This one is going to be less exciting since I didn't actually go into natural labor. Background:
When I first got pregnant, I was working with geriatric patients that should have been in palliative care, but refused because they didn't think they were that bad. I took them to the hospital a LOT for different illnesses like pneumonia and staph infections, and also for their various equipment failures, like PEG tubes getting yanked out or falling on their kitchen floor. I figured I could work through the pregnancy since I was going to advocate for more medical interventions this time around. They put me on 3 different drugs to try and control my nausea: Zofran (got a huge migraine and discovered an allergy to it), Phenergen (supposed to make you sleep, does nothing to me), and Diclegis (again, sleepy drug but I am apparently immune). The Phenergen and Diclegis worked together to make food tolerable for me but I still had a lot of off days. Rather than losing 40 lbs this pregnancy, I gained almost 80, even though I wasn't eating measurably more than before. My dr said this could be how my body compensated during pregnancy, or how my body reacted to the drugs/difficulties in this pregnancy (more on that later).
Working conditions deteriorated to the point I had to quit. I hadn't let my employers know about my pregnancy because they were looking to save money at the time and I knew my pregnancy would be used against me, wage-wise, so I kept quiet about it. I'm glad I quit when I did, even though it meant we were an unemployed household, because it meant I had more positive energy and less stress. At the 20 week ultrasound, we were elated to find out it was another boy. The dr came in afterward and said, 'There's an anomaly on his heart; probably because our machine is so low-tech, but we're sending you to Maternal Fetal Medicine to check it out.' I spent a month trying not to stress about it and everyone reassured me that it was just a machine malfunction, like they said. The day of the appointment came and we went in for the ultrasound. We got some great pictures and wonderful videos of our little boy moving around and posing for the camera. The tech didn't say anything, so I was relieved nothing had come up.
The doctor came in and said our baby had a hole in his heart and he was referring us to neonatal cardiology right away. I cried and tried to compose my thoughts as we walked over to cardiology. I sat on the table for another hour while the silent tech took pictures and videos exclusively of the heart. Another doctor came in and looked at the pictures. He talked to his assistant about 'pulmonary artesia' and 'Tetralogy of Fallot' but to me... all he said was that our baby could have a missing artery, might not, there's no way to know this early so I should go home and try not to stress about it. He said, 'This isn't our first rodeo.' to which I replied, 'No, but it is mine.' And he laughed, but I was serious. He might not have an emotional connection to the pregnancy because he'd dealt with it hundreds of times before, but this was my first 'problem' child.
Appointments upon appointments would follow. With our first, we got 2 ultrasounds; 1 to see if he was there and 1 for his anatomy scan. With this one, we had over 15. First, we were told the top regional hospital was a last resort kind of thing. The next appointment, they strongly advised that I transfer my care to that hospital. We moved states to be closer to where I was going to deliver. The appointments got closer together. They confirmed Tetralogy of Fallot, probably accompanied by DiGeorge Syndrome, a genetic disorder sometimes called 22q11 deletion. It can affect everything from immune response to developmental delays. Everything in between.
Fast forward to induction day. He had to be induced because we lived far away from the hospital and it was more risky to have him come naturally than to have everyone in place for when he came.
They told us to come at 5 in the morning. We left at 1:30 to get there in time, only to find they didn't have any beds. We waited around until almost 10:00 am, then we got back. I changed into the gown and we waited. A nurse came in with a Foley balloon to dilate me more (I was 1.5 when I checked in, 40% effaced). I had that in for about 3 hours, then it came out while I went to the bathroom, along with the bloody show. I thought, 'Sweet, we're about to get underway!' Wrong. They hooked me up to Pitocin, which wasn't too bad, then transferred me to another room closer to the NICU. They kept upping my Pitocin and I bounced on the birthing ball for a little bit to relieve the pressure. It was still hovering in the 'period cramps' range, so it wasn't too painful. The anesthesiologist came in and talked to me about different methods for controlling pain, saying the epidural was the most effective way to treat pain without affecting the baby. The other methods could cross over through the umbilical cord and affect the baby, leading to a harder birthing process. He encouraged me to get one because it would be easier to administer it sooner rather than later. I agreed to get one when they broke my water because even though I wanted to go through it medication free, I didn't want to stress out my baby's heart because I was in pain.
