Our gorgeous baby daughter, she's finally finally here. She's been here for nine days now and still I can hardly believe it. We've been home for six days, during which time we've been tending to her needs for food, changing and comfort and getting to know her patterns, cues and infinite displays of cuteness. Right now she's dozing in her swing, looking precious in her rosebud-print onesie, her naked little legs and feet covered by a flowered receiving blanket. She's absolutely gorgeous, and I say that subjectively, of course, but also because it's the truth; she has a round head, a petite little face, and a perfectly smooth complexion. She has none of the telltale markings of a rough vaginal delivery.
Although the story of her birth has been captured and shared by her daddy, here it is again from my perspective.
Wednesday, July 19
I'm exactly 41 weeks, or one week overdue. Last Thursday at my OB's office, the doctor checked my cervix and did a half-laugh. He didn't even tell me what I was, just said, "Okay, let's get that induction scheduled." My induction is scheduled for 6:00 p.m. I'm scheduled to receive cervidil and stay overnight to give it twelve hours to soften and thin my cervix. I'm supposed to call the hospital an hour beforehand to make sure they can accommodate me. I've spent the day packing and crying and watching the TLC channel and trying to prepare myself mentally for what I'm about to go through. At 5:00 I'm dressed and ready to go and I call the hospital. I'm on hold for ten minutes and then they tell me they need to have someone call me back. I end up calling them back after another half hour has gone by. I know by now that it's going to be bad news. They finally get the head nurse on the phone, who tells me that the problem is they have no available beds. There's another woman who needs to be induced first because she was due even sooner than me. The nurse gets the on-call doctor on the line, who tells me they are rescheduling me for the following morning at 7:30. By now I am so emotionally fragile that I can't even speak. I hang up and burst into tears, thinking I can't do this anymore, I can't lay in a hospital bed all day tomorrow and then labor all night, I'm ready now, I just want to get this over with and meet my baby. Joe is pissed and calls my mom to tell her, and then calls the hospital to get a better explanation from the doctor. But there's nothing we can do. We're bumped.
Thursday, July 20
At 6:30 a.m. we call the hospital and they give us the green light to come in. We pack up the car, and I'm looking at the Boppy pillow and the carseat and still only half-accepting that we are having a baby like, today. We get lost on the way to the hospital, one wrong turn that takes us in a gigantic circle, and it's no wonder because we are both tense and distracted. We get to the hospital ten minutes late. I am admitted and brought to a labor room, told to change into a gown, and put in bed with monitors strapped to my belly. I immediately feel like an invalid. The doctor comes in and checks me and gives us some good news: I'm 2 centimeters and 70% effaced, so I don't need the cervidil after all. We're going straight to Pitocin. Joe and I look at each other happily, and we're not bitter about being bumped anymore.
Things take a while getting off the ground because the nurses have trouble taking my blood pressure. The cuff keeps inflating until it explodes off my arm. They use a smaller cuff on my forearm instead. Getting my IV in takes forever. I have deep, tiny veins and phlebotomists hate me and that's why I don't give blood. They have to call someone from IV Therapy and even she has to stick me three times. More than a week later I still have big ugly bruises on my wrists and hands from it. Finally the IV goes in. They secure it with yards of surgical tape and begin the pitocin drip.
At first I feel nothing. I lay in bed listening to the baby's heartbeat, chatting with Joe and the nurses, watching Maury Povich, and succumbing to the blood pressure cuff every fifteen minutes. An hour later I feel some menstrual-like cramping, and soon I am having mild to moderate contractions every 2-3 minutes. They continue through The Price is Right, lunchtime (for Joe, I'm not allowed to eat anything) and into the afternoon. I walk the halls for a while, but it makes my blood pressure go up, so then I'm only allowed to sit in a rocking chair. Joe sits in the chair next to me, playing "MLB 2006: The Show" on PSP. The nurses and occasionally the doctor ask after my progress and seem disappointed that I'm not in more pain. At 4:00 p.m. the doctor comes back, checks me, and tells us I'm not making enough progress; she's sending us home. I accept the news with relief. I'm hungry, tired, and aching from the IV ordeal. They unhook my drip but leave the IV in my arm, securing it with even more tape, and discharge me. On the way out, we randomly meet the doctor who will be on call tomorrow. He tells me he'll break my water first thing to get things rolling. He seems nice.
Joe and I leave the hospital and call my parents. We go to their house and my mom makes us spaghetti and meatballs.
