Lynnaea: A Baby Story

I used to watch that show A Baby Story on TLC.  I don't remember all the thoughts I had back then (it was 12 years ago, after all...).  I just know I liked the show.  And I figured it was an apt title for this post.  I should warn you -- this will be a long one.

So Thursday, the 23rd, I had my doctor's visit for being full-term.  I documented here that I was 75% effaced, 2 cm dilated, etc.  I shared that the doctor expected I'd have a baby by the following Tuesday.  My timeline was getting short.  But I just spent the day doing my normal stuff.  I ate a regular dinner with Jeremy.  I told my mom there was no baby yet (when she called that evening), and she said, "You're just going to enjoy your last days of freedom, huh?"  Haha... To which she added, "Because once Baby comes, you're a mom forever."  Or something along those lines.  I laughed as I relayed that message to Jeremy.  Jeremy and I went to bed around 9.  Around 9:30, I started noticing I was feeling menstrual cramp type pains that didn't go away.  I lay there contemplating this and if it was false labor.  I got up to pee about 4 times.  And eventually, during that time, the constant cramp ache started to go into a rise/fall pattern.  Still tolerable, but very close together.  Again, I started thinking "false labor."  Because who has labor that starts with contractions 5 minutes apart?  (Especially first-time labor).  Around 11:30, I got up and walked to the couch to peruse "What to Expect When You're Expecting" and to see what it says about signs of labor.  When I was able to check off about 4 of the items, with the contractions peaking and falling even closer together at that point, I decided to wake up Jeremy.  I said to him, "Honey, I need you to wake up. I think I'm in labor, and I don't know what to do."  Hahaha...  Understatement of the year.  So he came out and sat with me and started helping me time contractions.  They were around 3 minutes apart.  But not super severe.  I was still able to talk and laugh.  We decided to contact the medical center and tell them my symptoms and see what they said.  I talked to a nurse who agreed that the frequency of contractions was indicative of real labor, but the intensity of the pain I described was not high enough yet.  She recommended I take a warm bath and drink lots of fluids.  And she said I could go in to be checked if I wanted to, since it's hard to determine things over the phone.  I relayed the message to Jeremy.  He said, "Okay, if you want to do a warm bath or something, that's fine.  I'm still going to get ready, because I have a feeling we're going in."  Boy was he ever right!  I got in the shower for a few minutes -- which took forever, because by this point the intensity was climbing, and I could no longer walk through the contractions easily.  So I'd pause and lean against something while the contraction passed.  All the while, Jeremy is getting ready, packing the last-minute things I called out to him for the hospital bag, and timing my contractions as I called them out to him.  And they were 1.5 to 2 minutes apart.  This was surreal to me.  I mean, seriously!?!  What happened to 20 hours of labor?  Not that I'm saying I want to be in labor that long...  But this was super fast!  We managed to get out the door about 12:40.

And this is where it got really fun.

