Birth Story

Thursday morning, 5am, the Hubs and I arrived at Methodist (all hospitals in my town have a religious affiliation). I get admitted, on paper, and sit in the waiting room with the other 2 couples there to induce. At 6:45am, the charge nurse comes to the door and informs us all that we will need to go home and call our OBs later in the day. They have no rooms and cannot perform any of our inductions.

I cry. I was ready for this day and now I was being sent home.

I don't wait, I call the answering service and leave a message for my OB to be paged. I get a call back from the on-call nurse. She is most unhappy that I've been sent home. I mean, really, I was being induced for a reason (hypertension) not just because I thought it was a good day to have a baby.

My BP tops out at 151/100. My OB wants to see me at 1pm. I go over to my mom's, we go have lunch, I go help her out at her school for a little while. Finally, 1pm rolls around and I head over to my OB's office. My BP is still very high and something new! Proteins! It's official – mild pre-e. That gets me a direct ticket to L&D… too bad Methodist is still full. Full as in, my OB walked across the parking lot and literally saw a woman in every bed.

My insurance does cover one of the other hospitals, Catholic. But my OB doesn't deliver at Catholic (boo!!) but 3 docs in his practice do (thank goodness for a big practice!). So he calls them, both the other docs and the other hospital. There is 1 bed at Catholic. One. But it is now mine. I've jumped to the top of the priority list. I am directed to head directly to the hospital. I stop at home, change clothes, switch around a load of laundry, shoot off a couple emails and then go to the hospital. It's 3pm when I arrive.

I change, sign lots of paperwork and get into bed. My dad got to the hospital first and was actually waiting in my room when I got there. Mom was next and Hubs arrived soon after. A very low dose of Pitocin was started and then upped a tad bit after 15 minutes. At 6pm my substitute OB arrived and ordered that the Pitocin be stopped and Cervidil be administered at 10:30 that night. No use having a baby in the wee hours when we can just do it the next day!

I sent everyone home so that we could all sleep.

I woke up in labor at 4am. Called nurses 4 times between 4 and 5… no one came. Turned out they were all in a very bad delivery (everyone came out ok, though!). At 5am, Hubs came and we were finally able to get a nurse down to the room. Stadol administered at 5:30am. I have no real idea what happened between 5:30 and 11:30am. I remember sitting up and the epi being inserted. I'm told I asked for a second dose of Stadol, but I have no recollection of that. The next thing I remember is that it's 11:30am and the nurses are prepping me and the bed for delivery. In case you haven't guessed, it was determined that I had been over-anesthetized.

According to mom, they started Pitocin again at 7am and within an hour I went from a 2 to a 6.

We started delivery a little after 11:30. Very quickly they realized that Little Bird was in respiratory distress and I was given an oxygen mask to help force more oxygen to him. Not long into delivery my OB decided that we were going to have to use a vacuum to get LB out. Even fully dilated, I needed an episiotomy (mine equated to a 2^nd degree tear). The epi was also turned off and the Pitocin turned up. Finally, I could feel something and could actually control how I was pushing. Never did feel any pain though!

After 44 minutes of pushing, including 23 minutes of vacuum, LB was born. He was blue. It was the scariest moment of my life. But the nurses quickly got him suctioned and breathing, but he still was struggling. Hubs and I only got to hold him for just a few seconds each before he was taken to the nursery. He did not have to go to NICU though (yay!).

All the while, I lost more than a quart of blood. My mom said that at one point, I'm laying there pouring blood and the OB looked up at her very calmly and matter-of-factly and said, "I promise I won't let her bleed out."

By the time they got me stitched up and cleaned up and LB to the nursery, I was much more lucid. LB spent about 2 hours in the nursery and then we were finally able to have him back in the room. His breathing had returned to normal levels. He had a serious hematoma which made him much more likely to be jaundiced, but all he ever required was some time in my room window.

We were discharged on Sunday afternoon.

It was traumatic for all of us, but at the end of the day, by "birth plan" was complete – LB and I were alive and healthy and very happy!