Friday, July 21
We are due back at the hospital at 10:00 a.m. This time we don't get lost. I am admitted into another labor room, a mirror image of yesterday's. The same nurses take care of me. My blood pressure behaves. The doctor comes in, checks me and breaks my water. The gush is prodigious; I remember asking, "God, do I have more amniotic fluid than anyone else in the world?" (No.) The doctor puts an internal monitor on the baby and the heartbeat goes from the galloping Doppler sound to a steady beep. They start the pitocin and we settle in for the long haul.
The contractions take hold this time. The nurses ask me to rate my pain on a scale of 1 to 10. When I get to 4, they ask "What would you like to do about pain management?" I am floored - epidural already? The contractions hurt, but they're not unmanageable. The anaesthesiologist is summoned. She is gentle and works quickly. I feel strange sensations down my right side when she injects the needle, but the catheter feels like nothing once its in. She injects some medication - not as strong as the real epidural, but something to take the edge off - and I get to 5 centimeters on just that. We relax quietly, listening to Guster and Pearl Jam on the iPod, and I try to nap.
The next time the doctor comes in for a check, I've jumped to 8 centimeters. He says, "All right!" and gives me a fist bump. By that point, all I can think about is food. Joe and I banter for 30 minutes about what he should get for me to eat after delivery. I decide on a tuna sub and he goes to a pizza joint across the street to get me one. In the meantime all I can have is ice chips, which I suck on one by one so I won't become nauseated.
At 8:30 p.m. the doctor comes in to do a check. "It's time to push," he declares. Holy crap. I say to Joe, who is still bent over PSP, "Better save your game; Olivia's getting called up to the show." The nurse tells me how to push by holding my breath, digging my chin into my chest and pulling back on my legs. It's a lot to remember and hard for me to do effectively because I can't feel my contractions. They make the decision to increase the pitocin and cut back on the epidural. I want to give up so many times. The only helpful one is Joe, who tells me I'm almost there even when I'm not. He says things like, "Come on, you can do it! Think about Olivia! Think about your tuna sub!" I only start pushing productively when the pain of each contraction is so bad that pushing feels better. I have no concept of time, no idea that I kept it up for two hours. But I can tell when it's getting close because the pressure and pain are unbelievable, and because Joe can see the head.
The doctor sweeps in at the last second and prepares for delivery. But he has the wrong size gloves; he futzes around looking for bigger ones and tells me not to push even though there's no fucking way I can stop. I could give two shits whether he has gloves on at all. He finally brings his ass over and Olivia is born with just two more pushes: one for her head and one for the rest of her. 10:20 p.m. They put her on my chest and she cries and Joe cries but I don't. I hold her slippery little body and stare at her and I'm completely exhausted and in shock. Then they take her away, and everything is kind of a blur, and I feel the placenta being delivered, and then the doctor asks, "Do you normally bleed a lot?"
They end up rushing me to the OR to do my repair. I am rolled through the halls feeling like I'm on an episode of ER. The anaesthesiologist pumps my epidural full of something that makes my legs completely numb. The doctor and nurses ask me about my job while I'm on the table, and I blather on about succession planning and executive development.
Saturday, July 22
After repair, I go back to the labor room to wait for the numbness to subside in my legs. They don't want to transfer me to my regular room until I can move them. My left leg recovers before my right. I unwrap and attack half of my tuna sub. The nurse comes in and tries to get me into a wheelchair but I almost collapse when I try to stand up. So they roll my whole bed into the new room and somehow I am able to transfer myself into the other bed. It's like 3:00 a.m. but I am still starving and eat the other half of my sandwich. I haven't seen Olivia since she was born, but Joe was able to go to the nursery and watch her being cleaned off and footprinted.
The rest of the night is a blur. I remember the sweet, grandmotherly nurse who helped me into the bathroom and doused me with cold shower water when I almost passed out. I think they brought Olivia in for breastfeeding a couple of times. I know I didn't sleep. All I could do was lay there in a half-conscious state, shivering as the anaesthesia wore off, afraid to move because of my stitches.
I spend the next two days crying. The combination of fatigue, recovery, the immensity of our new responsibility, frustration with breastfeeding, my overwhelming emotions toward the baby, and typical post-partum blues turn me into a blathering mess. For the most part I enjoy having visitors, asking the nurses for advice, and spending quiet time with Olivia, but I hit the wall at one point. A fabulous nurse/midwife gives me a frank pep talk that really helps. By the time we're ready to leave the hospital on Monday morning, I'm still emotional, crying every two seconds, but no longer feeling fearful. I'm ready to take our daughter home and begin learning how to be the best mother I can to her.
