The Overdue Baby Saga:
Seeing your due date come and go is a depressing thing. I personally believe that people who study physchologically damaging situations would have found my brain a very interesting palce to be for those 4 days after my due date. I just kept thinking about the studies I've heard about with people on death row and how it affects them mentally...
Anyways, the way it affected me was... I donned a horrible purple grandma nightgown and wallowed in self pity, while eating spicy foods, pineapple, and eggplant parmesan. All while balancing on my yoga ball... You know, because you can totally bounce the baby out.
I had plenty of contractions. But I was showing little progress. I was particularly stressed out because Audrey was a csection, so they really hesistate to do any kind of inducing because there is a higher risk of uterine rupture. My doctors said they wouldn't let me go over 41 weeks, which was comforting because I wanted it to end already, and not comforting because I really didn't want to do a csection again.
Labor:
I like to tell people that the ward (church) Christmas party put me into labor. ... But the truth is that I was already in the early stages by the time we got there. By the time we finished eating our dinner, we knew it was real and we needed to get to the hospital, which is about an hour drive.
I had been up since 4:30 AM with contractions that had been off and on all day on the 6th. We got to the hospital about 10:30 PM. My water broke at 11:15 PM. We had him by csection on the 7th at 10:37 PM. We actually got to go to sleep at 3:30 AM on the 8th. I got to eat food sometime the next morning. It was a long road.
That's the cliff notes version. I'll give a little more detail for those who want it.
Logan was in super pumped mode as we drove in. He was really excited. I was in super-uncomfortable-stop-being-so-cheerful-this-hurts mode. They hooked me up and found that my contractions were fairly strong and pretty consistent (uh, yeah. I could have told you that...), but I was only dilated to 1cm. They decided they'd send me walking for an hour. If I had progressed, they'd officially admit me. If I hadn't, they were going to send me home.
Right when they were about to unhook me from the monitors, a strong contraction ended and I felt this POP. It felt kind of like the little guy had just kicked me really hard. Along with the pop came the telltale rush of fluid. "Uhh, I think my water just broke." The nurse didn't believe me. She turned to get a little strip to test for amniotic fluid. By the time she turned back around, Niagra Falls had filled the bed, and the little test strip was not necessary. So, they admitted me.
At first, they let me walk the halls. It's definitely awkward, walking around with fluid randomly deciding to leave the nest... But, it was nice to get a change of scene and to have something other than the pain to think about . We went back into the room and they told us that I actually wasn't allowed to walk around because I was more high risk, and needed to stay hooked up to the monitors. :/
I wouldn't say that I was super awesome at managing pain while I could walk, but this was a step in the wrong direction. I could only walk in a 3 foot radius while monitors kept beeping at me. And boy, those contractions just kept getting stronger. And the lovely water just kept flowing. It was rather unpleasant.
They wanted me to wait until I was dilated to 4cm to get an epidural. The hours kept passing... And I stayed at a 1. And I stayed at a 1. And I stayed at a 1. More than anything, I was just SO so exhausted. I'd been up since 4:30, and it's not like having regular, strong contractions allows for much rest. So I decided to ask for an epidural anyways and discovered that the nurse was misinformed. I could have an epidural after all! Halleluia! (Don't ask me about time frame on this, by the way. I have no idea.)
They also put me on pitocin about this same time. This is kind of a big deal because a lot of doctors won't let VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) patients have any pitocin--especially ones that had their csection such a short time ago.
Getting an epidural was amazing! Ah-mazing. So great. Best decision ever. I could finally get a little bit of rest. Not much, of course, with people coming in constantly, but still. It was great. So great. I can't even say enough about how great. So great.
And boring. Most of the morning was really boring. We wished we had brought some cards or something. After 12 hours of my water being broken, I finally had progressed past 1cm.
Yes. It seriously took that long. I continued to slowly progress through the rest of the day. I was on a time limit because they only let you have your water broken for 24 hours because of risk of infection spreading to the baby.
Sometime in the afternoon, my epidural slowly stopped working on this spot near my hip on one side. And the not-working area slowly spread until there was a whole lot of pain going on.
So much of this is just a blur... But I'll tell you what I remember. I was stuck at 7cm for 4 hours with really strong pitocin contractions and an epidural that just wasn't working. (Apparently, the little guy was sunnyside up (facing the wrong direction), but we didn't know that until the csection.)
I hope I never see the nurse that was helping me through those hours again because I was just ugly. Inside and outside. I was so completely discouraged because baby wouldn't engage so I wasn't progressing anymore, and I was in SO much pain that felt like it wasn't even doing anything to get the baby here, and I had just started to run a fever. :/
So we made the hard decision (that would have been made for us in the next hour or so anyways) to proceed to a csection. It was extremely emotional. But honestly, at that point, I hardly cared anymore because I was so tired and so done.
