infusing water back into the sack through the internal monitor to try to float the umbilical cord if it is compressed.  That didn't work but the doctor thought we were still safe for awhile as long as the baby's heart rate kept coming back up at the end of each contraction.  I was on oxygen to help the baby.At about 1:15 I saw my husband run out of the room and all of the sudden about 10 people ran in.  I didn't know what was going on and they told me to get up on all fours, which was very difficult because I couldn't feel my legs. Of course my nightgown fell off so I was completely naked. So much for my modesty.  I thought they were just assessing the situation but all of the sudden my doctor ran into the room in scrubs and yelled that we were having a csection right now.  Before I knew it they were shaving me and having me sign forms.  My poor husband was standing in the corner petrified and they ran me down the hallway on the stretcher.They got me onto the table in the OR and put in a catheter and then prepped me.  The nurse anesthestist poked me with a syringe and asked if I felt pain.  I didn't on the right side but I did on the left.  I told her and she said that I would feel pressure not pain.  I did feel pain and I knew what the pressure was like because I only felt pressure on the right side. They continued to get out calipers and do it again and I said the exact same thing and she continued to patronize me and told the OB to go ahead that she was sure I was fine.  My DH was allowed into the room then and he said he knew something was wrong because my heart rate was 150.  I was ok for a little bit but once they got past my skin and down into the muscle I could feel everything.  I told them and they once again said I was fine.  When she started cutting my uterus I felt the entire cut on the left side and I started screaming and hyperventilating.  They finally put me under completely, which they should have done from the very start.When I woke up my husband said the first thing I said was "is the baby ok?" and he was so relieved.  He was holding the baby in a chair beside me and he was sobbing because he was so worried for both of us.  They allowed him in the room because he is a physician at the hospital and my oxygen saturation got really low and the baby came out very blue so the poor guy's nerves were shot.

Luckily after all of that we have a happy perfectly healthy baby. My baby is such a sweetheart and I love him so much, 8 months later but it has been hard getting over this.  I hope that I can over time.

Thanks,

jessica 

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Re: My Story

  • *speedracer**speedracer* member

    did you have a cord prolapse?  what a rough story :(

    when i was dealing with PPD i did not want to have any more kids.  i wanted to want more, but the thought of going through it all again and having more babies horrified me.  my pregnancy and labor were pretty good, but i didn't bond with my newborn for a very long time and i resented his presence in the beginning.

    i went to a support group, a talk therapist and saw a psychiatrist to help me deal with my PPD/anxiety.  I felt fully "recovered" when DS was ~1 year old, and was ready to have a baby again the following fall (hence my ticker).

    your story is somewhat like one a few threads down, maybe some lingering post traumatic stress affecting you?  


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  • melissawillrmelissawillr member
    I'm really sorry.  That sounds very scary.  I'm only 3 weeks post c-section and I'm still pretty anxiety-ridden.  The first couple of weeks I felt totally traumatized.  Nothing went wrong with my surgery, but it was my seventh surgery in the past 12 years.  I've had some serious health problems prior to being pregnant and then causing me to be high-risk during the pregnancy.  I knew before going into the OR that I was going to have some serious anxiety issues.  I guess while I was getting prepped for the spinal, my heartrate was 163, I was totally freaking out inside.  I don't think anyone can really appreciate the feeling of being operated on while awake unless they've been in the same situation.  I find myself on these boards early on my in DS' life because I'm starting to show signs of PPD.  I hope you start to feel better soon.  Before my next baby, (and it will probably be another csection,) I'm going to have to do a lot of work with my counselor surrounding the issues of PTSD.
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