Birth Story, Part Two

I thought about prefacing the rest of this birth story a bit, but I think I’ll save my comments for later and let the events speak for themselves!

3:20 a.m. through 3:46 a.m.:  As I mentioned yesterday, my water broke at home while I was in bed.  Since I was in my pajamas, I did take the time to get dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt.  Nothing fancy, but decent.  However, my relatively-neatly-groomed-for-the-middle-of-the-night state hurt the speed of my admission procedure.

First, the lady at the check-in desk (like this was a hotel) piddled around a bit with finding me in the system.  “Did you say you preregistered?” she inquired.  “I can’t seem to find you.  How do you spell your name?”

No joke.  I can hardly sit in the wheelchair, and she’s not in any big hurry to check me in.  Finally, she found me, asked my height, and told me I needed to step on the scale behind her desk.  All this did was inform me that I’d lost a pound of amniotic fluid, based on my weight the previous Monday!

Finally, the OB resident on call, Dr. Wagers, who looked about 19 years old, came up and asked if I was sure that my water had broken.  Apparently, since my pants were dry and I was not leaking fluid all over the floor, she wanted to ascertain that I hadn’t just wet the bed or something.  When I told her that I was quite sure, she told me, “Well, we only have one delivery room open, so I’m going to put you in triage and make sure you’re really in labor.”

Again, no joke.  By this point, I could hardly walk from the pain of the contractions, but I nevertheless walked to the triage room, somehow crawled into the gown shoved at me, and collapsed on the bed.  I think that I was moaning by this point, and I was definitely doing so when she examined me.

“Oh!” Dr. Wagers said.  “She’s at eight centimeters!  We’ve got to get her into a room RIGHT NOW!”

In a weak, pathetic voice, I asked, “Can I get an epidural?”

There was a long, dare I say, pregnant pause.  “Um, no,” she said as gently as possible.  “We have to do a CBC before we can give you one, and there’s no time.”

I almost told her there and then, “Well, I’m not doing this then.  No epidural, no baby.”

But you can imagine how that would have gone over.  I think they were already trying not to laugh at me.

The next 15 minutes or so were a blur.  I was very quickly wheeled to the only open delivery room, which exploded in activity upon my arrival.  By this time, I think I was crying out in pain (I know I was hoarse by the end of it) and holding on for dear life to the gurney from the triage room.  A nurse named Mandy got in my face and told me that I had to move from this bed to the delivery table.  Jeff told me the same thing, and I’m pretty sure that I told them I couldn’t.

Then, Mandy got in my face again and asked me if I needed to push.  As I had never experienced this part of giving birth without being numb from the waist down, all I could think was, “How am I supposed to know?!” and I said, “I feel as if I need to have a bowel movement!”  (Lovely, I know, but evidently that’s what it feels like when you have to push.)

Then, the nurses really started moving and told me I had to get on the delivery table RIGHT NOW, so I apologized and, in one brief respite between bad pains, the nurses and I managed to move me over.  As the nurses got me and themselves situated, my breathing got more and more shallow, as I moved from disbelief to full panic mode.  There was NO WAY I was capable of giving birth with no medication!

Jeff, in the meantime, kept trying to get close to me.  He asked at one point if I wanted to squeeze his hand, but I much preferred the bed rails.  He also found himself holding a fetal monitor that one of the nurses had shoved in his hands when she couldn’t get it strapped on me.  He describes the scene as one of very organized chaos.

Finally, Mandy slapped an oxygen mask around my face and told me that I needed to calm down, start taking deep breaths, and push correctly because the baby was ready to be born.  “We can’t get his heartbeat, so we need to get him out there,” she said.

Now, Jeremy was never in any distress; this whole thing didn’t last long enough for anyone but me to be in distress!  What she meant was that she couldn’t get his heartbeat externally with a monitor, but her words were definitely enough to galvanize me into delivering my baby.

3:47 a.m.:  I’ll spare you the gory details, but at 3:47 a.m., approximately 32 minutes after I walked into the hospital, Jeremy made his appearance, pink and yelling and very healthy.  Jeff got to cut his cord, as I looked on, so relieved that it was all over that I could hardly stand it.

Dr. Banks-Jackson missed the delivery entirely; Jeremy was delivered by Dr. Wagers, and Dr. Banks-Jackson only got there in time to supervise the cleanup. 

As soon as Jeremy had been cleaned up, the nurse brought him to me, snugly wrapped in a blanket.  He weighed 8 pounds, 2 ounces, and was 20.75 inches long.  As we had left the camera in the car, Jeff took these photos with his iPhone, which had no flash.  But I’m grateful he got these!

 

Here is Dr. Wagers, Jeremy, and me.

What a ride!  The nurses kept telling me, “This is the very best way to have a baby!” 

Hmmmm.