Monday, January 2, 2012

Drew Solon :: A Birth Story {Part 3}

So the last time I left you, I was 24 hours into the induction/labor process. And my body was basically saying ‘na na na, can’t make me!’.

And she was right. We couldn’t make her.

My doctor decided to try one more round of Cervadil and see what happened. But because we were going into the 2nd night of ‘fun’, they wanted me to get some sleep so they gave me an Ambien. Which meant I spent that night in a cycle of dozing off, waking up with a contraction and squeezing Luke’s hand, and then dozing off again.

Poor Luke. He didn’t have the benefit of an Ambien so he had to deal with his wife squeezing his hand REALLY hard every 2 minutes, so he didn’t get very much sleep that night.

We also had nurses coming in and out of our room all night checking on the babe. I didn’t mind that they were concerned and monitoring us, but it bothered me that no one introduced themselves, except my 2 main nurses. So here I am, having some unknown person looking up a place where no unknown person should ever look.

They finally called my doctor in at around 5:00 because they were concerned about Drew’s heart rate. He felt I was far enough along in the process to break my water, so he took his little crochet hook and did so. It didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would, but it was still a weird feeling.

It didn’t do anything magical, but there was definitely no turning back after that!

They did decide that I should get up and walk to see if that would help, so they sent Luke and I on a round through the hallways. It was so (NOT) fun.

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Luckily there was the rails for me to lean on when I hit a contraction. But it was really annoying because when my nurse put TED compression hose on me the night before she didn’t pull them all the way up, so as you can tell from the picture I had a bunch of hose hanging off the end of my feet and it felt funny when I walked.

I did not make it very long with this whole walking thing. All I wanted to do was get back in bed. So I did.

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After a couple hours of letting my body try, they hooked me up to Pitocin. That sent me into terrible back labor. It was awful. I was exhausted because I hadn’t slept in 2 days (well, really 6 months because of being preggo, but officially 2 nights), I was still a little out of it because of the Ambien and IT HURT! We had decided not to go for an epidural if at all possible, but I needed something so I asked my nurse for some pain medicine. Not sure if she just put saline in my IV or what but WHAT A JOKE. It did absolutely nothing.

So we tried the Pitocin for a couple of hours. At least I think it was a couple of hours. I really don’t know. I just remember laying there thinking this was the most horrible thing I’ve ever experienced and I just wanted to get out of there. I was about to walk out of that room and never come back. Ever. I didn’t care if I never had the baby. He could just stay in there. I was really hazy, so I would basically just deal with the contraction and then lay there in a stupor.

Finally my doctor came in and checked me one last time. After 40 hours, and 4 rounds of medicine my doctor basically said he would be generous and call me a 5. Wow. Basically my body was having none of it this whole labor thing, but I wasn’t in a good place health wise and my baby was in distress.

My doctor tries to do everything he can to avoid c-sections, but he felt it was necessary in my case. Since I had just spent the last 3 hours laying there knowing that my body just wasn’t going to be able to do it and begging them (in my mind) to just cut the kid out, I agreed without hesitation. Poor Luke. I didn’t consult him or even talk to him about it.

Once the decision was made, things moved along. I was taken to the OR and the nurse anesthetist put my block in. That was fun because I was still having contractions and had to sit very still. But he did it and I started to go numb.

Soon we were ready to start. Luke was in there, so they asked him if he wanted to watch. He took one glance behind the sheet, and that was enough for him. We still weren’t so sure about the c-section process, and part of us wondered if trying an epidural wouldn’t have helped enough to have the baby born naturally.
However, the doctors quickly dispelled that question when they came to the baby and found that his cord was wrapped around his neck 3 times. 

With that news, I just felt the protection of God wash over us. If we had pushed through and tried to go for a natural birth, it could have ended with catastrophic results.

As soon as we heard the baby cry, we knew that it was ok. Everything was ok. It was ok that I went through a failed induction. It was ok that I had a c-section. Because our baby was here. And he was perfect.

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