life and puppies

The Pitocin starts to work its magic pretty quickly. And by ‘magic’ I mean discomfort. The contractions pretty quickly begin to get more uncomfortable. I had told both the resident and Megan that I was interested in an epidural, and although there wasn’t any discussion of when, there seemed to be serious support for it (everyone nodded quite knowingly). Two bands are again set up around my belly — one measures contractions and the other, the baby’s heart rate. Megan tells us the baby’s heart rate seems fast, but that the doctor isn’t worried about it. My mom and Severa come to visit sometime around one am, I think. It was really, really nice to see them. I pretty much have no recollection of what we talked about, but I remember thinking, “Being a mom means getting up in the middle of the night, driving across town and sitting in a hospital room. Oh boy.” I sat on the birthing ball for awhile, which relieved some of the pain, but things were really not feeling totally awesome. I would still describe the pain, though, as really serious menstrual craps that come and go. Things get a little blurry at this point, but I know that my mom and Severa left and Aaron and Megan and I continue to just hang out. The three of us got along really well and Megan rarely left the room. I never used our iPod and I never turned on the tv. I’m not sure how the hours passed, but they did. I was clearly getting pretty uncomfortable and asked Aaron what he thought was going on with the epidural. Although I felt like I could still manage things, I was worried about getting to a point where I couldn’t and  then being told that it was too late for medication. So, Aaron raised the epidural query to Megan who got on it immediately. Soon a Chicago Bulls fan/anesthesiology resident was in our room, shifting his weight from foot to foot, asking me questions like, “Have you ever had surgery?,” “Any allergies?” and “Do you like cheeseburgers?” Ok, maybe not the last one, but there were a lot of questions that I felt had been well covered by every other person in the hospital. I understand anesthesiology is a huge deal and I’m sure their medical malpractice insurance is in a range I can’t even comprehend, but it still seemed pretty inefficient. And I was all about efficiency at that point. Finally, he sticks the needles in my back, which didn’t feel great, but wasn’t awful. Mostly it just felt odd — I worried he was sticking a microchip in my back and told him so. Soon, though, things were numb and while I could sort of tell I was having contractions, the discomfort and pain had subsided. Yay! The downside, though, was that in went the catheter. You’d think, of course, that if you’re numb, you wouldn’t really care about the catheter, but I found this wasn’t really true. I had great discomfort with that nonsense — I had a constant feeling that I had to pee. When I told Aaron that, he said, “Well, just go.” Uh, yeah, see, I didn’t have any control of that region so going or not going were no longer up to me. Shortly after the sweet relief is administered – I’d estimate it was a little after three am — Aaron and I decide to try to get some sleep. Aaron curls up on the couch and I am on my side on the hospital bed – tubes in my hand, blood pressure cuff around my arm, catheter in my whatever it is and epidural meds being administered in my back. Sweet sleep. But wait! Blech, blech, belch! Out of nowhere, I projectile vomit Twizzler residue all over the bed and floor. This is pretty upsetting. I’m embarrassed and a little scared. What the hell just happened? Aaron and Megan quickly clean it all up, Megan points out the barf bag behind me and things seem to subside. Aaron falls asleep. Soon, though, Megan decides that the bands aren’t doing what she’d like them to do. One thing after another is shoved inside me to measure the contractions and baby’s heart rate. One of them is even screwed into the top of baby’s head. Poor baby. I’m a little concerned at this point, but Megan seems calm so I sleep for a bit.