Welcome to the world, little one. We love you more than you'll ever know.
Although the story of her birth has been captured and shared by her daddy, here it is again from my perspective.
Wednesday, July 19
I'm exactly 41 weeks, or one week overdue. Last Thursday at my OB's office, the doctor checked my cervix and did a half-laugh. He didn't even tell me what I was, just said, "Okay, let's get that induction scheduled." My induction is scheduled for 6:00 p.m. I'm scheduled to receive cervidil and stay overnight to give it twelve hours to soften and thin my cervix. I'm supposed to call the hospital an hour beforehand to make sure they can accommodate me. I've spent the day packing and crying and watching the TLC channel and trying to prepare myself mentally for what I'm about to go through. At 5:00 I'm dressed and ready to go and I call the hospital. I'm on hold for ten minutes and then they tell me they need to have someone call me back. I end up calling them back after another half hour has gone by. I know by now that it's going to be bad news. They finally get the head nurse on the phone, who tells me that the problem is they have no available beds. There's another woman who needs to be induced first because she was due even sooner than me. The nurse gets the on-call doctor on the line, who tells me they are rescheduling me for the following morning at 7:30. By now I am so emotionally fragile that I can't even speak. I hang up and burst into tears, thinking I can't do this anymore, I can't lay in a hospital bed all day tomorrow and then labor all night, I'm ready now, I just want to get this over with and meet my baby. Joe is pissed and calls my mom to tell her, and then calls the hospital to get a better explanation from the doctor. But there's nothing we can do. We're bumped.
Thursday, July 20
At 6:30 a.m. we call the hospital and they give us the green light to come in. We pack up the car, and I'm looking at the Boppy pillow and the carseat and still only half-accepting that we are having a baby like, today. We get lost on the way to the hospital, one wrong turn that takes us in a gigantic circle, and it's no wonder because we are both tense and distracted. We get to the hospital ten minutes late. I am admitted and brought to a labor room, told to change into a gown, and put in bed with monitors strapped to my belly. I immediately feel like an invalid. The doctor comes in and checks me and gives us some good news: I'm 2 centimeters and 70% effaced, so I don't need the cervidil after all. We're going straight to Pitocin. Joe and I look at each other happily, and we're not bitter about being bumped anymore.
Things take a while getting off the ground because the nurses have trouble taking my blood pressure. The cuff keeps inflating until it explodes off my arm. They use a smaller cuff on my forearm instead. Getting my IV in takes forever. I have deep, tiny veins and phlebotomists hate me and that's why I don't give blood. They have to call someone from IV Therapy and even she has to stick me three times. More than a week later I still have big ugly bruises on my wrists and hands from it. Finally the IV goes in. They secure it with yards of surgical tape and begin the pitocin drip.
At first I feel nothing. I lay in bed listening to the baby's heartbeat, chatting with Joe and the nurses, watching Maury Povich, and succumbing to the blood pressure cuff every fifteen minutes. An hour later I feel some menstrual-like cramping, and soon I am having mild to moderate contractions every 2-3 minutes. They continue through The Price is Right, lunchtime (for Joe, I'm not allowed to eat anything) and into the afternoon. I walk the halls for a while, but it makes my blood pressure go up, so then I'm only allowed to sit in a rocking chair. Joe sits in the chair next to me, playing "MLB 2006: The Show" on PSP. The nurses and occasionally the doctor ask after my progress and seem disappointed that I'm not in more pain. At 4:00 p.m. the doctor comes back, checks me, and tells us I'm not making enough progress; she's sending us home. I accept the news with relief. I'm hungry, tired, and aching from the IV ordeal. They unhook my drip but leave the IV in my arm, securing it with even more tape, and discharge me. On the way out, we randomly meet the doctor who will be on call tomorrow. He tells me he'll break my water first thing to get things rolling. He seems nice.
Joe and I leave the hospital and call my parents. We go to their house and my mom makes us spaghetti and meatballs.
Friday, July 21
We are due back at the hospital at 10:00 a.m. This time we don't get lost. I am admitted into another labor room, a mirror image of yesterday's. The same nurses take care of me. My blood pressure behaves. The doctor comes in, checks me and breaks my water. The gush is prodigious; I remember asking, "God, do I have more amniotic fluid than anyone else in the world?" (No.) The doctor puts an internal monitor on the baby and the heartbeat goes from the galloping Doppler sound to a steady beep. They start the pitocin and we settle in for the long haul.
