Birth Story

So, it has taken more than two months for me to write this up, but here it is, finally.  :-)

On Wednesday, April 18^th, I went in to the ER for some unusual chest pain.  I had felt the pain once before but had ignored it after it went away, since it did not reoccur.  However, when the pain did reoccur on the 18^th, it was worse than it had been before, a debilitating nerve pain, like brain freeze, right in the middle of my sternum.  The pain itself was pretty intense, but the real difficulty was that it was relentless.  No matter what position I was in, where I pressed on my chest, or what I drank, the pain would not go away.  So, when it had lasted long enough that I couldn’t stand it anymore, I went to the hospital.

When I arrived, the valet fetched me and my mother a wheelchair, and she rolled me inside.  Before they even asked me what was the matter, every doctor and nurse in the room was declaring that I was to be moved to L&D.  Once I finally got their attention, I told them that I wasn’t there for the baby, he wasn’t coming any time soon, but that surely this chest pain would kill me soon if somebody didn’t pay attention to it.  And so eventually, they agreed to keep me in the E.R., as long as I had an L&D nurse with me the whole time.

Honestly, being a pregnant woman got me the fasted E.R. service I have ever experienced, but my mother and I would still be sitting there until very late at night.  (We arrived around noon.)  Pretty immediately, they hooked me up to heart rate and contraction monitor straps around my belly, as well as my own heart rate monitor and automatic blood pressure cuff.  I could hardly move for all the various wires.  They discovered that both the baby and I had elevated heart rates.  This obviously concerned them, and they decided to keep me overnight for observation.  At least they were kind enough to move me to L&D for the stay.

By the time we moved up to L&D, my mother had to leave.  Luckily, only a few hours later, Vince showed up to keep me company.  He slept on the little bench that they had in the room, and I lay in bed all night, hardly sleeping at all.  The monitors were terribly uncomfortable and restricting, and morning came with exhaustion.  While I was awake at seven or eight, Vince continued to sleep until ten or eleven.

I was administered a one hour blood glucose test in the morning, and so I wasn’t able to eat until it had passed.  I think I napped on and off through the morning, my mother stopped by twice.  At some point, I was rolled away for an ultrasound, which ended with a surprise 3D session.  I was given several “3D” images of my son after the procedure.  When eleven or twelve rolled around, I finally got Vince to wake up, which led to a huge fight ending with him storming out of the room, saying, “Sometimes I hate you!”  By the time the Doctor came in to see me, I had just barely had time to dry my tears.  Little did I know, I would be fighting back tears for the next several hours.

When the doctor came in, she had bad news for me.  I had failed the glucose test, and my ultrasound from that morning showed “excessive fluid.”  She told me that these two things together indicated that I may have developed Gestational Diabetes.  She suggested we move for an induction.  I was devastated.  I had expected to have a flawless delivery, unmedicated and natural.  I knew it wasn’t time for the baby to come, I hadn’t even felt any real contractions.  (Remember, I had only come to the hospital because of those pesky heart pains.)  I didn’t know this at the time, but I was hardly even dilated at all.  If my birth had been allowed to progress naturally, my baby would not have come out for at least two weeks.  Also, I had spent my whole pregnancy reading about the horrible statistics of hospitals.  I knew that inducing significantly increased my chances of “needing” a c-section.

I told the doctor that I didn’t know what I wanted to do, that I needed some time to think.  Once she left, I spent some time crying.  I texted my mother and let her know what was going on.  I cried some more.  Vince tried to call me and continue fighting with me.  I told him I didn’t give a fuck about his problems.  I told him none of it mattered to me at all, that I had other shit on my mind, and didn’t want to deal with his drama.  Once he had shut up enough to listen to the situation with the baby, he asked if he should come to the hospital.  I told him I didn’t know.

Shortly afterward, the nurse came to visit me.  I would like to say here that both of my nurses were lovely, and that I was blessed to have them with me on my journey.  I don’t remember their names, but this nurse was younger, with shoulder-length hair.  She told me that she had worked at many L&D units all over the country, and of them all, she trusted the doctors at this one the most.  She also told me that, usually, this particular doctor was not the type to push for inductions.  I asked her for her personal opinion, and she said that she would go for it.  She said that, if this doctor was asking for an induction, it was for a good reason, and she could be trusted to work for my best interests.

