Before we went to bed on Tuesday (August 7), I said to Matthew, "This is all about to go exactly as planned or horribly awry..." We had scheduled an induction for Thursday morning (August 9), so we were almost there but still had one kind of big day to get through. What had been the plan for Wednesday (August 8) was that my mom would fly in early in the morning, Matthew would start his trial (which would begin on Wednesday and then pause Thursday-Friday and resume on Monday, hence the induction Thursday) but still be able to leave if I went into labor so that he could be there at the hospital with me. Well, my mom's flight was delayed, which meant she now wouldn't be arriving until Wednesday evening, and Matthew's trial took a turn that meant he really wouldn't be able to leave that day even if I did go into labor. So if Baby could hold off until at least the end of Wednesday, we were golden, otherwise, we were kind of screwed.
Well, I made it to the end of Wednesday. My mom's flight ended up getting delayed twice more, and Matthew had tried to get me to stay home and go to bed early, but I figured a couple hours of lost sleep wouldn't kill me at this point, and I should probably greet my mom. So we went to pick her up a little after midnight, and on the way to the airport, I started having contractions. I'd been awoken by small cramps a few times in the night in those weeks previous, and my strategy had been to just kind of pretend I didn't think they were what I thought they might be and ignore it, which seemed to work. As we were driving, I kept quiet and didn't say anything to Matthew at first, but we were in the clear, so if mind over matter has any bearing in these matters, I just kind of let it happen this time.
I called my OB when we got home, and she told me I could either just wait and go in for my scheduled induction time the next morning, or if the contractions got so bad I couldn't talk through them, I could go in to be admitted through triage. The pain really wasn't too bad yet, so I tried to go to bed and see if I could sleep through some of it. I could not. I decided to get up and take what was probably my last opportunity to eat something (they told me I could have breakfast before my induction, so I figured the same rules applied here). I downloaded a contraction-timer app, which told me my contractions were about 1:30 to 3:00 minutes apart and 20 to 45 seconds, for which the app advised "Get Ready!" (but not "Go to the Hospital" just yet). My mom kept telling me that seemed really close together, and while I didn't want to totally jump the gun and get sent back home, I also was confused by the timing and by about 3 a.m., I figured we were close enough, so I woke Matthew up, and we got all our stuff together to drive to the hospital. Again, my pain level wasn't totally unmanageable yet, although increasingly uncomfortable, and I wonder if I hadn't been scheduled for the induction, they might have actually turned me away at the point I showed up at.
Triage took waaaayyyyy longer than I was expecting, though. Maybe because they were trying to decided whether to even admit me, but while I was in the room waiting, the pain started really amping up, plus I started getting more and more grumpy about the fact that not only was I in what was now a significant level of pain, but I also hadn't had any sleep that night (should have listened to my husband and gone to bed when I had the chance...). In fact—I've always been very strongly pro-epidural—but if I weren't, I think just the desire for sleep would have driven me to it at that point. I also felt like I could have handled the increase in pain if the contractions were, say, 10 minutes apart, but as it was, every 4 or so contractions I would finally get a long enough break that I would realize I kind of felt ok, and then immediately another wave would begin.
We finally were admitted around 4:30 (my mom had also been relegated to the waiting room this whole time, but then, it was a place she would be getting to know pretty well over the next several hours...), and they took me up to a room. When they wheeled me in, I said to Matthew, not entirely without apprehension (I was still a little nervous about this whole becoming-a-mom thing), "Well, this is where our baby will be born." (I think maybe I jinxed it...) I had been asking for the epidural since we'd been in triage, but the nurse had to get some blood work or something first, and then another nurse came in and said there was a line for the anesthesiologist, so we'd better put in the order asap. It was during this time that I discovered that popsicles were a pretty effective tool for managing my pain—I'd remembered from the hospital tour that we were allowed popsicles, and popsicles had been one of the closest things to a craving that I'd had in the last few weeks of pregnancy, so I requested one, and it was amazing how having that to suck on helped me focus away from the pain. The irony is that I only figured that out about 2 contractions before the anesthesiologist arrived...
