I will start by saying that this is not for everyone. This is for myself and it's graphic and emotional and raw. I'm just needing to get this out and move forward. And it'll be a very long story, just an FYI! grab some tissues and a coffee.
I really struggled whether or not to blog this, or just write it on paper and then burn it outside, letting the ashes blow away. I guess I'll make a decision when I get to the end, if I click POST or not. I don't want to come across as ungrateful for the beautiful daughter I have, I think its time to let go of the guilt I've harboured inside me for 2 years now.
July 31st, 2008 at 1:00am I woke up in the night thinking I need to use the bathroom, but then found myself searching for my clock, pen and paper to start keeping track of my contractions....they had begun!!! I was terrified, but also so excited all at once. I chose not to wake my fiance, I thought this could take awhile and since he suffers from an inner ear disease and gets vertigo easily, I let him sleep....he would need it. I remember laying in bed all night dozing in and out waking to another contraction thinking, hmmm not bad it feels like a period cramp but after a few seconds it disappears for 20 mins or so. This is easy!! About 7am he woke up, luckily he already had the day off since it was so close to the long weekend and he knew I could have the baby any day now. So I shared the news and he just jumped into action. Showering and eating breakfast, as if we are ready to go soon. Silly man.
Hours go by, and more hours, the pain increases but still very bearable and far apart. We watched movies and tv, I tried sitting on my yoga ball as much as possible, walked around the house, showered, ate, drank liquids, tried to act normal. I didn't want to tell my mum & dad I was in labour yet, not sure why to be honest. I think because I didn't want my mum to run over here and "baby" me through this. I wanted to do it myself. Around 6:30pm or so we called the midwife to tell her I had been in labour for 17 hours already and they were still about 10 mins apart. She thought I had a long way to go yet, but to call her when they were 5 mins apart or I couldn't handle the pain and she would meet me at the hospital. I do think thats around the time I told my mum on the phone as well. But told her go to bed tonight we will call you as soon as it happens! I'm sure she didn't sleep much that night!
By about 9:30pm I was crying. The pain had gotten to the point that I honestly didn't think it could ever get worse. The contractions were close to 5 mins apart and last 2 mins long each one. So my fiance called the hospital and told them we are on our way. The 5 minute drive to the hospital seemed to be the bumpiest road trip I've ever taken. Every bump hurt so bad and by the time he got me to the ER doors I could hardly get out of the car. The contractions were coming fast and so strong, and I was
SOBBING my heart out. I think I scared the people waiting in ER, even the doctor in the ER wanted to help me. I had seen patients lying in beds waiting for whatever they were in there shouting "Good luck, you'll be ok". They meant well but I seriously wanted to punch someone. And all I could hear was my fiance saying "Thank you" to all of them.
SHUT IT was on the tip of my tongue! The nurses offered the wheelchair for me, but I kept saying No the Pre-natal classes said to walk as long and often as possible, i'll walk. Now for those of you who know our hospital, the walk from the ER down all 3 hallways and up the elevator is seriously the longest walk ever when you are in labour. They are no where near each other in locations...something I would advise in the new hospital they are building here one day. Put the maternity ward close to the door!!! My girlfriends who did this walk late at night while in labour all know what i'm talking about!
I walked into the maternity ward with the sweetest nurses ready to greet me, they knew me by name and were sooooo happy to see me. I think I cried again because I thought, yes, someone to help me!! We walked down the hall to the labour and delivery rooms and there was my girlfriend "A" who I met in pre-natal, and her hubby drinking Iced Caps from timmy's looking calm and comfortable, saying nice things to me....honestly they could have said my hair was on fire, I dont to this day remember what she said, just her sweet smile and the look of fright on her hubby's face! LOL. She wasn't in full labour yet! But I love her still to this day for her smile...as I cried and walked down the hall. hahaha. (writing this out is really helping, I am laughing so hard now at how much I cried. Gosh I'm such a big baby!)
So midwife showed up, got the "Cadillac" of all delivery rooms (the one with the big shower in it) got all settled, they wanted me to pee in the cup...word to all your pregger ladies out there they make you pee as soon as you arrive, but I couldn't do it...should have been clue #1 that something was wrong. It was about 11pm by the time we got settled and I got into my sexy hospital gown took off the bra...ahhh that I do remember feeling such relief! And kept on with my hard contractions. So the midwife checked me and they were shocked how long I went before going to the hospital (22 hours, not that i'm bragging) and they realized I was 6cm almost 7cm dilated. They were happy and things seemed to be going smoothly. I heard 7cm and said, cool I will be giving birth within the hour.....I think they laughed at me.
