Maddie's Story - Part 1 - Birth

Right now my kiddo is asleep in her crib with the white noise CD her Daddy made playing. Pray God it stays that way, this is her witching hour.
It's time for the recollection of her birth. Well, here we go. And I apolagize ahead of itme to anybody who's sensitive about baby stuff or bodily funcitons (namely birth, no bathroom humor).
It's all part of the wonderful circle of life (cue Lion King music). Besides, I know several women my own age who read my blog from time to time - I consider it a public service to speak the truth about childbirth, especially natural childbirth, in all its glory. Gives you a new respect for your mom, too.

Saturday (11/18) we walked all over the South Philly Ikea looking for a new coffee table and other tables for our livning room. Very successful, had lots of energy, only had to sit down once. Felt a little crampy Saturday night, but crampy is a way of life to a pregnant woman.

Sunday I felt pretty craptacular - like the worst period I ever had, times two. (Hey, I warned you about bodily stuff.) Cramps, and dear-God-what-is-going-on-down-there discharge (Again, I warned you. I'm trying to be honest here.) It got worse and worse as the day wore on, and by mid to late afternoon I found myself on the couch in the one position that didn't make me want to end it all with Astronaut pill. Worst of all, had a major need to visit the bathroom frequently, and got nothing accomplished there. Plus sitting up like that was excrushiating. Bob found me several times that day crying helplessly on the toilet (and if you thought that was too personal to share, just stop reading now and pretend you were hatched out of a egg instead). Not good. BUT: I was not in labor, or so I thought. Labor was pulling, tugging cramps that start in back and come around front. Labor was waves of pain. Labor was back aches that reach around to your tummy rhythmically and in regular intervals, growing closer together and more intense until you could time them at 5 minutes apart and you called the doctor, went to the hosptial, and magically popped out a baby.

What I felt was akin to the pressure I'd been feeling since about month 8, that of a baby head pushing pushing pushing down on my pelvic & pubic bones. It would come and never quite go, but BOY did it know how to get my attention.

Stupidly, I figured this was part of late pregnancy (being 5 days from my due date and scheduled induction and of a family of women who deliver their babies very late and very slowly). We went to Bob's parents house. Bob started timing my 'contractions' using some bizarre graph that I still don't understand and all through the evening, everybody apparently knew I was in labor but me. Bob's Dad even took him aside and said, "Take your wife to the hospital". Well, he's seen a woman go through labor 3 times, he'd know. I wouldn't, clearly. But again, this was not like what I'd ever heard labor described as. For one thing, it never went away. From about 4PM on there was no real break where you could sit back and go, "whew, thank God that's over!" It just very slowly got more tolerable until BAM, I wanted to put my foot through the floor again. I was eventually talked into calling the doctor around 9PM, after going to the bathroom and finding that I'd had my 'bloody show' - incidentally not that bloody and NOT a good show, but a sure sign that labor is iminent if not already on top of you.

The doc didn't sound too concerned, especially since this was my first baby and I couldn't really say that the 'contractions' were regular. She said to take benadryl and a hot shower and try to get some sleep. So we went home (OW all the way) and I tried to do just that. She did tell us to time the contractions and if they got regular or closer together to call again. Laying down in bed was enough to kill me. My body just didn't want to be in that position, and it let me know. We called again at 11. She said to come in and get checked. She didn't sound particularly convinced.

The drive to the hospital was VERY long and VERY horrible. I remember thinking, "Well, even if this isn't labor and we do get sent home, maybe they can give me something for these cramps." By the time we got to the ER, I was pretty conviced it was labor. But I thought there was still a good chance we'd get sent home. I told Bob to just leave the bags in the car (we'd actually thought to take them!) and we got a wheelchair and headed up to Labor & Delivery. The ER attendant asked if my water had broken. I honestly didn't know. I'd felt all day like I'd had a flood down there, and how was I supposed to know what water breaking felt like? In retrospect, I'd probably had a leak all day. The attendant asked a woman in the ER, "She'd know if her water broke, right?" and the woman laughed and said OH yes! Well, apparently not.

We got up there and I'd pretty much shut down, verbally. Bob did all the talking for me. I remember one nurse being impressed that he knew my social security number. I also remember wanting to kill her if she didn't stop wasting time making small talk and get me an Epidural. The doctor of duty in L&D turned out to be the one doctor in my gigantic practice that I hadn't seen yet - the one I was scheduled to see the next day for a cervix check. Well, she checked me right then and there, and I was praying to God that I'd be far enough along that the could keep me there and get me the ever-lovin' Epidural.