The anesthesiologist was a bit of a hard nose. One of the first things she said when she came in was, "You can't have a popsicle right now." She kind of chastised the nurse for letting me have anything to eat within half an hour of the epidural procedure but thankfully didn't push it (i.e., make me wait). She then noticed my mom with her phone out (on FaceTime with my sister) and said, "You can't film this." Just everything she said was very abrupt and kind of accusatory. Only one person is allowed in the room for the procedure, so my mom had to step out. At first, she just went beyond the curtain in front of the door, but I guess the anesthesiologist heard her shuffling around outside it, so she made the nurse go and close the door to I guess keep my mom out or whatever. Anyway, in the end I got my drugs, so that worked out. I was a little nervous about the procedure itself, since I'd heard the actual injection can be painful, but I just kept telling myself it had to be better (or at least couldn't be worse) than the contractions, and once it was done, all the pain would stop. And I was right. I promptly rolled over and went to sleep. I sleep on my side, and apparently gravity has a legitimate effect on the epidural anesthesia, so what this meant is that over the course of my 2-hour nap (we'll get back to the timeline in a minute), my left leg went completely numb, and I was still feeling contractions a little bit on my right side, which I was somewhat put out about (once I switched sides, though, it all went away).
I was all set to settle in for a full day of labor, knowing that first-time moms can take a long time (and, I think, kind of forgetting to count the first few hours before we got to the hospital). I had brought a book, I figured I'd sleep for a few hours... Well, at 7:30 they woke me up because my doctor was in for the induction—she knew I'd gone into labor, but since it was already on the calendar, still came in to see how I was progressing. The (outgoing at this point) night nurse checked my cervix and got this kind of concerned look on her face. She said, "I think you're still a 4 [what I had been when I was admitted]... I'm going to go find someone with a little more experience." We really didn't think anything of it at the time—she did seem kind of young. So the day nurse came in for the shift change, followed by Dr. Oh. She wasn't the doctor we'd mostly been seeing at our practice, but she was the one on hospital duty on Thursdays, which was the only day we could induce between Matthew's trial (Monday-Wednesday) and hospital policy (they won't induce Friday-Sunday). Dr. Oh told us that I hadn't made much progress since I'd been admitted, so she was going to stick with the original induction plan and administer pitocin. Personally, I thought this seemed a little unnecessary, but I'm not really one to insist against medical advice, so I agreed. She then went to check my cervix as well, got the same puzzled look, and said, "Where's the head? ... Did it, is it further up in there or something? We'd better get a sonogram here just to check."
Well, sure enough, the sonogram showed that the head was nowhere near the birth canal. My baby was breech, and "We don't do vaginal breech deliveries." Now, let's pause here, for a list of things I've worried about going wrong over the course of this pregnancy: miscarriage, premature delivery, birth defect/disability in the baby, stillbirth, baby coming out a boy because the 20-week ultrasound was somehow wrong, being that one incredibly rare statistic of maternal death or near-death from post-birth complications. Not on that list: C-section. Truly. It was like the one thing I felt reasonably confident about not having to deal with. I didn't exactly skip the C-section paragraphs in all the pregnancy app articles I read about labor and delivery, but I read it from the perspective of like, something interesting that happens to other people—which I suppose is where it got me. God does like surprises...
Well, as I said, I'm not exactly one to argue with my doctor, but I'd read enough about unnecessary C-sections that I at least wanted to ask a few questions. So I asked if there was any chance Baby would turn on her own if I continued to labor, and she basically said there was no chance of that. I asked her how many C-sections she'd performed and she said thousands. So I asked Matthew for a blessing while the doctor stepped out, and we (Matthew, Mom, and I) decided we felt ok about it. The concept was a little frightening to me, but mostly because I was already concerned about postpartum recovery in general, and C-section recovery is supposed to be even harder. The doctor and nurses did a good job of staying calm in the moment. It's only looking back that I can kind of pick out some of the signs of how freaked out they were. Dr. Oh couldn't figure out how we'd gotten to this point with a breech baby in the first place. "Did she just flip this last week? Maybe she just has a really firm butt and it felt like a head..." It also all started to move very quickly at this point. Again, I had kind of settled in for like an afternoon or evening birth, and I kind of still thought/hoped that it would take a while to get me into surgery, but within about an hour they told me they had a room and we were going for this thing.
