Life Since Then, Part 4

Continued from Part 3...

It was pretty uneventful for a long time. For the most part, it was talking, walking, being checked without making much progress, and attempting sleep. Make sure to notice that I used the word “attempt”. I was exhausted and couldn’t get more than a few minutes to a half hour (maximum) of “sleep” at a time. Finally, at midnight, my nurse told me that my IV couldn’t wait anymore and they put it in. That was a good thing because by the time 1am came – after 7 hours of active labor – I decided I wanted some pain meds. The first round of pain meds was pretty nice. It didn’t completely stop my contractions… I could still feel them coming frequently… but they weren’t nearly as bad. I was able to get around 45 minutes to an hour of uninterrupted sleep. Mom and Dad left sometime around 2am. My pain meds had worn off by 3am, like I had been told it would, so I got another dose. This one wasn’t nearly as effective. I was also told at that time that since I had been in labor for so long that the chances of infection were increasing and if there wasn’t promising progression by 6am, they were going to start me on Pitocin to get him here faster. (Pretty sure I was only dilated to a 5 at this point… I hadn’t progressed much at all since we had been there.)

By around 4:30am, I was ready for some more pain medicine. But, the last one hadn’t worked nearly as well and the doctor told me that eventually the IV pain meds wouldn’t do any good at all. I decided that if they were going to speed things up, I would need the epidural. Not just for the pain, but so I could rest. When the anesthesiologist came in to give me the epidural at 5am, I had been awake with minimal sleep for a full 24 hours and in active labor for 11 hours with minimal pain management. By that point, I was mentally, physically, and emotionally drained. I’m not going to lie, that epidural scared me to death. It wasn’t AS painful as I had hyped myself up to thinking it would be, but it still burned very badly while he was back there. Brian stood in front of me so I could lean on him. I honestly don’t know if I could have handled it the way I did if he hadn’t have been there. (Side note: not being able to use your legs is the STRANGEST feeling. I could still feel them there, so it wasn’t like they felt like they had been amputated or anything, but it was like they were asleep. Not just a little tingly asleep, like when you’ve sat the wrong way for entirely too long and your legs feel like they’re full of cement.) Once the epidural was in, my doctor took off the monitoring belts and put in an internal monitor to keep a better watch on Trevor’s vitals. I liked lying on my left side so I could see people that were there.

6am came and still not enough progress so they started me on a Pitocin drip. But, that’s also when the problems started. They wanted to gradually increase the amount of Pitocin but by the time I got to a level 3, one of my monitors went haywire. Almost immediately, my nurse ran into the room followed by another 3-4 nurses. The Pitocin was making Trevor’s heart rate drop. They pushed fluids through my IV line, turned the Pitocin off, and got my doctor. After they explained to her what happened, she decided to leave it off for an hour or so and then start all over.

It’s hard to remember all the times things happened after this… much of it is a blur. My 2^nd Pitocin drip made his heart rate get really low again at the same level it had before so it had to be stopped for a while again. A 3^rd Pitocin drip was started and was left at a level 2 so his heart rate wouldn’t drop anymore which caused me to start dilating more, but not very quickly. My parents came back around 9 that morning and hung out in my room all day.

Sometime in the afternoon, I had FINALLY dilated to a 7 (waiting to dilate was one of the most frustrating things since I wasn’t able to speed it up myself) but it just wasn’t enough. My doctor and nurse came in and talked to me about a c-section and how the time for when one was going to be needed was getting very close. I had been in active labor for too long and the risk for infection was getting too high. Not going to lie, I started crying. I felt defeated… helpless… hopeless. My doctor was incredible. She knew I didn’t want a c-section as long as I could help it so she decided to let me go a bit longer. A short time after, my nurse came back and started to prep me for the surgery by washing my belly with the antibacterial scrub and getting out all of the equipment that would be needed. In the meantime, my nurse rolled me to my right side to give my left side a break and to try to get the right side of my cervix to dilate (the left had dilated all the way, but the right side was the one that wasn’t doing what it needed to), but every time I would be on my right side for any length of time, Trevor’s heart rate would drop again. I was put on my back and given an oxygen mask while more fluids were flushed through my IV line. I honestly lost count of how many times I had to use that mask.