Now, a word about my Epidural obsession; I was never one of those natural childbirth girls. I think it's nuts. I STILL think it's nuts. You woudln't have a tooth pulled without novacaine, would you? I made fun of the women on "House of Babies" who scream "oh god it hurts it hurts" - well what did you think, it would feel good to pull a watermelon out of a lemon-sized hole? Epidural. Duh.

The doctor happily announced that I was 5 cm dialated (if you don't know what that means, ask your mom and get ready for a long story). The L&D nurse, who was entirely too damn happy for my taste, congratulated me like crazy as if I'd just won the lottery. Apparently coming into L&D halfway to the 10 cm goal was a dream come true. Other women would kill to be in my shoes. I was going to kill if I didn't get my precious epidrual. There was a plan, and it involved me being happy, calm, and pain free when I gave birth. Ha ha. Well there was a million things to do before I could have any kind of relief - and at this point the 'contractions' had decided that they weren't going to let up at ALL in between (in between what? there was no start and end!) I had to have blood tests, they had to monitor the baby, she wouldn't cooperate so we had to do an internal monitor on her head (so yes, a wire comes out of THERE and it's attached to a machine on one end and her head on the other). At this point the doctor couldn't even tell if my water had broken or not. She asked if I'd felt it break and of course my standard wail of the evevning came out "I DON'T KNOW!" so she attempted to drain whatever was left in there (ew) and that was that. I had to have an I. V., and it wasn't working - damn my small, floppy veins! - and so I got stuck all over and finally told that they had to let an entire bag of mystery water drip into me before I could have the epidural. OH. MY. GOD.

(See how I'm not even trying to pretend that I was in any way calm, relaxed, our displaying any self control at this point?)

I 'breathed through the pain' (fantasized about punching the evil nurse) and stared at this one weird-looking flower on the weird-looking wallpaper and tried to breathe and not tense up - because apparently being 'tense' is bad for you at this point, when your body is feels like it's being ripped to shreds. FINALLY they came back and said we could have the epidural, just a quick cervix check and away we'd go. The whole wait was about 20 minutes their time, 20 hours, mine.

8 centimeters. I'd gone up 3 cm! I'd done in 20 minutes what some women labor all night to do. Actually, my body had, because I myself had nothing to do with it, I assure you. But OH wasn't that nurse pleased with me. She was going to throw me a party, I thought. "Do you know how many women would kill to be that far along? You haven't even been here an hour and you're almost done!" Joy of joys. Epidural please.
Nope, sorry.
Apparently this stage doesn't require pain killers anymore. (I beg to differ still.) You're there. The epidural is to get you to this point. It would just mess up the ability to push after this. I was going to go "natural", whether I liked it or not. And like it I didn't.
I was unconvined, and asked if there wasn't something else they could give me (I'm thinking local, for the actual baby-coming-out part. Cause OUCH.)

"Oh, no, you'll be fine!" Um...have I mentioned there's a baby in there adn it needs to come out? Dear Lord....

Well the nurse told me that if I felt like I had to push, or the urge to mabye have a bowl movement, I should tell her and we'd try to start pushing. I told her I'd felt that way since this morning, let's push already. So they took the bottom of the bed off - it's all very high-tech with the morphing delivery beds - and before I new it, I had my knees up to my chest, Bob holidng one leg and a nurse holding the other (and I had miraculously shaved that day, what are the odds?) and I was 'pushing'.

"Pushing", my friends, is a nice way of saying "trying to take a dump", because that's exactly what you have to do. (Again, you were warned way up there. Deal.) The doctor actually pushed exactly where she wanted me to focus all the pressure on, and guess where that was? Pushing was the worst part, hands down. It was long and horrible work, and I only did it for 40 minutes. Some women push for hours. How, I don't know. They're wonder-women and deserve freakin' medals. 40 minutes was enough for me, thankyouverymuch. You pull your own legs back and 'focus' your pushing to a very specific area - and they keep telling you if you have the right area or not, I have no idea how they knew - and you breathe in really deep and tuck your chin to your chest so you don't push with your face ( ha ha) and then you push like you ate the whole cow. Sometimes they counted, sometimes not. Bob felt SO bad for me at this point, he says. You do this deep-breath, push, let it out thing 3 times and then you fall back on the table exhausted. And oh, yeah, it HURTS. (unless you have an epidural. not that I'm bitter.)

