Preface: Many, many, MANY thanks to everyone for their congrats, well wishes, compliments, love and support over the past couple weeks. It has been wonderful and overwhelming to realize how wonderful our friends and family are!
Disclaimer: This entry is not intended to result in arguments, anger or any other negative feelings. This is my personal experience during labor and may be found graphic and or scary by some, especially those friends of ours that might be going through their own labor process in the near future. I’m not trying to scare anyone, but am just sharing my own experience / opinions.
I assume that most people reading this have already read Chris’s live blog of the birth. Everything in it was accurate and yes, as crazy as some of you may find it, I was in complete support of his blog. So once our little MAM decided to come, while most of our fans were sending congrats and well wishes, what most people don’t know is that I was being rushed into emergency surgery. Let’s start somewhere back at the beginning . . .
I was strongly against having to pick a date to induce. It felt like I was going against a higher power of some sort. It was the ONE thing I really didn’t want in the birthing experience but in the end, it was what we had to do. A lot of people asked if we had a birth plan. I would say ‘Yea, go into labor and have a baby.’ Early in the pregnancy I had been totally ‘gung ho’ on an epidural but after learning some new stuff in our birthing class, I decided that I wanted to see how long I could make it without one. I didn’t have a problem with eventually needing one but I didn’t want to be stuck in bed the whole time and preferred the option of being mobile for as long as possible.
As Chris mentioned, we checked in on Easter evening, just about one week past baby’s due date. They started with the Cervidil which is supposed to gradually work over a 12 hr period and give contractions every eight to nine minutes. Well, it really liked me (or maybe it really hated me?) but I started getting contractions about every one to two minutes within a couple hrs. The nurses said they were too frequent and hence the Cervidil was removed after only five hours. Contractions as of that point were manageable. They hurt when they came but grasping on to Chris’s hands and having him hold me was what I needed to get through them. Walking down the hallway helped as well. At some point in the middle of the night, we decided that sleep would be a good thing and I agreed to have a ‘cocktail’ as our birthing class instructor had called it. It was a pain med which worked wonders for a couple hours and let us both get some rest. I had a second helping a few hours later. Almost as good as a Blue Moon!
I honestly don’t remember most of Monday. I know the Pitocin was started at some point but I couldn’t tell you when. I had originally thought she’d make her appearance on Monday but no luck. I just remember the day being long and drawn out and this magical dilation was barely happening. Somehow the day went by and contractions did get stronger and so that evening, about 24 hrs after starting the process, I agreed to the epidural. I thought that making it through a full day of labor pains was pretty good and I felt proud of myself! For me however, the discomfort and pain was just getting to be too much.
So, I’ve had several friends who have had babies and epidurals to go along with them and all of them have reported ‘it just took the pain away’, ‘pressure but no pain’, ‘ah, it was like heaven’ and other positive experiences upon receiving it. I therefore, need to conclude that I am the only woman in the history of the world who an epidural does not work for. As Chris reported, I had severe shakes and itching. On top of that, I had PAIN. The anesthesiologist had to come back two more times to up the dosage because nothing was helping. When it finally came time to push, it was two agonizing hours. They tried to get me to do three ten second pushes with each contraction but I couldn’t hold my breath that long so we switched to four eight second pushes. The first two pushes with each contraction hurt immensely. So in between this, through tears and frustration and pain, I keep thinking about what we had learned in our birthing class and what I had read about in books and my daily pregnancy e-mails – ‘Go to a calm place in your mind and remember that with each push you are one step closer to meeting your baby.’ Well, in the words of my good friend Roland, “BULLshit!’ None of that worked. There were moments throughout when I said to myself “I can never have any more kids because I can’t go through this again.” I wanted to tell them to stop and just take me in for a C-section. In a nut shell, the pain was so bad that it took away any joy around childbirth that I had expected or wanted.
At 8:34AM, our little MAM makes her grand entrance. Everything seemed a bit chaotic as suddenly there seemed to be a lot of people in the room. As Chris and I are checking out the latest wonder of the world, the pain starts again. WTF?! I thought I was done. Our doctor informs us it’s just the uterus contracting to get the placenta out. They take Miss Maddy to get cleaned up and such and the pain is still going. The doctor tells us that my placenta is attached in two places instead of the typical one place and she might need to help it un-attach. Then, as soon as you think that pain can’t get any worse, it did and the doctor says ‘Her uterus inverted.’
Imagine checking your jeans pockets prior to putting them in the laundry – you pull it inside out. That is essentially what my uterus did. It is something very serious, however, so rare that I was unable to find any actual medical related information on it when I tried to look it up later on. Things got even more chaotic then. You know how you see women on TV screaming their heads off and think ‘omg, that will never be me.’ Yea, well it was me. I don’t think I’ve ever screamed and cried so much or so hard in my life. I lost a liter of blood as a team of two doctors, several nurses and an anesthesiologist whisked me down the hall for emergency surgery leaving a frantic Chris and a brand new crying baby.
