Warning: This is a REALLY long post (made even longer by this little preface) and it involves some of the nitty gritty details of labor and delivery. I recorded it this way because I want to remember and because I think Clara might be interested in reading it someday. If you don't want to read it, I promise I won't be offended. In fact, I won't even know. So feel free to sit this one out if you feel like it. I put some pictures at the end if you want to just skip to those. Thanks.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
I got up at the crack of
dawn for work, excited to only have 7 more work days until my maternity leave.
Work was fine-- fairly uneventful. I spent an hour and a half in a
training class for a new computer system we are getting at work, but still got
all my work done in time to cut out a little early in order to make it to my
weekly doctor appointment on time. The appointment started with the usual
stuff... pee in a cup, weight, blood pressure. My blood pressure reading
was high, with the systolic reading in the 140s. I am usually in the 100s
to 110s, so the doctor was concerned. They checked my urine for protein
and sure enough, there was a little. So the doctor mentioned the term preeclampsia and
said she wanted to send me over to the hospital for monitoring, and I kinda
felt all flip outty. Of course, she wanted a repeat blood pressure, and
this time the reading was in the 160s.
So I headed home just long
enough to change out of my work clothes and to pick up my hubby and we went to
the hospital. While there, I spent the next several hours sitting in a
chair while a machine took my blood pressure every 10 minutes. The
readings were still high for me, mostly 130s, but didn't seem too bad. Oh
yeah-- and I got to find out what it is like to be straight catheterized.
Basically, they stuck a tube up into my bladder and drained all the urine
out and then pulled the tube back out. Ouchie. Not my favorite
thing ever. But they wanted to make sure that the protein in my urine was
actually in the urine and not from some external source.
After the several hours of
monitoring, we were expecting to be sent home with orders not to go to work
anymore and to take it easy. The doctor sat down with us and explained
that the protein definitely was in my urine and my pressures were still too
high, so they were diagnosing me with mild preeclampsia and wanted to go ahead
and induce labor. I was blown away. It felt like it came out of nowhere.
I wasn't ready. I still hadn't packed my hospital bag. I was
scheduled to work in the morning. I was supposed to have a baby shower on
Saturday. We still needed to pick up a ton of stuff for the baby before
her arrival. We hadn't for sure decided on a name. We thought we would
have at least a couple more weeks to deal with all of that. Just then,
the machine took my blood pressure. The reading was in the 180s.
By the time they checked
us in at labor and delivery, it was after 10 PM. I hadn't eaten since
like 1 in the afternoon. I was nervous and stressed and it felt like
reality was suspended. I had my cervix checked 2 or 3 times and each
person said I was not dilated or effaced at all, so I knew I was facing a long
induction. After a little bit of time, I was able to calm down a little
and realize that my baby was going to come and that I could be not pregnant
anymore. My husband got me something to eat and I felt much better so I
settled in to do the labor thing.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
After getting admitted and
getting something to eat, I was feeling much less freaked out about the whole
induction. It was about midnight when they stuck a pill in to ripen my
cervix. After that, Z and I tried to get some sleep. That was
easier said than done. I still had a blood pressure cuff on my arm taking
my pressure every 10 minutes. I also had an IV in my right antecubital
(the area where the arm bends), meaning that if I bent my arm in the wrong way,
it would send my IV machine beeping away-- not to mention the discomfort of
that. And then there was the monitor that keeps track of contractions and
the baby's heartbeat. I had to wear this band around my entire stomach
that was so itchy, which was irritating to an already itchy and irritated pregnant
belly. They tucked the monitors under the band. The gel from the
monitors made things even more itchy and the monitors would slide out from
under the band with some frequency. It seemed like every time I moved
even a little, someone would have to come in and adjust something. I knew
it would be a long night.
At about 3 AM, someone
came and checked my progress. Not
too much had happened, so they went ahead and stuck another cervix ripening
pill in and we hunkered down again to wait for it to do its job. The next check was at 7:30 AM. The NP who checked me at that time was
killer. I don’t know what it was
about the way she checked my cervix, but it hurt like heck. Anyway, I was dilated to a 3, and
having regular contractions, although I couldn’t feel them at all. We knew we still had a long while to
go. I can’t tell you how happy I
was when the NP suggested that I get up for a while, take a shower, and we
would go from there. I felt like a
new person after getting away from all the monitors and unwinding a little in a
hot shower. When the NP came to
check on me again at 12:30, she even commented that I looked more relaxed, and
I really felt it. Another
(painful) examination at that time revealed that I was dilated to a 4/5 and 50%
effaced. The NP suggested that we
break my water, which was fine with me.
That was kinda weird but no big deal. The funny part was a little bit later when I decided I
needed to get up to use the bathroom.
