Delivery

[vanillaeclare]

(continued from "Labor")

Unfortunately, the beautiful relief I experienced from the epidural was relatively short-lived. Over the course of the next several hours, I began to feel pain in my back. I assumed it was just because I was in a weird position and my legs were numb. Lying flat on my back for hours probably could cause some pain, so I just kept asking the nurse to come and help me get readjusted. Some of the readjustments were helpful, but others were not at all. I couldn't get comfortable and the pain in my back kept getting worse and worse.

I finally told someone that I thought there maybe something wrong with my epidural. They didn't do anything except make me feel bad about myself. "You know, you are still supposed to feel the contractions." I realized that, and was fine with a little pain, but I was afraid that the epidural would quit working entirely, and I knew I was in more pain than I should have been.

After about 12 hours of labor, it was finally time to push. I started off pretty strong, but at some point I hit a plateau. The baby wasn't going anywhere and the pain I was feeling was now covering my entire back and the upper part of my uterus. I could feel every contraction, and the pain in my back prevented me from curling my body to push properly. I tried to tell the doctor and nurses, but they didn't believe me for the longest time. Finally, they realized that perhaps I'd be able to push more effectively if my epidural was working properly. They called the anesthesiologist back in, and this time it was a woman. All she did was give me a heavy dose, much like the initial dose they gave me. They didn't attempt to reposition the catheter or try to get the rest of my uterus numbed.

This second dose sent waves of pain through my back that were unreal. I breathed and moaned and my whole body shook. It is at about this point, that I lose chunks of time. The pain was so intense that I couldn't gain control on reality or time. After the worst of that pain was over, they tried to get me to push again. At this point, I had been pushing for 2 or 3 hours. It still hurt to curl my body, and the second dose did nothing but slow me down, cause more pain, and more fully drug my yet unborn child.

After another hour of pushing, through which my memory lapses, the doctor told me it was time to do a C-section. Both my husband and I began to cry. They had already performed an epesiotomy and I had been through so much already. All we wanted was a natural birth, and all the medical interventions imposed upon me had completely destroyed everything we'd planned for. Surgery is scary and the recovery is long. It's the last thing I wanted, the only thing that would completely destroy my birth experience.

We pleaded with them to reconsider, and I asked the doctor to get out the vacuum. The baby was stuck on my tailbone so it seemed to be the only hope. After it popped off twice, she said there was nothing more she could do. Apparently, there is a rule about how many times you can attempt delivery by vaccuum.

I still wasn't giving up, and told her to get out the forceps. Although I have no memory of it, my husband assures me that my OB looked at me like I was crazy, but did as I asked. I pushed hard enough to pop blood vessels, and after 2 or 3 more pushes, he finally came.

The sensation was ridiculous. One moment I was hugely pregnant, and the next, I felt empty. They placed him on my belly, and I grabbed him and held him tight. I had asked that he not be taken from me for triage, and that I be able to hold him and bond with him, but, like everything else in my birth plan, they ignored it. They even showed me a pamphlet about "Kangaroo Care" while I was in labor, so it seemed pretty backwards.

When they took him from me, I felt my belly for the first time and began crying hysterically. I'm not sure how long he was away, but it seemed to me to be an eternity. Meanwhile, I sobbed and sobbed, crying, "Where's my baby? Give me my baby!" I think this really annoyed the L & D staff, but to this day, I don't care. I could hear him crying and just knew if they gave him back to me, he would stop.

He didn't. When they finally let me hold him, skin to skin, he continued to cry off and on. He sounded so hoarse, like he still had a lot of fluid in his lungs. He kept crying even though I was holding him and talking to him. Birth must have been pretty traumatic for him, too. He had a scab on his head from the vacuum and bruises on his face from the forceps. Poor little guy.

When his shoulders emerged all at once, he tore me from hole to hole. The doctor took over half an hour to sew me back together. They called it a fourth degree tear, and I knew what it meant when they told me, but didn't care much. All that mattered was that my baby was finally here.

My husband was sobbing uncontrollably as well. He started the moment the baby was born, and my memory lapses there, but I assume it went on for several minutes. I wish now that someone had taken pictures of my husband's reaction. I was separated from both of them while they assessed the baby. I wanted someone to be with the baby if I couldn't.

Once the baby was back in my arms and everything seemed ok, my husband ran home to take care of a few things so he could get back to the hospital before my mother showed up. While he was away, my blood pressure dropped dangerously low, to 67 over 39. I also do not seem to remember the severity of that particular situation. I'm not sure why. They took the baby away from me at that point, because I couldn't be trusted to hold him. You'd think I'd remember that, but I don't. I guess I had lost a lot of blood.

My husband returned shortly thereafter. They had me lying flat, and finally let me sit up, but when they did, I began dry heaving because my blood pressure was still pretty low. That's when they told him what had happened, and he felt terrible. My low blood pressure was close to being fatal, and he hadn't been there. But I was still in some sort of stupor, didn't fully understand, and didn't really care. I said, "no big deal. I just had a baby!"

[medicwife]

Mar. 9, 2009 at 11:10 AM

Although it sounds awful I still say good for you! BTW, I am in one of your groups and saw your widget about the new baby! Congrats!

[Imamom4sure]

Mar. 18, 2009 at 11:43 PM when I had the epidural it felt like a stab in the back and a constant pain, it turned out that they had it in wrong and caused me nerve damage whereas my nerve ended up highly irritated and developed constant swelling around it, that lasted two years! (I even had to wear a back brace to see if this would bring the swelling down) btw, I was diagnosed at another hospital as having nerve damage caused by the epidural, and although I never heard of this, I was told that they have seen it lots of times! (yet they still give it to 90% of laboring moms) I think it was very creepy for you to have had an episiotomy when your baby was still way inside you for them to want to c-sec you. First episitotomies are considered unnecessary by European standards, second by americna standards it should only be done when baby is crowning (at which point I would think the head is too far out of the uterus that I would assume too late for c-sec) you just missed that c-sec by the skin of your teeth!

[Imamom4sure]

Mar. 18, 2009 at 11:50 PM btw, it is so eery how similar your delivery is to my first born, I also missed c-sec by skin of my teeth, I also begged for vaccum extractor over c-sec (but I didn't believe I needed it, I just was under lots of threats to have the baby at a certain time) how are you doing emotionally? this happened to me 10 years ago, but emotionally I started to develop Post traumatic stress syndrome, I resisted the c-sec because I had some intutitve feeling that I would die, plus I felt it was unnecessary. (but most of the things felt unnecessary, it was just that I was under lots of threats and emotional stress, they were totally lying and manipulating the situation, kept saying my baby was in distress, he had perfect apgars btw. But he ended up not being able to learn to nurse right, his latch on was horrible, and it took 12 weeks to get it right, mostly an outside intervention is what worked.