Well we pushed and pushed and I actually considered not telling them when I felt another contraction coming - oh, yeah, by the time you dialate that far you actually do get waves that you can feel, it's actually kind of nice at that point, except for the whole pushing thing. I was so tired I just wanted to fake not feeling one an lie back and rest, but then I remembered that they had me on a monitor and I couldn't exactly lie at that point. Damn.

I didn't feel the doctor cut a 'small' episiotomy. I DID feel the baby's head come out, but I gotta tell you, not near as painful as I thought it would be. More of a shock, because I had no idea how close I was. Actually, the nurse kept saying, "Just a few more. You're so close. Just a little more" and I kept asking "how many more?" I wanted a clear end in sight, I guess. The doctor told me, "Meg, the baby's head is out!" and I distinctly remember feeling this rush of pain and thinking "don't care right now! ow!" (How terrible am I? That was my thought! Oh well, nothing was very 'baby story' that night anyway') I also didn't believe them, because this pain was just going to go on forever and ever, wasn't it?

And all of the sudden, without any more warning, there was a hot little baby body on my chest, on her side, with her arms reaching for me and her eyes wide open. I'd done no more pushing after the moment her head was out - I guess the doctor did the rest - and there she was.

She cired, she was healthy, she was beautiful, Bob cried long before I did - he said it was mainly from a feeling of relief for me, that it was all over. I didn't cry till much later, when I was just holding her, when it was just her and me in our hospital bed.

SO we went into the hospital at midnight and at 1:38 we had our baby. Damn, we're good.

Nothing was as it was planned, of course; I was supposed to have an induction; everybody was supposed to have been waiting at the hospital to meet her, including Dad; I was supposed to have some kind of 'labor' time, when Bob and I would sit and wait and talk and play cards and keep distracted' I was supposed to have had that epidural; we were supposed to have called our families to tell them that we were at the hospital, then that we were ready to push, and THEN that we had the baby; we were supposed to have had the camera ready! Nope, you don't get what you plan with kids, ever, I'm learning.

All I'm going to say about the third stage of labor (Stage 1 being the contraction part and Stage 2 being the baby coming out) was that it actually felt kind of, well, nice, when they delivered the placenta (ok, stop whining, wuss. Life is gross.) It was warm and smaller than a baby, kind of a relief, kind of soothing. How many of you just decided to adopt?

Afterwards they had a horrible time 'fixing' me because I'd been so tense from pushing that I really felt no control over my legs and couldn't really open them to let the doc do her stuff. She kept threatening to send me to the operating room to get stiched up there. She finally called in a resident to help her. I was a mss - but hey, it was painful! I was in shock! Who could relax?

And THEN we called people. And Bob got the camera and we got some good shots of baby, and Bob's parents came to see her (2;30 in the morning at this point).

And I found out that NOT having had any pain meds had its advantages. They let me get off the delivery bed and walk to the bathroom and although I ruined a new pair of socks that I'd left on during the birth, (don't think about how, just remember that birth=blood, even though they don't show it on TV) it was lovely just to be able to walk around a bit. I got to go into the nursery with Bob and the baby while the weighed and measured her, too. And I got to get into my own bed in my own (private!) room myself. They showed me all the lovely procedures you have to go through to go to the bathroom (10 minutes, minimum, to pee!). And then we got to hold the baby some more, said goodnight to Bob's parents, and Bob and I eventually acknowledged that both of us were too exhausted to think anymore, and he went home and I (sort of) went to bed. I slept from 6:30 till 8:00, when they called me to tell me to order my breakfast from the room service menu.

And the demands that that hospital placed on me never stopped. This doctor, that nurse, here's the baby, we're taking the baby for this or that test, make sure you use the Stiz bath (there's another mystery I'll leave you), order your next meal, here to check your vitals, here to check your sugar, I'm the pediatrician let's talk, breastfeeing consultation, housekeeping, would you like to order a baby photo, etc. I think I slept maybe 7 hours the 3 nights I was there.

We had lots of visitors, lots of guests, and it was fun. When everybody went home I could never settle down, still running on too much adrenaline. The whole thing left me so high I could have flown for days on no rest at all. But that's probably nature's design. :-)

SO that's her birith story. Maddie's Story, Part 1.

I still want to talk (vent, whatever) about all the other stuff since - Thanksgiving, breastfeeding, family staying at our house, baby care, staying home with her, etc. But that will have to wait for another night because poor Bob's had her royal fusiness for quite a while now. It's beddy time.

*Night*