Madeline Elizabeth Born 1-14-2010 (long story)

~Angela~ · #1 January 17th, 2010, 12:31 PM

I'll do my best to write this story, I was pretty out of it for about 3 hours of my 7 hour labor.

About 8pm on 1/13/10 I started getting contractions. I got about 4 in the first hour. By 9pm, I decided to let DH know I could be in labor. By 9:10 I decided they really hurt and it was time to make the hour trek into the city to drop off DS and head to the hosp. By the time I got to my sisters house I was hurting really badly and we headed to the hosp. 5 min away. I had a tough time walking through the parking lot and into the birthing center. We got there about 10:15. I was having contractions about 6-8 minutes apart, but they were 1-2 minutes duration and hurt beyond I remember anything with my previous births. They checked me I was 7cm. They rushed me into my room and hooked me up to antibiotics (GBS+), a bag of fluid and took my blood because I REALLY wanted the epi. By this time I was crying and making a lot of noise through the contractions...they told me the blood test could take 45 minutes....and it did. Those 45 minutes were the most agonizing I have ever gone through. 11am the anesthesiologist came in to do the epi...here is where it gets fuzzy....

He hit a nerve going in, which caused my right leg to move. He ended up pushing the needle a bit far and giving me a spinal....not good with an epi needle, because it's bigger than a spinal. I went numb...from my legs up. They turned the meds off, but eventually I could no longer swallow. All I remember was concentrating on breathing. From what my DH said, they gave me an Epinephrine shot, and I kept passing out. They were either concerned that my lungs were going to fail or I stopped breathing. Scared DH quite a bit, and needless to say there were a lot of people in my room....I don't remember much of this. Eventually the medicine wore off and I was able to keep my eyes open and swallow again.....

Around 2:20 my numbness was wearing off enough for me to start feeling contractions again. By 2:30 I was in tears asking for another epidural, which of course they would have to redo another. I guess they were very reluctant to do anything. The nurse told me to wait until 3am when they could hook up the second bag of antibiotics. At 2:45ish I was insisting I could not tolerate the pain during the contractions that were constant, with no break...I wasn't screaming, but I was pretty close to it. The head nurse came in to check me and said I was 10cm, which made me upset, and I still though I had a chance at some pain meds before I pushed her out. She told me to 'practice push' with the contractions wait for the Dr. to come in. I'm pretty sure the Dr. came in after her head was out. I pushed less than 10 minutes, and most of that was myself pushing while they were getting ready and didn't realize. I never did get the urge to push until she was 1/2 way out and they told me to stop ...yeah right. That was the first time I had delivered with no pain medication. Holy cow it hurt, but as soon as she was out, the pain was gone. Madeline Elizabeth was born at 2:58am

She scored 9/9 on her apgars. She's 8lb 20.5 inches long.

I ended up with a 'dural tear' - I guess I'm leaking spinal fluid. I have had an intense migraine headache and neck pain from this (except in late afternoons) unless I'm flat on my back. 2 days ago they did a blood patch, they inject your blood into the epidural space to patch the leak (yay, another shot in the back). It's supposed to be 90% effective. It didn't work. I have a follow-up with the hospital tomorrow, and they may be trying again (95% effective the second time). Not sure where we go from there.

Maddie has some issues latching on, but we're trying to work through them. It makes it much tougher to work on BF with my complications. I, DH and my 2 boys are so in love

, she is beautiful - with a TON of hair.