This is a LONG one. But I want to chronicle this for myself more then anything, so I am trying to be as detailed as possible.
When I say that my birthing experience was one for the record books, I mean it completely dumps on my birthing center's high natural childbirth success rates. I had wanted a natural water birth, with dimmed lights, hushed voices and serene music playing in the background. I pictured myself listening to my hypnobabies, using a birthing ball, and pulling our child into this world with my own (and Dustin's) hands. It was a magical and beautiful experience, my imaginary birth. Alas, we don't always get what we want. Here is how I ended up with a 6 day hospital stay and a C-section ...
Tuesday morning-
I went into my 9am appt with mixed feelings. I was already 5 days overdue and hoping but not expecting some progress. I was checked and the midwife said I was about 70% effaced so that was good! Of course, I was completely closed with no dilation, but I was still optimistic. That is until they checked my bp. It was too high. No biggie I thought, happened once before. All I had to do was relax and have it retaken at the end of my appt. Surely it would be better. After all, my pregnancy had gone perfectly thus far. So at the end of my appt after discussing cohosh to induce labor and the fact that I would "risk out" of the birth center that Thursday if Jack didn't arrive before then, we did another bp reading. And another. And then one more, the last being around 150/100.
"I hate to do this to you" said the midwife, "But you need to go to Labor and Delivery right now and be assessed in triage". I would be lying if I said I didn't start to panic.
But L &D was pretty tame. I laid there strapped to monitors while they assessed me. The BP was never quite as high as 150/100, but it didn't go down much. Everything else was fine, we even got an ultrasound that showed that Jack did indeed have hair! Really, it looked like hair plugs. So now we had a plan: they would let me leave so I could collect my 24 urine at home as long as I stayed on strict bedrest. I then I should hope and pray labor started on its own before my drop off the next day, otherwise we may need to start induction with cervidil. Being told I could leave was wonderful! I had a plan of my own too: I headed straight to the hippie drugstore and got myself some blue and black cohosh pills to try and start labor. I planned on laboring mostly at home until I thought it was close enough that I could meet the midwifes at the birth center and birth there in the tub. And to be on the safe side, even though they didn't say I had to, I also decided to pick up a blood pressure cuff to monitor myself at home
just in case. Better safe then sorry was what I was thinking at the time . . .
Tuesday night-
I began the cohosh regimen that afternoon which included taking some combo of pills every 15 minutes for 5 hours. And what do you know but it worked! I started having regular contractions about every 3-4 minutes around 5pm. They were pretty tame, until around 9pm. And then they were all in my back. Every single stinking one of them. "
He must be posterior" I thought at the time. But still, it wasn't too bad, it was just discouraging. The way I figured it, when you feel the contrax in your back and not in your hoo-ha, you are pretty much guaranteed that nothing is happening as it should. Anyways, the contrax picked up a lot and I listened to my hypnoababies during them. They weren't too bad b/c during a contrax I would get on hands and knees or sway standing. But since I had been ordered to strict bedrest, Dustin and I decided to start taking my bp through them. The readings were not good. They were WAY too high. So I sucked it up and labored exclusively on my side for the next hour. At this point, the contrax started coming every 2-3 minutes. Now at the time I thought I was understanding why women say back labor is the worst. It was not unbearable (yet), but it was very painful, especially stuck in one position. So we decided to call our doula and midwife hoping it would be time to head on over to the birthing center soon b/c I was still concerned about my bp. We briefly mentioned to the midwife over the phone that we had a bp monitor and told her some readings were a bit high, but she didn't seem concerned since I was now laboring laying down and said we were fine to labor more at home. I guess she had an epiphany after we hung up though, b/c 10 minutes later she calls back and asks us to take another reading during a contraction while laying down. So we do and it was high. Very high. Like, scary high. And this was after being on my side for about an hour. So we are told to get our butts to L&D pronto. There goes the birthing center birth straight out the window, but I was prepared for that. We headed out. At L&D I skipped triage and went straight to a labor room. As suspected, all that back labor was pretty useless and I was only 2 cm, though more effaced. This is when things get interesting. They run some tests and long story short, surprise! I have developed pre-eclampsia. Not only would I not be laboring at the birthing center, but I most likely would not be laboring in any position other then on my side since my bp got so much worse when I wasn't flat. And there was one more goody--magnesium sulfate. All you ladies that have dealt with that wonderful drug know what I am talking about. If you remember with Lauren's pre-term labor (LaLa), she was given magnesium sulfate b/c it stops contractions. So if you are on mag for pre-eclampsia, you need to be on pitocin too so labor can actually happen. So I needed Magnesium to prevent me from seizing due to the pre-e, and pitocin to get my contractions back. Okay. I also knew they would
not let me labor standing or squatting, even on the mag. And I also knew Jack was posterior. Now, I may have been "tough" enough to labor epi-free on my side for a few hours with back labor even though being stuck on your back with a posterior baby is really painful and feels completely pointless (it is like your body is screaming at you what to do, how to move, to get that baby into a better position and then having to ignore it), but now you throw in
pitocin contractions!? No F-u-c-k-i-n-g way was I going to do that. Plus, I was not looking forward to a med free foley catheter insertion (necessary for the mag). So we called the anesthesiologist and told him to hook me up, and let me tell you, given my circumstances I seriously didn't even bat an eyelash at taking drugs. You would be nuts to labor naturally on pit and mag with back labor on purpose. Nuts, or stupid
So I get my epi, which was wonderful since I had still been having bad back labor for the last couple of hours strapped to the hospital bed, and they start the magnesium and the pitocin.
