**Wednesday, November 28, 2007-we’re scheduled for a 7pm induction and are asked to call around 6 to make sure everything is running on time. We’re told to call back around 8pm and they’ll know more about when we should come in. the 8 o’clock call…they tell us they’ll call us back cause ‘there’s a lot going on’. Finally, my dr. calls and tells me that even though it’s late, they will have a room for me that night and to come on in whenever we’re ready.
**we take a few last minute pictures and zane and I freak out about what we’re about to do…mama walsh stays at our house with all the animals and wishes us luck as we leave. get to the hospital and are put right into our room once we get to the ‘family place’. I change into my gowns and soon a nurse comes in to explain what they’ll be doing with cervidil. She comes back a while later, gets the cervidil in place and leaves for zane and I to get some rest. She tells me that for some people, cervidil is all that’s needed to jump start labor, but if not, then I’ll start on pitocin around noon on Thursday. (at this point, I think I’m hardly close to a cm dilated and somewhat effaced.)
**not much sleep that night. Nurses coming in every once in a while to check blood pressure, temperature, etc. the next morning, zane and I are awake pretty early and order some breakfast to tide us over until things get going. At 7am, the nurses change shifts and I meet the new members of my birth team. there was a regular nurse that worked in the hospital and a nurse from a connected hospital that was learning the ropes.
**Up until then, I’m not feeling much, and all of a sudden, I start getting contractions that I could feel were much stronger, but could also see on the monitor were much stronger. i realize at this point that i've never felt a "real" contraction and am getting no warm-up stage...At some point, the nurse helps me try some better breathing techniques that worked for a while until the contractions seem to be coming one on top of the other and lasting for a couple minutes each (at some point I hear one of the nurses talking about the contrax being “stacked” which scares the crap out of me). I sit on the birthing ball, try leaning against the wall, against zane and eventually end up in the tub (which I had thought would be heaven…it isn’t).
**after a few hours of this they decide that I was in labor enough on my own and won’t need to do any pitocin. I’m convinced that I’m 4, 5 or 6 cm at this point and am desperate for an epidural. they check me in the tub and I’m maybe 2 cms and tell me that I can’t think of an epidural until I’m at least 5cm. get out of the tub feeling out of control and have to lay down so they can remove the cervidil. After minutes of desperately searching for it (I’m maybe in more pain with this than with the contractions), they find it way in the back, remove it and I was beg for any kind of medicine.
**back on the birthing ball with zane behind me and I get my first shot of nubain…it takes a little while to work, but once it kicks in the contractions seem a little less intense and I’m drowsy and falling asleep leaning against zane. Pretty soon the contractions start coming back in intensity and I’m just about to lose my mind…
**this is where things get blurry. By now it’s mid-afternoon and I’ve been contracting consistently since early morning with little progress in my mind. At some point I get another shot of nubain and this one really doesn’t do anything. Around 4pm, I break down and tell any nurse that will listen that I just can’t do it anymore and want an epidural (I had really wanted to go as natural as possible, but with no sleep, the length of time since contractions started and the length of the contractions themselves, my body just can’t take it…) forget about the image i had of hopsitals trying to push drugs and get you to take whatever they'll give you. it took this long for my nurse to turn to me and say "maybe it's time we discuss our pain relief options..." i wanted to scream and punch her, but i was having a hard enough time breathing to stay conscious...since they don't routinely place iv's, they first had to get an iv going.
**the anesthesiologist comes in around 5 (i have no clue what time it is) and I’m in another world of pain…amazingly I don’t think I move a muscle while he’s working. the epidural is finally in and I wait to feel the total relief…minutes go by and I can still feel the contractions and my legs and feet. Slowly, my feet start to numb up and the contractions become less intense. throughout the rest of the labor, I can feel my legs and feet and belly, but the pain is lessened and I can finally relax a bit.
**Zane and I are hanging out in the room, my mom calls to tell me that she and my dad are on their way and they’re going to find a hotel to stay in for the night. All of a sudden, my nurse comes running into the room yelling at me to flip on my side and put the oxygen mask on. i throw the phone away and do whatever she tells me and finally the baby’s heartrate-which had dropped to 50bpm- comes back up and looks healthy. I start crying and for the rest of her shift, the nurse stays in the room checking the monitor and making notes. she never offers me consoling words as i'm crying, just continues to watch my chart and jot things down.
**my dr. is called about the heartrate drop and comes rushing in the room at some point to check on things. she has me turn onto my back to do an exam and as I do, I feel a gush. I tell her I think my water just broke and get excited thinking it’ll speed things up. She has a scowl on her face and tells me it’s not water, but blood with a clot and she’s not sure what that means...real comforting. as she's checking me, she can’t feel any bags of water and tells me that it must have broken sometime before on its own and wonders why i didn't let anyone know. I tell her there was never a gush or a trickle of anything in the weeks leading up and there was no way it could have broken without my knowing it... she stays a while to make sure things stabilize and leaves after telling me I’m at 8cm and should be pushing in the next few hours.
