I had an easy pregnancy. The
kind of pregnancy you don’t tell many women about because you know they’re
suffering and you’re…just getting big. Call it my height, call it the way my
body handles excess weight, I have no idea what to call it, except easy. It
wasn’t until Remy started getting stronger with her kicks that I could truly
believe something was happening to my body. And with an anterior placenta, I
didn’t feel kicks until Week 20 and they didn’t get especially sharp until
nearly the end.
Pregnancy (easy as it is or
not) is l o n g. Basically 10 months of time that seems to stretch into
eternity. Maybe your first feels longer than subsequent kids (ask me after I
get pregnant again, huh?) with anticipation and anxiety duking it out for space
front and center in the brain. I was pregnant from late August to early May.
My official due date was
Friday, May 6, 2016. First babies are historically late, and especially so in
my family. I worked in the office clear up to my due date with the intention of
working from home until the baby came. I had myself convinced Remy would come
at least a week late, and for once in my life I actually believed the thing I
told myself to make sure my expectations were appropriately set.
I worked through 40w 1d, left
my office in a usable place, and went home to wait. So confident I was that I
had plenty of time, we purchased tickets to see Avengers: Civil War on Tuesday
$6 night. (Not that it was a movie I really wanted to see, it was a just
because we could.) Paul found out he’d passed the Oregon State Bar about a
month before and was looking for work. So there we were with nothing to do but
wait to deliver this little gamechanger.
SUNDAY, May 08
I felt very few Braxton Hicks
contractions on the ramp up to the big show. So Sunday morning when I woke up,
ironically on Mother’s Day, I knew something different was happening in my
body. I was unsettled (and lazy) enough that I sent Paul to our 10:00 church
alone. I dozed off and on and wrote a letter to my soon-to-be-born baby girl.
(I also forced Paul to write one. I’ll get it posted for posterity’s sake if
it’s the last thing I do.) Contractions continued off and on throughout the day
and I knew they were building into the main event—I just had no idea they would
go on so long. Wanting to get out of
the house later in the afternoon, and wanting to have some hearty food in my
system, we had dinner at Outback Steakhouse and then wandered a TJ Maxx. At
this point I was timing my contractions and we put a preemptive call in to my
OB to ask how we should handle things so he wasn’t surprised by a middle of the
night page. Some instructions were exchanged but it was essentially a ‘wait it
out.’
So wait we did. We went on a
long walk in the park near our house (to speed labor along). I curb walked (to
speed labor along). Eventually we went home and to bed where I had a horrific
night. I hardly slept; in a middle-of-the-night conversation I told Paul I
would wait it out at home until Albertsons opened at 5:00 so we could have a
bagel on the way. (Clearly I was very worried about all the reading I’d done
re: starving during delivery because they don’t allow you to eat once you
arrive.)
MONDAY, May 09
I grew restless and
uncomfortable enough that I looked up what time the Starbucks on the way to the
hospital opened. 4:00 AM, hallelujah! My
whole plan had been to wait out as much of labor at home so I could just show
up at the hospital (dilated at like a 4 maybe?), get a quick epidural, and like
my sisters have super quick, medicated deliveries. Easy peasy, right? Stay
tuuuuuuuuuned.
So we’re in the Starbucks
drive-through about 4:15 in the morning. (Paul needed a shower you see.) The
cashier at the window asked why we were up so early and seemed delighted when
Paul told him we were heading to the hospital to have a baby. Sadly, this did
not mean we got free breakfast. I ate my bagel and we rushed down to Meridian
Park Hospital.
It was quiet on the floor
when we arrived and I was checked into a room. A nurse did a dilation check and
delivered the bad news. I was only
dilated to a one. Uno. Nine inches from delivery. Oof. They let me stay for
a few hours and as I wasn’t progressing any, I got the boot. Plus a shot of
morphine to deal with the pain, but the boot nonetheless. Paul drove me home to
sleep and wait out my ensuing dilation. BUT TROUBLE FIRST. My body was already
on its way to fairly forcefully rejecting the morphine. No sleep for me; I
writhed in bed for a few hours until the 1:00pm appointment Paul had been able
to set up with the OB. Not sure why I had a barf bag in my hand on the drive,
but it came in handy as I threw up everything in my system before we got to the
doctor’s.
I’m clearly in pain slash
distress at the doctor’s and I’m dilated all the way to a 2. A two guys! 1:30 in the afternoon Monday.
I already feel like I’ve been in labor forever but we trek back to the
hospital. Taking the most efficient route would normally have been the
preferred way, but driving absurdly windy roads had me throwing up anything I’d
managed to put down. I’m so uncomfortable. And tired.
