Colin's Birth Story - The Finale

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

We were officially admitted, officially upstairs in labor and delivery, officially going to have this baby soon.... I was so not quite ready there.  I had been ready to meet him (so impatient) but so not ready for everything that meant.

My first request was drugs!  I wanted them quick.  It wasn't so much that I couldn't take it anymore, but I had this overwhelming feeling of why should I keep taking it if I didn't have to.  I had been having contractions for 36 hours, I was just tired of it.  They called in the anesthesiologist, and John went to go get lunch.  (No one is allowed in the room for epidurals except medical staff)  The anesthesiologist was great, very nice.  When he walked in the room he asked how I was doing, and I made some lame crack about how he must love his job since everyone is probably extremely happy to see him when he walks in a room.  I'm funny.  He let me know how it would all go down - they stick me in my spine with a needle, inject instant relief and then ultimately the true epidural will sink in after about an hour.  I was psyched, but so nervous that during a contraction I would move and mess everything up.  There is such a small area that they do all this in (think millimeters... aack!) that I didn't want to move.

As he gets ready to stick a needle in my spine he warns me that it will feel the pinch and then a burning for about 10 seconds.  He wasn't kidding, it literally felt like he was setting a small pinpoint of my back on fire.  I commented as such, in not a "holy mackerel dude, it feels like my back is on fire" but more in a "wow, sir, you weren't kidding.. it does in fact feel like burning".  I was very polite.  Haha.  After a few minutes, he said to let him know if I felt anything in my legs... sure enough, I started feeling some sort of "twang" in my right leg.  Then I heard him and the head anesthesiologist chatting behind me, and it didn't sound good.  Apparently there is a small risk of going too far with an epidural, and then your spinal fluid can leak, and wouldn't you know - I was part of that small risk group!  Fan-freaking-tastic.  So lucky me, I got to have the epidural experience twice!  He ended up having to move up my back a little ways and try again.  With this second tap, that apparently removes me from being able to get the instant relief portion... so I was stuck waiting for the actual full epidural.  Not.a.fan.  Once he did the second location everything seemed to work out just fine, I started feeling warmth in my toes on my left foot which meant that it was working.  When he came back later to check how it was going, I was starting to internally panic.  My right side wasn't feeling the effects.  My left side, heavy and happy - my right side, light and painful.  I could feel the contractions start on my right side and then disappear as it moved to the left.  So, while it was better than before since it was only lasting half as long, half of my body, it was still painful.  It took 45 minutes for it to finally migrate to my right side - the minute that I started feeling warmth in my right toes, there was so much relief ... I was starting to get so scared.

At this point, John, me, and my dad were just hanging out.  John's family was planning on heading down once Martha got off work.  We thought we had a lot of time.  I had been put in my room at 2pm, by then it was about 3:30pm, and so we thought there was still plenty of time.  They checked me again at 5:30 and I was at 7cm..  I couldn't believe how fast that had gone.  They also realized that Colin had decided that he wanted to stay safe and cozy in the amniotic sac because he had apparently resealed himself in there.  They had to rebreak my water.  How often does THAT happen?  I was already on pitocin, and when they broke my bag again they saw that little Colin had already pooped... Awesome kid.  So that meant that they had to have pediatricians on hand for when he was born to ensure he hadn't aspirated anything -- and they warned me that they weren't going to encourage him to cry once he was born so that he hopefully wouldn't breathe anything in.

Not too long after they checked me, I was getting a lot of pressure on my tailbone.  I couldn't figure out why the epidural wasn't working because I felt like my contractions were come back.  I was clicking my little clicker (I was taking full advantage of these free pain meds)... and still there was pressure.  I mentioned this to the nurse who brought in the doctor... 20 minutes after they had checked me at 7cm, I was fully dilated and ready to push...... if I wanted to.  The doctor said that I could also just wait a little while longer and have my body labor him down.  The minute she said "you can go ahead and start pushing if you want to," I might have freaked out a little bit.  I wasn't ready for it to happen that fast.  I wasn't ready to push.  So I took the option of letting my body do it's own thing for a while.  I needed to be mentally prepared for this - especially since they told me it could take anywhere from 1-3 hours of pushing to get the baby out.  Umm, that part was NOT made clear to me in my classes.  I didn't know that the actual pushing could take that long.

John's family made it down to come in for just a minute to say hi before it was time to get the show on the road.  John and I kind of kicked everyone out to give us a few minutes to wrap our heads around the fact that this was about to happen.. we were about to have a baby...

I don't know what I expected in labor.. I guess I expected moaning, and freaking out, and something like I've seen in movies or something.  I thought there would be a lot going on and everything would happen really fast and loud.  I was so off.  The doctor (our doctor wasn't on call - but I have to say, if there was someone to take her place, this doctor was AMAZING... like our doctor in almost every way and just so calm) sat at the end of the bed, explained kind of how we were going to do this and we got started.  With a contraction I started pushing, they started counting.  Oh yeah - they.... so Prentice is a teaching hospital ---- so that meant that I had two students hanging out and holding a leg and watching me labor.  Kind of awkward, but they were really nice and very encouraging.  Then in between contractions we sat there and chatted, made jokes, relaxed.  It was so far from what I imagined, but so exactly what I now realize I really wanted.  They said amazing things to me, that made me feel like I was the queen of labor.  Ha.  It was great.  I learned about the gossip from the small town the doctor and one of the nurses was from (yeah, I had three different nurses throughout my time there that kept being called away for other women in labor, but they all ultimately ended up in the room.... I had quite the audience).  It was excellent.  I started pushing around 6:15/6:20.  I was just so thankful for the epidural.

Colin was making excellent progress, things were going so well.  After a long series of pushes where he was just siting right there, waiting to enter the world, I just wasn't stretching enough.  They were starting to get concerned because his heartbeat was a little lower than they would have liked, and he had been there for a long time and wasn't advancing.  The doctor told me that she thought an episiotomy was needed because he just wasn't getting that final push through.  I went with it, but I don't know that I will ever forget the sound of scissors in a place where scissors should NOT be allowed.  ...:::shiver:::...  Again thankful for the epidural.  Once that cut was made though, it only took a couple more pushes to bring him into the world.  I couldn't believe it.

Colin came out and cried (way to go buddy... you were supposed to wait) and the pediatricians took him away to clean him off so that he wouldn't breathe in the poo.  I was laying there while the doctor and the students cleaned me up.  Now, I won't go into TOO much detail there.  I don't really know that much detail since I couldn't see anything.  But, when you have two students learning what to do after a delivery you can imagine how not fast they were.  The doctor providing instruction, the student doing the work... I felt like it took FOR-E-VER.  And I was hearing things like "we need to make sure this goes back to where it came from"  (umm, what?) and "well, if you do it this way, that's going to hang there and cause her pain, so you can just trim it" (excuse me???).  Luckily through most of it, I had Colin on my chest and I was far more interested in checking him out than listening to all the terrible nightmare inducing things they were saying.

And that's how we became a family of three.  It still feels completely surreal even almost 6 weeks later.

Now some pictures to show off the fruits of my labor.. ha, get it?

Our board when we checked in - luckily I got the epidural BEFORE the pitocin.

Me being happy with the epidural and just waiting it all out.

Hello Colin!!

His stats - 7 lbs 15 oz, 21"!

And then there were three...

The next day, checking out our new baby boy

I think this is just a really good picture of John

Colin at home for one of his first couple of days

So here we are.  A family of three.  I can't believe how smooth everything went and how "easy" it was in the grand scheme of things.  I'm happy for this next chapter in our lives -- but I have to say I'm terrified of it too.  It's so much harder than I thought it would be, but not as hard as it could be.  

Colin - we are so happy you're here.  It's been such a crazy 5.5 weeks, we have both changed so much and are starting to figure each other out.  We love you!

Colin's Birth Story - Part 1

I will begin with a couple of things:

1 - never thought I would be into writing a birth story (not that I wouldn't have one, just that I wouldn't write one)

2 - I will be in "overshare" mode, so if you don't want to hear words like "dilated", "mucus plug", or "episiotomy", then I recommend reading no further -- well,  I suppose you could go a couple of paragraphs in, but do you really want to risk it??

3 - I probably am providing too much commentary for this and most of this is something no one will care about - but I feel like I should record it somewhere before I forget..

Week 40 - Due Date Friday, March 8, 2013

I had a doctor's appointment on Friday morning on my due date.  I walked in to my doctor saying "welcome to your due date, where's the baby?".  That's EXACTLY how I felt about it, so at least we were in a joking mood.  She checked me and I was still only 1 cm dilated, slightly softer as she said.  But generally speaking, not looking like I was making any progress.  We agreed to schedule me to come in on Monday so that we could discuss induction the next week and see how I was doing.

That weekend, we relaxed a little bit.  We didn't think we were having a baby any time soon, and at the same time, we were making plans for having an end in sight, and that felt good too.  Since we didn't know if we were having a baby any time soon so we actually had nothing specific to do.  It was fantastic.  Although, we didn't know what to do with ourselves.  I told my work that I was still pregnant, did some work over the weekend to try and get ready to go on leave.

Monday, March 11, 2013

My doctor's appointment was in the morning, nothing had really happened over the weekend.  It was rainy and so we had done as much walking as we could, but we had been limited by the weather.  I had started using Evening Primrose Oil to see if I could kickstart labor.  I was on red raspberry leaf tea to see if that would jumpstart contractions.  It hadn't done anything yet, but I figured if nothing else it would be the placebo effect and make me relax.  She checked me again, and I was still only at 1 cm.  On a note, I'm pretty good with pain.  I mean, I'm not like super woman or anything about it, but I would like to think that I handle pain pretty well.  It is the most UN-comfortable thing in the world to be checked for dilation.  That made me pretty nervous for the actual labor part, if I couldn't handle a little dilation check.  After talking with the doctor, there was the general feeling that I was probably going to be induced.  We scheduled me going into the hospital on March 17 to get settled in and then get started with either breaking my water or pitocin - depending on how I was looking.  We were going to have a baby by next Wednesday, essentially guaranteed.  How crazy!  My doctor said that she was the on-call doctor Thursday night, so she recommended me to start taking castor oil on Wednesday to get him moving.  I picked it up at the store that night, and I have to say it sounded nasty from what I was reading online.  I'm glad that I didn't end up needing to take it.

That day, I started having some minor contractions.  They felt like menstrual cramps, but they were pretty mild.  I figured they were just some practice contractions, maybe some Braxton Hicks.  The last few appointments with my doctor, I could feel some contractions after but I assumed it was just because she had gotten all up in my business and ticked him off.  I was still convinced that I was going to be an induction case - after all, pretty much everyone in my family was late - excessively late.  So, I just assumed that I would be the same way.  Especially since I had such little progress over the last few appointments.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013 - 2am

Around midnight or 2 am I was woken up by contractions.  I no longer had to google what a contraction felt like (what I had spent much of my Monday doing), I was definitely able to identify that these were the real deal.  They weren't excessively painful, but they were rough.  I didn't want John to know because I figured that they would pass, and he was supposed to be going to work so I didn't want him to be tired and cranky.  I guess eventually my moaning, rolling, and rocking woke him up and I told him that I was timing and they were between 2 and 10 minutes apart, depending on what position I was in.  They were still irregular, and varying in intensity.  John sat up with me and kept timing.  At one point in the morning we finally decided that he shouldn't go into work because they were getting closer and closer together.  (That was a back and forth conversation.. ha)  We called the doctor in the morning to explain the situation, and she recommended that we go ahead and go into triage since they were around 2 minutes apart.  What-what?!?!

I took this picture right before leaving, thinking it might be the last picture of me pregnant - it was, but only because I didn't take one on Wednesday.

We took our time getting everything finally together and in the car.  I figured that we still had a lot of time, and it was really scary to think that if I was in the hospital and admitted it meant that a baby was actually coming!  We got to triage, checked in, and went back to start getting monitored.  What's really strange to me, I was feeling my contractions really low on my abdomen, they put the bands high on my stomach for heartbeat and contractions.  The nurse left the room and said that she would be monitoring from the nurses station, so we started looking at the monitor to see if we could follow along.  It made absolutely no sense.  So, I started freaking out that the monitor wasn't picking up my contractions and that they would think I was making it all up.  (I'm insane)  So, I was watching and worrying that they wouldn't believe me.  After about an hour the nurse came back in and let us know that she had talked to our doctor and even though my contractions were every 3-5 minutes (phew, they WERE registering), they weren't intense enough and I wasn't dilated enough to admit me so she had to send us home.  She kept apologizing, and seemed to genuinely feel bad about not being able to admit me.  But at that point, I was still only 1 cm dilated, so they just didn't think I was making enough progress to stay at the hospital.

We got back in the car and headed home.  At that point I called my dad and let him know the deal, we called John's parents and filled them in.  My dad decided that he would go ahead and hop in the car to head up, since the worst that happened he would be here for a few days, the best that happened he would be here in time for Colin to be born.  John and I went home to start walking around the neighborhood.  One of the slower walks I've ever taken... needing to stop every so often to go through a contraction, and just generally making slow progress around the block.  Once home, I alternated between sitting on my exercise ball (good idea) and walking around the condo (not as good of an idea).  When my dad got in, I was still joking and working my way through the contractions.  John and I both went to bed early since we hadn't slept that much the night before.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

What is it about 2am?  That's apparently my labor bewitching hour.  Around 2am the contractions were crazy.  I had been able to start sleeping through my other ones (a good indication that the intensity was in fact too low for me to be admitted to the hospital I guess) - but these woke me up with a vengeance.  I started timing, but they were around 8-10 minutes - meaning that while they were crazy painful, they weren't close enough together to warrant going into the hospital.  At 3:30 am, we decided to call the doctor because John and I were at a disagreement over whether we were told we only needed increased intensity (no timing), and if we needed intensity AND timing.  The doctor was not exceptionally pleasant - I realize we were calling at 3:30 in the morning, but it's our first baby and we have NO idea what we're doing.  After explaining our false alarm on Tuesday and then explaining what had happened this morning he said "is this your first baby?"  "yes."  "Then you have a long way to go."  I think that was a terrible thing to say to a woman who has had contractions for the last 24 hours.  Not cool man... So that just put me in a bad mood.

At about 4:30 am, I noticed that my pants were wet.  I assumed it was just the continuation of the mucus plug (gross!) that had been making its way out over the last few days and didn't think too much of it.  I changed my pants, mentioned it to John, and went back to bed to get through the contractions.  A couple of hours later, I got up and realized that I was still leaking fluid and that it seemed a little different than before - so I started thinking it could be my water breaking.  I texted my friend (who had her water break) and asked how she "knew".  I suppose at that point, if I'm questioning it enough to ask - I really should just call the doctor.  But, I was gun shy.  I had already gone into the hospital and been turned away, called overnight and been shot down... I didn't want to go for three.  I made my way out to the living room, and started realizing that with sitting and walking the contractions were back to being really close together but the intensity was lower... When laying down, the timing was more spaced but the intensity was really high.  That was extremely confusing.  After talking with my dad (who agreed that these seemed different and that I should call the doctor) and talking with John (who had been trying for hours at this point to have me call) I finally dialed in.  We explained what had happened, she agreed it could be my water breaking, and had me go into triage once again.

We loaded up the car and made our way over to Prentice about 11am.  I got in a triage room, and at this point was hoping that my water was broken since then they would absolutely have to admit me.  The contractions were ROUGH.  I was ready to be admitted so that I could get some relief from the pain.  This is when I discovered that Prentice had a dumb pain scale.  They asked me my pain on a scale of 1-10, so I assumed my own scale of 1 meaning no pain, and 10 being the worst pain I had ever experienced.  So, I ranked this at a 7/8.... compared to Tuesday when I ranked it at around a 5/6.  The nurse kind of looked at me like I was a crazy person, which is when I found out their pain scale was 1 meaning no pain and 10 meaning getting your arm cut off with no pain medicine.  Umm, that's a jump. So, my 7 wasn't quite accurate, because I don't think it was anything near cutting off my arm.  But, it did hurt and was some of the worst pain I'd ever had.  After that I had to amend it back to the 5 - which then made me feel like a complete wuss that I couldn't handle it.  I was whistling and humming through them.  It was not melodic, but it was helpful.  The nurse did a check to see if my water was broken, left to get results and talk to my doctor.  They hooked me up the machine to monitor me, and John and I kicked back and watched the Vatican Pope coverage on TV.

While the nurse was gone, I was just hoping that my water was broken or I was at 3cm so that they wouldn't make me go home.  I didn't think I could handle it if they once again said no admittance.  If the contractions had to get more intense to be admitted .... I was screaming uncle on this labor thing.  When she came back in we found out that my water was indeed broken (woohoo) and when she checked me I was ALSO at 3 cm!  Double whammy for hospital stay.  Thank goodness!!!  They were about to wheel me up to labor and delivery and the pope was about to be selected.. what a great Wednesday!

They finally brought us up to the room at 2 pm... It had been 36 hours since my contractions had started on Tuesday morning, and I was so excited to get this show on the road... and even MORE excited for that epidural.  I figured at this point I would have a long wait until he would actually be born.  I was ready to get settled in, get the pain meds, and relax for a little bit since neither John or I had slept the last two nights.  We were very mistaken.... in less than 6 hours our little guy was making his debut!

I had the nurse take this picture - the last picture where it was just the two of us!

Breastfeeding is all it's "cracked" up to be...

This post is getting ahead of itself a bit on the blog, since I haven't even written his birth story yet, but  I feel like it's an important topic.  If you're shy and don't want to read about my nipples (which is probably not every one's cup of tea) then you should skip this post.. and probably skip the birth story.. and come back when I'm posting a more G rated post.

Breastfeeding.  

Such a hot topic these days, and such an intense topic.  So many opinions, so many thoughts and judgements.  When I was pregnant and people asked if I was going to breastfeed (which is a weird thing that acquaintances feel they can talk about my breasts when they don't know me very well) my response was always "I'm going to try".  This was based on the little bit that I had read between blogs and the class we took and all the information that I had soaked in up to this point.  Everything I had read said how beneficial it was (plus side) but also how difficult and trying it can be (down side).  So I didn't want to set myself up with an absolute and then be disappointed in myself if I struggled or couldn't make it work.  Although, I will say that I was going to be incredibly disappointed if I wasn't able to breastfeed, as then they would have been the literal biggest waste of space EVER. 

At the hospital things seemed like they were going pretty well.  The class we took prepared me a little bit for different holds to try to get him to latch, and what I should be looking for.  I thought I was prepared.  But, there was trouble from the start.  My left side - no bueno.  For some reason, it just always hurt a little bit more than the other.  I had two lactation consultants come from the hospital and assured me that his latch was good.  I just didn't have faith since it was hurting.  I didn't realize that it was going to just be sore in the beginning - and started to seriously doubt myself.

When I got home, that's when things got crazy bad.  I was sitting in the room crying while he cried because he was hungry, and all I wanted to do was feed him through magic because there was no way in h-e-double-hockey-sticks that I was letting him nurse on the left side.  But, I knew that I had to give it a shot otherwise it would just mess up my body, especially since I was only 3 and 4 days in.  I needed to nurse to get the supply. 

I contacted another lactation consultant on Monday, yes, that's day 5.  I think the woman thought I was probably a little nuts-o to contact her so early after getting home, but I was struggling.  It was so painful.  She looked at me, watched him latch, weighed him before and after and he was doing AWESOME.  As in, getting like a million ounces of milk from each side (okay, like 1.5-2 oz, which is apparently golden for day 5 of nursing).  She was super impressed and positive and gave me so much confidence.  It was one of the best things I've ever done.  She did note that my nipples were bruised and battered, which is an unfortunate side-effect, and did agree that my left side was pretty torn up, and I had a pretty awesome crack in my nipple.  Yeah, a crack... WTF.  With time, it was supposed to get better.  Both of us (Colin and me) were supposed to learn and it was supposed to get better.  

Unfortunately we didn't get better.  By Thursday I was praying for a milk nurse, not understanding why I wasn't born a noble in some different time period.  My left nipple was swollen to the point where I don't think he could really even get it in his mouth to eat, engorgement was setting in... and I swear that the crack that I had was turning green.  I was going between hot compresses to reduce the swelling and ice packs to reduce the pain.  I knew it was going to be hard, but I didn't think it was going to be THIS hard.  I was so miserable and every time he would cry I would want to hide because I didn't want to have the pain.  I could barely bring myself to feed him.  Every time John would look at me or mention "hungry" I was getting so angry, and it wasn't his fault.  He was just trying to make the crying baby stop crying.  Both of us knew the answer, I was the only one that truly understood the gravity of him being hungry.

I googled everything I could think of - essentially reading from everyone to not stop nursing - suck it up and nurse through the pain.  It's amazing the amount of pain and suffering I was able to go through for this little 8 lb baby.... but I sucked it up.  Saturday came a fever and chills, and redness and swelling... mastitis.  At least I was pretty sure.  I was still on my prescription ibuprofen so it was bringing down my fever, but I was still swinging between 101 and 99.  I'm supposed to call the doctor at anything over 100.4 but my fever never stayed above 100.4 for longer than 5-10 minutes so I didn't think it was worth it.  I was starting to get so frustrated because everything had felt so "easy" to this point, and this was so incredibly hard.  And I generally only like things that I'm good at, so I hated being so "bad" at breastfeeding.  

The week progressed, I talked to my doctor, I talked to my lactation consultant.  My doctor said that I should keep nursing, if I thought it was mastitis and it was bad enough to warrant antibiotics I could call back and they would submit a prescription for me.  I declined hoping that I could make it through.  My lactation consultant said as a last resort I could do "nipple rest" where I would pump and feed him through the bottle instead of nursing him directly - but the way she said it made me feel like I was copping out because I should be able to just suck it up and it would get better and heal on its own.  By Thursday I was sure that the crack was green and that infection was setting in so I got an antibiotic nipple cream.  Of course I called on Friday afternoon so it didn't get filled until Saturday morning.  The pharmacist was so sweet because I was calling every hour to see if it was there on Friday afternoon - and you could tell that she felt so bad to have to keep turning me away.  When I picked it up on Saturday she remembered me and gave me a pity look, she completely understood the desperation in my voice.

Where am I now?  Still in pain, a chunk of skin and tissue is still missing on my left nipple.. but the pain is manageable.  I'm terrified of when the ointment runs out, I'll probably see about getting another prescription for it if only for peace of mind.  I wish I could say that everything is now rainbows and butterflies - and nursing is like riding on a unicorn through a land of cotton candy.  Two weeks came and at least it became manageable.  I don't cry (at least when he's hungry), but it still hurts for the latch. I don't look at him with fear when he starts to cry and I know it's not because he's dirty or tired - he's hungry.  

I'm now just over four weeks in, four weeks of being home.  I have to say, breastfeeding is hard.  All those bloggers were right.  The only thing that makes me keep going is that I know all of the benefits of breastfeeding... and let's be honest it's good for me too - cheap AND burns calories.  There aren't many things in my life that I can say I can burn calories by sitting on the couch.  I know that if I decide that I can't do it and I turn to pumping and bottle feeding, that's okay too.  I know that whatever choice I make is what will work best for our family, but I really do want to stick this out - suck it up.  I think that I realized what went so wrong - the seal break when trying to reposition him.  I didn't do such a good job, and so I think he was essentially stripping skin of my nipple and making the crack worse.  I wish I could go back in time.  I just really need to have this crack (which is now a chasm) heal.  And I probably need my psyche to heal a little bit too.

**I would like to send a very big thank you to a very good friend who I talked to right before the breastfeeding "hump" - understanding and knowing that crying in the night and the stress I was feeling about breastfeeding is normal and okay... and that I'm not a crazy person.  One of the more therapeutic conversations of my life.**

UGH!

I had just written a TON going towards Colin's birth story --- and it said that it was saved.  Blogger is a liar, as 80% didn't in fact save so now I'm back to re-writing....... This will take a while folks.