I was already relatively well-prepped, since I'd had the epidural and all they needed to do was change the anesthesia going into it. We had a different anesthesiologist this time, and he was much more friendly. My poor mom was once again banned, though—I'd also remembered from the hospital tour that only one other person would be allowed in the OR for a C-section, but I think she was disappointed to miss the birth. Matthew was escorted away to get fitted with scrubs, and they wheeled me in for prep. It was kind of scary. I mean, there are a lot of emotions that come with needing a C-section—primarily, I would say, disappointment and apprehension, if not fear—and I'd had very little time to process it. The OR ceiling felt really close, and it was all so much brighter than I'd pictured, and having surgery while you're awake is nerve-wracking because you just think, What if the anesthesia doesn't work and I feel everything?? One thing that actually helped me calm my mental state a little in that regard was the previous experience of having had LASIK (another waking surgery). I reminded myself that everything had gone just fine with that—in fact, I actually hadn't had the anesthesia done properly, and it was still fine.
Every person in that room (and there were a lot) came up to my head and introduced themselves. I remember finding it a little much that every single one of them told me their name and role. I guess I just didn't feel the need to personally greet each of the five NICU nurses or whatever when I was being strapped to an operating table. They lay your arms out to each side and put some kind of weighted blanket on top of them, and then there's a bar that swings out above your chest, where the drape then hangs. I discovered, rather unpleasantly, that I actually could see the doctor's hands in the reflection of the lights overhead. Since I had no particular desire to witness the removal and replacement of several of my vital organs, I basically turned my head all the way to the side so that my eyes wouldn't inadvertently stray to something I couldn't unsee... By this time, Matthew had arrived. One of the myriad doctor/nurse people had joked with me earlier that they'd seen him taking selfies outside the OR (it turned out he was actually taking a picture of the entrance to the OR, since he knew I like to document things, lol).
They began the surgery, and Matthew just put his head down close to mine and we shared a pretty intimate few minutes talking about the fact that we were about to be parents (he later told me he was also avoiding watching the procedure, although he did get a glimpse of my intestines). The anesthesia worked just fine (they also have the anesthesiologist stand right by your head just in case), and I could feel a slight tugging sensation throughout most of it. When it came time to pull the baby out, they told me, "Ok, you're going to feel some pressure up through your chest and into your shoulders." Boy, did I. I felt it mostly in my shoulders and clavicle, and it was a little bit painful... and then, ostensibly, Baby was out, but she was completely silent. I'm like, waiting to hear a cry (maybe I've seen too many movies) Matthew said, "There's the baby!" And the doctor, "It's a little girl!" (rush of relief, not gonna lie...), and I'm thinking, Where is this baby?? but no way am I looking anywhere near the top of that drape because I really didn't trust my eyes not to stray to that reflection I definitely did not want to see...
Well, they took her over to the weigh station with the NICU nurses (standard procedure for C-sections, apparently), and then I could hear a little cry. The first thing I heard the nurses say was, "Oh, this is not recent..." referring to the breech position. Apparently they could tell from abrasions on her legss and a big purple bruise on her ear that she'd been breech for several weeks, at least (oops, guess it was her bum the doctors thought was her head after all). At this point, Matthew went over to see her and take some pictures. When we did the hospital tour, they mentioned something about the husband being able to cut the umbilical cord, and Matthew gave me this look like, Why would anyone ever want to do that?Well, in a C-section, he's obviously not allowed on the operating side anyway, but from what I could see over at the weigh station, they had left a good bit of the cord attached, and Matthew was gamely taking the scissors and cutting it off where the nurse showed him to, which I found kind of amusing. Once they had her cleaned and weighed, they brought her over to do skin-to-skin with me... and placed her directly on top of my throat. Now, I don't know about you, but when I imagined that first moment of skin-to-skin, it did not involve having my esophagus half crushed by 8 pounds of baby. I mean, I guess there's not a lot of room on that side of the drape, but it kind of ruined the moment, especially because I very quickly had to say, "Guys, I don't feel very good..." They managed to get the baby off before I turned my head to the side and heaved.