My doctor came back in at about 2pm or so to check me (I think with the intention of taking me down to the operating room) and I was almost completely dilated! There was still a small piece on the right side that hadn’t dilated all the way. The c-section talk went away and my doctor told me that it shouldn’t be much longer. I think this is when Brian’s mom came to visit. She wasn’t able to stay long because she had to get Timothy and Thomas from school. (Brian played an incredibly cruel trick on my mom… he went out and told her that I had regressed and gone from a 10 back to a 7. She, of course, flipped.)

The nurse came in and checked me again at 3:30pm and I was still almost dilated to 10. The right side still had a little piece, but she said it was incredibly soft and wanted the doctor’s opinion. Dr. Delong came in and agreed – saying that it should be soft enough for Trevor to get past it – and wanted me to try a few pushes. After a couple, she said she wanted to try to deliver the baby so Brian went out into the hallway and told Mom and Dad that they needed to go to the waiting room while we were trying to get Trevor out. (My doctor also asked if I wanted a mirror placed at the foot of the bed so I could see him being born. Um, sorry, but… no thanks. Gross.)

Pushing started at 3:44pm. Brian started out counting for me… and did GREAT… at first. He started out doing a pretty good pace. But then he decided that if he counted slower, I would push longer. WRONG. It got to the point where I had to stop pushing by the time he got to number 6 or 7… there was no way I was making it to number 10 at that pace. I distinctly remember saying some “choice words” and then the nurse immediately offering to count for me.  Once the doctor thought Trevor was in a good position, they broke away the bed – which, I have to say, was pretty impressive. That was, however, the most vulnerable I’ve ever felt. (Laughable, but kinda gross moment: While Trevor’s head was still in the birth canal, the doctor asked Brian if he wanted to come see the baby’s full head of hair. I felt bad for Brian because he was looking for a nice way to decline her offer. As he was stuttering, she said “It’s ok… you don’t have to.” He promptly replied with “No. No. Nope, I don’t wanna do that.”)

Pushing alone wasn’t doing it. His face was facing the ceiling instead of the floor so his head was having a hard time getting past my pelvic bone. My doctor told me that he wasn’t going to get out on his own, so she got a vacuum and attached it to his head. From where I was, I couldn’t really see much of anything she was doing. (Brian later described it to me… he compared it to it looking like she had gone fishing and was pulling back the fishing pole, trying to pull a big fish out of the water.) All I know is it helped. She would pull while I would push and then wait for the next contraction to do it all again. Finally, we got his head out (I swear, I thought it would be easier than that). She asked if I wanted to reach down and touch his head… I don’t even remember how I responded… I just know I didn’t do it. Again… gross. Once his head was out, the rest was incredibly easy. All it took was 3 more pushes.

Brian and I welcomed our son, Trevor James Hart into the world on September 13, 2013 at 4:48pm.

But… just because he was here, doesn’t mean everything was fine.






.... To be continued....

Life Since Then, Part 3

Ok, I lied... this isn't the rest of it. I didn't quite realize how many details were involved (that I would remember) with Trevor's birth...

