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I am going to post my birth story from piczo and myspace as now with my LO getting enough time to sit down and type things out doesn't come easy. So here it is! ............................On the morning of June 8th, 2008 I woke up at my grandparents’ house where I was staying because my husband was in Mexico and being 9 months pregnant no one wanted me to be alone, in case I decided to pop or something. So, after being cooped up at their house for a few days I decided I needed to go home to check on my apartment, my cat, my e-mail and all my internet ‘things’ as well as recapture just a bit of sanity. Once home I started having menstrual type cramping. I didn’t think anything of it. I had had it before and it had ended in NOTHING. However, as the day progressed, the cramping slowly became closer and closer together and started moving from my lower abdomen up and around my sides to my br___tbone and then going back down the same way. The pain was not unbearable but noticeable, and I was able to time it. Every five minutes.
When my grandparents called to check up on me, these pains were approximately every 2-5 minutes apart and made me stop to catch my breath. The informed me they would be picking me up and taking me to the hospital. I told them it wasn’t time. They didn’t listen. They came and picked me up, we drove to my mom’s work where we let her know what we were doing, went to pick my sister up at my grandparents’ house and drove to the hospital. I knew that if I was indeed in labor I would not be eating for a very long time so I insisted we eat. All of the family piled into the hospitals fabulous restaurant and we ate. My mom came soon after.
After the feast we drove down to labor and delivery where they put me in a triage room. Only one person was allowed to visit me in the cramped little room so my mom, my sister, my aunt, my gramma and my cousin took turns coming in to visit me. By now my contractions were every 2-3 minutes and getting more painful by the minute. However, they were still bearable. They did an internal check and I was 80-90% effaced and at 1-2cm.
**Mind you I had lost my mucous plug some days earlier and continued to lose more as well as very clear looking cm type liquid**
After 5 hours at labor and delivery, a biophysical profile to make sure the fluid level was good as well as that her heart accelerations were good etc and doing a blood panel on me to rule out pre-eclampsia they decided I was not progressing adequately and that I was not in active labor. Therefore they sent me home and advised me to call my doctor in the morning as she was on-call to see what I should do next. By the time we arrived home I was having contractions 1.5-2 minutes apart and they were painful enough to cause me to grip whatever was nearby and breathe. I spent from 11:30 PM -6:15 AM in pain and agony and torn as to whether I was in enough pain to go back to L&D before they had suggested I should call my doctor. I took a shower to try to help the pain which worked for a little while but then the pain came back and even stronger. At 6:15AM however I was sitting in the big reclining chair in my grandparents’ house breathing through a contraction when I heard and felt two distinct pops and a large wet gush as though my period had just come on super heavy. I got up, got dressed and my family drove me to labor and delivery, AGAIN.
I was still having contractions every 2 minutes and they were so unbearable now that I was convulsing and starting to hyperventilate. They tested what I knew was my amniotic fluid and told me it tested negative and that I was still not more than 1-2 cm. They hooked me up to the monitors and Sammi wouldn’t move. I sat in that bed for almost 1 hour waiting for Sammi to move, all the while writhing and convulsing. Eventually I lost momentary consciousness due to the pain and threw up all the orange juice they had given me. They did another biophysical profile which again came back fine but Sammi still wouldn't move. They even zapped her with an annoying little buzzer... NOTHING. The one nurse who took care of me in triage was horrible. My favorite quote from her was when she was trying to locate Sammi’s heartbeat with the monitor and told my mom that she needed to do it because the nurse ‘just wasn’t going to stand there and wait while her hand cramped and she had other patients to take care of’. Yeah, needless to say I will be writing a letter about that.