I spent the rest of my time in the OR throwing up nothing (I guess this is why they don't let you eat), spitting out the saliva that kept collecting due to the heaving, and.. burping. Incessantly. It was so weird, and very confusing, not to mention unpleasant. I guess air gets into your stomach from being all opened up or something. When they finally finished putting me back together, I was wheeled into the OR recovery room (my mom still wasn't allowed in here either. When I got there, Matthew had his shirt off and the baby skin-to-skin. He explained to me later that she'd had to have meconium pumped from her stomach and her oxygenation levels were low, so she needed the contact. I think it was a sweet bonding experience for them, although as my recovery dragged on, I started to get a little concerned about my lack of interaction with Baby. First, they had to cut off the anesthesia and wait for it to wear off. It's kind of a weird sensation to be asked, "Can you move your feet?" and have the answer be legitimately no. Then they also start giving you pain medication, and the stronger it is, the more likely you are to be drowsy from it. So I got my first dose, and after a few minutes, the pain was worse, not better (this seemed strange at the time, but looking back, I realize it must have been the anesthesia wearing off). So the nurse said she had something stronger she could give me, but it would make me very sleepy. I had two doses, but the pain kept escalating, until I felt like it was on par with the contractions from earlier. So she said, "Well, I can give you one more, but I'll have to put you on oxygen, because when we give people this much, they sometimes stop breathing..." #awesome
So with the third dose, complete with oxygen tube, my pain level finally started to decrease instead of increase, although it still hovered somewhere around a 5 or a 6. She told me they wanted me down to a 3, ideally, before sending me up to the postpartum unit. By this time, I knew it had been a couple hours, and I was really starting to get concerned about starting breastfeeding. My goal was not to use formula (at least, not right from the outset) if we didn't have to, but I also don't want my child to starve. When I asked about it, my nurse said, "Absolutely not" in my drugged out state and assured me that newborn infants can go about 6 hours from birth before they really need to feed. Well, she left the room, and another nurse came in for the baby (mom and baby have separate nurses in the recovery room) and said, "Hey! Would you like to try breastfeeding?" I was a little concerned that the other nurse would come back and chastise me for going against her directions, but Baby's nurse got a bit scornful at this concern and said that she was Baby's nurse, and there was no reason I couldn't breastfeed right then and there, as long as I wasn't in the room alone with Baby, and she set me right up.
This was my first real contact with Baby outside the womb, and I wish I could say it was magical, but I was seriously so drugged. I could barely keep my eyes open, but I was glad I could at least start feeding my baby. She had so much hair. Is it terrible of me to confess I was kind of hoping for a small baby with an unremarkable amount of hair? Haha. But honestly, I was a little flabbergasted trying to figure out where in the world this child had come from, since neither Matthew nor I was born with so much or such dark hair... She definitely gets the weight and height from her dad though. Her little legs and arms and fingers and feet were all so long!! Matthew was also born by C-section (being a twin), so they have that in common, as well. And my mom (later in the day) kept insisting she looks exactly like my sister Rebecca (I joked, "It's a good thing she came out of my uterus then, or there might be questions...") Another remarkable thing was how alert Baby was. I'd read varying opinions on whether the drugs from a C-section or even just the regular epidural can make a baby sluggish at first, but they seemed to have no effect on our little one. Right from the outset, she was wide awake and looking around at everything. We also confirmed that we wanted to name her Merlene, after my grandmother who passed away before I was born, Rose, which really was just a name Matthew liked, but it also happens to be my middle name, after a great-grandmother on my mom's side.
Well, it wasn't too much longer before they decided that my 5 or 6 pain level was close enough and the regular postpartum recovery unit could give me more drugs (not the strong stuff) to keep getting that under control, so they wheeled us all up to the 6th floor. I spent the rest of the day in a bit of a drugged haze, which was miserable, especially because I was dying to call my dad (especially, since Merlene was his mother) and the rest of the family to introduce our baby. But I couldn't keep anything down (I literally threw up like, 2 cups of just water at one point), and I could still barely keep my eyes open. I maybe should have known better than to take Percocet, since that kind of stuff always makes me sick, and in combination with the other stuff, it was really just a losing battle. It was probably (barely) worth it, to manage the pain on that first day, but I refused more of it when they offered, and I pretty much have just been living on Tylenol and ibuprofen since...