We are about 20 minutes from the hospital.  We are driving along, and I'm mostly silent, because these contractions are now coming hard and fast.  And then I start to notice that I am feeling nauseous as well.  I knew this was something that happened to some women.  I figured I would be okay, though... I don't often get sick.  Oy.  Bad choice to not say something to Jeremy.  We were almost to our exit when I lost it...  All. Over. The. Van.  And myself.  Let me just say that I didn't have a light dinner that night (which is recommended if you know you're in labor...).  I was horrified.  I kept apologizing and saying, "Oh my gosh!  I'm disgusting.  I have to go in like this!?!  I'm covered in vomit!"  We parked and Jeremy came around to get me and all the stuff.  Me all the while wailing about how gross and disgusting I was -- how awful I smelled.  Jeremy pulled a blanket out (we keep a couple in the van) and wrapped it around me and said, "It's okay, nobody can see it."  To which I replied, "But I stink!  They will smell me!"  But...  I had to go in.  Or stand outside for a few hours and deliver a baby there...  I opted to go in.  And proceeded to apologize to everyone I came across for my stench.  So they got me to a triage room to check me and verify I was in labor.  My first order of business was to strip off all my vomit-ridden clothing.  Ugh.  So, so nasty.  Once they'd checked me, they found I was about 3.5 cm dilated and 100% effaced.  My contractions were coming about 2 minutes apart.  They called my doctor and he told them to admit me.  So I walked down the hall to the room where our baby would be born.  The next couple hours, I played pin-cushion.  I'm pretty sure the nurse I had during the night was pretty new.  She started trying to get the IV into my left hand.  No go.  She checked my right hand.  Didn't like what she saw there, I guess.  Tried the crook in my left arm.  No go.  Went back to my right hand.  Oh, she didn't numb my left hand when she tried to get the IV in there, so that was fun.  But really not so bad, since I was still dealing with contractions every two minutes.  Although I will say that made me even more irritable -- but I did bite my tongue.  She did remember to do lidocaine to numb my right hand and was finally able to get the IV going.  Oh, I should also mention that, though I had nothing left in my stomach to purge, I spent the entire night puking.  That was awful.  Anyway, once she got the IV in, she wanted 3 tubes of blood.  She got the first two, but the 3rd she couldn't get.  And so she called up the lab and had a tech come up.  That was after she tried to get it from the crook of my right arm and failed too.  So eventually the lab tech came and picked another spot on my left hand and managed to get it there.  I think I may have been a little dehydrated or something; because when they came to get my blood on Saturday, they had no problem.  So yeah, I was all IV'd up and trying to just make it through constant contractions.  They gave me a birthing ball to try -- I hated that.  I think I did pretty good.  I didn't roar (or moo, as my friend Tawni suggested I allow myself to do if I wanted to ;)...).  I think the worst I kept saying was, "It hurts, it hurts, it hurts."  And, "I'm so tired, I just want to sleep."  I was too...  I had not had a wink of sleep since the night before, and I was exhausted.  I just wanted to sleep.  I couldn't even keep down water, so I stopped drinking any.  Jeremy was constantly bringing me my barf bucket (poor guy), and I reeked of vomit, still.  I wish I'd had the energy to get up and get in the tub to at least clean stuff off me.  But I was hurting so bad.  I really did want to try to go natural, but I got to 5.5 cm and I caved.  I knew that there was a good chance I could sleep if I had the epidural, and that is all I could think about at that point.  So, about 30 minutes later, I got the epidural.  So who knows, maybe I'd made it to a 6 by then.  I don't care at this point.  Of course, all of these things are very emotional.  I kept apologizing to Jeremy and telling him I felt like I was being selfish by getting the epidural.  He kept reassuring me that I wasn't being selfish.  But I felt that way.  I felt like I wimped out.  But, it was the decision I made.  And I can't say I'm too sorry.  Though I am sorry for what ensued...

