My first birthing experience!

LABOR & DELIVERY:

A lot of friends have blogged about their labor and delivery story's, and while they are often kinda gruesome I have enjoyed reading them. So I thought I'd share mine as well. First let me just say that I was very blessed with an easy pregnancy. I had hardly any morning sickness and was able to work right up to the very end without any difficulty, for which I am very grateful.

I was scheduled to be induced on Aug 18th (my Dad's birthday =) but on my last Doctors appt I was dilated and having mild contractions so he didn't think I'd make it till then. We recently moved to Gilbert but our Doctor delivers at the Banner Thunderbird Hospital which is a good hour away, so rather than try and guess when I was far enough along to come in without chancing being sent home, I was placed on a "standby" status where the hospital called me as soon as they had an available room. I was called in at 7:30am Sat morning Aug 14th. We arrived and registered by 9am. The hospital has converted to paperless charting and the super nice old lady nurse I had was really slow putting our information in the computer (She kept getting distracted and telling us stories about her kids and how things used to be ;) so by the time she was done it was 11:30am, and I think my Doctor was a little annoyed.

The epidural was pretty easy. They numbed me with a little Lidocaine first, which is the same stuff we use at the dentist office. I've never minded shots and let lots of friends practice injections on me in hygiene school so I wasn't really nervous, but Edward freaked a little when he saw the size of the needle ;) The worst part of the whole thing was the nice old lady nurse wrapped her arms around me in a comforting way instructing me to slump my shoulders, but by so doing her face was 2 inches from mine and her breath was really bad. I tried breathing in as little as possible till we were done.

Finally around 1pm we were ready for the Doctor to come in and break my water. I was placed on Petocin and dilated progressively from there. I reached 10cm at around 9pm. My epidural IV bag started beeping that it was empty, but my nurse had said she would bring me a new one as soon as she had finished discharging her other patient and I was so timid about pressing the nurse call button, so we just listened to it beep as I felt the numbness wear off. I started thinking about my friend Erin, whose epidural wore off just in time to feel the whole delivery. By the time my nurse came back I had started throwing up. It didn't take long for the new IV bag to start working though and I was good again.

When the Doctor came in and was ready for me to push, Reese came out in just two try's. His umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck once which made his heart rate drop a little, but the Doctor untangled him and had me reach down and pull him up onto my belly. My first thought was how I couldn't believe he was mine! My second thought was that he had a cone head, but the Doctor assured me the swelling would go down and his head would be normal by morning.

I had imagined Edward being a lot more attentive during the final stages, but he doesn't handle blood real well so he kinda hugged the walls. He sure was a proud Daddy though! Reese weighed in at 7lbs 8oz, and was 21 inches long. (Though the next morning after the swollen bump on his head had receded, he only measured 20 inches).

My gown was halfway falling off, so for the sake of decency I won't include any pics of me.

POST PARTUM:

I was laying there while they cleaned Reese up, thinking how easy this whole process had been and how I was ready to have 10 more kids when I started to realize how tired I was. The thing is they don't let you sleep! We were transferred to our Post Partum room and I started feeling really sick. The epidural had worn off and I could feel the contractions from the Petocin IV. I was freezing cold with tremors and my blood pressure shot up to 180/120, which is twice as high as it usually is. They kept coming in to check either me or Reese every 10 min all night long, so none of us got any sleep. My last IV bag of Petocin finished around 5am and I was so excited to have that done with! They told me the other IV of saline solution could come off as soon as I had filled my toilet bowl twice. (Sorry if that's TMI). I ate the breakfast they brought and started getting really excited to go home. That's when the new shift of nurses came on and the worst Sunday of my life began.

I was given two really young nurses, a Trainer and a Trainee. The Trainer chick was kind of a smug know it all, and the Trainee was really nervous. I told them I was ready for the second IV to come off so the Trainee started trying to peel the tape off my hand while forcefully holding the IV head in place. She ended up with a big clump of tape wrapped around the end that she was trying to yank off. I asked her if she could just get some scissors and cut around it but she said, "I don't have any". When the tape finally came off the IV head was back bleeding from being so manhandled and so she tried to flush it with some saline solution, but was unsuccessful and in the end just took it out. The girls came back a few minutes later to inform me that the on-call Doctor wanted to start me on a 24 hr Magnesium Sulfate IV because of my high BP the night before, and that it would make me feel like crap, and the soonest I'd get to go home was Tuesday. Since the other IV head had come out she needed to start a new one in my other hand. After poking me three times and unsuccessfully inserting the needle (she said my veins kept rolling), the trainee finally got it in a vein, but she punctured it so low the tubing went down into my wrist. She told me just not to flex my wrist or it would kink the IV (a hard thing not to do when that was my dominant hand and I'm using it to pick up and put down Reese to nurse, and fill out those tracker sheets, etc.) When they started the IV they did a 30 min bolus first and my whole hand turned red and felt like it was on fire. The nurses said it was normal for the magnesium to burn like that. By this time I was crying and I cried for a long time afterwards. I was just exhausted and in pain and felt like a prisoner, but my nurses were concerned and started having me fill out all kinds of questioners on Post Partum Depression which just annoyed me even more. The on-call Doctor came in and explained that I had developed Preeclampsia after the baby's birth, and that even though my BP had been normal all morning, my lab results showed something off with my liver enzymes. By Sunday night Edward and I were so tired. He hadn't slept at all in two days because in-between feedings he'd held Reese to let me nap a little, and he had to work the next morning (his Maternity leave didn't start till the 20th, which was my actual due date) so he went home to feed the dogs and cats and sleep a few hours before morn.

I had a new Nurse that night, but she frustrated me also. I felt like Reese was starving because he just cried and cried, but she didn't want me to supplement him with a bottle. (Evidently they had just had a big seminar for all the nurses on the importance of breast-feeding, the week prior.) Reese's weight had dropped 10 ounces, but she said that was normal while they were feeding on the colostrum. The poor guy sucked so hard trying to get something and I was super sore. Finally, at my insistence, she brought me a couple ounces of formula in a bottle, and after Reese finished it he gave me a the HUGEST smile! (I know one day old babies can't smile yet, but he did, and it was huge.)

On Monday morning the IV finished and Reese was discharged, so they left us alone a lot more because they no longer needed to check him, which was wonderful and we were finally able to get some rest. The nurse that night was nice and took the IV head out completely because my wrist was red and swollen and she was afraid it would get infected. My Mom came down and stayed the night in the hospital with us so Edward could go home and sleep again before work. Tuesday afternoon we were finally able to go home, and my milk came in, so it was a big relief! Today my Dad gave me a blessing before they headed home, and my stitches feel so much better now (class III tear), so everything is going pretty great! I can't believe how much I just absolutely love this little guy!