scrawls.

scrawls

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7.10.07

birth story

October 2nd, 1:36 in the morning, 3.2 kilos/7 lbs, 52 cm/20.5", Erica Renee came into the world after fifty-odd hours of labor and some week and a half overdue......

Oy. So. Saturday morning, the 29th, i had contractions that were Different, being very regular and a bit painful, and i hopefully took the dogs for a good long walk, but they went away when we got back. Le sigh. Around 7:30 or 8:00 PM they started up again, which is where i'm counting from, and we went off to have proper Mexican food, which involved going on the streetcar and walking a pretty long way, again, and slowly, with many stops, and it was really good Mexican and spicy and the bean dip was absolutely delicious and the contrax went on all the way through. I took some Tylenol and tried to go to bed, but couldn't sleep. I started having bloody show (or blood, anyway) around eleven. By midnight the contrax were five minutes apart and lasting about fifty seconds; around two they were lasting a minute, and we obediently called a taxi and went to the hospital. The taxi driver was Turkish and very sweet and excited for us.

At the hospital they determined that i was a fingertip dilated and not terribly effaced, and said i could spend the night or go home and come back in the morning. Yeah, we live an hour from the hospital and i was starting to think that this was back labor - i stayed. By morning i was 2cm and pretty damn sure that this was back labor; i'd had about an hour and a half of sleep and had a cup of fennel tea and some yogurt for breakfast; they said it was good that i'd stayed, and that i'd have a baby that afternoon. Ha. I was on fetal monitors for twenty minutes every two or three hours throughout but didn't much feel like moving except to try and see if sitting up helped, if bending over helped, if this side helped, et c. Sitting was best at this point (and M was amazingly helpful and completely awesome). My legs kept shaking. Sunday afternoon i was still at 2cm and they gave me some homeopathic pessary to help with pain and, therefore, help me relax - lavender and something else, prostaglandins, maybe. Sunday evening i had an enema (which was unpleasant) and a shower (which was pleasant) followed by cervical massage (which was also not pleasant), but was still at 2cm. I can't remember if i ate anything else, but M said i didn't eat for two days, and i tend to believe him. Around ten p.m. they gave me an injection combo of nabufin and prepetil, neither of which i can spell, to help me sleep and speed cervical ripening, respectively. I slept for about two hours. Monday morning i think i had a banana and some more fennel tea, and was found to be at 3cm and they gave me little round white homeopathic pills to take five of every fifteen minutes: Caulophyllum thalactroides and Gelsemium sempervirens. M copied the names off the bottle. Monday afternoon i had another enema (still unpleasant) and a bath (which didn't help with the pain in the slightest, and was very disappointing) and more lavender suppositories to help with pain and another sleeping-and-cervix injection, but i couldn't sleep. I was loopy and out of it (the nabufin (sp.) was something like morphine), but still very much having very fucking painful back labor, and not sleeping. I was starting to be not able to breathe through things any more and started saying things like "i can't" and "i am pretty sure i am going to want an epidural later." I was on my side in bed most of the time and would get up and try to walk every so often. Sitting started to be worse than laying down. At some point i threw up. We think my water broke with the enema or bath because it wasn't there later, but we hadn't noticed anything new. Monday evening - after the hospital dinner time, which was around 5:30, but hell if i could eat - i was finally at 5 cm and went to the delivery room, which was lovely because i could have an epidural.

So i had the epidural. After they pumped in a liter of saline, at about 6cm, but whatever. Two days of back labor was enough of a natural childbirth for me. It wasn't quite a walking epidural - my right leg I wouldn't have trusted with my weight on it, and they were both still shaking - but I could move on the bed pretty well. The midwife we had on duty was cool and funny and spoke better English than she would admit to if you asked. The epidural was delicious. The pain was almost gone - just almost, and I pushed the button for more relief twice - but I could still feel contrax. Three contractions after it went in, i fell asleep, and essentially slept through transition - the midwife would come in and check how dilated i was every so often, but oh, it was wonderful to sleep. I need to find the patron saint of anaesthesiologists and thank her profusely. The midwife was able to rotate the baby's head into a better position so i didn't need to push the extra-epidural button any more. At about eight (i think) they started me on some form of pitocin, coupled with a belladonna pessary to finish the cervix. At eleven forty-five i was ten centimeters dilated. I don't know if there is a different standard in the States, but here they start a two hour timer when they tell you it's okay to push. An actual, ticking, timer, that you can hear. The baby was slow to descend. The midwife brought in the doctor on duty, who upped the pitocin. I'd met the doctor before. They said i was pushing the right way - it was hard for me to tell with the epidural - but even so, with half an hour to go on the timer, they wanted the baby out. And the doctor came back, and a nurse, and a pediatrician too, so with M and the midwife it was fairly dense. They decided on a vacuum and episiotomy - and with the fetal monitor going, i wasn't about to say no. The midwife did the episotomy and i don't know why but it made me feel a lot better that it was a woman doing it. I saw them holding the scissors and looked away - i couldn't feel it, i couldn't hear it, i could hear the doctor saying things like "maybe angle it a little more" in German. And then they went in with the vaccuum, and I pushed, and they pulled, and the nurse pushed on the top of my belly, too, and the baby finally came out. The cord was wrapped around her neck just once, but it was long. It looked like a plastic-covered bicycle lock. It - and she - were a little purple. It was Tuesday morning.

They put her straight on my chest while the pediatrician suctioned out her lungs. We were a bloody pair. M and i dried her off and put her in a slightly cleaner towel; she nuzzled at my breast and latched on a bit while we waited for the placenta. They took her away for measurements and clothes after the placenta came out and M held her while they stitched me back up. We got to breastfeed and gape at each other in the delivery room for maybe another two hours before Erica and I went upstairs to go to sleep and M went home - there'd been a mini-boom that night and all the private rooms were already filled. We both got this crazy adrenaline high - after being exhausted, after all that long, but the tired went away for an hour or two at the sheer blinding miracle of it. And then the tired came back, and we slept, Erica and I upstairs in the hospital, and M at home.

And she's here. And she's perfect. And i can't quite believe, yet, that she's mine and I get to keep her. She takes my breath away.

Oh! And, there are pictures.

Labels: baby, drama, family, health, mamadom, people, reflection, writing

scrawled @ 14:13