So my legs went numb and they had to help me move.  Weird sensation, let me tell you.  It's like they weren't even attached to my body, and I'd look down and see people moving my legs -- only they didn't seem to be mine.  (I will say this improved the whole modesty thing...  I've always cringed at the thought of so many people viewing me in all my naked glory...  But when the bottom half of your body doesn't feel anything, you can sort of pretend like they aren't looking at you anyway.  Hahaha.)  The anesthesiologist told me I could expect to start feeling my legs in an hour or two -- they would just feel very heavy.  The pain almost immediately went away, and I started getting really groggy.  The doctor talked to me for a while (I'm guessing to see if I was reacting okay to the epidural?) and then he left and they dimmed the lights.  I started dozing -- interrupted multiple times by puking.  Jeremy sat by my bedside and held my hand and slept in that position as much as he could.  Poor guy.  Somewhere along the way, after one of my puke sessions, I was coughing to try to clear my airway a bit.  My cough was so weak.  I asked Jeremy if I was coughing louder than I thought I was, and he replied to me that my cough was not strong at all.  This started to concern me a little, because I was literally coughing will all I had.  But I was still so groggy.  I remember talking here and there a little.  I remember the nurse coming in and giving me a shot of something called Turb (probably short for something), which was to slow down my contractions.  Though I couldn't feel them, I guess they were coming every minute and a half and the baby could feel them, and Baby couldn't get any rest between the contractions.  And I wasn't far enough along yet to push or anything.  I think I may have been around a 7 by that point.  Somewhere around here, too, I realized it had been 2 hours since the epidural, and I still couldn't feel my legs.  Like -- at all.  So I mentioned it to Jeremy and the nurse.  She went and got ice and started putting it on different parts of my body and asking if I could feel it.  I couldn't feel it anywhere below my waist.  I told her my hands felt tingly too.  She called the doctor, and he told her to shut off the medication and that he'd be down to check on things.  Slowly I started to feel more coherent.  The anesthesiologist came and found that instead of an epidural, I'd ended up with a spinal block through an epidural needle.  And also, a spinal block does not require the same dosage as the epidural... it requires about an 8th of that.  The worst part of all of this is that, after they took the catheter out when it was all over, it left a much bigger hole in the area where my spinal fluid is -- and so I was leaking spinal fluid until my body could repair itself.  And that meant having a horrible headache for a week, unless I was laying down pretty much flat.  And this did not help the breastfeeding adventure.  But I'll get to that later.  The good news is that it's over now.  Oh, also...  I was shivering/shaking so much by this point.  Uncontrollably.  They say that's just a normal part of labor toward the end.  It's weird how, even though I couldn't feel the pain, my body was still experiencing all of it, and so it was reacting accordingly. 

So my doctor got there around 6, and I was dilated to an 8 or 9.  He broke the amniotic sac around this time to progress the labor.  We were listening to the baby's heart rate, and eventually, the heart rate started to drop with the contractions.  It'd be beating away up at 170 and then fall to the 90s and lower.  The lowest was 55.  This was not what medical staff wanted to see, of course, but they just kept monitoring for a while.  My doctor left to the clinic around 7:30, thinking I'd have a few more hours of laboring, since the nurse said she thought we could let the contractions labor Baby down into position for pushing.  This was a new nurse -- the day nurse.  And she was awesome.  But by around 8, I was fully dilated, so they had to call the doctor back.  So around 8:20, I started pushing.  The pain meds had worn off enough that I could feel the pressure of the contractions (though I still couldn't feel my legs).  So Jeremy and the nurse helped push my legs up while I pushed.  The nurse was very encouraging, I will say that.  She would say, "You're doing awesome!"  Oh, by this point I was on oxygen -- mostly for the baby, and it must have been helping, because Baby's heart rate never dropped out of the 100s again, even during all the stress and strain of pushing.  And holy cannolli.  Pushing is hard work.  I mean, I was all pumped to go and feeling like I could push this kid out.  Boy oh boy...  It doesn't take long to get tired!  I pushed for an hour (which isn't bad at all, especially for a first-timer).  I remember the nurse saying how awesome I was doing, and so I'm feeling pretty great about all my progress.  Until she says, "Everytime you push, I see this much (picture her fingers making a circle the size of a 50-cent piece) of a head full of dark hair!"  Well, that deflated my balloon!  I was thinking with all my pushing that the baby's head was almost out!  Haha...  Of course, the nurse was doing all this -- and the doctor came in when I was just about to have the baby's head out.  So I pushed some more.  And they said, "Look down!"  I looked, and here Baby came!  Baby had the umbilical cord wrapped around the body once.  Also, I guess it was a short cord.  They put Baby on me, and I felt the tears well up and drop down my face.  It was automatic.  I note this, because I'm not generally emotional in public.  I do my crying in the privacy of my own home.  Usually alone.  But I had no control over it.  The tears just came as I looked at this little miracle.  Jeremy was able to announce "It's a girl."  We weren't out of the woods yet...  She didn't do a lot of crying, and that bothered the medical staff.  So she was put onto the infant warmer and Jeremy kept tabs on her and what all they were doing while I was delivering a placenta and being stitched up.  Lynnaea's color was too pale, she was pretty floppy, and she wasn't getting oxygen like they wanted her to (and she wouldn't let out those throaty loud cries that they wanted to hear).  They kept reassuring me that she would be fine -- that she had all her fingers and toes.  For 16 minutes they waited for her to perk up.  and then they took her to the nursery, which usually only happens if there are complications -- otherwise they leave Baby with mom and dad from the start.  So Jeremy went with her.  I still couldn't do anything with my legs (though they were starting to tingle at least).  I was stuck in my room for several hours, unable to walk or stand.  So I started making phone calls.  Nobody knew we had gone in...  I hadn't been in any condition the night before to send texts or make phone calls.  So I just started calling with the news of a new baby girl.  She was born at 9:16 a.m. and weighed 7 pounds 13 ounces.  The hospital measured her at 20 3/4 inches long (though her pediatrician's office keeps measuring her smaller).

