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March 2011 Moms
Team green = blue -- LONG birth story (PIP)
This is a super long birth story but incase anyone is interested in hearing my story -- pictures are at the bottom, feel free to scroll down to see our precious team blue member!
On April 2nd I woke up at 4:30am having contractions. DH said I had been behaving really oddly in my sleep and I had been having dreams that involved being physically beaten by some crazy guy in a subway so I'm sure I was having fairly consistant contractions before I woke up. At around 6 I decided to start timing them. They were around 5 minutes apart, lasting one minute, for over 30 minutes. By 45 minutes into timing, they had started to become very irregular and slowly began to become farther and farther apart.
DH had plans to meet my father to work on the yard at the property they're going to be selling. I decided I didn't want to be left home alone and went along. By 2pm I was having semi-regular contractions again only this time I was lying in the backyard in the sun. In hind sight, being in the sun on Saturday was a horrible idea. Doctors kept freaking out because my face and arms got burnt and they kept thinking I was turing a bright flush.
We got home at 3:30 and I decided to start timing them immediately, they were between 2 minutes and 7 minutes apart with most coming 4 or 5 minutes apart and were lasting between 45 seconds and 2 minutes. After timing them for 3 hours DH and I decided to go to the hospital to see if I had progressed. On Tuesday at my appointment I was 60% effaced, 1 cm dilated and at -2. When I showed up on Saturday at 7ish pm I was 80%, 3 cm and still -2. After walking an hour I dilated another to 4cm so they decided to have me stay.
I had two nurses in L&D, one was a very knowledgable and one had just started 9 days prior. I generally have no problems being a guinea pig. I've trained dental assistants and know how rough it is on them so I completely understand that the more laid back the patient, the easier the training. That being said, this woman tried my patience. Internals are uncomfortable but because she didn't know what she was doing or how to properly measure they were miserable. I had contractions more comfortable than her internals and each time she either didn't get a measurement or needed the other nurse to check me again anyway.
I progressed fairly steadily to 6cm and 90% by midnight. At 2am I was contracting once every 2 minutes for one minute and shaking so hard that my bed was rattling. I went in not wanting an epi but knew at the rate I was going and how uncontrollable my shaking was so early that I probably wouldn't make it. My body was getting weaker and weaker with each contraction and even while sitting on the birthing ball, I couldn't control my shaking. It was a really rough decision to make but ended up being the reason DH was able to be there when DS was born. We had been told that if I needed a c-section in a hurry that without an epi, I'd be put under. I had no idea that it would come to that.
By 4 am, I was still stalled at 6cm and the monitors were having a difficult time following my contractions so an internal was placed. After another hour of monitoring, my contractions had basically stopped again. At this point they started pitocin and I really began to feel guilty about the epi. DH and I were told it would still be a few hours so he took this time to go home to take care of our dog. At 6 am the nurses came in to check me again. The new nurse said I was still stalled at 6cm and that I was now closer to 90%. The older nurse had her doubts so she checked me herself. After checking me, she went back into the storage room, came back with gloves and told the new nurse to tell her exactly where my cervix was. It was really awkward because I knew the young nurse had been completely wrong and the older nurse was annoyed. I felt kind of bad for her until the older nurse signed to me that I was a 10. After a fairly long explanation of what she was feeling and why that meant there was no cervix left they told me I had about an hour left until I would be pushing. DH walked in during this conversation and immediately called my parents and his parents.
The nurses wanted to let me to continue to labor down because LO was only at -1 so we talked to family for a bit. When the nurses came back we kicked them out to try pushing. Attempt number one was a complete failure, nothing was accomplished. Push number two dropped LO's heartrate to 70 where it stayed. They paged a resident and after rolling my from side to side and the heartrate not increasing they paged the resident again. My doctor and the resident both walked in at the same time. The flooded me with fluids, stopped the pitocin and found an angle I could lay in that brought the heartrate back up. My doctor decided to let my labor down for bit longer before trying again. They requested I not push the epi button anymore to let my body get unnumb some to help pushing go quicker. At 9:30 he came in and told me that he was willing to let me continue to try a vaginal delivery but in his opinion, he thought the chances of success were really slim. I never got so numb that I couldn't move my legs or roll over on my own but prior to not pushing the button I was truly unaware when I was having contractions. While he was in explaining everything I started having some fairly strong contractions so he decided to do an internal and see what the pushing would do for LO. I gave a really solid strong push and LO's heartrate dropped into the 60s. This time it wasn't coming back up. My ob told me he could feel the baby's ears and that s/he was turned sideways and stuck in my pelvis and we had to get the baby out now.
