Sunday, April 18, 2004

A Year Ago Today: Mikro's Birth Story

April 16th was my "due date", which came and went. I have an ultrasound on April 17th, and they say my amniotic fluid is low. I get a 7/8 on the Biophysical Profile, the only deduction being the low fluid. The previous day, it was 80 degrees here after a week in the 40s, and I sweated like a horse all night, so it would not surprise me in the least to find that I was dehydrated. That said, my OB's partner wants to induce me immediately, using cervidil and pitocin, and basically strap me to a bed for the duration. With my severe claustrophobia and PTSD, I am losing my mind just thinking about it.

I am counting on being able to move around for as long as possible through labor. Now they want to imobilize me. I don't think I could take it.

No one says the words emergency, or fetal distress. The baby's heart rate is perfectly normal, his movement is good, everything else is going fine. I can't believe for one day past due they want to subject me to this ordeal. I am frantically trying to get ahold of my doctor, whose service had supposedly paged her.

I feel like her partner is far more concerned with CYA than any problem with me or the baby. She wants me to go in immediately, but I refuse (she cannot believe I dare) and say I will go in the morning, hoping to buy time and speak to my regular OB doc.

Shortly after that, I get a call back from my own doctor, who is on vacation, because of the school holidays, but not actually out of town. She tells me her partner called her and said I was freaking out, which I admit I am, and we have a long conversation.

Her partner's first language is not English, and there was big time miscommunication going on, besides the fact that pushing me the way she did is a recipe for disaster.

My doc gives me an entirely different description of how it would work -- only on the external belt monitors, free to move around after they run a baseline tape on the baby to be sure the cervidil isn't harming him, free to labor in the tub, walk around, do it my way.

They had followed me for the low fluid, which was an on-again, off-again thing with me the last month or so of the pregnancy. Personally, I think I was just plain dehydrated from stress (lawsuit stuff) and the very unseasonably warm weather, but my doc didn't really want me to take a chance, because apparently the level was very low... and the baby was full term.

I say to her, it sounds to me like what happens to me will depend on who is in the room, you or your partner, and tell her that I don't want her partner.

My doc offers to come in and deliver him herself if I will go in and do it. Since there is a good chance I am going to have him in the next five days when her partner is the only one available, I figure my best bet is to take her up on it and have someone I trust there instead. She also tells me she had checked with the hospital, and no one else is in labor that night, so the likelihood I will be able to have the tub room for my labor is really good. Since I don't want drugs, that's important to me.

So I go in. They stick the cervidil in at 10 pm, and by 1130 I am off the monitors and walking around. That lasts till around 2 am, when I get in the tub because the pain is getting pretty bad. Just before I get in the tub, I am puking my guts out, which is nothing new, since I puked the entire nine months...

Oh-- forgot to mention-- the monitor isn't working real well in the tub room. They have a good readout on Mikey's heartbeat, but they can't track my contractions...

That tub makes a HUGE difference-- I actually fall asleep floating in the warm water. But around 4 am, even with the Lamaze breathing, the contractions are really bad, so I decide to get out and that I will probably let them put in an IV and take the stadol "to take the edge off" but still avoid the epidural.

Now life gets interesting, because I have always had lousy veins. They can't get an IV started. Every time they get in a vein, it collapses. So an hour, six or eight tries and a call to the IV team later, I still have no IV, no drugs, not even a Tylenol, and I am now yelling in pain. (You should have seen my arms and hands-- I looked like a boxer who lost the bout... huge purple bruises everywhere from the IV sticks.)

Of course, it is Good Friday, and it seems like only the youngest, least experienced people are on duty... While the IV follies are going on, the nurses decide that, no way has the cervidil worked yet since it hasn't been 12 hours, so I must be overly sensitive to it and reacting badly, because I should not be in so much pain so soon. The implication is, I am a wimp. They think I am 2 cm's dialated. So they decide to pull out the cervidil. They start fishing around for it. Neither can find it. That is agony. They still haven't called my doctor!

Around now, the IV team nurse finally hits a good vein. And the on call obstetrician stops in to check on me. She takes a look, asks the nurses how far they think I am (still 2 cms) and tells them, no, closer to 7, and the kid's head is RIGHT there, slamming away at my cervix, and he is just about ready to come out. No wonder you are in so much pain! says she.

Now she decides to fish for the cervidil, and I am yelling my head off in pain and snark: Uh, could I get the pain relief before you stick your hand any further up there?!?

It's 630 am. They call my doc. They push the stadol. Of course, it doesn't even begin to work for about 15 minutes, half an hour. (Not a big surprise. Pain meds don't seem to work normally on me. My dentist makes me come in an hour early and get multiple shots so there's a chance novocaine will work before he starts to work on me... Anyway...)

All the stadol does is make it feel like my legs weigh a ton each. Does nothing for pain...They tell me I am not allowed to push until my doc gets there. I am just explaining to them that they better sew my legs shut because there's no way in the world I can keep from pushing when my doc arrives. In half a second, with no pain at all, she snags the cervidil and removes it. I hear her ask the others how they tried to get it as she demonstrates the proper technique. Argh.

Fifteen minutes later, with me yelling loud enough that my husband thinks I damaged his hearing, out pops Michael at 7:05 am. I get a small tear (no episiotomy), which gets stitched up (and I felt every stitch, yuck). I have a surreally bad moment when, immediately after he's out, my doctor announces the time. The only context in which I have ever heard them do that is for time of death. I start to freak out until I hear what at the moment is the most wonderful sound in the world, my sweet son yelling his head off. So the end result is a gorgeous, 8 pound one ounce, 19.5 inch baby boy, who I am immediately in danger of spoiling rotten. Both of us are fine.

After the stitches, he tries to nurse, but falls asleep on my chest instead. They whisk him to the nursery to clean him up, and move me out of the labor and delivery room and into a regular room, where, for the first time in months, I am able to eat and enjoy it. No complaints about hospital food from me! As soon as I am done eating, Mikro is brought to our room, where he and Kev and I spend the next two days together learning the ropes. We go home on Easter Sunday.

One year later, we're still breastfeeding, and he's a happy, healthy beautiful boy who is the brightest and best thing in the universe as far as his mama is concerned.

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