That was enough to convince me, and I told her that I would go through with the induction.  I called my mother and let her know, and got a hold of Vince.

They started me on pitocin by the afternoon.  At this point, the nurses had changed out, and now I was with the older, redheaded nurse that would stay with me throughout the entire delivery.  She kept the pitocin low and slow, doing me a mercy.  She was a wonderful woman, completely supportive of my wish to be unmedicated, and later of my choice to medicate.

Because of the pitocin, I was required to be on the monitors constantly, which meant I was confined to the bed, unless I was up peeing.  I went through several hours comfortably enough.  Vince showed up eventually, accompanied by my best friend Adam.  My mother was in attendance as well, as often as she could be.  The contractions were mild, at this point.  Once six o’clock (or so) rolled around, the doctor and nurse started talking about breaking my water, since I wasn’t progressing very quickly.  I didn’t really want this to happen, since it would put a time limit on my labor, and I would have much rather had a long, easy labor, than a short one full of complications.  It turned out that my water breaking was the least of my worries.

When the doctor arrived to do the procedure at eight or nine, she started with a cervical check, to make sure the baby was still head down.  The baby had been head down for my entire pregnancy, so I was completely shocked when she said that she couldn’t feel the head anymore.  She brought in a little portable ultrasound and confirmed that suddenly, for no reason at all, my baby was breech.  (Now, I had felt a “flip” a few hours before, but I had thought that the baby was simply rolling over, to face the back instead of the front.  I had never imagined that he would suddenly flip breech.  I am convinced this happened because we introduced pitocin, and he didn’t like the idea of being pushed out just yet.)

The next thing the doctor said was, “Stop the pitocin, we’re going to do a c-section.”

I immediately panicked.  Couldn’t I just deliver breech?  No, she said.  There’s not a doctor in the city that will deliver breech.  Can I try inversion positions, take some time to flip the baby back?  It probably wouldn’t work, she said.  Finally, I asked about an external version procedure.  I absolutely refused to be rolled in for a c-section.  She tried to tell me the risks associated with an external version.  Finally, I told her to give me some time to try and flip the baby on my own, and if I couldn’t, then we would do an external.  She didn’t particularly like it, but she left me alone to do my thing.

I spent the next hour laying with my head down, and my ass up in the air, but no luck.  I was determined.  The baby had only flipped a short time ago, he should easily flip back.  I willed him to flip over with all of my heart and mind.  Unfortunately, both my heart and mind were exhausted; I could hardly keep myself from crying, much less connect with my unborn child and tell him what to do.  It was getting late, I had hardly slept the night before, and emotionally, I was approaching my breaking point.  Vince had been present this whole time, but he had been either asleep, or non-responsive.  My attempts at telepathy and spiritual connection failed.  The child stayed stubbornly upright.

The doctor returned with her little ultrasound again, and a large bottle of lubricant.  My only choice now was the external version.  I lay on my back, and my lovely nurse offered me narcotic pain medication, which I refused.  She was surprised, but didn’t push it.  I was put on oxygen, however, since our heart rates were elevated again.  The doctor did a quick (rather painful) ultrasound to decide which way to turn the baby, and then set to it.  She applied a generous amount of lubricant to my stomach, told me to take a deep breath, and started pushing the baby counter-clockwise.

This was the most painful thing I have ever experience.  I actually cried out in pain.

With one great push, she had the baby sideways, with his head on my right side.  She took a half a second to give us both a break, and then pushed again, sliding him around to upside-down again.  When success was announced, I immediately broke down into sobs, releasing the tension that the pain had built up in me.

Vince remained in his position on the little bench, lying down, throughout the entire procedure.  The ENTIRE time that our son was being wrestled inside my stomach, and I was crying out in pain, he stayed where he was, and didn’t say a word.  He pretended he was still asleep.

Immediately after the baby was confirmed head down, the doctor set about breaking my water.  They wanted to get rid of the extra fluid that the baby had to swim about in, and suck him down into the birth canal, so that he wouldn’t flip breech again.  Compared to the external, the exam of my (extremely sensitive) cervix seemed like nothing.

Finally, as they were preparing to break my water, Vince came to my side.  He didn’t say much, but I was just stupidly grateful that he was next to me.  It didn’t last long, and soon he was back to his spot.

Once my water broke, the flow of waters was unstoppable; I didn’t think I even held so much fluid.  And it just kept coming.  They had me lying on a stack of towels that my sweet nursed changed out often.  Once I had lain down after the initial gush, it was back to business.  She started up the pitocin again, and strapped all my monitors back up.  I was told that I was allowed to stand as I pleased to work through the contractions (so long as I was close enough to the equipment so the monitors could still reach me.)

However, another problem surfaced.  During the external version, the umbilical cord had wrapped around the baby’s neck once.  This made it so that, unless I was lying on my side, or sitting up on all fours, every time I would have a contraction, the baby’s heart rate would drop dangerously low.  My nurse was amazing, and never panicked.  She worked with me to try and find as many positions where the baby wasn’t stressed as possible.  In the end, though, I was restrained to lying on my side, or being on all fours.

It was now very late at night.  Vince had brought several friends to the room to keep him entertained, including one “friend” that I had specifically requested he NOT invite.  The contractions were starting to get more painful.  The trance music that I had playing helped me to focus through the contractions, but I was very quickly wearing down.  I had hardly slept the night before, and it was nearly three in the morning.  The contractions were painful, and I couldn’t stand or walk, or do anything to work through the pain except try to meditate through them.  I was trying to get on all fours during each contraction, and then trying to lie on my side between contractions so that I could rest.  However, changing positions was extremely difficult, because of the many wires and monitors attached to me.  (At this point, I had two IV lines, a blood-pressure cuff, two wired, internal monitors, and an oxygen mask.)

Everything was working against me.  I think that if even one thing had been different, I may have been able to persevere.  If I had been well rested, and wasn’t so exhausted, if I had been able to stand to work through the contractions, if there hadn’t been so many people in the room, if I hadn’t been attached to so many wires…  if even one of those things had been true, I don’t believe I would have needed the pain relief.  As it was, however, I felt that if I continued the way I was going, with no pain relief, that by the time it came to give birth, I wouldn’t have the energy to push.

So, I spoke to my lovely nurse, and had her set up an epidural.  Even knowing that relief was coming made the pain easier to deal with, knowing that I would be able to give my whole self to delivering my baby.

The epidural was executed flawlessly.  I was still restricted to lying on my side, because of the baby’s cord, but with my oxygen mask, and yet another wire tying me down, I was finally able to relax.  I caught a few hours of sleep, occasionally waking up to flip to the other side, or to push the button on my epidural.

The next time I woke up, the doctor was in the room, and I was told that I was fully dilated.  At this point, I could feel that the epidural was losing some of its efficiency, and I should have pushed the button again, but I chose not to.  I wanted to feel my birth, and by the time I had pushed to crowning, nearly an hour later, I believe that the epidural had almost completely worn off. 

I pushed with my nurse for almost an hour, before the doctor was called in.  At first, it was hard to feel the urge, or even the muscles that I needed to focus on, but as the epidural wore off, I could feel the urge to push more and more, and could identify the proper muscle groups.  My nurse was wonderful, supportive and encouraging.  (She actually ended up staying about an hour after her shift was supposed to end so that she could be with me through the entire delivery.)  When the baby was finally crowning, they transformed my bed, and everybody covered in scrubs.  I was terrified at one point, because nobody was at my feet ready to catch the baby, and the urge to push had taken over me.  I was afraid that I would involuntarily push the baby out while nobody was there to catch him.

I wouldn’t say that the experience of giving birth was painful.  There was certainly pain involved, but the more prevalent descriptor that comes to mind is… “intense.”  As the baby’s head slowly came out, stretching me, my body was filled with adrenaline.  The pain didn’t matter, my body knew exactly what to do, and I was in thrall with the directive, I had no choice.  Giving birth was the most important, despite pain, despite fear or anger or sadness.  It is the only time in life that I have been completely out of control, and I didn’t mind it so much.

I pushed out the head, and felt the doctor turn the baby.  I was told later that she removed the cord from around his neck at this point.  I pushed a few more times, and out came the body.  My little Taurus boy then cried with the most lovely and sweet voice I have ever heard in my life.  I kept asking over and over again, “Is he okay?”  Of course, he was just fine; he had no problems at all.  I wanted skin-to-skin right after the birth, but they didn’t give it to me.  I was laying flat on my back, so I couldn’t attempt to latch, or anything.  (This is the only part of my birth experience that I really regret; I wish I had been more firm about the things that I wanted directly after the birth.)  Vince cut the cord, (it was FAT, more than an inch in diameter) and they took the baby from me for weight and measurement.

Only then did we decide on the name.  Lukas Gabriel was born at 7:09am on April 20^th.  He weighed 7lbs 14oz, and measured at 19 ½ inches.  He was absolutely perfect in every way, and came out looking just like me.  He got a tan skin tone from his father, but his blue eyes and warm, light brown hair came straight from me.   In the two months that it has taken me to write this story, he has nearly doubled his birth weight (my little fatty!) and his voice has only gotten lovelier.

Bottom line?  My birth experience was NOT what I wanted or expected, and at times it was extremely stressful and sad.  However, I have no hard feelings about it, because it led to the most beautiful little boy I have ever met.  Would I do it again?  Absolutely. :-)

Men, Stress, and the Mundane

37 weeks

The last few days have been pretty stressful.  I’ve gotten into more than one nasty fight with Vince that left me feeling beat down and exhausted.  Honestly, I just don’t have the emotional endurance to keep up with him.  He is a constant fire that gets bored and destructive easily.  I just want harmony.  On some days, and in some ways, my natural inclination toward moderation and calm is a balm to him, and we work well together.   At other times, we work in complete opposition.  It doesn’t help that, on top of it all, he is stubborn, and I am even more stubborn.

My mother had a pretty horrible couple of days as well, and I feel so guilt-ridden about it.  It always seems that when I’m not around, her luck is worse.  Her emotional and physical state has become a constant sore on the back of my heart filled with worry.  Sometimes I can’t even bare to imagine the amount of stress she holds on her little shoulders.  I know her physical health is suffering from it.  She is such a fighter, even uphill in the rain, because she doesn’t know how to do anything else.  She’s not the sort of woman that finds the sneaky way around, she’s the sort that will fight on and on up that hill until she just drops from exhaustion.  I just wish Chris, her child-like significant other, would put more effort into easing her burden.  He starts work at Wal-mart tomorrow, and already he has done nothing but complain and make my mother feel horrible.  Sometimes I just want to hit him.  Or put him in time-out.  I’m not sure which would be more productive.

I had a doctor’s appointment this last Wednesday.  I unexpectedly had to walk, and so showed up a little less than fifteen minutes late.  The receptionist tried to tell me that the doctor wouldn’t see me, because I was too late, but I think she realized the danger in telling a pregnant woman that she can’t see her doctor.  I probably would have thrown a fit.

Anyhow, because my primary doctor is off breathing the thin air of Mt. Everest, I got to meet one of his partners instead.  I actually think I liked her better.  She told me a little more than he usually did.  According to her, the baby is still sitting rather high, and he hasn’t fully dropped yet.  That certainly explains the discomfort.  It also puts me a bit at ease.  I can pretty much count on delivering close to, or after my due-date.

Truth be told, I would love to pop him out on 4/20.  I’ve tried to convince Vince to buy me some Red Raspberry Leaf tea, as well as some evening primrose oil, just to try and help things along.  I may also ask to have my membranes swept that day.  I’m not desperate enough for the birth date that I’ll use castor oil, and I certainly would not care for a chemically induced labor.  So I’ll have to stick to the good old standby of sex, pineapple, and spicy foods to try and get this baby out on that day.  If it doesn’t happen, I can’t be too upset.