When I finally came to, the pain was gone. I don’t know if I passed out from the pain or if they gave me something to knock me out but either way, it was gone, thank goodness. I had both doctors and the nurses reassuring that they had fixed everything and that I’d be okay. I’m not sure how long I was in there. Chris said it was around 45 minutes. The only thing on my mind was getting back to feed my baby.
Getting wheeled back to our room and being greeted by Chris and our new snuggled up little baby was awesomely amazing. I finally had a chance to look at her and she was beautiful. I, however, was still pretty much a mess. In addition to the IV that I had already had in my left arm and the epidural stuff on my back, I now had stiches to fix the mess down below, a second IV in my right hand, a urine catheter and a blood catheter which was connected to a balloon which they had had to insert into my uterus for reasons I’m not entirely sure of. The doctor had explained everything but I honestly don’t remember what she said. It might have been to keep its shape and prevent it from collapsing. I’m not sure how many of you have seen a catheter but I had thought they were little tiny tubes. Nope – about the size of a garden hose. So now imagine two of those coming from between your legs and then taped to your left leg, being connected to an IV pole on your left side and still getting Pitocin to help your uterus, more stuff taped to your back and not being able to move or prop yourself up using your right hand since there is an IV in that and having a brand new baby and figuring out how to nurse her. TOUGH. Despite all this, we persevered as that is all the Michaels family knows how to do. Chris and the nursing staff were AMAZING, hence his previous post on nurses. Round the clock they were there to help position me in the bed, supply sufficient pillows for nursing and work with Chris, Maddy and I to make sure we got breastfeeding off on a right start. Chris was left to diaper duty for the three days we were in the hospital (which I know he was secretly excited about) as I could not get out of the bed without a lot of help. I was able to get out four times during the 2.5 days we were there after the surgery with nurse assistance. It’s true that all your inhibitions go out the window after childbirth as they basically had to change me and apply medication and ice packs. No shame here!
The epidural stuff came off later that day. The catheters came out late the following day followed by removal of the right hand IV the next morning and finally the arm IV later that afternoon before we were able to go home. I am not sure what women are given if they don’t have complications but I left with a foam treatment for healing the lady parts, stool softener, iron pills for the blood loss, and 600mg tablets of ibuprofen for pain in the abdomen area. My stomach area was slightly swollen and poofed out – once again not sure if that’s normal or a result of the surgery. My feet and legs were ridiculously swollen from the IV which was kind of funny since I had no swelling during the actual pregnancy. We headed home Thursday afternoon, nearly four days after checking in, but with our prize in hand. J
I was pretty sore the first few days. I hadn’t moved around that much since she arrived and I was glad to have the ibuprofen even though I forgot to take it a lot until the pain would hit. Maddy’s little legs kicking at me during burps didn’t help much either but two weeks later, the swelling in my stomach, legs and feet have all gone. I feel mostly recovered although my abdomen feels slightly sore if I move around too much and the stiches will take six weeks to heal. I’m not supposed to lift anything heavier than our Maddy and no working out for six weeks either – blech!
So now is where I guess I’ll get a little preachy. Once again, this blog was not intended to scare anyone or cause arguments – Just to share my experience. It’s funny in a way how everyone kept saying to pack my bag a month before her due date because ‘you never know if she’ll come early!’ I knew she wasn’t going to come early, just like I knew we were going to have a girl. There was no doubt in my mind. I was 99% certain we wouldn’t end up with a C-section. Emergency surgery after the fact? Never once crossed my mind. I’m extremely lucky that I had such a strong, knowledgeable, competent team of doctors and nurses. They were able to tend to my situation so quickly that despite losing all that blood, I didn’t need a transfusion. While a home birth is not something we were ever interested in, I know that some people out there are in full support of it. Just please be aware of potential complications that could arise and have a plan in place. While giving birth in a hospital might not be what you want, it ensures that you would be taken care of should anything go wrong. Once again, my opinion.
I also want to give mad props to the women who have made it through childbirth drug-free. I don’t know what sort of pain tolerance others have or what it feels like without complications but the dual attachment of the placenta is likely what was causing so much pain despite the epidural. Perhaps the pain isn’t that bad if you don’t have to be induced. I don’t think I’ll ever know.
Doctors assured us that future pregnancies will be fine but that we might need C-sections as the likelihood of the same complication arising is likely. After that experience, C-sections are fine by me! I honestly would prefer that to avoid having to go through a labor experience like that. In the end, we made it and I am grateful for that. We are now a family and for that reason alone – yes, it was worth it.