In the end, although it wasn't what we had planned or wanted, I definitely feel like a lot of things came together exactly the way they needed to for us to get our little Merlene here safely. If I hadn't been scheduled for the induction, the doctor might not have come until it was too late (to avoid a complete emergency situation). We were blessed that the hospital nurses recognized that something wasn't right and we were able to determine that before I'd progressed too far into labor. As details emerged about her position in the womb (bum down, folded in half with her feet up on either side of her head), it became clear that a vaginal delivery (attempt) would have been disastrous. I think it was even a blessing that I went into labor just long enough before the induction to have avoided an unnecessary administration of pitocin and to be already prepped with the epidural so that the process could move as quickly as needed once the situation unfolded. I'm grateful for the medical technology that allowed me to deliver this baby safely and with relatively low risk, despite the unfavorable circumstances, and for good doctors and nurses who were able to make the right calls and perform the necessary procedures properly.
So with the third dose, complete with oxygen tube, my pain level finally started to decrease instead of increase, although it still hovered somewhere around a 5 or a 6. She told me they wanted me down to a 3, ideally, before sending me up to the postpartum unit. By this time, I knew it had been a couple hours, and I was really starting to get concerned about starting breastfeeding. My goal was not to use formula (at least, not right from the outset) if we didn't have to, but I also don't want my child to starve. When I asked about it, my nurse said, "Absolutely not" in my drugged out state and assured me that newborn infants can go about 6 hours from birth before they really need to feed. Well, she left the room, and another nurse came in for the baby (mom and baby have separate nurses in the recovery room) and said, "Hey! Would you like to try breastfeeding?" I was a little concerned that the other nurse would come back and chastise me for going against her directions, but Baby's nurse got a bit scornful at this concern and said that she was Baby's nurse, and there was no reason I couldn't breastfeed right then and there, as long as I wasn't in the room alone with Baby, and she set me right up.
This was my first real contact with Baby outside the womb, and I wish I could say it was magical, but I was seriously so drugged. I could barely keep my eyes open, but I was glad I could at least start feeding my baby. She had so much hair. Is it terrible of me to confess I was kind of hoping for a small baby with an unremarkable amount of hair? Haha. But honestly, I was a little flabbergasted trying to figure out where in the world this child had come from, since neither Matthew nor I was born with so much or such dark hair... She definitely gets the weight and height from her dad though. Her little legs and arms and fingers and feet were all so long!! Matthew was also born by C-section (being a twin), so they have that in common, as well. And my mom (later in the day) kept insisting she looks exactly like my sister Rebecca (I joked, "It's a good thing she came out of my uterus then, or there might be questions...") Another remarkable thing was how alert Baby was. I'd read varying opinions on whether the drugs from a C-section or even just the regular epidural can make a baby sluggish at first, but they seemed to have no effect on our little one. Right from the outset, she was wide awake and looking around at everything. We also confirmed that we wanted to name her Merlene, after my grandmother who passed away before I was born, Rose, which really was just a name Matthew liked, but it also happens to be my middle name, after a great-grandmother on my mom's side.
Well, it wasn't too much longer before they decided that my 5 or 6 pain level was close enough and the regular postpartum recovery unit could give me more drugs (not the strong stuff) to keep getting that under control, so they wheeled us all up to the 6th floor. I spent the rest of the day in a bit of a drugged haze, which was miserable, especially because I was dying to call my dad (especially, since Merlene was his mother) and the rest of the family to introduce our baby. But I couldn't keep anything down (I literally threw up like, 2 cups of just water at one point), and I could still barely keep my eyes open. I maybe should have known better than to take Percocet, since that kind of stuff always makes me sick, and in combination with the other stuff, it was really just a losing battle. It was probably (barely) worth it, to manage the pain on that first day, but I refused more of it when they offered, and I pretty much have just been living on Tylenol and ibuprofen since...
In the end, although it wasn't what we had planned or wanted, I definitely feel like a lot of things came together exactly the way they needed to for us to get our little Merlene here safely. If I hadn't been scheduled for the induction, the doctor might not have come until it was too late (to avoid a complete emergency situation). We were blessed that the hospital nurses recognized that something wasn't right and we were able to determine that before I'd progressed too far into labor. As details emerged about her position in the womb (bum down, folded in half with her feet up on either side of her head), it became clear that a vaginal delivery (attempt) would have been disastrous. I think it was even a blessing that I went into labor just long enough before the induction to have avoided an unnecessary administration of pitocin and to be already prepped with the epidural so that the process could move as quickly as needed once the situation unfolded. I'm grateful for the medical technology that allowed me to deliver this baby safely and with relatively low risk, despite the unfavorable circumstances, and for good doctors and nurses who were able to make the right calls and perform the necessary procedures properly.
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