Wednesday--
Time passes. The rest of the story after I got the magnesium started is pretty foggy, but it is coming back to me in flashes and enough people were there to help me fill in the blanks. Before I got the magnesium started they had warned me that it was nasty stuff. I thought maybe they were exaggerating, but it truly was just as bad as they said. I felt like I was in hell, no, like I was in a sauna in hell. I shook everywhere, and my right arm where they administered the drug felt like it was in some torture contraption. But by far the worst was the disorientation and semi-hallucinations. I am talking complete far out mind numb. Despite this, (or maybe due to the mind numb) I was actually in pretty good spirits. I even have the worst picture ever of me giving a thumbs up to the Camera with an oxygen mask strapped to my face
I mean, at least I wasn't feeling that awful back labor. And even though the mag made me vomit, it was only during those times that I felt like I was "present" and not in outer space or hell or whatever, so for a while I welcomed the vomit. And so that's how things went most of Wednesday for about 18 hours--They pumped me full of mag and fluids, I labored on my side, and I managed to get a few naps in thanks to the epi. I was making progress too, though it was slow. Knowing how much I wanted to stay close to a natural childbirth as possible, my midwife kept close watch on me and we trudged through. It wasn't until Wednesday around 6pm that I started to feel the back labor coming back despite the epi--which to me was a good sign that things were progressing. And even though I could feel the pain of the contrax, I knew it was nothing compared to the pain I would have felt epi free. Those pit contractions were just massive. So at this time even though I was half out of my mind, I was optimistic. I cracked jokes the entire time and felt like I was on some kind of sicko magnesium sulfate induced comedy tour. Really, I made the best of it since I had no other choice--it was my labor experience whether I liked it or not.
Just after 6pm when I started feeling the contrax more after increasing my pit, test results showed I had too much magnesium in my system, which is not good but happens. So they pump me with fluids and turn off the mag. A sweet relief! My mind cleared some, and I progressed pretty quickly after that. Before I knew it I was at 9 cm with just a lip of cervix left. At this point they turn the mag back on since a seizing mommy is no good either, and we start to get ready for the pushing stage to begin! I was pretty excited for it. And even though I was feeling more and more contractions in my back, I didn't ask for an increase in my epi since when I had gotten a bolus of it earlier I went completely numb and was useless. And I didn’t want that b/c I was hoping to have Jack that Wednesday night! After more contrax the lip disappeared and the pushing stage began. Here is where things went from not great but bearable and even jovial at times, to completely craptastic.
Pushing is supposed to be easy, right? Women say it isn’t painful, or that it is a sweet relief. Yeah, okay. I pushed for 3 hours total, and for me it was the most horrible pain/pressure/whatever ever. In the early pushing stage I started to get very bad back labor. They told me, "push where you feel the pressure". Well, my epi was light enough to where I could feel the bearing down pressure you are supposed to feel at this point, but it was a tiny speck of feeling compared to the overwhelming pain of my back splitting apart. I was unnerved. I asked for more of an epi dosage and they all discouraged me; "You want to be able to feel what is going on" they said. I took about 30 minutes of that crap before I looked at Dustin who was holding my left leg in the air and demanded I get some G-****** mother-fing epi RIGHT NOW. So I got some and what do you know, I could actually feel the pressure to push in the proper area once the numbing back pain was gone, and my pushes became super awesome fantastic. And so we pushed, for a long time. At some point I could feel the contractions get more intense and they told me they had cranked up the pitocin to “get things moving along”. But despite all my intense pushing I wasn't making the best progress, so I convinced them to let me do some contrax on hands and knees squatting on the bed. They were amazed I could actually get in that position with the epi being at the dosage it was, but like I said, the epi did not numb me completely at all. In this position we made some progress but not as much as we would have liked and I was utterly exhausted. I had been pushing for 1 hour after 24 hours of back labor, and I was delirious on the magnesium and swollen to high heaven everywhere. So I laid back down for the rest of labor. Now, unbeknownst to everyone in the room until my c-section prep, my epi had come undone when I was on hands and knees. So over the next 2 hours while they were steadily increasing my pitocin
even more, the epi which sure wasn't as strong as I liked to begin with, wore off. And the back contractions hit me over like a freight train. Still, I gave it all my might, thinking I must be close. I pushed, I strained, held my legs, held my breath, did all they told me too. Dustin was great and very encouraging, even though he did have a look of horror written across his face half the time while staring directly at my vagina. But it was rough, and I was confused as to why I was feeling so much. The contrax were just on top of eachother. And my god, they kept telling me to push harder and harder, even though I was pushing as hard as I freaking could. I moaned, grunted and yelled. I got very primal with it. They told me not to push in-between contrax to conserve my energy, but I
always felt the urge to push and it was pretty intense to focus on not pushing when I felt that urge. For those 3 hours I tried so very hard to get Jack out, but it was so hard to focus while on the magnesium, even after they tuned it off at one point. My brain was mush and I was seriously delirious. I just kept telling myself out loud, "Focus, Michelle, you CAN do this, FOCUS" in between contrax but it was just impossible to focus. I knew I needed to try and somehow push him out on my own. I knew he could fit, and I knew he was in a bad position and I was stuck on my back. But I just kept thinking that
if only I could focus more, I could make it happen. Have I mentioned that Magnesium is some nasty stuff?