The contractions take hold this time. The nurses ask me to rate my pain on a scale of 1 to 10. When I get to 4, they ask "What would you like to do about pain management?" I am floored - epidural already? The contractions hurt, but they're not unmanageable. The anaesthesiologist is summoned. She is gentle and works quickly. I feel strange sensations down my right side when she injects the needle, but the catheter feels like nothing once its in. She injects some medication - not as strong as the real epidural, but something to take the edge off - and I get to 5 centimeters on just that. We relax quietly, listening to Guster and Pearl Jam on the iPod, and I try to nap.
The next time the doctor comes in for a check, I've jumped to 8 centimeters. He says, "All right!" and gives me a fist bump. By that point, all I can think about is food. Joe and I banter for 30 minutes about what he should get for me to eat after delivery. I decide on a tuna sub and he goes to a pizza joint across the street to get me one. In the meantime all I can have is ice chips, which I suck on one by one so I won't become nauseated.
At 8:30 p.m. the doctor comes in to do a check. "It's time to push," he declares. Holy crap. I say to Joe, who is still bent over PSP, "Better save your game; Olivia's getting called up to the show." The nurse tells me how to push by holding my breath, digging my chin into my chest and pulling back on my legs. It's a lot to remember and hard for me to do effectively because I can't feel my contractions. They make the decision to increase the pitocin and cut back on the epidural. I want to give up so many times. The only helpful one is Joe, who tells me I'm almost there even when I'm not. He says things like, "Come on, you can do it! Think about Olivia! Think about your tuna sub!" I only start pushing productively when the pain of each contraction is so bad that pushing feels better. I have no concept of time, no idea that I kept it up for two hours. But I can tell when it's getting close because the pressure and pain are unbelievable, and because Joe can see the head.
The doctor sweeps in at the last second and prepares for delivery. But he has the wrong size gloves; he futzes around looking for bigger ones and tells me not to push even though there's no fucking way I can stop. I could give two shits whether he has gloves on at all. He finally brings his ass over and Olivia is born with just two more pushes: one for her head and one for the rest of her. 10:20 p.m. They put her on my chest and she cries and Joe cries but I don't. I hold her slippery little body and stare at her and I'm completely exhausted and in shock. Then they take her away, and everything is kind of a blur, and I feel the placenta being delivered, and then the doctor asks, "Do you normally bleed a lot?"
They end up rushing me to the OR to do my repair. I am rolled through the halls feeling like I'm on an episode of ER. The anaesthesiologist pumps my epidural full of something that makes my legs completely numb. The doctor and nurses ask me about my job while I'm on the table, and I blather on about succession planning and executive development.
Saturday, July 22
After repair, I go back to the labor room to wait for the numbness to subside in my legs. They don't want to transfer me to my regular room until I can move them. My left leg recovers before my right. I unwrap and attack half of my tuna sub. The nurse comes in and tries to get me into a wheelchair but I almost collapse when I try to stand up. So they roll my whole bed into the new room and somehow I am able to transfer myself into the other bed. It's like 3:00 a.m. but I am still starving and eat the other half of my sandwich. I haven't seen Olivia since she was born, but Joe was able to go to the nursery and watch her being cleaned off and footprinted.
The rest of the night is a blur. I remember the sweet, grandmotherly nurse who helped me into the bathroom and doused me with cold shower water when I almost passed out. I think they brought Olivia in for breastfeeding a couple of times. I know I didn't sleep. All I could do was lay there in a half-conscious state, shivering as the anaesthesia wore off, afraid to move because of my stitches.
I spend the next two days crying. The combination of fatigue, recovery, the immensity of our new responsibility, frustration with breastfeeding, my overwhelming emotions toward the baby, and typical post-partum blues turn me into a blathering mess. For the most part I enjoy having visitors, asking the nurses for advice, and spending quiet time with Olivia, but I hit the wall at one point. A fabulous nurse/midwife gives me a frank pep talk that really helps. By the time we're ready to leave the hospital on Monday morning, I'm still emotional, crying every two seconds, but no longer feeling fearful. I'm ready to take our daughter home and begin learning how to be the best mother I can to her.
Welcome to the world, little one. We love you more than you'll ever know.
