Saturday, June 02, 2007

Before I Forget...

... I better blog about the details. This will probably be horribly TMI, so don't read if you're squeamish.

Sunday, May 27th - At around 3:30 am, I woke up because I felt a trickle of pee. I jumped out of bed feeling horrified that I had lost control of my bladder. So I went to the bathroom and "finished peeing". But when I tried to get up, there was more pee. Fine, whatever. After a few minutes, I go back to bed. I sat down on one of my flat pillows and there was a GUSH. Maybe a couple of cups worth of fluid came out. I was a little worried but I wasn't 100% sure that it was amniotic fluid. I go back to the bathroom and try to clean myself. Crap, there's a tinge of blood. So I call my doctor's office. Answering service girl takes the message. Almost forever passed, and the doctor finally calls back. She said answering service idiot wrote down the wrong number, but she had my papers in her car (luckily). I told her what happened and she said to go to the maternity wing of the hospital ASAP. Its about 4 am now and I try to wake up DH.

Me: Hun, wake up. We have to go to the hospital.
DH: (No response).
Me: Hun, my water broke. We have to go now.
DH: WHAT???!?!!!

So we get dressed and go to the hospital. At this point, I'm not having any contractions, just a dull back ache and still fluid coming out. I was more worried about making a mess at this point. So we drive to the hospital and I start feeling weird. I feel cramping, but no contractions. DH drives up to the ER entrance and goes in for help. Someone with a wheel chair came to get me and I could barely get out of the car at this point. They take me upstairs and DH goes and parks the car.

The maternity ward nurses said my doctor had called ahead and they were expecting me. They bring me into a room and I go and change into a gown. At this point, my legs have turned into jello and I'm feeling very weak and there is a bit of cramping going on. The nurse puts this extremely tight band around my belly. Think of a horribly tight tube top going over a very pregnant belly. NOT COMFY AT ALL. I told her it was too tight and I needed a bigger size coz it really hurts. She said I'm probably having contractions. She helps me into bed and starts hooking me up to stuff.

DH arrives and holds my hand. At this point, the cramps are really horrible. I told DH that I can't do this without drugs. I mean its just cramps right now and they're painful. What's gonna happen when the contractions start? I NEED DRUGS. The nurse says she needs to check me, so she does and tells me that I am 9 cm dilated. WHAT??? How the heck do you go from zero to nine in half an hour?

So at this point we're waiting for the doctor and they're poking me and hooking me up to an IV. I'm laying on my side and I'm clutching to DH, completely freaking out. My doctor arrives and I beg her for drugs. She said its too late for drugs and she doesn't want me groggy. ACK!!!!!

The nurses asked if I felt the urge to push. I did. So they helped me get into position. A nurse on my right, DH on my left. Me with eyes closed praying that this will be over quick. I'm not really sure what happened next. I kept my eyes closed the whole time and pushed when I felt like I had to. I was screaming like crazy initially, but the doctor and nurses said to hold my breath and focus on pushing. The nurse on my right was a GREAT labor coach. Too bad I didn't get her name. She had a calm, soothing voice and I focused on that and on DH rubbing my ear and neck. It did not feel at all like I thought it would feel. I really thought it would feel like I was being ripped open. It wasn't like that. It felt like I had to do number 2 REALLY BAD and I was horribly constipated. Several minutes of pushing later, out came our baby girl. She was bloodly and mucusy and slimey and screaming like crazy. They put her on my chest and let DH cut her umbilical cord. They then whisked her away to the baby table to clean her off. Meanwhile, my doctor is digging around inside me. Casually she goes, "Okay, the placenta is out." I opened my eyes and I saw what looked like a big deflated, bloody balloon with the umbilical cord dangling from it. She said the umbilical cord was really long. I closed my eyes again, completely exhausted, thinking that its finally over. WRONG.

The doctor orders one of the nurses to give me Nubain. What the heck? I asked for Nubain earlier and you give it to me after the worse is over. Or so I thought. One of the nurses starts PUSHING down on my belly and I felt like my insides were getting ripped out. I SCREAMED LIKE HELL. It HURT. OMG. I cannot even begin to describe it. I could feel myself shaking uncontrollably and all I could do was scream and hold on to DH. This went on for an eternity. I had no idea what the hell was going on. I hear the doctor say, "I'm sorry, but we need to remove all the clots." No one told me about this part of labor. This wasn't mentioned in anything I read. I didn't see this in any of the videos. No wonder they don't tell pregnant women about this. It was absolutely horrible. It was the worst pain of my life. They finally stop and now I feel the doctor start to stitch me up. UGH. I have never had stitches in my life. This was not a good first time experience.

I basically collapsed after everything. I was still shaking and was semi-out of it thanks to the drugs. DH tells me that they did an episiotomy. "They did?" Then he tells me that the doctor was literally grabbing the clots from inside me. "Ick! She was?" Good thing I had my eyes closed the whole time. That's one thing I did NOT need to see.

After leaving us alone for a while, a nurse came in and said that I can get in the shower and get rinsed off. They had a chair for me to sit on, which was good because I had to energy to stand up. I get rinsed off and get into a clean bed and rest. They also brought the baby to me and had me nurse her. It was weird, but I managed to get it done.

After resting for a bit, DH and I start making phone calls to people. This was probably around 6:30 - 6:45. I called my mom and told her the news. DH called everybody else. FIL came to visit that day and I made more calls after taking a nap. I got transfered to my room while FIL and DH were having lunch so I called them to let them know where I was. The rest of the day was spent resting, making more phone calls and spending time with the baby.

Here are some pictures taken by DH that day. The pictures in the previous post were taken on Monday, May 28th by Mandy.




3 comments:

Monsoon said...

I love to hear labor stories(nw that I have one too! I will be posting one myself in a day or two. I agree the grinding on your uterus after labor was NOT fun. It hurt as bad as some of the really bad contractions. (I saw it mentioned in a few books, but they do not tell you that it hurts like hell!) Enjoy your daughter, we are heading home later today to enjoy ours!

Susan @ Real Girl Designs said...

Thanks for sharing. My water broke in my office, while I was sitting at my desk. My DH was out of town, so I went to the hospital with a co-worker in a cab. I felt sorry for the poor cab driver, because I had nothing to clean up all the mess I left in the back seat. LOL

Karen said...

Congratulations!!! She's beautiful. I have never heard of that uterus "grinding" thing. I was my sister's labor coach, and they didn't do that to her. Wow. Sounds truly awful. But I'm sure by now you're thinking it was all worth it! :)