Not for long, though. I wake up shaking uncontrollably – my teeth, my arms, my hands, my head — everything is shaking. I feel very cold. Everyone checks on me and a cervical exam reveals I am now eight centimeters dilated. I’m happy to hear this, but the shaking is pretty scary. Megan tells me she thinks the shaking is from all of the work my body did in such a short time to get to eight centimeters. I accept this explanation because, well, why not. Things seem to happen quickly at this point and before I know it, I’m ten centimeters and given the green light to push. Baby’s heart rate is still high, but no one seems that worried (although everyone keeps announcing it like it’s something I should know. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do about it, though). It’s about 5:45 am. Pushing begins. Aaron takes one leg, Megan the other, and she tells me to wait for the contraction and then to do three pushes. All three should be done after a deep inhale, and on the exhale I am to push like I’m trying to have a bowel movement. There’s too much going on to say anything to anyone at this point, but I keep thinking, “Why didn’t I know that that was how I was supposed to push? How the hell did I miss that little instruction?” It’s probably obvious to Megan that I didn’t know that, though, because I almost invariably push wrong on the first one to two pushes of the series. She also keeps telling me to keep my butt down on the bed. This is all harder than I can explain, and not because it was painful or uncomfortable — though that part is soon to come. It just seems like so much to coordinate and my brain is hardly working and certainly can’t communicate such complicated and unfamiliar directions to my lower half. Breathe in deeply, push out my bowels on the exhale. But keep my butt on the bed. And do it again. And again. Ok, just as I sort of think that I am getting this routine down — Megan and Aaron are being super encouraging — things start really hurting. The contractions hurt more and the pushing is just incredibly painful. My legs and feet start tingling, like they had been asleep and were just waking up. The pushing becomes more and more exhausting. I am a broken record, “Um, things really feel weird. Things really hurt. Things are tingly.” There are other nurses in and out and no one really seems to take notice. I mean, they’re nice to me, but no one seems to think anything is strange. The attending finally comes in around this point, apologizing for not getting to us until now. It didn’t really bother me, especially as I hadn’t know that he was supposed to pop in for a visit. He assesses the situation and tells me that I have to do more work before he can help me by pulling or using forceps. Forceps! Good God. The doc also mentions that if I don’t get things moving along, I’ll have to have a c-section. A c-section! For God’s sake, we could have done that yesterday! I’m tearing up and Aaron is about ready to ask if we can up the epidural to get me some relief when a nurse walks around the back of my bed and sees that the tube from the epidural medicine into me has fallen out of me. Uh, oops. She announces that the back of my gown is soaked with druggy medicine. So, yikes. A new anesthesiologist comes rushing in and fixes things up quickly. Sweet relief. The thing I noticed most about this wasn’t so much the alleviation of serious pain — though I did notice that — but instead that I had more energy to concentrate on pushing. I assume this is because I wasn’t concentrating on being in so much pain and my energy could be used for more productive things. I then continued to push for awhile but nothing really seems to be happening. Baby’s heart rate is still high and, at one point, an unfamiliar nurse comes in and whispers with Megan for a bit. Megan tells us that all of the nurses are watching Baby’s heart rate and contractions on monitors out at their desk and are riveted. Uh, great. I have no clue what to do with this information. I feel like I should be really stressed out about it, but I feel like I can only concentrate on following the instructions I’m given. A shift change occurs so we lose sweet Megan and in comes maternal Linda and a teenage nursing student who could not have been nicer. Linda was pretty bossy — but in that kind of sugary voice that has scary conviction underlining it — and adjusting to the change in dynamic is a bit rough. But the tweenage nurse is so nice and kind that it eases the transition a bit. The doc comes in again and is more serious with his c-section threat. I push and push and push. Linda tells me Baby is going to be totally bald – she can see the head! I push and push and push. And nothing really seems to be happening.

I am lying on the bed with my legs up on the squat bar and pushing beyond what I think is possible for me.  I cry and scream and even start to swear. I honestly do not think this baby is coming out. Right before 8 am, a new doctor comes in — another shift change. At this point, it seems as though there are 100 people in the room, though I know that can’t be right. While the doctor is at the foot of my bed, I push so hard that I feel a football-size something-or-other fall out of me. In fact, I see my belly go from inflated to deflated (well, as deflated as I get) and I hear a short scream. What happened? I ask. There seems to be a moment of chaos and confusion before the entire room realizes that Baby Molly has just popped right out. After almost two and a half hours of pushing, over a day of contractions, vomit, shaking, epidurals in and out, our baby girl just fell out on the bed when no one was expecting it.

And now she’s here. Ten fingers, ten toes. And quite a bit of hair.

The next day the doctor visited us and apologized for not being ready. I’m not sure we were really ready, either. But I am sure about one thing: we are totally in love.