Ok so lets skip some hours and get to the nitty gritty. About 27 hours in they realized that the baby was stuck. Her head was crooked and my cervix was so swollen. Half of it felt 10cm dilated to them (and by
them yes I mean multiple people were all up in my grill...you know...) but the other side felt so swollen from the baby pressing on it that blood was building up and that was half the severe pain I was feeling. The back labour was OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD. And i still had not pee-d yet! I had my fiance pressing on my low back as hard as he could possible press for at least 2 hours (hours 25-27) so much so that he got to the point where he could not feel his hand anymore and didn't know if he had the strength to keep pressing on it for me. For me it relieved the pain, but I know he thought he was hurting me. Nope, he could have punched me in back and I wouldn't have felt a thing. By this point I was huffing the gas they gave me til my eyes were rolling back in my head. Big Daddy thought that was the weirdest thing he's ever seen. I think it creeped him out. But gas was temporary. As soon as you exhale the pain is there. But I had said I wanted a natural birth with no drugs unless I needed them. I will never say those words again.
My blood pressure was through the roof, the baby's heart rate was escalating and not coming down. My contractions were every 2 mins but lasting for 1min 45 secs. (they start timing contractions from when they
START, so i'm not kidding I had a 15 second break in between them....for 2 or 3 hours!) I was physically exhausted. And I also forgot or refused, not sure which, to drink fluids. So I was severely dehydrated. The midwife gave me an IV....5 times it took her to get a vein, they were so dehydrated she couldn't find one. And that was almost as painful as the labour. On the last one she sliced through a nerve and I just about jumped off the bed in pain. And that actually hurt for a month. FYI peeps, ask a nurse to do it!
By the 27th hour the nurses were getting scared. the screams that were coming out of my mouth were primal. My fiance said it was nothing he'd ever heard before, and apparently I started chanting like a monk! No joke. My second girlfriend was in the other delivery room and she heard me too. I think I scared her husband as well. oops I'm sorry!! So the nurses called in the doctor. He arrived like Heaven sent an angel to me, looked at my BP, looked at baby's heart rate, took one quick exam on me and asked the nurse to call the anesthesiologist (hope I spelled correctly) and to order fentanyl to calm me down (it's 100 times more potent than morphine) and then ordered an epidural for me. He said the epidural would bring my blood pressure back down and slow down contractions until they could turn the baby's head and deliver her. But they couldn't give me epidural without somehow calming me down first, I think I was borderline hysterical in pain by that point. Then he asked the midwife to step aside and have a seat. I was no longer her patient.
I had a midwife, a doctor, a pediatrician, and anesthesiologist and 3 nurses, plus my man all in the room with me trying to get this baby out. When the anesthetist (however you call him) came into the room here's what I thought. A) Good Lord you are freaking gorgeous! B) I love you. lol. I'm not sure if I had clothing on at that point, my fiance told me a year later that I took off my dressing gown and chucked it across the room saying I'm too hot with this thing on. Bahahaha it's a light as a sheet. too funny!!! the entire maternity ward staff saw me naked. There is no modesty when birthing a child.
Epidural man didn't think I would be able to sit still long enough for it to be inserted into my spine. But they told me I had no choice and they thought I was going to have a c-section. I signed 3 papers I think not sure what they said I was in too much pain and scribbled something on each one. I got into position, which is very hard when you have a beach ball between your legs, apparently I started chanting or counting/chanting. Something odd and unusual, holding onto the meal tray with one nurse holding my one arm and the midwife holding the other, because my contractions were so hard and so close together. I asked the anesthetist to wait til my go, i knew I had a 15 second break coming up, and he did and then went for it. To be honest I didn't feel the epidural go in at all. I felt him taping it to my back and that was it. Then they told me to carefully lie down and relax. They had to put in a catheter which hardly filled up and the nurses were very nervous about my lack of fluids. Within 30 mins I couldn't feel my legs or the contractions, but they told me I had to wait 2 hours before I could push. So my man had a tiny siesta in the lazyboy chair and the nurses all left me and dimmed the lights and I rested my eyes. One kept checking on me and checking the baby monitor but she sat there quietly telling me to rest. Which was so nice. I was exhausted.