As the day wore on, I was able to learn that my doctor things there may have been a slight placental abruption (where part of the placenta tears away from the uterine wall) at some point the day before -- and that was why my labor started hard and fast.  Baby had to come.  He said when he broke the sac, that there was a little bit of blood in the fluid.  This could also have been why Lynnaea was paler than they wanted her to be at birth.  By about 11:30, I was able to go visit her in the nursery (my legs were finally working).  While we were in there, they were able to shut off her oxygen and let her breathe 100% on her own -- and she did it like a champ.  I started feeling faint (probably lack of food and exhaustion), so I handed her back to Jeremy.  I was afraid of dropping her.  So they wheeled me to my new room (apparently lots of babies being born that day, so they moved all those who had delivered to another wing) and I ordered lunch.  Part of me was afraid to eat anything, because I didn't want to start throwing everything back up!  The good news is that I didn't :).  Jeremy and I tried to get a little rest while we had the luxury.  It didn't work for me.  I was to awake.  We told people they could come visit after 5, since we didn't even have Lynnaea in the room with us at that point.  I wasn't able to bathe, because they still had the epidural catheter in in case I needed an epidural patch (this was in an effort to patch the whole left by the needle...  But I wasn't going to opt in for that unless I couldn't move due to the headache).  So when people did come to visit, I still smelled like vomit, and now also body odor and 9 month old amniotic fluids and other bodily stuff from the delivery.  I wasn't allowed to take a shower at this point.  Ugh...  I apologized to everyone for how much I stunk.  Gross.  I love my showers, and I really could have used one at that point.  Haha...

So that's the story of Lynnaea's birth.  I remember thinking, while I was still feeling the contractions, "Who signs up for this a second time!?!"  And honestly, I'm still a little afraid of going through it all again.  Mostly the after-effects.  People say it takes a while, but you eventually get there.  I guess so, because lots of people have more than one kiddo ;).  Lynnaea is worth it.  I love her.  I feel a sense of obligation and protection toward her that I cannot explain.  I feel a patience I didn't know I was capable of feeling.  It's hard to believe she is mine -- that I am a mommy.  I'll do another post on the post-partum experience (because that's another doozie that I'm still working through), but the emotions and feelings are sometimes overwhelming.  Someone commented on facebook that this is a never-go-back-moment.  I totally see that.  From now and forever, I am changed.  This sweet baby is mine to love and cherish.  And I hope I always remember how important it is to do just that.  She is my miracle, and I am blessed to have her.

And just so you have a couple more pictures to look at :)...

Notice her legs in the picture above...  I don't know why, but in that outfit, she doesn't like the leg holes!  She scrunches up and sometimes puts both legs in the same hole.  It looks so funny to me.