My mother bought a battery charger, so my camera is officially up and running again.  Perhaps next time I’ll have some pictures to share.  It’s not really a blog without pictures, right?

Fear, Loss, and Resentment

35 weeks, 1 day

So I had a little bit of a breakdown today.  I lifted my shirt in the bathroom mirror today, and almost couldn’t handle it.  My stomach looks like a crime scene.  It’s almost gory, it makes me so sick.

I didn’t have a single stretch mark for the majority of my pregnancy.  It wasn’t until five months came around when the first couple reared their ugly heads.  I didn’t mind so much, because they were small, just three tiny red lines coming out the top of my belly button.  Otherwise, my belly stayed smooth and flawless for a good amount of time.  I developed a few more as time went on, but not enough to really bother me.

And then one day, it seemed my skin couldn’t take the strain anymore, and I woke up the next morning hardly able to recognize the once-smooth surface of my belly.  The marks had exploded across the bottom half of my belly.  I don’t care who you are, stretch marks are ugly because they look painful.  The skin is RIPPED apart.  Since that first initial explosion of stripes, the marks have only gotten worse.

This hurts me worse than anything else I have gone through with this pregnancy.  My VANITY suffers.  I suddenly have this great, glaring physical flaw, and I don’t know how to deal with it.  I am reduced to tears consistently, facing this horrible change.  I know it sounds vain and selfish, and maybe it is, and I DON’T CARE.  It hurts so badly to suddenly have something about myself that I HATE.

What will happen to me when I go back to work?  I will never again be one of the flawless girls, “one of the hot ones.”  I will never again be able to work in a high class club.  Forever, for the rest of my career, I will be one of the mediocre ones, one of the ones that is lucky to make even half of what could be pulled out of a club.  I was only able to enjoy my work for a little over a year before this pregnancy took over me.  Dancing is my PASSION, my LOVE in life, and it has been taken away from me.  Now, instead of a beautiful dancer, I feel like I will be a desperate mom stripper. 

I don’t know how to even articulate the level of hurt that this causes me.  I expected to be able to spend many years as a beautiful dancer, choosing to work in whatever club I liked, making as much money as I chose to ask for.  Now what?  My future is nothing like I wanted it to be.

…

Even writing this is making me cry.

I cannot wait to get back to work.  I want to feel the pain in my muscles again, and I want to feel the power of strength that that grants me.  I want to lose myself into the music, and I want to fly.  But it will NEVER be the same.  It will never be the way it was again.  I feel like somebody let my take one bite of the most delicious cheesecake ever made, and then threw the rest of it down on the ground before me.  I didn’t have enough time to really enjoy and experience this work as I wanted to.

The universe has taken everything from me.  Every material belonging to my name, I have lost.  I have lost the time that I wanted, and I have lost my VANITY.  Everything I ever cared for has been taken from me, and I know it is meant to be replaced by this little boy.  I am afraid I will still be unhappy.

I am afraid of resentment.

34 weeks, 1 day

I feel like I’m in purgatory right now.  I’m far enough along that I’m anxious to see the end, and starting to feel uncomfortable, but not far enough to feel the looming possibility of imminent delivery.  In fact, I am quite confident that this baby is very happy in his little home, and I doubt I will deliver before the final due-date.

…

Being pregnant makes writing frustratingly difficult.  I can make any simple statement, make it true and thoughtful, but I can’t seem to string them together with any sort of linearity.  (Is that even a word?  It ought to be…) my thought processes are jumbled and disconnected, pushing too many things around at once.  Maybe writing these things will help me to organize…

…

I’ve been meaning to write for a long time.  I’ve spent more than three months procrastinating this very moment, and now I find myself just as unprepared as I expected I’d be.  I’ve never been terribly good at keeping record, but at this time I feel as though there is a wall blocking the passage of emotion and thought into my hands.  Maybe I should start by telling a story…

I had a doctor’s appointment today.  It was short, efficient, and boring.  I’m not terribly fond of my obgyn, but because of the late nature of my prenatal care, I didn’t have much choice.  I just needed health care, the face didn’t particularly matter.  My Medicaid didn’t kick in until nearly thirty weeks of gestation, and at that point I was so desperate to see a doctor that I chose the closest available.  Now I’m stuck with it.