After about 2 hours they offered me morphine for the pain. I declined. I wanted to see my doctor who would be on duty soon. I wanted her opinion and I wanted to be admitted as they were talking once again about sending me home. Finally at about 8:30 my doctor arrived and everything moved very fast from that point on. She said of course she was going to admit me, get me on an IV, get me my epidural, give me pitocin, check me and go from there. They gave me two IV sites, but because the contractions were so unbearable the IVs felt like nothing. They then transferred me into a labor/delivery/recovery room and my favorite person in the entire world arrived. His name was Karl and he was my angel in a doctors mask. Yes, yes he was the provider of my epidural. They had me sit on the side of the bed, raised to its highest level with my feet on my mom’s knees who was sitting in a chair in front of me with her hands on my knees. I hugged a pillow to my chest and arched my back. The pinch of the numbing shot was no big deal. Literally no more than a minor stick of needle to have blood taken. Then there was pressure when the large needle went in, and cool cool sensations as the beautiful heavenly fluids rushed through me to numb me. WOW!!! HEAVEN IN A NEEDLE.
They hooked me up to the pitocin, and the doctor did my internal which come to find out, I had NOT broken my water that morning but a couple days ago when I had been checked for leaking the first time. She told me that if I had just broken my water I would still have some of my sac left. There was nothing there, just her head pressed firmly to my cervix and no movement. She did scalpel stimulation and no movement. It was not long after that my doctor came in and I believe in an effort to keep me calm told me she thought, ‘ that it would be best to go ahead with the c-section ‘ because Sammi wasn’t reacting as much as she would have liked. In retrospect I know I was rushed into the OR and that she had planned it all along because Sammi had been in there without any amniotic fluid for more than 36 hours and babies are supposed to be born no later than 24 hours after membrane rupture. So into the OR I went.
My mom went with me. I won’t lie. I was scared but they gave me morphine, on top of topping off my epidural and I started to feel very woozy. The doctor asked me if I could feel anything and I said no, felt a poke and panicked. I yelled, I felt that! They asked me what and I said I felt a sharp poke. They asked me if that was all, I said yes and they said, well we’ve already gotten to the uterus so don’t worry. The anesthesiologist (KARL) stayed with me, alongside my mom the whole time, comforting me, asking me if I needed anything, asking me how I felt, rubbing my head and my neck and my shoulders. He was spectacular. And then they announced her birth, I heard one sharp cry, they quickly showed me her very calm purple body and whisked her away. My mom kissed my forehead and disappeared. I knew everything was not okay but was in such a daze, I could not say anything or do anything. I was however, comforted to know my mom was with her and would not leave her.
The sewing me up part was the most agonizing. It took the longest and they tilted me slightly upside down which made me light headed and dizzy. At the very end as my doctor was ripping down the shield that kept me from seeing what had been done she suddenly dropped the curtain on my face and yelled, “OH SHIT!”. . . I was petrified something had gone wrong with my incision or the staples or something but later I found out that as she was pulling down the curtain she had accidentally pulled out the drain to my incision. No big deal. She just put it back and we were done. She apologized for being so unprofessional.
I spent the first hours after my section in my room with my family without Samantha while she spent the first 4 hours of her life in the nursery being pumped, having gas expelled, and basically being revived from the distress she had been in due to the conditions of my uterus thanks to the incompetent nurses in triage. My mom never left her side. She came into the room about 4 hours later and it was love at first sight.
Arturo arrived in from Mexico later that night.
We stayed 5 days and on the 4th day Sammi was diagnosed with mild jaundice. She spent the 4th evening and the 5th morning under lights in the nursery which tore me up to see her on all the wires and apparatus. We left later Friday afternoon and have been ecstatic and excited ever since.
I have been br___tfeeding and feeding her formula and she’s getting chunkier and happier by the day. And that is the end of the wonderful story of Samantha Marie’s birth.
I am now suffering from mild incision infection, taking antibiotics and hoping they don't have to reopen the incision to drain the wound. YUCK! I am suffering from minor post partum blues, feel like crying at the drop of a hat and am often sad for reasons I do not know, but then I look at my LO and cry happy tears. She is so wonderful and so beautiful. She sleeps like a dream, (long enough to allow mommy to watch movies and type online...lol) only cries/wimpers when she is wet or hungry and is already smiling at me. Let me just say being a mommy is A LOT HARDER than I ever imagined, but it is soooooo beyond wonderful too... thanks to ya'll who inquired and GL to those of you who are still on the pregnancy journey!
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