Here goes…

To be completely honest, I’m not sure when it really began. On Tuesday, February 28, with 38 weeks under the belt (literally), we had a prenatal check up and the nurse asked me if I wanted a cervical exam. I felt odd saying yes (who wants a cervical exam?) but I was curious to know what was going on down there. Well, the NP did the exam — ouch! — and nada was going on. Actually, baby sweet potato’s head was at a semi decent station (I’ve blocked what it was — negative two, maybe) but I had 100% zero dilation. Additionally, the NP seemed to have quite a hard time even finding my cervix. This was both painful and kinda disturbing. The true issue of the day was my asthma. All through the appointment, I was a super wheezer. It really wasn’t pretty. Maybe because I had no baby remotely poking out of me, I had baby putting some major pressure on my lungs and airway. Or at least that’s my medical diagnosis. The NP sent me off to Urgent Care to get a nebulizer treatment for my asthma because, in her words, I “could not go into labor breathing” the way I was. The second half of my third trimester was marked by super bad asthma. I was going through rescue inhalers faster than I was going through episodes of The Office (watched a ton of the NBC show on Netflix’s Instant Watch — I felt like I didn’t have the Pam-Roy-Jim-Karen timeline down right. Now I feel like I could do some serious damage at a trivia contest). So, that was Tuesday.

I felt a lot of nausea on Wednesday, February 29, and ended up working from home to try to be a little more comfortable. Nothing very eventful happened, though, and I went to bed at a normal hour. I woke up around 3:30 or so on Thursday morning and felt some pain. Pain may not be the right word – it was more like discomfort. At 3:30 in the morning, though, I wasn’t thinking very clearly and tried to go back to sleep. Around 4:30 am, I realized I still had the discomfort and started to think, “Hmm. Could these actually be contractions?” Aaron was still sleeping and I didn’t see any need to wake him up, but I did start to use the What to Expect app’s contraction counter. The pain I was feeling was similar to a menstrual cramp except that, of course, it came and went pretty regularly. It came and went about every six minutes for about 45 seconds a pop. I started to realize that I may, indeed, be in labor. This was both reassuring and terrifying. It seemed so crazy to me that it was happening — I mean, after all this time and then it’s just so…undramatic.  Gracie and Aaron were just snoring away while I was watching episodes of Gossip Girl and, at the same time, I’m having a baby. Crazy. Sidenote: For reasons I can’t explain, I decided to put Gossip Girl — a show that I had never before seen more than ten minutes of — in our Netflix Instant Watch queue and watch several seasons while going through these labor pains at home. So, things just seemed so … calm. In fact, I wasn’t even sure what to say when Aaron woke up, which was probably around seven or so. I felt a little guilty telling him that I didn’t think we should go into work and that, you know, I might be having our baby in the super-near future. So, we sat around watching Gossip Girl as I waited for the contraction counter to show me that it was time to head to the hospital. We’d been told to wait until the contractions were about a minute long and three to five minutes apart. The thing is, though, they seemed to be getting a little longer in duration, but were hanging out at more like the five minute mark than the three, so we kept waiting. Around 11, though, we called the triage area of the birthing center at Meriter and relayed what had been going on…We were told that we could come on in, but the nurse didn’t sound convinced we were having this baby any time soon and I don’t think Aaron and I were even sure there was really a baby in there at all. But off to the hospital we went! Given that Meriter is only about a mile away, I felt like we could save face and just, you know, drop in to see what was happening. No big deal. We walked in, passing outgoing baby-makers with their flowers and balloons and, I suppose, babies and waltzed on up to the fourth floor birthing area. The triage room was super boring and I’m sure it’s just because I was enormous — being preggers and all — but the bed felt like three-quarters of a twin bed. Anyway, long story short (that phrase always reminds me of one of my aunt Terry’s answering machine/voicemail messages, which are always anything but), I’m hooked up to the contraction monitoring machine and the baby heart rate machine (both pretty cool, in my opinion) and then I *get* to have another cervical exam. The result after seven hours of contractions? I’m two centimeters dilated! Thud. What a disappointment. Keep in mind non-pregnancy focused peeps, you’ve got to get that cervix to ten centimeters of dilation before you get the green light to push that baby out. Two centimeters. ‘Oh my gosh,’ I think, ‘At this rate, this baby may not be here until Labor Day.’ Well, that’s a polite way of relaying what I was thinking. So, we’re advised to stay put for an hour and someone will remeasure my cervix then. Oh, awesome. We stay put and watch Jeopardy!, which is AO’s favorite daytime show, and are treated to an episode of Youth Jeopardy! This means I am slightly more successful at the show than I usually am. AO keeps shouting nonsense about the unprecedented nature of the contestants’ boldness — Daily Double insanity — but I don’t really know what he’s talking about. In addition to being in pain and uncomfortable, I can’t help replaying the nurse’s words: “It could be false labor.” What? If this is false labor, I’m petrified. One, it doesn’t seem to have any end in sight — how long can I keep this up? Two, I’ve dilated two centimeters in two days so doesn’t that mean something? Three, if this is false…? Ugh. After an hour, a twelve-year-old resident comes in, measures me (not knowing I’ve previously been measured, which is pretty annoying) and pronounces me three centimeters dilated. Well! A centimeter in an hour seems impressive to me! But, the twelve-year-old tells me what I’ve been thinking for months, “Different people measure differently.” Obviously a centimeter is a centimeter, but no one is exactly sticking a ruler in there. Resident twelve-year-old tells us we can stay or we can go and come back later. So, we can stay in this tiny triage room until…I’m not sure what, or we can go home and watch Gossip Girl and come back when I’m more in labor labor. I’m paraphrasing the options. We decided to go home. Before we leave, though, I ask the resident what needs to change, what symptoms I should have, in order to come back to be actually admitted to the hospital. She says, “Oh, you’ll just know” and smiles. I said, “Yeah, I thought I knew this time.” This was snarky of me because, well, I obviously didn’t know as evidenced by me not even recognizing the pains in the first place, but it really annoys me when medical professionals give this tidbit as ‘advice.’ It’s just not helpful. So, home we go. Gossip Girl. Gossip Girl. Gossip Girl. I don’t know if you agree, or know, Dear Reader, but Gossip Girl is really not a very good show. It’s not even a very good guilty pleasure because it’s pretty damn boring. It’s kinda good laboring entertainment, though, because it’s mindless and it never matters if you miss five minutes — you can easily figure out what happened and you never really ‘miss’ it. All of this probably explains why I haven’t watched a single second of the show post-Molly.