We called my mom and dad first. Of course she flipped out. They wanted to come right away, but I didn’t think everyone needed to be crammed in that little room, so I told them I’d let them know when I was able to get a birthing room. I don’t remember what order everyone else came in, but I made sure to get at least the majority of the family notified. When people offered to let other family members know, I decided that would be best so I could get some rest. I figured I’d have a long night ahead and needed to keep as much energy as possible, especially since already being up so early that morning. While waiting, Brian and I went over the “rules” I wanted to set for while we were in the birthing room. I had already been telling him these (mostly at random) for a few weeks prior.  Little did I know that he had put them in his phone so he wouldn’t forget J

Those rules were:
1. Only he was allowed in the room while I was pushing.
 - I believe that a baby’s birth is an extremely intimate moment and should be shared by the mother and father, without the distraction of other people (besides the hospital staff). I think that gives too much opportunity for people to argue over what everyone’s “jobs” are… who stands next to the woman being the coach, who sits on the couch, etc. Also, the more people in the room, the more things there are to potentially take the doctor’s attention away from what they’re there to do – get the baby out SAFELY. A lot of people that I know have had their mothers in the room and/or various other family members… and… to each, their own… but that’s not how I wanted things to go.

2. Only he was allowed in the room while I was being checked.
- Um… I know a bunch of people that I didn’t know were going to be in there while everything was exposed for everyone to see. BUT… I don’t know those people. The only time I have to see that doctor again is for yearly exams at which time she sees everything anyway. It’s not like I work with these people and every time they see me, they’d get a visual of my exposed vajayjay.

3. When the doctor was talking, everyone else needed to be quiet.
- If this one isn’t obvious enough… I had never birthed a baby before. And no matter how many books you read or pamphlets you look out or picture diagrams you see… it never FULLY prepares you for being in the moment. That and each birth doesn’t progress the same way. I needed to be able to hear each and every thing my doctor or nurses were telling me so I knew what was going on.

4. I didn’t want anyone called until it was confirmed that I was in active labor.
- We had already discussed this on the way to the hospital. If you haven’t, read the end of Part 2 for the reasoning.

5. IV pain meds were preferred – no epidural unless the IV meds weren’t enough and I couldn’t take it anymore.
- I know epidurals are standard now. I know they’re the best form of pain management. But… first off, I HATE needles. I passed out when I was 11 (?) in the middle of Claire’s in the Town Center mall in Charleston after getting my ears pierced. Not from pain, but from getting myself so hyped up over it that my adrenaline crashed. Nearly passed out when I got my navel pierced in my senior year of high school. Needles and I do not get along… period. And second, without mentioning names, a man that I work with lost his daughter after she gave birth to her third child due to complications from an epidural. This scared the hell out of me. I looked up the statistics on it and yes, they were very, very minimal. But it wasn’t able to be completely ruled out. As a result, an epidural was to be used as a last resort.

6. Brian and Dad needed to BEHAVE.
- Brian and my dad are entirely too similar with their sense of humor. Once they get going, they just. Don’t. Quit. And at times, it can get downright obnoxious. I had other things to focus on than getting annoyed.

7. I didn’t want anyone to try to talk me into changing my birthing plan (unless it was my doctor and in a life/death situation)
- It was MY birth plan for (likely) the ONLY baby I would ever have. I made these decisions based on various things: Brian’s input, birthing class, various other moms, etc. Granted, I know that everything could change, but I wanted to at least set parameters for how I wanted it to go. The way I saw it was if you want to try to tell me how my birth plan was incorrect or that I needed to change a million things about it, then you just needed to get pregnant and make your own birth plan.

For the record, I still don’t think any of the above was unreasonable. I cannot begin to express how incredible it was to have a husband that gave his opinion when asked for it but still allowed me to make my own decisions without any negative pressure.

Right at 8pm, we were told that a birthing room was ready… the ONLY birthing room available. (I felt sorry for the other women that didn’t have a room yet.) Before I was able to be moved, the doctor checked on my progress again. (This was pretty amusing seeing as my water hadn’t completely emptied. They made sure to stand to the side when checking me… just in case it would explode in their faces.) After getting in the birthing room, the nurse wanted to do the standard IV drip. But… I knew I wanted to walk around and I really didn’t want to bring that pole along for as long as possible, so she told me she would leave it out as long as possible but would need to be in before I got any pain meds. As soon as we got settled, Mom and Dad walked in.

To be continued....

Life Since Then, Part 2

Continued from Part 1.....