After the 3 hours of pushing the surgeon came in and watched me push. I was beyond exhausted at this point. I couldn't hold my own legs up, I could barely hold a push no matter how hard I tried and I felt like I was completely not “there”. Dustin said my eyes kept rolling around and going into the back of my head too. I gave it everything but Jack still wasn't where he needed to be. He was molded (part of his head was through my pelvis) but he simply would not descend. The surgeon told me things would only get worse, and everyone seemed to be in agreement a section was the next step. And honestly, I was okay with it. I had given labor everything and I knew I had reached my limit. I had no energy left and I mostly tried to not pass out most of the time. So without reservations we get prepped and it was at this point they discovered the disconnected epi. I wonder if they would have increased the pit to what they had had they known it was disconnected. It was really rough.
I remember just before the section began I was talking a lot, cracking jokes and asking the anesthesiologist a bunch of questions (I had gotten my epi hooked up and working again), but otherwise the operation is a big blank. It's like I dozed off for a second, but when I woke thinking we hadn’t started and asked where Dustin was they told me, "with the baby". I believe my exact response to this was, "*** it’s over already!?" At the time I thought that maybe I was so exhausted I had slept through it, which was strange but made some sense. But several days later I started remembering some of the stuff I had been saying just before the operation began. I remember asking the Dr. if it was normal to feel bugs crawling up my back and then I remember freaking the F out at the blue sheet they use to block the sterile field. It seemed so close that it would suffocate me, and every time I tried to tell the doc about it, he ignored me, so I started accusing him of trying to kill me. Of course, it was nowhere near my face! So I think they may have given me a little extra something to knock me out
The c-section itself went pretty well. Dustin got to see my 2 fibroids, one of which is actually a pretty good size. He was also shown my ovaries and uterus by the good doc (poor Dustin is still traumatized). And Jack was FINALLY born at 1:30 am on Thursday happy and healthy, though covered in meconium. And he was indeed in a really ineffective posterior position. I have included a pic that shows how the wrong part of his head—the very back part—was molded which was why he was unable to descend as he should have. In fact, he had a lot of bad bruising on his head, my poor baby. But he was such a trouper making it through all that himself, I really feel like I have a tough little fighter on my hands. After the section I was transferred to recovery to join my family and baby Jack, and the first thing I did was demand to see my baby boy. I could see them doing exams on him, but I had such an urge to hold him tight. I was still way out of it but Dustin said I was yelling and everything. And when they brought him to me I will never forget the feelings that surged through me. To me it didn’t matter how he had arrived, just that he was here. I cried so much, and I will always remember the first time I saw him. I nursed him right there on the spot against my naked chest and it was simply beautiful.
My initial recovery at the hospital was not the greatest, which is why I stayed a bit longer. My body had been through a lot, and I lost a lot of blood during the section so I now have “severe anemia”, which is why they didn't want to send me home even on Monday. I was also pretty swollen for most of my hospital stay which is normal but mine was pretty bad. And my nerves were/are fried. I can’t move my left leg much while sitting b/c I strained something while pushing, and that muscle is still repairing itself. But since I am fairly mobile and feel pretty well despite the anemia, they let me leave (thank God!!!) and overall I have been feeling better everyday. Having Jack to look at helps a great deal
So that is my tale. Pre-eclampsia is serious business. And even though I am admittedly a bit traumatized by everything that happened, I am okay with it. I really truly told myself all along there were some things I cannot control, and that the unexpected could happen to me. And I think I would be a complete wreck had I not had that mentality throughout my pregnancy. And ironically, I did manage to achieve or avoid some things on my birth plan: I avoided an episiotomy, vacuum, forceps and I got my c-section scar sutured instead of stapled
So it isn't all bad. And I have thus far been blessed with super easy breastfeeding, so I am very thankful of that. Anyways, Jack is worth it all—from the months of TTC to my labor experience, I would do it again in a heartbeat for my Jack and I feel blessed just to be a mom.
If you made it, thanks for reading
Pics: I also added one in the private section
Living it up!
Here he is! You can sorta see the back of his head molded out, and it was worse then this but had gone down some
Jack, just born!
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Jack's Birth Story
! Thanks for sharing!!!
But so glad both you and Jack are well. He's simply gorgeous!
I love his hair!!
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