**the nurses shifts change and at 7pm I get two new younger nurses who will be there for the birth. at this point i’m getting really nauseus, and scared to death because my worst fear is throwing up. for nearly hour, i fight the feeling and finally decide that if I’m going to throw up I might as well go ahead and get it over with. i try my hardest to make something happen, but nothing does. i’m also feeling hot and shaky and chilled and they tell me I have a fever (I find out later that it’s 101) but I can’t remember if they start antibiotics now or wait until later.
**at some point before 8, they tell me i'm fully dialated and i’m starting to feel some pressure and slight urges to push, but the nurses tell me to hold off until I really feel like I need to do something about it. just before 8:30, I ask one of the nurses what the best position to start trying to push would be
**there’s lots of encouragement that I’m pushing in exactly the right way and making lots of progress with each push. I try a few different positions and settle on my back as the best one. After an hour or so, they ask if I want the mirror positioned so I can see when the head starts to show. A few more pushes and I can tell something is happening, I’m feeling more pressure and less pain from contractions. Zane’s face says it all before they even tell me that the baby has lots of hair, he’s looking amazed and bewildered. as the time wears on, i'm somewhat hoping that they'll just whisk me away to the or and get this child out of me...
**the dr. came back in and I could tell everyone was getting ready for the delivery. I kicked it into high gear and every ounce of my body just wanted to get the baby out. I finally heard the magic words from the dr. telling me to stop pushing. One more push and the most intense relief washed over me. I yelled “what is it?!?!” as the dr. and zane were looking but hadn’t turned the baby over yet. Then zane said “it’s a girl!” and looked at me with the most love and excitement i’ve ever seen. They put her on my chest under my gown and a towel and started wiping her off while zane cut the cord. It was 10:18pm and I couldn’t wait to get her stats.
**i could tell right away that something else was going on and I started getting really anxious about why the dr. wasn’t up and congratulating us. I kept saying “there’s something going on…what’s wrong?” but no onepaid attention to me. finally one of the nurses came over and told me that I tore a little and that they had to stitch me up and not to worry.
**i went back to snuggling our baby girl, still wondering why no one was really paying attention to the baby. she's burrying her head in my neck and grabbing onto my necklace--the one zane had given me for mother's day :) zane is standing next to the bed, just looking down and smiling. i'm rubbing the baby's back which is so incredibly smooth and it's calming for both of us...
**after a good hour of laying there and hearing the nurses being called in and out to get more sutures and feeling more and more pain and stinging, asking for more numbing stuff and being told that I had been given just about as much as they could give me, i burst into tears again and start shaking uncotrollably (making it even harder for the dr. to do her work...)
**Finally, around midnight, the dr. finished and came up to my head to tell me that it was worse than she thought and instead I had a 4th degree tear. She explained what it all meant, but at that point I wasn't even listening. They are about to take the baby to the scale and someone said ‘what do we guess she weighs?’ I guessed around 7 ½ pounds, zane said maybe 8. she went on the scale and I heard “wow! 8lbs, 15oz.” that’s my piggy :)
**The 2 days that follow include:
-extreme sleep deprivation and exhaustion that made me (and every nurse i had) question my sanity
-a lactation consultant that barges in the room less than 12 hours after I’ve had my baby girl and forces her to feed when I’m screaming out and unable to even sit up
-having a few visitors which make me so happy, but then having my nurse tell me that i really don't seem up to having visitors and i should really tell them not to come
-later, same lactation consultant comes in unannounced as I’m on the phone with my sister and goes about her business staring at me and when I say to her ‘do you need me to get off the phone?’ she answers “um, your baby needs you!” which leads to an intense breakdown and another nurse coming and taking avery to the nursery asking me if i have a history of abuse and giving me some type of anti-anxiety/sleep pill to help me sleep/calm down (I calm a bit, but still don’t sleep).
-24 hours of antibiotics and constant watch over my temperature and vitals before I can be discharged from the hospital...
-an iv that started burning whenever they put a new bag of antibiotics in, me telling them over and over that it hurt and them just giving me ice packs to put on my arm...finally at 3am on Friday morning, I couldn’t take it anymore and rang the nurse who came in and had to insert a new iv because the first one had blown
-finally the witchy nurse and lactation woman coming around and instead of making me feel incredibly guilty for not breastfeeding, telling me that it was okay and that my body was in enough pain and that I needed to heal myself
*overall, probably the worst experience of my life, that brought me the greatest joy in my life and I would do it over 100 millions times if I had to just to have my sweet little avery by my side *
a fun shot of what avery would look like without her hair :)
i think i already have a handful of pictures of avery asleep in zane's hand like this...i can't imagine how it's comfortable, but she's not complaining...
zane finally figured out a good way to swaddle and wrap up avery so they are both comfortable and happy :)
a little shot of us blogging :)
carrie and avery
meg and avery
allie and laura with avery in her cute new (pink) outfit :)
that's all for now-- a lot harder to blog with one hand :) more to come later...
