So my doc left for the day. That's ok - I wasn't expecting him to be able to deliver anyway. A midwife, Sandy, came in and introduced herself and told me she was going to be the one to deliver because all of the doctors had a party they'd be going to. I asked her how long she was on (I was used to people leaving!!!) and she told me "Until you have this baby." Wow. I liked her right away and felt she was very calming and relaxed. I was excited to have a midwife. My second nurse was also going off duty (boo, I liked her) and I met the new one. Sandy told me she'd check to see the progress on the anterior lip around 8pm (doc left at 5:30) and if I was good then, I'd get to start pushing. My brother and Kathryn came by to see me and took my mom out for a quick dinner. Around 8pm, Sandy came to check and said all systems go! We just wanted to wait til my mom got back from dinner to start pushing. I think it was around 8:30 that we started.
I remember thinking how surreal it was that I had been in this room ALL DAY and all of a sudden, boom, I get to start pushing. There was no climactic "OMG! I HAVE TO PUSH!" moment, nor did I really feel much of the contractions. My legs were pretty heavy at this point, since I'd had two epidurals... especially my left leg, so Sandy and Mike helped me lift them up each time a contraction came so I could push. for the first hour or so, I thought pushing was a piece of cake! I thought of it as an athletic challenge and took to pushing the right way immediately. Sandy told me I was a super strong pusher and was surprised I hadn't pushed before (I only got to 5cm with Eli). So the first hour came...and no baby. I was starting to get discouraged, hoping that I would have been able to get the baby out right away. The second hour came and went. My contractions were coming about every 5 minutes and I had to wait til I had one before I could push. That part was SO frustrating. It was during this hour, I think, that Sandy started to get on my nerves! She'd answer her PHONE in the middle of my push and go out and answer it!! There were 5 times when I pushed without her there at all, and my nurse would jump up from her computer and try to get gloves on fast enough to help me. (The nurse and the midwife clearly did not get along....and I don't blame the nurse at all...). Over the night I realized that Sandy, while initially very relaxing and comforting, was quite absentminded and frustrating at times. Still, I tried not to let it get to me. During the 3rd hour, my eyes really started to hurt. I'd push GREAT for about 8 seconds and then for the last 2 seconds, I'd feel the push go all the way to my eyes. I felt like one of those dolls you squeeze where the eyes pop out. I kept saying this and kept getting the response "push from your diaphragm" etc etc.... I WAS, but there's only so long a person can push before getting exhausted. I was starting to get VERY discouraged, especially when we'd see the head come down and then go back up. I couldn't figure out what on earth I was doing wrong and why I couldn't just push the baby out! They kept telling me I just needed to push the head past one bone and they'd be able to help guide it out. I just couldn't get there!
As the fourth hour approached, I was starting to get upset that the baby wasn't going to be born on the 14th. I had been getting messages all day long to the tune of "Yay! A Flag day baby!" I had grown to love the 14th and was REALLY sad that I wasn't going to be able to do it. As midnight neared, my mom was giving me the countdown and I was pushing SUPER EXTRA HARD to get that baby out. To gather strength, I kept saying "Ok baby - room service is over. You are coming OUT!" All to no avail. Midnight came and went.
Sandy said she was going to give me an episiotomy to see if that would help the baby come out. I did NOT NOT NOT want that, so I pushed SUPER EXTRA HARD again for the next three contractions while she was setting up her little station. Nothing. (Thankfully, she decided not to do the episiotomy - yay!). At this point, Sandy called in the doctors to see what we should do next.
Who comes in? Dr. Morrissey, the doc I HATED from before. Great, right? I was momentarily peeved, but was so exhausted at that point that I wouldn't have cared if the secretary walked in to deliver. There was another doc with her (a higher level doc) who was AWESOME. She was screaming "GO GO GO GO GO!" and replenished every ounce of energy I had left to deliver this kid. They were there to do the vacuum but when they saw how far I was able to push the head down, they had me push for another 15 minutes. They told me that I was soooo close and they knew I'd be able to do it on my own. So I pushed on. (Forgot to mention that for the last two hours, every single time I pushed, I felt like I had to throw up. I'd yell for the bucket EVERY single time and just dry heave because all I'd had ALL DAY LONG was ice chips. My mom and Mike must have been so frustrated handing me the bucket over and over, but I was sure THIS was going to be the time. Lol).