Ok, so we’re home. Aaron brings me a delicious Skinny Cheese with spicy mustard from Milio’s and we do nothing but wait and time the contractions (and watch Gossip Girl) all afternoon. At some point, I eat Twizzlers and Aaron takes a nap. The contractions hurt a lot but they don’t seem to be getting much closer together or that much longer. The intensity of each one, though, seems to increase. I don’t know if they’re actually more intense, though, or if they’re just wearing me out. Finally, around 9 pm, we decide to head back to the hospital. Although nothing has changed considerably and I certainly don’t ‘just know,’ I know that I can’t just keep this up. I can’t sleep with this level of pain and regular discomfort, so we make the move back to triage. When we get there, I tell them that things seem to be about the same, but maybe a little longer in duration, a little closer together and a little more intense. When asked if my water has broken, I say, ‘Maybe.’ ‘Maybe’ is true, but I also feel like I say it just so the staff doesn’t think I’m some sort of malingering person. I feel a little weird taking up everyone’s time with all of this, but things feel so weird, it just seems like professionals should be involved. A nurse does a test to determine whether my water has broken. A resident comes into the room and tells us the results were inconclusive. Uh, hmm. He says he needs to do another test that will involve a sample, a microscope and a positive result that will look like frost on a window. Let’s be clear: neither the nurse’s test or the res’s is at all comfortable. The res does the exam and declares there to be amniotic fluid in the house and no further examination – or frosty microscopic examination – is necessary. Reader, we have a winner! My water had been broken and we are good to go. YIKES! We are good to go. A baby is coming. A BABY IS COMING. At this point, Dr. Resident (redundant a bit, I know) tells us that we are going to be admitted to the birthing center (for reasons I can’t explain, this feels like a victory) but I need to decide if I want to just hang out in my present state — contracting every five minutes or so, for about sixty seconds — or if I want to step things up and start the Pitocin. Dr. Resident says that I could stay au naturel and linger in my present state for another thirty some hours or amp it up. I know the Pitocin treatment isn’t what people relish, but because I had been up for eighteen painful hours, on the heels of bad pregnancy sleep and asthma problems, the thought of being awake another day and more was seriously frightening. ‘Bring on the Pitocin,’ I said.

We were admitted to our lovely birthing suite around 11 pm. After a short tour of the room, Megan, our amazing nurse — she was with us from 11 pm until 8 am, stuck a needle into my right hand, administering the Pitocin and saline drip. On my left arm, Megan placed a blood pressure band. Both of these would remain in me, or around me, as the case may be, for the duration of the labor.

And then…