My original due date was November 3. The week before that, my OB appt was rather uneventful... No real progression, so we planned for induction 4 days past my due date. With a couple medical issues of his, we didn't want to prolong things too much. 2 days before his birthday (and 2 days past my due date), we checked things again and still only had minimal progress.
On the morning of Nov 7, I woke up around 4am and started getting ready. We left the house at 4:45 and checked into the hospital about 5:15. In a moment of foreboding, on the way to the hospital, I told my husband that I hoped things went smoothly, but if things didn't progress or started getting hairy that I was absolutely fine with a section and my famous words "I don't want to sit there and play games all day if we all know what is coming."
After we checked in, I called my parents and asked them what time they were coming up and asked my mom to bring me a pillow from home (the only thing I forgot to bring). After getting checked in and answering a million questions, I got hooked up and got my IV placed but we held off on starting any medication until my doctor was there. When they hooked me up to the monitor, i was having contractions every 4-5 minutes, but they weren't super effective. My doc stopped by shortly thereafter and prepared to break my water and start the induction (with IV medicine). While all that was going on, my family started pouring in. We had my husband, my mom and dad, my aunt and my first cousin in the room just hanging out.
After they started the medicine, I was keeping half an eye on the fetal monitor. I was pretty dedicated to being a good patient and not be too medical, but since I'm proficient at reading a monitor and have participated in or performed plenty of deliveries, I couldn't resist watching it. Shortly after I was ruptured and the pit was started, I started noticing some not-so-good tracings, and my nurse, two other nurses, and an anesthesia person came rushing in to turn me, put on oxygen and turns off my pit. Shortly thereafter, my doctor came over from his clinic and put in an internal monitor (most painful part of the whole thing).... I had no pain medication of any type up to this point. After that, we decided to go ahead and attempt to place an epidural in the event that we had to move quickly to a section (both the doctor and I knew what was looming). Due to extensive back surgery, it took the anesthesiologist nearly a hour to place it, and he was very nervous about it working (it had to snake through and around scar tissue and a curved spine). While he was placing it, I talked to the nurse about fried chicken (it was Wednesday which is fried chicken day at the hospital cafeteria).
The epidural started working and my doctor came back and turned the pit back on. As history tend to do, it repeated itself and the baby started looking rough on the monitor again. At that point we stopped the medication and had a little powwow about going on with a section. I was fine with that and just asked for 20 minutes or so to get my sister at the hospital and to call my father in law. Things began to move quickly at that point and as soon as all of the family was there, we rolled to the OR.
I know the order of a routine c-section like the back of my hand, so I was calm and collected. My doctor had one of his partners come in to assist, so I told them to just keep talking to me about anything but what they were doing, I tried not to look at the reflections off of the surgical overhead lights while they were doing it. We discussed residency, the match, doctors having children, fried chicken again, and a few other things. When they got to the point of actually delivering him, things got mildly hairy... Turned out that Little Man was WEDGED down in my pelvis and would not have been able to be delivered vaginally anyway. It took my doctor (an average strapping young guy), his partner (woman smaller that me), the CRNA (big strapping dude), and a vacuum to get him out. It was fairly traumatic for the baby, but as luck would have it, the neonatologist attended my delivery because there were some other deliveries going on. He took him and got him perked up. After a couple minutes, I heard screaming and everyone in the room finally breathed.
I got to see him for a second, then they took me back to my room in L&D while my husband showed him to our family. They brought him to me to feed, and thankfully he took after me from the beginning and decided that he loves to eat.
We eventually got settled in our room, and neither of us had any terrible lasting issues. I healed quickly, and he was we is of course PERFECT. He got a cephalohematoma as a parting gift, but that's what hats are for.
No comments:
Post a Comment