So they decided the vacuum was not going to be the answer, because the baby's head was a little bit swollen and that meant the vacuum suction would not work properly. Lovely. I was like - oh great, I am NOT having a c-section after ALL OF THIS! Then they told me it was forceps time. Fine - at that point, you could have told me you were going to pry the baby out with a dull knife and I would have agreed. My eyes were nearly swollen shut at this point and my legs were cramping so badly. I was not a happy camper. They told me that with the forceps, I'd just have to give one giant push (instead of the three I was doing each time) and then two little pushes as they guided the shoulders out. Fine by me! I told them to please not pull my baby's head off. Dr. Morrissey was the one doing the forceps thing and the other (better) doc was guiding her through it. Had I been more lucid at that moment, I would have sent Dr. M packing! So that ONE push that I'd have to do turned into EIGHT. Even at my strongest, I was only pushing three times in a row. They told me I could NOT stop or bad things would happen. GREAT.... so I used every last ounce of my eye popping energy in those 8 pushes. I was lucid enough to look and see his head coming out and I saw what I thought was a huge hole in his neck... that combined with blood spurting everywhere had me convinced he wasn't going to make it.... but then I realized that "hole" was the doctor's glove holding his neck...and then i heard him start to cry. Yaaaay.
As soon as they pulled him out, the two doctors were like "WHOA! That explains it!!!" The cord was sooooo short that he barely even came out. Translation - there was no way on earth I was going to be able to push that baby out with the cord being as short as it was. I would have had to push him PLUS the placenta out at the same time. So I instantly felt relieved that the reason for his non-progression wasn't me. About a minute passed before we even thought to ask if the baby was a boy or a girl.... it was my mom who called out "What is it???" They turned the baby over and yelled - it's a boy!!! He was born at 12:30am on June 15th. I was feeling bummed about the date until one of my friends told me - good for him for holding out and defying everyone's expectations, picking his own birthday! So true, and now I love that he came on that day.
There was a crazy whirl of activity as the doctors tended to him (he was fine! yay! what a little trooper!) and me and it was just insane. My epidural had warn off RIGHT then (the machine was beeping empty) and I felt the entire sewing up process. My legs were cramping so bad and i was shaking from the delivery (a common side effect), plus I had lost a lot of blood. I was MISERABLE. They brought me the baby to hold and I could only hold him for like a minute - I wasn't doing well and I couldn't even focus on him. I was happy that Mike and my mom were there to hold him and Mike did a great job of taking pictures.
The sewing up process was horrible. They said I hadn't torn all the way but had what they call a big "scrape." Not sure what that means, but I HURT. My legs felt like they were broken and my eyes were so swollen. I really felt like I was in a fight... a couple of them. I became a whiny, miserable patient at this point, and was frustrating to myself and I'm sure to the nurse because they kept wanting me to move and my legs wouldn't work. They were cramped up so bad that they literally felt broken. I couldn't move myself up in the bed, get over to the stretcher, etc etc. I wasn't able to even think about feeding the baby, so someone grabbed a bottle of formula for mike to feed him.
Liam, my little trooper, was amazingly strong for all of this. He was SO alert when he came out and was awake, looking around for two hours!!! Amazing little guy. They took me to my room (with an ice pack on my eyes!) and that's when Mike and my mom left for home (it was about 3am at this point!). I was in NO condition to take care of myself, let alone the baby, so they took him to the nursery for the rest of the night. The midwife gave me a crazy heavy duty pain killer in my IV and everything started spinning. When my nurse woke me up shortly after that, I was totally out of it, not even sure where I was. I remember telling her "I hear babies! Are there babies here? Oh my gosh - one of them is mine, i think. Am I supposed to be doing something?" Lol.
I woke up at around 6am feeling much, much better and they brought me the baby around that time. I was finally able to feed him and hold him and I loved getting to really meet him. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and didn't even recognize myself. My eyes were completely bloodshot and swollen, my whole face was swollen, and I had burst tons of little blood vessels in my face and on my shoulders and chest. It was a scary, scary thing to see (lol - and there go all the cute first mother-son pictures!), but everyone assured me no permanent damage was done and everything would go away.
And that, my friends, is how Liam Rhys Flores made his way into this world. I'm so proud of him for handling all that chaos with such strength. He's going to be a tough little guy...that's for sure. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment