I picked up the cold pay phone receiver, pressed the cold buttons, and shivered as I told my husband the news. The pay phone made our conversation difficult to understand, he rushed to the hospital while I stopped by home to pack my bag and put some laundry into the washing machine. When I finally arrived to reassure him, we were unceremoniously admitted to the hospital.
At 4 pm the nurses applied prostaglandin to my forbidding cervix (50% effaced and not even 1 cm.) The prostoglandin burned into my tissue, the IV dripped into my veins, my bladder swelled, and my sciatic nerve cringed as I was ordered to lay on my left side and not use the restroom for an hour--the longest hour of my life. The procedure was repeated at 10 pm for the second longest hour of my life.
My last childless night's sleep ended abruptly at 6 am with the nurses administering pitocin. Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan was my breakfast. While Captian Kirk was threatened by the earwig zombies the pitocin took hold of me. Violent cramps gripped me every minute, just as one taperd off another began. I'm was at 3 cm now and the doctor cleared me for an epidural at my will. H'e'd also like to break my water.
Okay...
(I was niave and uneducated. And it pains me to this day.)
The doctor sat with one knee up on the foot of the bed. And with a long, thin, flexible hook my baby's only world was penetrated and all our hopes of a normal delivery drained onto my socks.
Almost immediately the baby showed signs of fetal distress. The pitocin was sharp while the oxygen was smooth. But nothing could comfort my baby now. The doctor said this is the moment he's been preparing me for, it will have to be a c-section. Inbetween overlapping contractions I signed the consent forms.
The mustardy operating room bustled with a dozen staff. I felt like I'd been thrown back to the 80s when women pushed the boundries of femenity and roles. I was stripped, preped and poked while nature looked on through the unbreakable hospital glass. The bustle died down and the surgery began. While the doctor talked about golf and asked for pliers, I lay drugged while the smell of my cauterized flesh wafted in the air. I so wanted to be a part of my baby's births, but my utterances and questions were met with polite tolerance. The doctor found the problem; there was a knot in her umbilical cord.
The baby was born and my husband was at her side. Eventually she cried. Like a bottle of wine she was shown to me, but the operating shield was up to my chin and the drugs made my head feel like lead so I had to cross my eyes to see her and then she was gone. My vital parts were replaced to their "approximate anotomical locations" and I was sown up and wheeled to my room.
Hours later the baby was finally brought to me for her first feeding. I was too nauseous to move. The nurse forced the sleepy head onto my breast like a child forces Barbie and Ken to kiss. She would quicly learn to latch the next day (though her low blood sugar kept us in the hospital for a week) but at last I lay dreaming and sleeping with the 4 lb 7 oz bundle tucked in my arm, she was finally mine and I was a mother.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Birth Story #1 Part 1: Birth and Burgers
After 4 births, whether by a sense of nostalgia, maturity, or appreciation, I feel it is finally time to write my birth stories. I feel like the poster child for methods of delivery having had an emergency c-section, a planned c-section, a vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC) and a miscarriage. I hope my experiences will enrich yours be it past or present.
Birth Story #1 Part 1
I lay in the quiet darkness of the cavernous ultrasound room at the regional hospital. I listened to my deliberately slow breaths to ease the beating of my heart. The ultrasound technician hadn't said much, but I watched the calculated measurements flash on the screen: gestation 37.5 wks, head 37 wks, abdomen 32 wks, total weight 5 lbs 7 oz.
7 1/2 weeks earlier I stopped by the community hospital for a quick amniotic fluid leak test. The nurses routinely hooked my "fluffy" abdomen up to the monitors. My "angry" cervix contaminated the samples, but the nurses were reassuring: that fluid is likely not amniotic. Embarrassed and starving I was eager to leave. But my intuition manifested in the form of hypochondria had brought me here for a reason: the baby's heart showed intermittent patterns of non-reassuring fetal distress. Dinner would have to wait.
Hour by hour we waited for a reassuring heart beat, unable to leave and unable to eat in the event the baby should need to be delivered shortly. By the next morning the community hospital had done all they could and ambulanced me to the regional hospital for ultrasounds, more monitoring and in the unfortunate event, the NICU. In the end, the only thing that was determined was that the baby should be monitored indefinitely. And so 24 hours later I sat in a tiny triage room making love to my cafeteria food.
After that week in the hospital (with 2 steroid shots), followed by non-stress tests twice a week for 7 weeks, plus another afternoon in the hospital, this ultrasound shouldn't have been different. But the perinatologist came into my quiet cave, tall, thin and gray. He spoke closely, as if the rims of his round spectacles were my own. The baby has stopped growing. Shown by it's disproportionate head to body ratio, it's called Intrauterine Growth Restriction (IUGR). He wants to do an amniocentesis, but I'm almost 38 weeks I say. My doctor orders an induction at his community hospital, so I order Arby's 5 for $5 on the way.
Birth Story #1 Part 1
I lay in the quiet darkness of the cavernous ultrasound room at the regional hospital. I listened to my deliberately slow breaths to ease the beating of my heart. The ultrasound technician hadn't said much, but I watched the calculated measurements flash on the screen: gestation 37.5 wks, head 37 wks, abdomen 32 wks, total weight 5 lbs 7 oz.
7 1/2 weeks earlier I stopped by the community hospital for a quick amniotic fluid leak test. The nurses routinely hooked my "fluffy" abdomen up to the monitors. My "angry" cervix contaminated the samples, but the nurses were reassuring: that fluid is likely not amniotic. Embarrassed and starving I was eager to leave. But my intuition manifested in the form of hypochondria had brought me here for a reason: the baby's heart showed intermittent patterns of non-reassuring fetal distress. Dinner would have to wait.
Hour by hour we waited for a reassuring heart beat, unable to leave and unable to eat in the event the baby should need to be delivered shortly. By the next morning the community hospital had done all they could and ambulanced me to the regional hospital for ultrasounds, more monitoring and in the unfortunate event, the NICU. In the end, the only thing that was determined was that the baby should be monitored indefinitely. And so 24 hours later I sat in a tiny triage room making love to my cafeteria food.
After that week in the hospital (with 2 steroid shots), followed by non-stress tests twice a week for 7 weeks, plus another afternoon in the hospital, this ultrasound shouldn't have been different. But the perinatologist came into my quiet cave, tall, thin and gray. He spoke closely, as if the rims of his round spectacles were my own. The baby has stopped growing. Shown by it's disproportionate head to body ratio, it's called Intrauterine Growth Restriction (IUGR). He wants to do an amniocentesis, but I'm almost 38 weeks I say. My doctor orders an induction at his community hospital, so I order Arby's 5 for $5 on the way.
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