I decided to start this blog from Zoe's birth and will be filling in the past month and a half as I have time. With a voracious little imp ruling my life, spare time can be hard to find.
Zoe's birth was what could be called a good learning experience. What I have learned from 3 days of labor with an epidural put in only for the last 6 hours followed by an emergency C-section?
1) natural child birth is highly over rated
2) labor and delivery are very very painful
3) drugs are good
Right from the start things didn't go as I had envisioned. During my first call to the hospital on Tuesday morning I was informed that they were full and I would need to go somewhere else. Max and I had toured this hospital, looked at the newly renovated labor and delivery rooms, visited the maternity ward, and memorized exactly where to go depending on whether it was after hours or during the day. So after a panicky call to Max's mom, her subsequent call to the hospital, the admitting nurse called me back to say that if I could hold off for awhile a room might free up. I ended up waiting all day and went into triage that evening. I was only 2 cm so they sent me home. I did get a morphine shot as consolation though!
Wednesday arrived and my contractions were stronger (i.e. extremely painful). I waited until the evening to go back to triage. 3.5 cm and 90% effaced, so things were moving along, just at a glacial pace. I figured 1.5 cm every 24 hours, so another 5 days and I would be ready to deliver. I was sent home with another morphine shot, but this time it didn't seem to have any effect. I couldn't lie down and sat in my glider chair and dozed off only to jerk awake every 5 minutes from the pain of a new contraction. By 3am Thursday we were back in triage, 6cm and I was admitted!
My labor and delivery nurse was new. I could tell as she looked at my veins for the IV. Each vein was stroked and examined with the intensity usually reserved for putting an IV into junkies and the obese. After the doctor remarking about what great veins I had, she took the plunge and managed to get the IV in. A new nurse for childbirth is not a good thing! Luckily there was a shift change that morning and a new nurse came in (who was very experienced this time), wondering why there was so much tape around my IV.
After 6 hours of extremely painful contractions, I was checked again only to be told I was still 6cm. I did not understand what all that pain was for since apparently
nothing had happened. (I expressed this sentiment to Max and he tried to calm me down a bit since I was near tears at that point). The doctor broke my water at about 9am, convinced that would get things going. They had told us at the child birth preparation class that when your water breaks it's just a trickle, nothing like "in the movies." For me it was just like in the movies, a hot gush onto the floor dousing my socks with more water coming out every time I shifted my weight. Poor little Zoe had lost her cushion and was finally descending. I quickly got to 9cm and by now the contractions had changed. Dilation contractions hurt, but pushing contractions sweep you up in a wracking agony with your whole body screaming "PUSH." But I was told not to push since I wasn't at 10cm. I was hit with
pitocin to get the last bit of cervix dilated, causing faster even more painful contractions. I was exhausted now and the idea of hours more of this was too much. I wanted the epidural but the nurse had seen my birthing plan and told me to keep trying a little longer because she wanted me to have a natural birth
as I had written in my birthing plan. I cursed my "birthing plan" and the child birth preparation classes and their focus on natural, i.e. extremely painful, childbirth. The nurse left the room for a minute and I looked Max in the eye, grabbed his arm in a death grip to reinforce my point, and told him he had to get me an epidural. 20 minutes later an anesthesiologist and a trainee arrived and they inserted the epidural. Within minutes the pain was gone. It was after 3pm by now and I had been pushing for over 5 hours. The nurse checked the baby and she was still at +1, so absolutely no progress. I couldn't push any harder and "vacuum extraction" was being bandied about. Zoe was getting as tired as I was. She was in distress and her heartbeat was slowing. Within minutes I was wheeled into the surgical suite for an emergency C-section. The C-section was fast, within 10minutes Zoe was out. A nurse brought her over to me so I could see her as they repacked my organs and sewed me up. Zoe was wet and angry looking, a fat little frowning Buddha. She was cleaned and swaddled as I was being wheeled into recovery. The nurse brought the baby to me to nurse for a minute before I was brought to the maternity ward. Even after all the drugs and a long and traumatic birth, she latched on, a harbinger of her seemingly limitless appetite.
So that is the story of little Zoe's birth, what I can remember of it.
Now I will show pictures of my beautiful "little" baby (8lbs 12 oz).