The epidural had done it's job. I had relaxed enough that the baby turned her head enough to allow me to fully dilate. The doctor and nurses all came back in with the midwife too, and told me they were only going to allow me to push for a little otherwise I needed a c-section. I told him, I know I can do this. So they had to tell me to push since I couldn't feel the contractions, or anything from the ribs down. I started figuring out that when I felt the baby moving and kicking me inside I was contracting, so my daughter would give me the signal and we worked as as a team and she was out in about 40 mins of pushing. Not too bad. they did have to put the vacuum on her head to turn it slightly to the side and then she came out. And just because you're frozen doesn't mean you dont feel the baby moving inside you. That was a weird feeling. She came out all healthy, and she got placed on my chest and I remember saying she's so small! She was born at 7:15 am Aug 1st, 2008 weighing 6lbs 4oz. (30 hours of labour) The baby got checked by the pediatrician and I layed there recovering and happy it was over. But as we were holding our precious angel I noticed the doctor who delivered her was taking a long time to stitch me up. At least 30-40 mins of sewing. I found out later I had 3rd degree tears. Ouchy! But since I was still frozen I didn't feel him stitching me. But once the swelling went down the next day the pain was out of this world. *i'm shivering at the thought right now
So we thought everything was fine. We had called our families and me and baby were in my room trying right away to get her to latch onto my breast. And she would which shocked me, but of course you dont' have much of anything on day 1. She did alot of sleeping that day, and I think i tried to. My parents showed up about noon on their lunch hour from their jobs, and I was so excited to see them. Of course they came back later that night, but they knew me and big daddy needed to try to rest. Nothing seemed unusual to me, since i'd never had a baby before, I figured all babies were "jumpy" in the beginning so we tried to be quiet. Late that night around midnight the nurse came in and said let me take her to the nursery to weigh her again, and told me to rest since I had been up for 2 days. I must have passed out for a couple hours, and woke up about 2am and noticed she still wasn't in the bassinet. I really had to go to the bathroom and change my dressings but when I came out the pediatrician was standing in my room waiting for me to get out of the bathroom and he said the words that will haunt me forever:
You're baby is very sick, we need you and your husband down in the nursery right now.
We ran down that hall and when we arrived there she was hoked up to monitors and a tiny IV in her arm. Laying naked but a diaper under the heat lamp. I don't think I cried yet. I was in shock. They told me that when they undressed her to weigh her she was shaking uncontrollably, and not just from being cold. So they pricked her heel and took a blood sample and her blood sugar was 0.7 (normal is 4.0 - 5.0) she was in bad shape. If they couldn't stabilize her there was a chance she would not make it. They asked me if I was diabetic and I said no, but the baby had to stay in there under the heat and hooked up to the monitors and IV until they could stabilize her. They fed her a tiny amount of formula to see if her blood sugar would go up. But there was nothing we could do but wait. They told us to try to rest and sleep and they promised to wake us up in the night if anything changed. I think I did fall asleep from pure exhaustion. In the morning we got up and went back down to the nursery and they had taken a vial of her blood and it had gone up a bit, but as soon as they lowered the dosage in her IV she crashed again. She just could not stabilize her sugars. It was really a waiting game. There was nothing we could do but wait and pray. We fed her every single meal and changed every diaper that up until midnight when the nurses told us to try to sleep. Early the next morning we were back in there holding her as long as possible. I only left the nursery to eat and go to the bathroom and have a quick shower. Same with my fiance. We sat in the chair rocking her as she was hooked up to the machines. There was no way I was going to let her lay there without being held by us.
The nurses got me pumping the colostrum right away, and I would seriously dip the tip of my finger into the bottle where I pumped it and then put my finger in her mouth so she could suck it off, which she did. I would scrape that bottle dry so she got every drop, plus then they would give her formula to get that sugar up in her body. And thats what we did every 2-3 hours. Pump, feed her, weigh her, change her, hold her. Non-stop. the nurses had to force us to go sleep from midnight til 3am when i had to be woken up to pump what I could, back to sleep til 6am to pump. I pumped around the clock every 3 hours for 5 weeks. No lie. The poor baby had to have her heel pricked every 3 hours to test her sugars and LANCED the heel every 12 hours to take a vial of blood from her to do more testing...from friday night midnight til tuesday. Her little foot was so bruised and purple from being pricked that they ran out of spots they could even prick her. And by the sunday she wouldn't even cry when they did it, she had already gotten used to the pain they put on her. It was heartbreaking.
