[Hex]

On my last appointment on August 13th, I was scheduled to be induced on August18th which was my due date. My doctor said that it was for convenience so that everyone was prepared. I didn't really like that reason, but I had been in tons of pain the past few months, so much that I couldn't even lift my feet more than an inch to walk and rolling over in bed was hell.. so I just went along with it. The sooner the better. My doctor also scheduled me for a BPP and NST on the 14th.
So I went to those the next day. The BPP was perfect. Sebastian was doing practice breaths as soon as the tech started looking at his... umm.. whatever. I couldn't tell what anything was on the ultrasound. lol. I guess he was breathing so soon that she was actually shocked. So she printed out this little info card with all of these numbers and told me to take that to the Maternity ward and give it to the nurses when I get my NST.
So I went to get my NST. My mom was there because she drove me and my husband was out with his dad but he was supposed to be back home early.
The nurse hooked up the monitors for the NST and I layed down on the bed. The nurse told me it should only take about a half hour. I just pretty much layed there listening to my baby's heartbeat and almost falling asleep. I heard my mom talking about the lines on the paper thing and I woke up. She was telling me that I was having a contraction. I was just like "Okay." lol. And then another one. And then a few minutes later another. Finally I was like "No. I'm not having any contractions. That machine is broken. I just have gas."
Then she noticed that the line for the baby's heart rate was going way down with every contraction. The nurse came back in and looked at the paper and then left. This seemed to be taking forever. And then again my mom was bugging me about having these so-called "contractions" but I was convinced that the machine was picking up my gas as being contractions because everytime it registered one, I'd get this really light lower back pain that went a little into my sides and felt the need to pass gas. lol. The nurse came in again and looked sort of confused like she didn't know what to do. My mom asked her about the heart rate going down and she said something about the monitors and so I thought that it was just the placement of the monitors was messing with the lines or something. I layed there and tried to fall asleep. I'd been in this NST for almost 2 hours now and it was not fun anymore.
So then the nurse came in again and asked when I was due and I told her I was getting induced the 18th. She said that she was going to call my doctor and send him the report and see what he said. So she pulled some of the paper off... and then left and I was still hooked up to that dumb machine. I thought for sure that she'd take me off it then.
She came back and said that my doctor wanted her to check my cervix. So she reached her whole arm up into me (Slight exaggeration) and that hurt like crazy. She was twisting around up in there and when she finally pulled her hand out she had blood on my fingers. She said "There's some bloody show" but I was thinking: yeah right you just ripped me a new one and there's the evidence! And she said I was about 3 CM which was the same that I was at my appointment the day before so no big surprise there. She left again and then came back and said that my doctor wanted me to be admitted NOW. She said since I was already having some contractions he was going to get me induced right away. That was at about 1-2 PM I think...

So I was freaking out. I told my mom to try calling DH and no one was picking up our phone. He wasn't home yet and didn't bring his cell with him. So I was getting ready to be induced now and I had no idea where DH was and no way to get ahold of him. As they were rolling my bed into the L&D room I was saying "Now? Can't we do this later? Can I come back in a little bit, maybe?"
So now my mom started frantically calling my house and I realized that I had been starving since I'd left my house that morning so all my attention focused on the fact that I was going to be in labor for hours and I needed food.
They hooked me up to the Pitocin (which I kept referring to as Oxytocin) and I told them not to set it too high. Then they put me on something else and when I asked what it was the nurse said it was gluclose fluid. And I said "Oh.. like liquid food." lol. But I knew that was not going to make me any less hungry. They finally brought me my "last meal" as I called it which was all liquids. There was broth, tea, jell-o, juice... and that didn't make me too much less hungry either but at least helped me get through the rest of my labor.
This is me in active labor eating my last meal before I started feeling contractions (the big shine ball is because it's a picture of a picture):