After that, all there was to do was get Trevor’s room together… that and wait on him to get here. I had started my 2 week rotation appointments at my OBGYN’s office… those were fun (please read the previous with as much sarcasm as possible). But no matter how much I disliked the visits, they were informative. I was dilated to 1cm for about 3 weeks before my due date… with no change until the appointment on my due date – September 9^th – where I was dilated to 3cm and fully effaced. At that point, my OB decided it would be best to strip my membranes to try to stimulate labor. She told me if I was going to go into labor on my own, it would be within the next 24 hours. She scheduled me to be induced on September 16^th at 9am… just in case. Brian had me walking every single day trying to get me to go into labor. Sometimes it was just down to the end of the driveway and back and other times he had me walking down the road a bit. He even took me to the mall once and had me walk from Sears to the other end and back.

Then, the evening of September 11, I started having light cramping (hours apart). It had been well over the 24 hour timeframe the doctor had given for going into labor on my own so I figured it was something I had eaten. I told Brian about them and he wanted me to try to time them, but they were too light and too sporadic and I couldn’t tell where they started.

By the following morning, they were more noticeable but they were still about an hour apart. I was still working, so I wasn’t able to focus a lot on when they started… I was only able to tell when they reached their “peak” and it took my attention away from whatever I was doing. Around noon, the ”cramps” were finally  somewhat timeable and were anywhere from 8 minutes to 15 minutes apart and I decided it was time to stop working and focus on whether this was real labor or not. Timothy had a baseball game that night and Brian and I decided that it would be best to have an alternative plan in place for him to get there in case we had to take off to the hospital.

My mother in law, who had been on standby for weeks, came over at 5:30 to pick up Timothy and Thomas and head to the game. I think Trevor must have been waiting on the boys to be taken care of because my water broke at 5:40ish. (DISCLAIMER: Gross descriptive things coming.) It wasn’t the big “gush” that you see in the movies or read about in books so I wasn’t sure it was that. I had used the toilet in the master bathroom and walked to the kitchen when Trevor kicked and it felt like I had peed myself. (This had happened a couple times before so I wasn’t concerned. I did think it was odd because I had JUST emptied my bladder, but I figured I just hadn’t bent over enough to get it all out.) I headed back to the bathroom, cleaned myself up, tried to pee again (nothing came out), put on some new underwear, and headed back to the living room to say bye to the boys. I wasn’t able to make it through the living room before it happened again.  So back to the bathroom I went and repeated the process, only this time I put on a pad in case it happened again… at the rate I was going, I was going to run out of clean underwear and soon!

Brian and I decided it was time to get our hospital bags in the car and head to town. The boys headed to the baseball game with their grandma and we headed in the other direction to the hospital. Calls were made to the doctor’s office and the hospital on the way there but I decided not to call any family at that time in case it was a false alarm. The way I saw it, I already had enough to deal with and didn’t want/ need to add to that by having people other than hospital staff hovering. (I apologize if anyone is offended by that, but that ended up being a really good decision. You’ll see in a minute.)

We got to the hospital at almost 6pm on the dot. It was a good thing we called ahead because there was ONE exam room open. This room was about the size of our master bathroom, closets included. There was enough room in there for Brian and myself, but it got very tight in there once the doctor and nurse came in together. (Speaking of the doctor… Lisa Delong was the one from my doctor’s office that was on call. I had seen her ONCE before… she was the only one there (out of 5) that I hadn’t quite formed an opinion on yet. I had seen the others multiple times.) It was confirmed that I was in labor, but they told me that they were unusually busy that evening and all of the birthing suites were occupied at that time and I would need to wait until someone had their baby and was moved to their mommy/ baby suite. (You stay in the birthing suite for 2 hours after giving birth to let the effects of anesthesia wear off some. The baby normally gets their first feeding in this room also.) Once all of the admission stuff was taken care of, we decided to call family and let them know what was going on.

...... to be continued. The rest of the birth next!