They brought in the guy who was going to do the epidural and... he was a student. He stuck me a few times and it didn't hurt as much as them ripping the tape off my leg hair to get the Foley bulb out. Then he stuck me in the wrong place and it felt like the sensation of licking a battery... but in my spine. After they squared everything away, my legs went dead. I felt useless. I hated it so much. I couldn't move my lower half at all and all my strength basically disappeared. I had to lay in the bed a certain way to get the epidural to drip evenly. I guess they put it in wrong? Then I felt nauseous. I pressed the call button because I knew nausea meant my blood pressure was dropping. Literally out of nowhere, I lost the ability to talk. I tried communicating with them about how I was feeling, about how numb my chest and throat were. I felt useless and the more I tried to control my emotions, the more out-of-control I felt. I cried, again, and more people kept coming in to look at me and ask how I was doing. The more I tried to articulate it, the slower I talked, the less I could control my mouth. They were talking about a possible stroke... but it didn't feel like my brain was affected, only my ability to talk. I still thought the same way, only now I was trapped in an unresponsive body.
After almost an hour, the sensation gradually faded and I was able to talk normally. They think my body shut down my speech center in the brain because I passed out... I didn't pass out, but I didn't seem to suffer any ill effects so I let it go.
I got to 6cm and the epidural wore off. They had me on a continuous drip, but it wasn't enough. I couldn't move, or even talk. The nurses tried to shift me around, but I had absolutely no strength. I'd been up for over 24 hours at this point and I was exhausted. Moving my giant body was even harder than before, especially since I couldn't feel my body from my belly button down. Unfortunately, I still felt every single contraction. The only way to cope was to grip the side of my bed and try to grit my teeth through the pain. I was too tired to even yell, or do anything other than silently bear it. So basically I did my second labor 'med-free' except I was also useless in bed, so I couldn't even move to the birth positions I'd wanted from the beginning. They also had to cut off my Pitocin, at that point, because the baby wasn't tolerating it.
After all the hype about epidurals, I was expecting something more effective. I couldn't move, couldn't do anything, and that was SO MUCH WORSE than just going through the pain by itself. Imagine choosing the 'no pain' option, only to be confronted with 'PAIN, only you can't move around to try and cope with it'. It was the worst. He descended, finally, so I could push. He kept crowning, then backing up. They got the forceps to help him out. My Mom says they basically tried to rip me open to get him out. My pushes... didn't feel effective at all. I was thinking, 'Push!' but I don't think it actually did anything. I felt the first few, but near the end, I didn't feel anything when I 'pushed'. They laid him on my chest for about 10 seconds while they cut the cord, then took him away to the NICU.
The reason why he didn't descend was a huge, tight, knot in his cord. They also think that's why he panicked so much during labor; because he wasn't getting sufficient oxygen flow through his cord to compensate for the stress of delivery. I didn't tear at all (my Mom was surprised because of the aforementioned manhandling) and I could actually get up and walk around after almost a day of waiting for the epidural to wear off. By the time he was born, I'd been up for almost 48 hours.
Based on my experience, I would not get induced again and I am NEVER getting an epidural. I don't care who says what about it, my biggest concern was that I would get it and it wouldn't work, and I was right. My body didn't take to it and I could have the leading expert in epidurals offer, but I would still refuse. The pain of labor is nothing to the panic and embarrassment of having to rely on the nurses to move your legs for you and feeling trapped in your own body.
I told my husband our next one would be different and he quoted the adage of 'Getting kicked in the balls is worse than childbirth because you never hear men saying, 'Do it again!''
To which I replied that if a guy got a reward at the end of it, like a beer, guys would be trying to kick THEMSELVES in the balls all the time. We finally came up with a satisfactory rebuttal. Take that.