Almost 24 hours after my water broke, little man (who was still nameless at this point) was born via csection. And it was so awesome. We are seriously grateful for medical advances that allow us to have healthy babies when difficulties arise.
Logan watched the whole thing again. The nurses made a point of bringing him up to me so I could see him when he was born because I told them about the traumatic experience of not getting to see Audrey for 6 hours after she was born.
7 lbs 13 oz, 20.25 inches of pure perfection.
My doctor was amazing. I had a really bad scar from Audrey's section. I was allergic to the dissolvable staples they used, and it developed a really painful keloid scar. It basically looked like an earthworm was stuck to my skin. It was that raised. And it hurt me up until the time he cut it out. (He said it looked like I had had 3 csections with all the scar tissue I'd built up.) He took extra time to use special stitching and stitch extra layers so that I could heal better this time.
And it really worked. I felt better after 2 weeks than I had after months of Audrey's.
This extra stitching took a really long time. When they wheeled me out, I was so out of it, and barely staying awake. This nurse came up to me and said, "Let me tell you about your son." And boy. That really scared me. But Logan was there, and he didn't look worried. So I tried really hard to stay awake through the fog and listen to this lady. (I'll explain all about him in the next part.)
I had to stay in the recovery room for 2 hours. I threw up once. And slept the rest of the time. Then, they woke me up and wheeled me into the NICU so I could hold my little guy. Oh man, it was such a tender mercy. I really was scarred by the way things were handled with Audrey, and this was just so much better.
When we got into our postpartum room, I was SO groggy and super grouchy. The nurses kept asking me questions and really being so sweet. But I just couldn't handle it. I told them that I just couldn't talk to them, and they needed to go away so I could sleep. And I pumped for 15 minutes and went to sleep without eating because I was just that tired.
The next morning I had breakfast, pumped, and got to go see little guy.
Callum in the NICU:
Little guy (still nameless at this point) would have to stay in the NICU for at least 48 hours because he had a pneumothorax. Basically, when he screamed after being born, a little hole developed in his lung, causing it to collapse. This created an air pocket between his lung and his ribcage. They had quickly stabilized him with a high flow of oxygen, so it wasn't like we were ever scared or worried about him, but they needed to monitor it until it healed.
He also was put on an IV of antibiotics that he would need for 48 hours because my water had been broken for so long.
He also had IV fluids of sugar water because the high flow of oxygen made eating impossible for a little while. They said it would be like trying to eat while your head was stuck out the window of a car driving 60 miles an hour.
Before too long, they were able to lower his oxygen so he could eat. I was keeping up with pumping, and would nurse him, then give him a bottle of formula. They had us supplement him from the start because they needed to keep his blood sugar up high enough to slowly wean him off the IV sugar.
His oxygen came off completely sometime in the first day. His antibiotics came off right on time too after 48 hours. They also took chest Xrays everyday to check on the progress of the pneumothorax. It shrunk quickly, and he has had no lasting effects from it. The long (5 day) stay was mostly for weaning him off of the sugar.
It took FOREVER. After every feeding, they would prick his little heel and check his sugar. If it was high enough, they could lower the IV one notch.
We went and fed him every 3 hours. We could help change his diaper and could spend as much time as we wanted there, except that I was still a patient recovering from a csection. So we mostly went just for the feedings, then had to rush back to my room to take meds/ eat meals/ have the nurses do their latest torture on me ;) before rushing back to feed him again.
Also. Quick shoutout to THE best guy ever. I won't even bother trying to put my feelings into words. Thanks, Logan. Love you.
I had a MUCH better time of healing this time. If we didn't need to stay for Callum, I would have wanted to go home much earlier this time. We had 2 names in mind, and had a REALLY hard time deciding which to name our little man. We would "decide" on one and try it out for a few hours without telling anyone else. But once we tried Callum, we just knew it was for him. He's definitely a Callum. (A fact I knew since he was in the womb.)
Eventually, I was discharged because I was past ready to be, and couldn't stay admitted any longer. They have a couple of family stay rooms in the NICU, and we were able to stay in one. He was even off of his IV, and able to stay in there with us. It was great! Then, we finally got to go home the next day! We really missed Audrey (and she was missing us) and we were SO ready to get away from the horrible and constant beeping of monitors.
Yeah. There's too much to write about new mom life Vol 2. Life is way busy. Someone is usually crying and sometimes miracles happen, and my kitchen gets clean. ;) That about sums it up...
Audrey LOVES little Callum. She got to feed him a bottle of pumped milk the first night he was home, and she was in heaven. She does get frustrated with how often I've got to be sitting on the couch feeding him instead of playing with her and attending to her every desire.
Nursing has been much better with Callum (most of the time). It is still hard, and I have to eat oatmeal everyday for breakfast and a whole bunch of other milk boosting things, but so far, we're still going with it.
Remember that Oatmeal is disgusting, but helpful, and babies are always miracles, no matter how difficult the delivery. ;)