As soon as I stood up, a TON of warm liquid ran down my legs and onto
the floor. It felt kinda like I
had peed my pants, except for I knew it was just amniotic fluid. The nurse made me get back in bed and
use a bed pan because it was such a mess.
At some point along the
line, I was given some pitocin, a medication to help progress labor by
strengthening contractions. I
can’t remember when exactly they started that. But sometime after that is when I actually started feeling
the contractions. I had been
having contractions all along, including the day before when I was getting my
blood pressure monitored, but it was the pitocin that made them strong enough
to hurt.
I wasn’t in too much pain,
but I wanted to get my epidural before it did get too painful, so at 2:00, the
anesthesia team came to give it to me. A resident did the first attempt, but when they injected a
drug into it to test it, it was clear that it was in the wrong place. I think it had gone into a blood vessel
or something. So the other
anesthesiologist did a second attempt… same problem. Finally, after something like 45 minutes after the initial
attempt, attempt #3 was successful.
Yay.
5:00 check revealed that I
was dilated to a 4, 80% effaced. I
was happy that I couldn’t feel it when the NP checked this time.
Within the next few hours,
I started to feel some contractions in the right lower quadrant of my
abdomen. They hurt pretty bad and
I was unhappy about it. I had 3
epidurals for goodness sake.
Shouldn’t I be pretty much pain free? At around 8 PM, the anesthesiologist came to check on me and
adjusted the epidural catheter somewhat, hoping that would fix the
problem. 8:30 check revealed that
I was dilated to a 9, 100% effaced.
I knew it wouldn’t be too long now, and I felt a little frantic because
I was still feeling pain in the right lower abdomen with each contraction, and
I didn’t want to have to push through to the end like that. So, at about 10 PM, I got my 4th
and final epidural. It took a
little while for the pain to subside all the way. I was nervous for a while that it wasn’t going to, but it
finally did, and at 11 PM, I was dilated to a 10, 100% effaced, and ready to
push.
Friday, April 27, 2012
Right at 1 am, 25 hours
after the start of my induction and after 2 hours of pushing, our darling
little Clara Marie Noyce made her debut into the world. She had the umbilical cord wrapped
around her neck 3 times, which is apparently very unusual. Thankfully that wasn’t harmful to her
in any way and they got it off her really fast. Zack helped cut the umbilical cord close to her abdomen
while I got all fixed up. And that
was that. We became parents to an
amazing little baby.
A view from our labor and delivery room. Philly skyline in the background, Franklin Field on the Penn campus in the foreground. The Penn Relays were going on.
Getting Induced
Getting some oxygen near the end of labor
Welcome to the world!
7 pounds, 7 ounces
The proud daddy
4 comments:
Thank you for sharing this, ShaNae. Such a treat to get the whole story!
ShaNae And Zack,
Congratulations on your beautiful, beautiful Clara! Love reading your story and seeing all of the pictures. Wish we could stop by, hold that baby, and smell her head. Tell her, when you hold her, that her favorite great-aunt Cynthia loves her.
Wow, I knew parts of your story, but the whole thing is pretty intense.
Given your experience, do you think you would go the same route next time? Did you feel good about the doctor's decisions to induce and everything?
I have a friend right now who is 10 days past her due date, and she's using a midwife and planning a home birth, so she's just hanging out, resting at home, going on walks, doing swimming and yoga and acupuncture, and being with her partner while she waits for the baby to be ready. I think she's been dilated to a 1 for about a week and a half. Even though she's dying to just get the baby OUT, she's happy to be waiting for it to happen on it's own schedule.
I think both of these scenarios sound super uncomfortable. Two days in a hospital with IVs and catheters and belly bands sounds just terrible terrible terrible, but then you get the baby out and can move on to the next phase. Waiting for day after day after day with no progress sounds terrible, but you get to be more comfortable during the process.
I don't know which is the more preferable option. Your birth story is really intense. If you could do it again, would you do it the same way, or change anything?
If we're going to have another baby, I'm pretty sure that everyone's preferred option would be that science figures out a way to speed up a full-term pregnancy to about a week and half.
Taking my tongue out of my cheek for a moment, let me just point out that ShaNae's induction was not a scheduled event, nor was it based on weak information. She had pre-eclampsia, a condition which becomes a fatal condition (eclampsia) if untreated. Fortunately, there is a treatment -- delivering the baby. If bed rest or a diet change or blood pressure medication treated pre-eclampsia, we probably would have chosen that. But we want to have ShaNae around for as much of Clara's life as possible (not least of all because I would be a terrible single dad).
Delivering the baby was absolutely the right call based on all scientific data just as allowing labor to occur on nature's timetable (rather than the hospital's or the mohter's) is the right call during a healthy, complication-free pregnancy.
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