When I first got pregnant, I was working with geriatric patients that should have been in palliative care, but refused because they didn't think they were that bad. I took them to the hospital a LOT for different illnesses like pneumonia and staph infections, and also for their various equipment failures, like PEG tubes getting yanked out or falling on their kitchen floor. I figured I could work through the pregnancy since I was going to advocate for more medical interventions this time around. They put me on 3 different drugs to try and control my nausea: Zofran (got a huge migraine and discovered an allergy to it), Phenergen (supposed to make you sleep, does nothing to me), and Diclegis (again, sleepy drug but I am apparently immune). The Phenergen and Diclegis worked together to make food tolerable for me but I still had a lot of off days. Rather than losing 40 lbs this pregnancy, I gained almost 80, even though I wasn't eating measurably more than before. My dr said this could be how my body compensated during pregnancy, or how my body reacted to the drugs/difficulties in this pregnancy (more on that later).
Working conditions deteriorated to the point I had to quit. I hadn't let my employers know about my pregnancy because they were looking to save money at the time and I knew my pregnancy would be used against me, wage-wise, so I kept quiet about it. I'm glad I quit when I did, even though it meant we were an unemployed household, because it meant I had more positive energy and less stress. At the 20 week ultrasound, we were elated to find out it was another boy. The dr came in afterward and said, 'There's an anomaly on his heart; probably because our machine is so low-tech, but we're sending you to Maternal Fetal Medicine to check it out.' I spent a month trying not to stress about it and everyone reassured me that it was just a machine malfunction, like they said. The day of the appointment came and we went in for the ultrasound. We got some great pictures and wonderful videos of our little boy moving around and posing for the camera. The tech didn't say anything, so I was relieved nothing had come up.
The doctor came in and said our baby had a hole in his heart and he was referring us to neonatal cardiology right away. I cried and tried to compose my thoughts as we walked over to cardiology. I sat on the table for another hour while the silent tech took pictures and videos exclusively of the heart. Another doctor came in and looked at the pictures. He talked to his assistant about 'pulmonary artesia' and 'Tetralogy of Fallot' but to me... all he said was that our baby could have a missing artery, might not, there's no way to know this early so I should go home and try not to stress about it. He said, 'This isn't our first rodeo.' to which I replied, 'No, but it is mine.' And he laughed, but I was serious. He might not have an emotional connection to the pregnancy because he'd dealt with it hundreds of times before, but this was my first 'problem' child.
Appointments upon appointments would follow. With our first, we got 2 ultrasounds; 1 to see if he was there and 1 for his anatomy scan. With this one, we had over 15. First, we were told the top regional hospital was a last resort kind of thing. The next appointment, they strongly advised that I transfer my care to that hospital. We moved states to be closer to where I was going to deliver. The appointments got closer together. They confirmed Tetralogy of Fallot, probably accompanied by DiGeorge Syndrome, a genetic disorder sometimes called 22q11 deletion. It can affect everything from immune response to developmental delays. Everything in between.
Fast forward to induction day. He had to be induced because we lived far away from the hospital and it was more risky to have him come naturally than to have everyone in place for when he came.
They told us to come at 5 in the morning. We left at 1:30 to get there in time, only to find they didn't have any beds. We waited around until almost 10:00 am, then we got back. I changed into the gown and we waited. A nurse came in with a Foley balloon to dilate me more (I was 1.5 when I checked in, 40% effaced). I had that in for about 3 hours, then it came out while I went to the bathroom, along with the bloody show. I thought, 'Sweet, we're about to get underway!' Wrong. They hooked me up to Pitocin, which wasn't too bad, then transferred me to another room closer to the NICU. They kept upping my Pitocin and I bounced on the birthing ball for a little bit to relieve the pressure. It was still hovering in the 'period cramps' range, so it wasn't too painful. The anesthesiologist came in and talked to me about different methods for controlling pain, saying the epidural was the most effective way to treat pain without affecting the baby. The other methods could cross over through the umbilical cord and affect the baby, leading to a harder birthing process. He encouraged me to get one because it would be easier to administer it sooner rather than later. I agreed to get one when they broke my water because even though I wanted to go through it medication free, I didn't want to stress out my baby's heart because I was in pain.