This time block gets a little blurry here because everything happened so quickly. DH asked if he had time to tell family and was told to do it quickly because he needed to get changed. I had an anesthesiologist on my left pumping things into my IV and one of my right pumping into my epi. They were both talking really hurriedly while another person was drawing blood and someone else was poking me to see if the anesthesia was working yet. I don't remember when DH came into the room but I know I looked over and he was already in his OR scrubs. They didn't run me down to the OR but they definately didn't stroll either.
I wasn't strapped down which was nice and I had one anesthesiologist on my left and my DH on my right. At 10:13am LO was born, one nurse said girl, someone else said boy and finally my doctor asked DH what LO's name was and he told me Charles was just born. Charles was silent for what felt like forever. I watched them take him over to the warmer and DH follow. They sucked him out and did a lot of poking before he finally made a whimper. Never cried but that simple little whimper was the best sound I had heard all day. They gave him some oxygen to help him pink up a bit. Since I had gotten to the hospital on Saturday my temperature had been slowly increasing. When I went in to the OR I was 99.9 and while on the table I finally got a fever. I started to have increasing amounts of backpain while being closed up and after getting more drugs DH and I were on our way to recovery while DS was off to be cleaned up.
In recovery my doctor came in and explained that DS was awfully bruised from being wedged and that he was afraid damage was done to my uterers, bladder, and/or kidneys. I would have to get a CAT scan done to see if I needed surgery or if it was just trama that would recover. I haven't yet heard the details of how DH told our families that LO was a boy but I know he went out with the footprints on his hands and asked if they wanted to meet Charles.
My CAT scan showed no damage was done but they had to keep me on a cath for longer than normal because I was having so much blood in my urine. DS shocked a lot of nurses and my peditrican by how well he was doing. On Sunday he weighed 7 lbs 8 oz and was 21 1/2 inches long. He dropped down to 7lb 2oz by Tuesday and surprised everyone when he then started gaining. By the time we left Thursday he was already back up to 7lb 6oz. He's a super healthy eater and nurses really quickly. Generally he's done within 30 minutes if not before then and definately has his fair share of hind milk. He scored a 2.3 on his jaundice scale which is basically a 0.
Though the birth didn't go even close to how I had hoped, I'm glad I decided to go with the flow - to trust my instincts and let my body attempt it on my own rather than going in for an induction and to do what I felt was necessary.
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Re: Team green = blue -- LONG birth story (PIP)
Life of mrsjanks
What an adventure! You were very brave. Congrats Girl and your pictures are so sweet. Also, what was your reaction to becoming "team blue?"
Thanks ladies! I've been trying to take it easy. My doctor wrote DH a note for work stating he needs to stay home with me until the 18th so he's on sick time now. He's been so super helpful and I have no idea how I'd be able to handle this without his help. My movement is still a little limited but I'm looking forward to getting around better soon. Thank goodness for vicodin
Honestly it's still a bit of a shock and DH and I had a strong feeling LO was a boy. It's very surreal to not only have a baby, but to know that it's a boy and be able to identify the baby as a he now rather than a baby. That being said, without a doubt I don't regret going team green. The experience was well worth the wait and as far as not having ANY clothes when LO was born (well excluding 6 white onesies and 2 gender neutral outfits) we got bombarded with outfits. Chances are we now have newborn outfits he'll never get to wear, partially because he's already over 21 inches and partially because he has some big ol' feet. My MIL bought a huge bag full of outfits and told us that she knows the sizes are only newborn but we'll get another bag at Easter.