Lily's Birth Story

Apparently the new trendy thing to do is blog your childbirth experience. I never wrote one of these things for Lily's birth. I kinda wish I had, so I guess better late than never, right?

Before Lily's birth, we took the basic child birth class, but beyond that, I just assumed things would happen when they happened. I would get an epidural and everything would be easy-peasy. Except, I ended up in the hospital at 36 weeks with high blood pressure eventually diagnosed as preeclampsia. Still a few days away from full term, they decided not to induce, but just keep me as an inpatient and monitor everything. I appreciated the full week of rest, with absolutely delicious hospital food (our maternity hospital is catered by the culinary school downtown). I did not appreciate being hooked up to an IV 24/7 and all the medication and blood draws they did each day. With Lily, I had regular Braxton Hicks contractions for 2 months leading up to my due date. These contractions landed me in triage to be evaluated for preterm labor at 34 weeks (there is a funny story about this which involves miscommunication between myself and Nathan, him running 2 miles to the hospital because he didn't have a ride. It was a trial run for what NOT to do when I actually went into labor.) At 36 weeks 4 days, the lead Maternal Fetal Medicine resident decided it was time to induce me. They said inductions typically takes 24 hours from start to delivery. They planned to use a balloon catheter to open my cervix to 3 cm, then use Cervidil to ripen the cervix, and finally start me on pitocin to begin contractions and active labor. I'm sure it was a well thought out plan, but instead, here is what happened... the balloon catheter dilated me to 3cm in about an hour while I ate dinner. The pressure on my cervix also intensified my "Braxton Hicks" contractions (looking back, they probably weren't Braxton Hicks, but real labor). They cannot administer Cervidil to a patient with regular contractions so they hooked me up to a monitor around 10pm to try and find a break in the contractions to quickly give me the drug. A break never came. Still assuming these were Braxton Hicks, the doc ordered another med that is given orally in 3 doses and will ripen the cervix. At 11:30pm I took the first dose. My parents went home to sleep. The docs planned to start pitocin the next morning. The single dose of the medication really ramped up my contractions and I began having horrible back labor. The only semi-comfortable position I could find was standing on my head with my butt up in the air while Nathan applied pressure to my lower back. After 40 minutes in this position (and still assuming I wasn't in "real" labor), I agreed to allow the nurse to give me some narcotic and sleep aid so I could get some rest for the actual labor which wasn't supposed to start until morning. Looking back this was mistake #2 (mistake #1 was not realizing I was in actual labor). While receiving the concoction of medication, I felt a pop, like a water balloon bursting in my butt. And then there was the gush. WORST THING EVER! Even worse than the pain! After 2 deliveries and recoveries, I still think the absolute worst part is my water breaking. I guess I hate sitting in warm pools of bodily fluid. (TMI? Perhaps.) They immediately began the process of transferring me to the L&D floor. Nathan called my parents (it was 12:30am, they had just climbed in bed), to let them know I was in labor and to send my mom back to the hospital. At this point, the concoction of medication I received kicked in and I couldn't speak comprehensibly or keep my eyes open, and when I did say something, I'm pretty sure my response was to a question asked 5 minutes earlier. The meds didn't even help the pain! They just made it so I couldn't vocalize how bad it hurt. Within 30 min. of transfer to L&D, I got an epidural to ease the pain and allow me to sleep off the narcotic/sleep aid. I slept on and off for 3 hours or so. I remember the nurses kept putting an oxygen mask on me. I should also note that since I had high bp, they started me on a Magnesium IV. That is also the worst stuff ever! Made me shake like crazy and imagine I was FREEZING! Or maybe that was still the narcotic/sleep aid? I have no idea. I was on so many drugs by the end of this delivery, I needed 2 hands to count them all. As I drifted in and out of consciousness, I heard blurbs about "heart rate dropping", "pumping fluid back into uterus to cushion contractions", "in transition", "only 6cm", "if we can get her to 8cm, this baby is small enough", "heart rate isn't coming back up, we need to do a c-section". Around 5am, they prepped me for a c-section, tripled the strength of my epidural so I couldn't feel a thing below my shoulders, dressed Nathan up in some spiffy blue scrubs, strapped me down to a table, called in all the Maternal Fetal residents to witness the c-section (literally, there were 15 people in the delivery room), and once I was all ready... we waited. The residents chatted, a nurse held my hand, and everyone just stood around. I guess they were waiting for a bag of blood in case a transfusion was necessary. Thankfully that bag of blood took a long time to show-up because in the meantime, one of the residents decided to check my cervix one more time. I was 10 cm. I had gone from 6-10cm in minutes, most likely due to the extra epidural dosage. It relaxed my muscles enough to allow them to fully dilate. Off came the straps holding down my arms, 2 residents each grabbed one of my legs (at least that's what I saw them do, I sure didn't feel them do it) and said "You're going to push". I'm going to push what?! I can't feel anything! So I pushed, like I thought I might push if I could feel my muscles. Apparently it worked well enough for a doctor to instruct a resident on how to use forceps to yank Lily out of my body. Nathan was quite impressed at how hard they pull (imagine the picture of Christopher Robin trying to pull Winnie the Pooh out of Rabbit's hole). Good thing she was born with her head still attached to her body. Although she had a swollen spot on the side of her face from the metal forceps. Lily was born healthy and screaming at 5:24am weighing 6lbs 1.8oz. She's my little peanut, who hovered around the 5th percentile her entire first year. She was born with a strong desire to suck and took to nursing immediately. By the next day, we shoved a pacifier in her mouth. Two years later, we still can't get the pacifier out of her mouth.

To sum Lily's birth story up in one word, I would say "DRUGGED!". It was a short labor (5 hours from water breaking to delivery), but I wasn't "present" for any of it. I also had 3rd degree tears from the forceps and it took me the full 6 weeks postpartum to heal. There were so many residents present for the birth, I don't know who delivered her, I don't know the OB whose name is on her birth certificate, it was all very impersonal. Don't get me wrong, I am thankful I was able to deliver Lily vaginally, but I knew with baby #2, I desired a calm, quiet, delivery with an OB I know and could trust.