But we’re checked in again to
the hospital and clearly on the road to having a baby. I need to get myself
dilated to a 4 so they’ll break my water and give me an epidural. A few hours
pass and I’m at the magical threshold. 4:00 in the afternoon; more than
24-hours after contractions first start. I’m set up with a catheter, have my
water broken (which is easy to explain but probably not too-family friendly;
just imagine it’s a balloon that needs to be popped), and an epidural ready to
be put in.
Before you have your first
epidural, you’re terrified of all the things that can go wrong. You’ve read
things, you’ve heard things. But at this point, the delivery I was sure I was
going to have (induced) was out the window. The doctor putting the epidural
into my spine was named Dr. Payne. These are the things you can’t make up but
give you ample opportunity to joke about to distract from the pain. Epidurals
can only be placed in-between contractions so on a short break between that
never-ending gift that keeps on giving, a long needle was placed in my back and
a pain-blocking magical potion introduced pretty immediately.
I’m beyond jazzed at this
point. I’m pain-free, I don’t have to get up to use the bathroom, and I’m en
route to getting that baby out of my body and into my life. It was a joyous
45-minutes.
And then it all went south.
The next few hours were an
intensifying reentry of contractions. My body started rejecting the epidural.
First the right side. Eventually the left. Dr. Payne adjusted the dosage
flowing through the tubes. He gave me two new epidurals from scratch. He eventually
told me there was nothing else he could do. Dr. Pain indeed. It looked like I was going to deliver this
baby naturally.
TUESDAY, May 10
Contractions continued to
grow in intensity and frequency. For the next ten hours (6PM-4AM), I
experienced a contraction roughly every two-and-a-half minutes. Unprepared to
deal with natural child birth, I lasted about six seconds into each contraction
before a panic attack began and I was unable to breathe as the pain washed back
and forth. For hours, I felt helpless. My full mental faculties were intact and
I knew something was wrong. I was anxious to do something, anything differently. I asked the nurses seriously what my options
were; I was ready to have a c-section. It was truly horrible. In between
contractions I was so thirsty. Paul (probably rightfully) rationed my intake
because he didn’t want me throwing up.
I’ll keep the trauma of those
eight hours fairly limited as I don’t want to talk myself out of having another
baby. The short of a verrrrrrrry long night is that my body was dialated to a 9
for hours on end (with contractions to match) but a piece of my cervix was
blocking the birth canal for the baby to descend. At 4AM the doctor showed up
with a plan. I would start the pushing process, and he would use his hobbit
hands to manually move that piece of cervix. That process took about two hours
and was as comfortable as you can imagine. Then, THEN, the real work of pushing
could begin. As painful and difficult as pushing was, it was the change my body
(and brain!) needed. The time between each contraction/push was the mental rest
I needed to gear up for the next push, which finally felt progressive.
Pushing (never forget this is
a natural birth) proceeded for another two hours, though it didn’t feel nearly
that long. Paul stood on my left and held one of my legs, a nurse on my right
with the other. Machines started beeping, alerting everyone present that the baby
wasn’t getting the oxygen she needed. They quickly gave me an oxygen mask and I
struggled to use it. It felt too small for my face and I alternated breathing
from it and normally. The baby was still in distress and things flew into quick
action as I was given an episiotomy and they baby was vacuumed out of me.
7:37 AM and our baby girl is
HERE. They put her on my chest and she has a full head of dark hair. It’s quickly noticed that she’s not breathing and she’s squirreled
away to the in-room incubator while my OB worked to stitch me up. I cry out as
a reminder that I have no numbing pain medication, and the doctor and nurse
pass a look. I’m shot up with a local anesthetic and I cry the whole time; it’s
painful, but it’s over. I cry because
it was so hard, and so utterly terrible, and I’m alone. Paul is with Remy first
in our room, and later as she’s moved to the fetal nursery/NICU as they work to
stabilize her. It’s a surreal feeling to experience such a lengthy affair and have
nothing to show for it. I spend the next hour alone as the nurses work to clean
me and the room up. Paul comes back and fills me in on what they’ve been doing
to Remy to stabilize her. We order lunch. Eat lunch. Parents, without a baby. The
most horrific pain in my life transpired, and nothing (yet) to show for it.
It’s nearly four hours before
they bring Remy to me.
The rest of our hospital stay
is more normally mainstream. My OB tells me that’s as bad as it can get and I
would have survived well on the plains. It’s not much consolation for the
series of unfortunate events that just transpired, but it does make me feel
better to know it was out of the ordinary terrible. I call it outlandishly
terrible. But I plan to do it again as soon as I can*.
*easy to say as I’m writing
Remy’s birth story when she’s 20+ months old. HA.
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