It’s not that he’s unfriendly or rude.  I just think he’s sort of… high traffic.  He is one of the few doctors in the city that accepts Medicaid, and so I’m sure his client list is quite extensive.  His mannerisms are very efficient and non-personal.  He divulges little information that isn’t imperative, and our appointments rarely last longer than fifteen minutes.  It seems his ideals have followed the same track of efficiency.  He keeps to the sort of ideas that follow the mainstream, and can get him through the many patients that he sees every day.  For example, when I asked him about the hospital’s policy on allowing me to leave with the placenta, he made a comment about people doing “weird stuff” with it.  For those of you out of the loop, it is quite common for us crunchy, naturalistic mommies to ingest the placenta after birth, either by powdering and encapsulating it, or by preparing it as a meat.  I know that this is what he was referring to, and so I kept my mouth shut about my own decision to ingest the organ.  I don’t think it would have gone over well.

Luckily, he was very supportive of my decision to breastfeed.  (I think that most physicians are, however.)  I have not spoken to him about my decision to go through with a natural unmedicated childbirth; I have no idea how he would react.

Not that it matters anyhow, he won’t be around for the delivery, and neither will any of the other doctors that I will be seeing up until then.  Apparently it is the new fashion for well established doctors to climb Mt. Everest in the summers.  That’s where my doctor will be, anyhow.

I’ve decided I don’t particularly care what doctor I see anymore, since the likelihood of my preferred ob being the one to catch the baby is about as slim as the little stick that told me I was in this mess.

Vincent didn’t want to come to the appointment today, and I can’t say I blame him.  The doctor told me nothing of interest and, as I stated before, the entire appointment didn’t even last as long as it took to make the baby in the first place.  (That’s saying something, if I know anything about our sexual habits at the time of conception… and I do.)

I feel quite a lot of affection for him lately.  He has made a complete turnaround from a couch-hopping bum to a hard working guy.  Currently, he spends twelve hours a day, seven days a week, caring for a quadriplegic friend of ours.  This work is intensive, demanding, and relentless.  Vince must be there EVERY morning to get P out of bed, shower him, change his catheter, dress him, and cook him breakfast.  In addition, every afternoon he has to administer P’s medications, and every night, he has to put him to bed.  The times in between, Vince can’t be far, in case P should need help with anything.  If Vince isn’t there, P gets stuck in bed, which is a terrible situation for him.  Vince doesn’t get weekends, or even reasonable working hours.  He is on call as P’s attendant for every hour that he is awake. 

If he were getting paid, I’m sure it wouldn’t seem so horrible.

You read that right, Vince is not getting paid for these services at this time.  Because of the irresponsibility of P’s former attendant, Vince was asked to fill the role without any notice, and because of the necessity of the situation, he did so.  Unfortunately, he had no way to know that it would take nearly two months for him to get on the payroll and start receiving checks for his work.  In addition, all of the work that he has done every day for the last month and a half was off paper, and so he will not see even a penny of the wages that he was promised for that time.

I know that he is feeling the strain of this.  Luckily, his employment approval should come in within the next day or two, and he will start getting checks then.  I try and make him feel a little better about it, telling him that his time will be returned to him.  He has been completely selfless in helping P go about his daily motions, with no compensation except his stress.  The karma will return to him, it must.  I don’t think it makes him feel any better.

It doesn’t help that we aren’t living together at the moment, and he doesn’t get to see me (and the attached baby) as often as he would like.

I feel so much gratitude for the work that he is doing (as well as a healthy dose of guilt for not being as supportive as I could), and I want to make him feel better.  Finally, I see some hope for our future.  It’s been a long time since I’ve looked around and seen anything but unhappiness coming towards me.

I think I shall write again soon.  Maybe by that time we might have decided on a name….

Haha, yeah right.