I think this story begins at the chiropractor's office on August 6th. As all of you who have been reading this blog already know, my back has been killing me, and my neck was really out of place, so I took a trip to the chiro. While I was there he offered to do some deep tissue massage on me, which is thought to bring on labor. But he said "I've got to warn you though, I've done this on a handful of people and it's never worked". I told him he could give it a shot. When I got home from his office my spine was no longer hurting me, but the back muscles he massaged were. Since deep tissue massage usually have that lingering pain effect I didn't pay much attention to it, but it continued to hurt all day so when I went to bed I took one of the muscle relaxers that my doctor had prescribed for back pain. I got a good 4 hours of sleep before I woke up at 2:30 to take one of my night time trips to the bathroom. While I was going to bathroom I heard a little pop, and only because I had read other women's birth stories with the mention of a "pop", I thought out loud "I think my water just broke". When I stood up fluid continued to trickle down my leg, so I sat back down and tried to figure out what to do next. I was shaking. TJ never wakes up for anything, so I was trying to decide how I would get him up. And I was scared to get back up because I didn't know how much fluid was going to continue to come out. I put on a pad and went to get the paper my doctor had given me with the labor and delivery phone numbers on it. I sat down in bed to call the hospital, I figured I'd wake TJ up after I let them know I was coming. I told the nurse that I was 39 weeks pregnant, I said "and my water just broke". TJ's eyes popped open. He's never waken up that easily before. The nurse asked me if I had any other symptoms, I said no, but that my hands were shaking. She laughed and just said "is this your first baby?".
We started getting everything together. I had already packed my bags, but there was still a handful of things that weren't packed up yet. I got dressed, had a bowl of Raisin Bran (since I knew that I probably wouldn't be eating for a while), we fed the dog, and left the house at about 3:45. We got to the hospital about 15 minutes later, and they brought me to my room. I got into my gown and laid in bed, the nurse hooked me up to the monitor to keep track of Kash's heartbeat and my contractions. For the first few hours I was having some regular contractions, but I wasn't really feeling them, and they eventually died down. So the nurse contacted my doctor and they decided to get me on an IV and give me some pitocin to bring back my contractions. Well, it worked. I began having regular contractions again, but this time they hurt. I tried to deal with the pain by myself for as long as I could. I had no idea how far dilated I was because the nurse said they wouldn't check me until I asked for pain medication, but I wanted to know how far along I was before I asked for any meds. I finally got the point where I needed something, I was 4 cm dilated when they gave me a dose of fentanyl. That helped out a lot, but only for like 20 minutes, so I asked for another dose. Once that one wore off another 20 minutes later, I told them to just send in the anesthesiologist for the epidural. They told me he was currently in a C-Section so it would be about 45 minutes before he could come take care of me, so I got a third dose of fentanyl while I waited.
Finally, after what seemed like forever, the anesthesiologist came in. He started the epidural (which wasn't as bad as procedure as I thought it might be) and I began to feel a lot better, even though my left leg was getting pretty numb and began irritating me. I think it was around this time that the on call doctor came in to introduce herself, she said that my doctor was out of town but that she was going to try and get here in time to deliver me. If my normal doctor didn't make it, she would be the one to do it. I have no idea how long I was feeling "OK" for after receiving the epidural, but all of sudden my entire body began shivering uncontrollably, and I was feeling so much pain in my tailbone that I was having to breath through it like it was a huge contraction. I told the nurse that I needed my epidural to be upped or something, so she left, but no one ever came back to do anything about it. Finally the nurse came back and asked if the anesthesiologist had come in, I said no and that I also felt like I needed to push. So the anesthesiologist finally came to help me, and then although my pain felt better and I stopped shaking, I lost total control of my legs (I could move them somewhat up until this point), and I hated that. Then the doctor on call came in to check me, since I said I felt the urge to push, and I was fully dilated to 10, but Kash's head was only at 0 station (he needs to be at about +3 to be pushed out), so she told me I would probably have to push for 1 to 2 hours to get him down. So it began. At about 4:30 pm on August 7th (12.5 hours after being admitted to the hospital) I started pushing. I couldn't feel my contractions so I didn't really have any pain, but my legs were so heavy and numb that it was hell trying to hold them up during the pushes. I ended up pulling my left groin muscle and hurting my left thumb during all the pushing because that leg was so dead. Kash didn't really like it when I pushed, his rate would decelerate a little, so they made me wear an oxygen mask. About 2 hours later the on call doctor came back in (it didn't look like my doctor was going to make it) and she remained in the room with us to assist with the pushing. The doctors and nurses kept saying "great job", and "do another push just like that one", so I knew he was almost here.
Just before 7 o'clock rolled around, the power went out, only in my room! The rest of the hospital was totally fine so there were no backup generators to turn the lights and machines back on, and my monitoring machine was the only thing telling me when I was having a contraction (and when to push), so the nurse had to keep feeling my uterus for the contractions to let me know when to push. A few other nurses came in to hold some flash lights up for us, and they had to bring in the old school machines to listen to Kash's heartbeat. Kash was finally born at 7:08 pm, in the dark. TJ cut his umbilical cord, and after they gave him to me to hold for a few moments (and let him poop on me), they took him to get dried off and assessed. He weighed 7 pounds 12 ounces, and was 21 inches long. He was perfect. He had good color and scored an 8 on his APGARs (10 is perfect). The pediatrician didn't really like the fact that his cry was so quiet, but after a few pokes and rubs he got louder. His head was shaped super funny from being shoved down in my pelvis for so long, but it quickly fixed itself. And he also had a large purple birth mark on the top of his head, but it is going away. The doctor delivered my placenta and said that it was extremely healthy, and surprisingly large for the size of the baby, which maybe explains why I looked so huge while I was pregnant. After the placenta was taken care of the doctor stitched me up, I got a 2nd degree tear during the delivery, which really isn't that bad. I got to nurse Kash right away after they dried him off, and after I spent some time with him they gave him his first bath and started running his blood tests and administering his shots. It turned out that he had low blood sugar, probably due to the fact that I had a slightly elevated fever during the labor, so I had to feed him some formula a few times to help even it out. But everything else was passed with flying colors.
My normal doctor came by the hospital the next morning to see how I was doing. She felt so bad for not being there, especially since she almost never misses one of her patients deliveries. It turns out that when she was getting ready to head to the hospital from her out of town location, she noticed she had a completely flat tire, which prevented her from getting there in time. But she felt good about leaving me in the care of the doctor who delivered Kash, she is actually my doctor's doctor.
I was healing up nicely, even though it took quite a while for me to get feeling back in my left leg after the epidural, and I walked with a bit of a limp for a while afterwards. Kash was breastfeeding well and after the required 2 night stay in the hospital we were released to go home! We are now home with our new little boy, and all four of us (including the dog) are doing great. Kash is the most beautiful baby ever, and he's so good too. TJ and I of course just love him to pieces.
"Here I Am!"
