You asked for it. ^_^
My plans were so quaint. I was going to have a water birth in a beautiful birth center with my lovely midwives Bea and Ricci. I had a horrible pregnancy – uncomfortable, threw up the whole time, had fainting episodes… horrible. I hoped and prayed that I’d go into labor early just so it would be over with.
My due date came and went without so much as a hint of a contraction. At 41 weeks my midwives started bringing in the “big guns” – the age-old methods of inducing labor. Blue cohosh, black cohosh, homeopathic pulsatilla, acupressure, some crazy incense and ashes thing, castor oil…. nothing.
At 42 weeks the State demands transfer to an obstetrician. I transferred to Ricci’s former employer – this rough, big woman I’d never met before. She did an ultrasound and a non-stress test. Told me the kid was between 6½ and 7½ lbs. (remember that) I checked into the hospital that night (Friday) for an induction.
9:00 Friday night – Cervadil. After 2 hours, they started on the pitocin. I was strapped to monitors, couldn’t eat. I was allowed water for a while.
By the middle of the night, I still wasn’t having contractions strong enough to dilate. They put me on the maximum amount of Pitocin allowed. My pain went from about a 3 to a solid 6.
Hour 26, Dr comes in and says “Hasn’t your water broken yet?” and proceeds to break it. Lots and lots of meconium. Add the neo-natal staff to the party in my hospital room. Pain jumps to an 8. I try to bear it, as I wanted to maintain the idea of a natural childbirth as much as I could.
Hour 28, I can’t f*king take it anymore. Please, please give me the epidural.
15 minutes of glorious pain relief, and then the pain is back. In my back. Only now, the epidural has killed my legs, and I can’t adjust myself to get more comfortable. A nurse comes in and tells me I have until noon the next day to have the kid, or the doctor required by law to perform a C-section. I told her to shove it.
A few hours later I beg the anaesthesiologist to come back and give me another shot. It does nothing. Awesome.
8:00 Sunday morning I’m finally dilated enough to push. All the pain, none of the ability to move my legs. Also awesome. At one point they put a bar over my bed, and wrapped a sheet around it. I used the sheet to pull myself into a sort of squat to make it easier on the baby. Around Hour 37, I was running out of energy, and wept and bawled as I allowed the Dr. to use a vacuum. I don’t know if it was the shame that did it, but she barely touched his head with that thing, and I had his head out. He had shoulder dystocia (shoulder stuck behind my pelvic bone) and she had to reach in and turn him. 2nd degree tear. Awesome.
37½ hours, and baby’s out!
11 inch head. 15 inch chest. They didn’t measure his shoulders – they were wide. 10 lbs 5 ounces. (remember the estimate? Ha ha.) I had half the hospital through my room to see the 10 lb baby that came out of the 5 foot tall girl.
7½ lb placenta.
He was fine, I was fine, all was well, until I started to haemorrhage. I don’t remember much of what happened at this point, as my brain pretty much turned itself off. I remember pain. Pain like I’ve never experienced before or since, and cold. Such cold. I lost 4½ lbs of blood in clots, and I don’t know how much ended up on the floor. My husband says it looked like a scene in Poltergeist. Blood all over the hospital room.
Eventually they got the blood stopped about 30 seconds before the Dr was going to get an emergency hysterectomy on her CV. I took two units of O+ after they moved me to a recovery room, and was still coming up with blood count numbers that Ricci said didn’t even make sense for a living human.
But a couple of days later, I felt like Superman, and had an awesome little boy to show for it. For all of that pain and hassle, I managed to not have a C-Section, and my recovery was still faster than my friend who did have one. Yay for happy endings. ^_^