By sunday night the nurses told us to go to our room, take a couple hours break, let them look after her. They could see how emotionally wrecked we both were. Looking back it was exactly what I needed. And I think that's the first time I really cried. We were watching tv and I just started bawling. It was like the flood gates opened and I finally starting grieving for my sick baby. I asked my fiance if she was sick because of something I did wrong while pregnant. Did I eat too much sugar near the end? Did I stop taking my pre-natal vitamins too soon, they made me throw up so I stopped taking them. What did I do to deserve this? What did she do to deserve this? I cried and I cried and I cried. For hours. But that's when it sunk in that something seriously could be wrong with my perfect baby. I just remember praying to God that I would do anything, anything at all for her to get better. And I begged him to please not take her from me. That's the night I truly started believing in the power of prayer. I think this has been the hardest part to write so far. Writing this out, I think I have just found the memory spot that I have been hiding and had tucked away so I wouldn't ever feel that pain again. I think the thought of losing her was more painful than 30 hours of physical pain. I would do it all over again in a heartbeat if it meant to keep her healthy.
ok let's see if I can finish this without crying anymore. So the pediatrician called childrens hospital and they told him what they were doing here was everything they could do as well. So there was no need to medi-vac us over there. It was all just a waiting game. She was born on a friday by tuesday she had stabilized her sugars on her own with no IV,so they finally removed the IV that day. And allowed her to sleep with us in our room that night. I don't think I slept much that night. The next day wednesday we were released. Just like that, no follow up nothing. I kept asking, well what do I do if she drops her sugars again, how will I know? But they assured me that once she stabilized on her own that she would now be fine. I was scared to death!! I was worried sick that she would relapse and I wouldn't be able to help her. But they were right, she thrived and was gaining weight slowly but surely and she was a happy girl.
She never did latch onto me again. I wanted to breastfeed so badly the whole pregnancy and I kept pumping for 5 weeks around the clock. But I wasn't producing any milk, like less than 2 ounces at a time. So we always had to top her up with formula to make it 4 ounces so she was getting enough. I had lactation consultants and my midwife all coming to the house to help me but it was no use. By the time my 4 week check up came my midwife tried again to help me get her to latch, but she had gotten so used to the bottle in the hospital that she refused to latch onto me. And I was drying up. I went on fenugreek and beaded thistle to increase my milk but it did nothing. I had to make the choice, stop pumping or keep pumping hardly anything out. I stopped. And then I went into a post pardum depression. And I think I cried for 3 days straight. The guilt I felt for not being able to feed her, the pressure I felt from others to keep trying, it was horrible. I had one friend...one single person, tell me it was ok. She herself was unable to nurse her children and she talked me through those days and made me feel like it's ok. I will always be grateful for her supportive words and encouragement through that awful time. It was a very hard decision to make, some people think it's easy, but when you wanted to do something so badly but weren't able to because of factors you can't control its painful. After that the baby started gaining weight at a better pace, so that made me feel somewhat ok about my decision...at least she was still healthy. I hadn't done a ton of research on formula, since I was a pro-breastfeeding pregnant lady. But we did our best.
I really have harbored this guilt in me for not being able to breastfeed. I felt like a failure for so long....so long. I would see my baby mom friends nursing their kids and I would act all tough like it didn't bother me, but usually I would quietly cry on the drive home that I didn't feel that special bond with my baby like they talked about. I mean don't get me wrong I have an unbreakable bond with my daughter, but I can imagine that nursing a baby would give a different feeling that bottle feeding. I think that's why I held her til she fell asleep in my arms for every single nap and bedtime until she was 14 months old. I wanted that closeness and bond. Once I gave that up and allowed her to fall asleep on her own I think it helped build her confidence in herself and also allowed me to let-out the cord a little bit. ( i still haven't cut it yet. lol)
I'm not sure how to end this. This was my birth experience. Nothing went as planned, and I was left so emotionally raw from the whole thing that it really put me into a depression. Everything I do I always second guess myself, since babies don't come with a manual. But I think I'm doing the best I know how. I have a great model to follow...my own mother. She is the best mother anyone could ever ask for. And I hope one day I am half the woman she is today. She has such strength and kindness, and is truly the nicest person on the planet. And my daughter loves her so much. As do I. I have learned alot from this experience and know more now about myself and my strengths and convictions. So I hope i'll be better prepared if i decide to bring another blessing into this world.
And if nothing else, I have learned to listen to my inner voice. And trust myself.