So in the meantime my mom had gotten ahold of everyone EXCEPT DH. My best friend was there.... my grandparents... a couple of other friends.... but still no DH. Everyone was pretty much hanging out with me there in the room. My best friend had just been at the hospital a couple of days ago when her cousin gave birth and was looking at my contraction monitor. She was shocked that my contractions were getting up to 60 or 70 and I was just sitting there laughing with everyone else like I didn't even notice them. She said her cousin was screaming in pain on a 30 and she'd had an epidural. I didn't have any meds at all and wasn't feeling them. I was still convinced that the machine was broken and was telling everyone the machine was broken and that it was gas! I even started tipping to the side and loudly passing gas for proof! They still didn't believe me!
So shortly after 4 my doctor was finally there. They were still talking about the baby's heart rate. I'd noticed on the monitor that it would drop below 60 sometimes and then jump as high as 210 before it regulated. The nurse was saying that it was just the machine trying to get the baseline or something like that but my mom was still acting majorly freaked out and nervous about it. The nurse said that the doctor would do something like a "spiral" heart monior or something which they'd stick to the baby's scalp once he got there which was more accurate so I was just waiting for that.
When he finally got there he was wearing scrubs instead of his normal doctor lab coat getup. So the first thing I said was "Aww don't you look cute in your little scrubs!" I must have been quite an intereting patient LOL. He just wanted to get down to business though and he sad right on my bed and started ordering the nurses around. He checked my cervix, broke my water, and then put the spiral heart thing on the baby's head. All of that hurt like hell. Then he left again and my labor party came back in. Shortly after he broke my water I started being able to feel my contractions, but they weren't too bad. My friends were saying that they were down in the 30s now instead of up to like 90 like they were before... and the doctor had just had them turn my Oxytocin up.
So after a little bit my contractions started to noticeably hurt, but it was nothing unbearable. I was feeling them in only a small area though.. on the front right above my hip bones sort of in a V like where you get round ligament pains. I asked if I could sit up, and a nurse helped me sit my bed up but said that the doctor liked all of his laboring patients to lie flat on their backs. Sitting up only made it worse so I lay on my back again. I hadn't taken any birthing classes or anything like that so I didn't have any tools to work through them. Instead, I just lay there visualizing my cervix opening, the baby moving down, and the pain becoming positive or "therapeutic." I went on like this for maybe a half hour until I had myself pretty much tranced out. People were walking in and out. Between contractions I was lying there extremely relaxed and when a contraction would come I would breathe deeply and on exhale I would say "therapeutic pain. ahhh. It hurts so good." Everyone was starting to think I was nuts and I heard my mom say she was starting to worry about me. lol.
This is me in my "trance" phase:

