Birth

Gosh, where to start right? Well. Lets start with a birth story. Everyone loves a good birth story.

No? That's okay. I'm going to tell my story anyway. And then we can  fast forward. Sorry but this first one, will be a long one. Stay with me. I'll get more entertaining later but I need to get this down before I forget all of the details.

It was a Monday. Very boring. Went in for my NST (Non-Stress Test) and gave up another urine sample. I swear, you learn to pee on demand when you are pregnant. Also you drop your pants a lot more too, but that's for another post.

As per usual, my son did not want to cooperate with the monitor. I even drank 12 oz of juice in the waiting room. So our NST took over 2 hours, again. Then the doctor had us wait in the exam room for almost 45 minutes... Again. Going to my prenatal appointments was definitely an all day event. I was just starting to get hungry and annoyed when she came in and checked me. I was dilated to 1cm and about 50% effaced. GREAT news. I'm at 39 weeks and I'm so ready to not be pregnant anymore. I just wanted to meet my son!

We left and my husband and I headed to the Chinese buffet for dinner. We were meeting some friends there. As we sat down to eat my doctor calls me and asks me to come in the next morning and take another urine test. I agree to it, pretty much use to her calling at all hours and asking me to do tests that always turn out normal.

8am the next morning, my husband and I head to the doctor's office and I pee on demand again. As I'm waving goodbye to the nurse, she stops me and tells me that I'm suppose to stay until the test results are done. Wait... what? Can someone tell me what is going on? We wait for a few minutes and the doctor comes in and tells me there is protein and I have to be admitted so she can induce me. Silly pregnant lady is excited. That means a baby right? We're going to go have a baby!

I ask her if I could go home, eat breakfast and get my bag. Nope. Husband can go home and get my bag. I'm not allowed to eat. So much for my big plans to attack a Taco Bell crunch wrap for breakfast. So my husband goes upstairs to Labor and Delivery with me and helps me get all settled into a room before he leaves to get my things.

When the nurse comes back to hook me up to the NST monitor I ask her what is going to happen. She tells me that we're going to start me on Cervadil for 6 hours and then check me before starting Pitocin. That doctor will send me home in 48 hours if I don't have the baby by then. We're already at 9am now. We finally start the Cervadil at 11am and honestly, I don't even really know that it changes anything. At 6pm my nurse comes in and takes out the Cervadil and checks me, I'm at 3cm and 75% effaced. It's working. While she was checking me, my nurse accidentally broke my water, so I'm definitely here until I have a baby now! The on call doctor wants to wait and see what my body does on it's own.

So I go to sleep. Bad move. No one told me I should have used that opportunity to get up and move around and walk or shower or get in the tub. So I sleep. In all honesty, I am exhausted at this point because I haven't been allowed to eat all day.

I wake up every so often with the contractions and they offer me some IV painkiller, since I'm also hooked up to two IVs. I accept and go back to sleep. When I wake up again it's morning and I'm still contracting and still hanging out in bed. I've been checked again and now I'm at 4cm. We've slowed down a lot. They start Pitocin at a 1, I have no idea what this means. Every hour they increase the number. At some point the contractions are so terrible that I beg for an epidural. We're at 5cm when I get it. Eventually I'm at a 16 for the pitocin, I think. They keep checking me and some times I've progressed and sometimes not as much. Around 5pm they check me again and I'm at 8.5cm finally. I've been in and out of sleep all day with the painkiller they gave me and now that I'm at 8.5 I'm excited. This is great news. Except that it's not. My doctor comes in around 7pm and says that I've been running a low grade fever, despite being given tylenol. When did I get tylenol? I don't remember. And she says my son's heart rate has been accelerating. She wants to move me to the OR for an emergency c-section right away.

I'm DEVASTATED. I don't even know if I can stress that enough. My entire goal was to push out a baby boy and have this natural high adrenaline rush while they put my baby on my chest and I smile up at my husband all sweaty and tearful. That's not how it's going to go. They have me sign  consent forms and I am wheeled down the hall. My husband isn't allowed to go with me yet. I hear them tell him on my way out that if I fall asleep they will not allow him in the room with me. So I make my number one goal to stay awake.

It doesn't seem like it takes long but they inject more drugs into my epidural and transfer me to the operating table. I'm being prepped and it doesn't seem to take very long before my husband is with me again. (If you ask him, it was a lifetime. I believe him.)

I feel myself starting to drift and my husband does a great job of keeping me awake. Apparently we have the same goal. I feel a tug and then my doctor says "Oh my God, look at all that hair!" -- I can only assume she's talking about my boy so I smile. I can't see my son though. She starts to stitch me back up  and I feel pressure while she's closing me. Wait -- Why isn't my son crying? Why haven't I seen him? How long has it been? I start to feel panic rising in my chest like vomit. My husband is looking around the curtain at the nurses. They're doing something with my son but neither of us can see. Finally I hear his cry but it's short lived.

At some point my husband is handed my son and he's just so perfect. He shows him to me and I'm crying. We made that. Then a special care pediatrician comes to talk to me while I'm still being closed up. Apparently my son's first APGAR score was a 2. This means he had life threatening issues and needed medical intervention immediately. His next (5 minute) APGAR was a 5, which is better but still not a great score. At ten minutes they scored him as an 8, which is healthy. Then he was swaddled and handed to my son. She explains all of this to me and tells me that when his cord was cut, his sugar dropped and he stopped breathing but he should be fine now.

I'm moved from the table back to my bed and my son is handed to me. They wheel me back to my room and my bedside nurse asks if I would like to breast feed my son. OF COURSE! Please. Show me. We get him to latch (like a champ!) and after two suckles, he starts turning blue. The nurse lifts his arm and drops it. He's limp. She grabs him from me and calls a code into her voice paging thing. She says there is a NRP in my room and says "ALL call" -- Within SECONDS my room is flooded with nurses and doctors. Seconds.

I have to pause here because this part of the story is hard.

It takes 25 minutes for them to get my son completely resuscitated. The whole time I'm a wreck watching from the other side of the room. Nurses rotate out talking to me and keeping me calm. My husband is sitting on the bed beside me.

He is stabilized and whisked away to the special care nursery. I'm informed later that he will be transferred to NICU at another hospital (Riley Children's) but they will bring him down before he goes so that I can see him again. Keep in mind, I have only seen him for a MAX  of ten minutes now. I'm dying inside.

That is it for the birth story. But I would like to mention here that my son is beautiful, he is perfect and he only spent seven days in NICU before being released home. We feel like three of those days were not really needed but CYA days for the hospital.