They brought in the guy who was going to do the epidural and... he was a student. He stuck me a few times and it didn't hurt as much as them ripping the tape off my leg hair to get the Foley bulb out. Then he stuck me in the wrong place and it felt like the sensation of licking a battery... but in my spine. After they squared everything away, my legs went dead. I felt useless. I hated it so much. I couldn't move my lower half at all and all my strength basically disappeared. I had to lay in the bed a certain way to get the epidural to drip evenly. I guess they put it in wrong? Then I felt nauseous. I pressed the call button because I knew nausea meant my blood pressure was dropping. Literally out of nowhere, I lost the ability to talk. I tried communicating with them about how I was feeling, about how numb my chest and throat were. I felt useless and the more I tried to control my emotions, the more out-of-control I felt. I cried, again, and more people kept coming in to look at me and ask how I was doing. The more I tried to articulate it, the slower I talked, the less I could control my mouth. They were talking about a possible stroke... but it didn't feel like my brain was affected, only my ability to talk. I still thought the same way, only now I was trapped in an unresponsive body.
After almost an hour, the sensation gradually faded and I was able to talk normally. They think my body shut down my speech center in the brain because I passed out... I didn't pass out, but I didn't seem to suffer any ill effects so I let it go.
I got to 6cm and the epidural wore off. They had me on a continuous drip, but it wasn't enough. I couldn't move, or even talk. The nurses tried to shift me around, but I had absolutely no strength. I'd been up for over 24 hours at this point and I was exhausted. Moving my giant body was even harder than before, especially since I couldn't feel my body from my belly button down. Unfortunately, I still felt every single contraction. The only way to cope was to grip the side of my bed and try to grit my teeth through the pain. I was too tired to even yell, or do anything other than silently bear it. So basically I did my second labor 'med-free' except I was also useless in bed, so I couldn't even move to the birth positions I'd wanted from the beginning. They also had to cut off my Pitocin, at that point, because the baby wasn't tolerating it.
After all the hype about epidurals, I was expecting something more effective. I couldn't move, couldn't do anything, and that was SO MUCH WORSE than just going through the pain by itself. Imagine choosing the 'no pain' option, only to be confronted with 'PAIN, only you can't move around to try and cope with it'. It was the worst. He descended, finally, so I could push. He kept crowning, then backing up. They got the forceps to help him out. My Mom says they basically tried to rip me open to get him out. My pushes... didn't feel effective at all. I was thinking, 'Push!' but I don't think it actually did anything. I felt the first few, but near the end, I didn't feel anything when I 'pushed'. They laid him on my chest for about 10 seconds while they cut the cord, then took him away to the NICU.
The reason why he didn't descend was a huge, tight, knot in his cord. They also think that's why he panicked so much during labor; because he wasn't getting sufficient oxygen flow through his cord to compensate for the stress of delivery. I didn't tear at all (my Mom was surprised because of the aforementioned manhandling) and I could actually get up and walk around after almost a day of waiting for the epidural to wear off. By the time he was born, I'd been up for almost 48 hours.
Based on my experience, I would not get induced again and I am NEVER getting an epidural. I don't care who says what about it, my biggest concern was that I would get it and it wouldn't work, and I was right. My body didn't take to it and I could have the leading expert in epidurals offer, but I would still refuse. The pain of labor is nothing to the panic and embarrassment of having to rely on the nurses to move your legs for you and feeling trapped in your own body.
I told my husband our next one would be different and he quoted the adage of 'Getting kicked in the balls is worse than childbirth because you never hear men saying, 'Do it again!''
To which I replied that if a guy got a reward at the end of it, like a beer, guys would be trying to kick THEMSELVES in the balls all the time. We finally came up with a satisfactory rebuttal. Take that.
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