Sometime during this stage, I loss all sense of time and a lot of chunks of my memory. I guess I had been about 5-6 cm dialated at this point. The next thing I really remember was feeling this really horrible and strange feeling like my entire stomach and all my guts were just trying to crawl out my bottom. My mom asked if I my body was pushing and I said I didn't know. It felt like it was trying to pull itself out so I didn't think so. lol. She got a nurse and told them she thought I was going into transition labor and they came back in and checked me and I was at 7 cm. I started feeling really hot. They gave me a wet rag and I kept constantly brushing it all over my face. Finally DH came in! My doctor checked me and I was at 9 and I guess I was apparently pushing although I didn't know that lol. Everyone was cleared out except my DH and best friend. They transformed my bed and it was time to start pushing. DH made it JUST in time.
The actual pushing stage was pretty funky for me. I still had no pain meds and I think I was still tranced out from earlier so I don't remember too much. I remember that my visualizations turned really negative though sometime after my 3rd or 4th push when I could feel pressure in my rectum. Suddenly I was imagining all of the pressure on my rectum just tearing holes between it and my vagina and I started to scream in terror with my pushes and then I started to hold back while pushing for this reason. My doctor was really good at coaching me though and was telling me not to waste my energy on screaming but to get mad and focus everything into pushing. I really started to try but by that time I was exhausted. I remember screaming "THIS IS HARD!" and "THIS IS HOOOOOOOOORRRIBLE!!" and my doctor telling me "It's called labor! It's supposed to be hard!" They were telling me to rest between contractions but there was no "between contractions" anymore. I had about 10 seconds between and not enough time to catch my breath before I had to push again. My consciousness was slipping through. I have a short memory and then blackness.... another short memory and then more blackness... My vision was looking kind of like a strobe light. I couldn't push too much now because I couldn't feel anything most of the time anymore. I was disconnected.
I started to feel something though. My doctor was wiping something on me and I asked "what are you doing?" and he said "I'm helping you get the baby out." So my next push I just screamed "YES HELP ME GET HIM OUT! HELP HIM!" I heard DH say he could see his head. He kept saying "He's beautiful, Honey. Push." But when I looked at DH I couldn't focus because everything was sort of flashing. Finally the baby was out. I heard him sort of squeak and gurgle and I heard my mom (it sounded like she was standing right next to me) saying "I don't hear crying." I was confused because she had to leave the room, but I knew it was her voice. I was still in a weird state but the strobe light thing was fading. I tried to look over to see my baby where they were rubbing him and suctioning him, but there were nurses all over.
The next thing I remember was my doctor helping me deliver my placenta. This is when I really started to wake up. He was rubbing my stomach and then he'd give a few gentle pulls.. then he'd rub my stomach again and pull again. It seemed to be taking forever but I didn't say anything. I just look around the room relaxed. A nurse brought my baby over to see me. They had him all wrapped up and his hands were in front of his face. I touched his finger and smiled and then they left with him.
My doctor started doing some other stuff down there once the placenta was delivered and I asked him what he was doing and he said "sutureing up your episiotomy" and I was just like "okay" but then I was thinking ... wait. I had an episiotomy? He said that he had some numbing medication on down there but if I felt anything to tell him and he would put more on. This part seemed to take forever. It was at least 20 minutes and I know toward the end I started feeling his stitching and he had to put more numbing stuff on to finish. The clicking sound of this tools was relaxing me but annoying me at the same time and I started to wonder if he was sewing a quilt down there. When I looked down all I could see was his face with all this gear on and his hands flicking and stretching this string up and down. It was getting old pretty fast and I wanted to see my baby already.
When he was finally done and everything was pretty much back to normal they had my bed normal again I noticed that part of the back of my right thigh was numb. I asked a nurse and she said it was probably from my legs being up in the stirrup things.
My best friend asked me when it was all over what it was like and my answer was "Like slipping through dimensions."
My brother came in to talk to me. I asked him where everyone was and they said they were all looking at the baby. He wasn't interested in "larval stage humans" though so he'd rather sit with me. I still couldn't feel that part of my leg so I rolled onto my side. I was told that my baby was hooked up to a heart monitor in the nursery and that I couldn't get out of bed for at least 4 hours to go see him. My mom came in with 3 pictures she took of him in the nursery. Those 3 pictures got me through those 4 hours without going crazy.



Two hours later that part of my leg felt like it had cellophane covering it. I thought something from on the bed had stuck to me so I tried to pull it off but then I realized that I was scratching at my own skin. It was starting to get weird.
A pediatritian came in to talk to me and told me that Sebastian had an arrhythmia and they were faxing it over to a childrens' hospital to see what they thought of it.
People then started coming to see me.. then people started leaving... Finally my four hours was up and I could go see my baby for the first time.
I asked for a wheelchair since I still couldn't completely feel that part of my leg.. although it was getting better I highly doubted that it was from my legs being up. I started to wonder if that huge needle that my best friend said they stuck into me had anything to do with it. I guess it was some kind of nerve block and I wondered if it had blocked the nerve in my leg too.
My first time holding him:

I was still the first to hold him (other than nurses) even if it did take 4 hours.

The Pediatrician came back later that night to tell us that Sebastian's arrhythmia was within normal ranges for a baby his age and he was off the heart monitors for the rest of our hospital stay.
After all of this though, I learned that the nurses really weren't as cool and calm as they acted around me about the baby's heart rate while I was still in labor. When my mom was out in the hallway they were really worried about it and my doctor wasn't. They were showing him Sebastian's papers and they looked almost exactly like pictures in their manual which could mean the baby was under major distress.
Also I learned that my doctor used a vacuum tool for the delivery of my baby which I didn't know until afterward when DH was talking about the delivery and said "and then the doctor stuck the white vacuum thing to the baby's head and he came right out."
So Sebastian Alexander was born August 14, 2009 at 9:26 PM. I had about 4 1/2 hours of labor that I actually felt. I don't count the rest because that was just gas. He was 6 lbs 13 oz and about 21 inches long.
Hope you enjoyed my story!

[mary30]

What a cutie !!

I am glad everything is ok with his heart !!