Disclaimer #2: This post is not for the faint of heart. If you don't like hearing the dirty details about childbirth, then you should probably stop reading now. If words like forceps, placental abruption, high blood pressure, overdose, and giant needle in spine make you squeamish, then you should definitely stop here.
Last chance!
Ok, here's the scoop:
Like I said in my last post, my blood pressure was all messed up. On February 2nd it sort of sky rocketed to about 160/110 (if you don't know anything about blood pressure, normal is 120/80). I'd been on bed rest for a couple weeks, so this was happening just from taking it laying down. It was a sunday so I called the emergency line and talked to my doctor. He said to take another dose of my blood pressure medication and check it again in an hour. If it didn't go down, I needed to go to the hospital to be monitored. After taking the medication, it went down low enough that I didn't need to go to the hospital, but my doc wanted to see me first thing the next morning (February 3rd).
The next morning came, and my little sister Val drove me down to the doctors office. My blood pressure had gone up again and I'd lost 2 pounds since my appointment like 4 days earlier. My fundal height (size of my belly) had stopped growing too, which had him concerned. Things just didn't seem to be going well for me or the baby, so he recommended that I should be induced. This scared me. I was 36 weeks along, and was worried about whether my baby would be okay coming this early. But I felt like it was the right thing, and I trusted that my doctor knew what was best.
So over to the hospital we went. I called John who was at work, and let him know that we were going to have a baby! He went back to the house to get some baby essentials and the car seat, and then met us at the hospital. I was already contracting on my own, before they started me on the pitocin, so that was good.
My blood pressure was so high, I was at risk for having a seizure. So they put me on this thing called magnesium. Magnesium is made by the devil himself. I'm serious, that stuff is just terrible! It made my brain soooo foggy, I was very irritable, and basically incapable of making decisions. Add to that the pain of pitocin induced labor, and an annoying nurse in training, and I wasn't your average sweet peach to be around. What made matters worse, is that they didn't take my small body into account and gave to the normal magnesium dose they give to their adult patients. Well they basically overdosed me, and when they tested the magnesium levels in my blood they were barely below the toxic level. This was hurdle number one, and it made all the other hurdles that are to come even harder to bear.
So the doctor broke my water (ouch) and started me on the pitocin at about 1:30 pm. I was about 1cm dialated and 100% effaced when I started. My parents came to the hospital, and so did my brother and his wife. John was by my side, feeding me ice chips, popsicles and juice, and helping me keep my patience. My sweet nurse in training messed up on my IV, and had to poke me like 3 times when drawing my blood, so after that point I had this rage towards her! Every time she told me "you are doing so great," I wanted to rip her head off! I'm really not that mean of a person, but this was the magnesium talking.
At about 6:30, my nurse (the experienced one I didn't hate) came in to tell me that if I wanted an epidural in the next hour, I needed to get it now because the anesthesiologist was going to be gone to dinner. I had originally wanted to try to labor longer without the epidural. I was only about 5-6 centimeters dialated at this point, but the pain of contractions was starting to get a little bit intense. Previously, the doctor had tried to put in a monitor inside of me to measure contractions, and tried to stick a sensor to babies head to measure his heart beat more accurately. But he couldn't get it through and it hurt so bad! He was going to be coming back in soon to try again, and I thought if I was going to end up getting an epidural eventually I might as well do it now so that I wouldn't be in all that pain again. But at the same time I didn't want an epidural. So I sat there, incapable of making a decision (my brain was so fuzzy thanks to that dang mag). I finally told John that he just needed to decide! He opted for the epidural.
So in came the anesthesiologist and out came the giant spinal needle. I leaned up against John to keep me steady. To be honest, I wasn't really that worried about the needle going into my spine. Before, that was one of the big reasons that I didn't want the epidural. But the pain of labor kind of shifts your perspective, so I just leaned against John and tried to hold very still through contractions. After the epidural went in, I started to feel verrrrrry light headed like I was going to pass out. Before I could tell the nurse she started speaking very urgently to the anesthesiologist, repeating my vitals. I'm not sure what my heart rate was, but my blood pressure basically flip flopped and went from 150's/110's to like 90/150! And then I started throwing up. I can still hear the anesthesiologist's words saying "I'm pumping 5cc's of this, and 10 cc's of that..." It felt like I was on an episode of Greys Anatomy! My doctor came running in and had them give me zofran to stop the throwing up, and then they finally got things back to normal (ish) and I was able to get some rest.
At about 10:30 pm, I started feeling the contractions more intensely. In between contractions I would get really sick to my stomach, and then contractions seemed to bring relief. I told the nurse and she checked me and what do you know I was at a 10. Time to push! After a few pushes, the babies heart rate started dropping during contractions so they put me on an oxygen mask to see if it would help bring it up. I continued to push for about 20 minutes. John was by my side, helping me through each push. I was kind of sitting up and bearing down, so I couldn't see what was going on down there, but I could see my doctors face. I watched his facial expression closely as it turned from concerned to worried. He kept looking at the monitors and I knew something was wrong. He said to the nurse something like, "This is a lot of blood. This is more blood than normal." And even though this should have freaked me out, I was oddly calm through it all. Babies heart rate had dropped and it wasn't coming back up, so the doctor asked for forceps... It was either that or emergency c-section, which I def did not want. It turns out I had a partial placental abruption, which is why I was bleeding so much, and why his heart rate dropped.
It was 11:09 p.m. I think I closed my eyes for the forceps part. I did not even want to see those long metal things anywhere near my lady parts, but I watched as the dr. pulled my little purple and blood covered baby into my view. The first few seconds he was silent, and my heart stopped.
And then he cried, and that cry was the most beautiful sound I'd ever heard. And then I cried.
They cut the cord and rushed him over where a crowd of nurses and specialists waited to check him out. They wiped him off and weighed and measured him. He was 4 lb's 14 oz and 18.5 inches long. They brought him over and laid him on my chest for a few minutes. His little smooshed up face was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. But his breathing was a little wheezy, so they took him away while I got stitched up (thanks forceps). John went with baby Elliot, and even though I was worried I knew in my heart that everything would turn out okay.
And it did. After an hour of CPAP and one 20 second episode of not breathing, he didn't have any more problems with breathing. He did end up in the NICU for the next 10 1/2 days because of hypoglycemia, jaundice, not being able to regulate his body temperature, and feeding issues, but that story is it's own post.
Now, 4 months later, it almost seems like a distant memory. But my sweet baby Elliot was worth all of it. He was worth the pregnancy and delivery from Hell. <3
