Well hello. This is obviously my first post on here, and at first I was going to write about my terrible day, but then I thought, "why? why not make my first post memorable and write about the birth of my daughter?" So here goes...
Ella Florence Noel was born on Dec 14, 2010, at 11:21pm. She was 8lbs 11.7 oz and 20.5 inches long! Wow what a big baby!
She was originally due Dec 7th, but I scheduled an induction for the 13th/14th because she would just not come and I was not showing any signs of labor. However the week before I was having a lot of back pains which I now think were mini labor pains. Maybe Braxton Hicks? Anyway, I was supposed to go in Monday the night of the 13th. They scheduled me for that day anyway, but they called me up and said that I had to wait until they had a room available. Thanks guys for telling me that before.
So we waited, and waited...and waited. Until 1am on the 14th. I had JUST gone to bed at eleven, giving up on them calling and had planned on calling them the next morning to yell at them for not calling. So we got the call and headed in. The other unfortunate thing is I live almost about 45 minutes from this hospital. So I was even more anxious because of how long it took us to get there.
We finally got there around 2am and got checked in. This process was quicker than I thought, I signed some papers and headed to a room to disrobe and prepare! The room was pretty small, but better than most triage centers because they are usually shared rooms. This was private. The nurse hooked me up to a hep lock and gave me a pill called Cytotek (this is inserted on the cervix to get it dilated and hopefully start labor). That was done around 2, 2:30. And the waiting began!
To fast forward a bit, the labor was pretty intense and I believe this has caused me to forget some of what happened that day so I will be making some guesses as to what happened that day.
The nurse came to check on my I believe every hour or so to see if I dilated. Finally around I believe 7am I had dilated enough to be moved to my own delivery room! Hooray! From there I was hooked up to fluids and also Pitocin to get the contractions going. From there it was all downhill.
My contractions came pretty irregular, sometimes they were strong but far apart, and other times they were close together but not strong enough, so the nurses kept changing the amount on me. For hours this went on, and I was only slowly dilating, not even effaced. Throughout the day my doctor would come in, she inserted a balloon to speed things up because we were not progressing well, this did eventually work and got me to...I think about 3 cm. She came back couple hours later and readjusted the balloon to get me to 5 cm. This did work right away. However it was not good enough for my doctor. So she broke my water. What a weird feeling that was! I will certainly never forget it ha! Anyway, my timeline is all screwed up with this thing, but at some point I was dilated for 5 hours at only 5cm, nothing else changed. The pain was intense, like I said, I can hardly remember things. However I do remember that they could not have been more than a min apart lasting a min and a half or so.
During all of this, my baby was doing just wonderful! The contractions never affected her, she sailed through it all! And Eric (my bf) was a wonderful support person, he was there for every contraction so that I could have something to ease my pain. I could not ask for a better person to support me through that.
Finally, around 9 or 10pm, or so I have been told, the doctor came in and suggested I opt for a C. You know my response? YES! I was ready for this to be over. It was the absolute last option for me. (since i was 17 i always wanted a home water birth, i was adamant about it) But unfortunately that was what I had to do, the doctor said at that point the baby was starting to get stressed from everything. So I gave in, I did not want to harm her, and I was too tired to go on. I have been told that I was sort of falling asleep between contractions, and sometimes very drousy walking between the bed and the bathroom. I was done!
The next part I remember pretty well. It all went so fast, the anesthesiologist came in and talked to me(don't remember what he said, probably stuff about the procedure of the spinal). Then he left and someone came back with scrubs for Eric and papers for me to sign. To this day I have no idea what I signed, probably something about consent for the surgery and spinal.
Soon someone came in and tried to decide if I could walk there or not, then they decided not and threw me in a wheelchair taking me to the O.R. If you have ever been in an operating room than you know, it is a freaking FREEZER in there! They told me to go sit on this super thin table and lean forward. (by the way, i have had many contractions at this point since they took me to the room, and Eric was not allowed in the room yet so they were worse!) This is my favorite part of the whole night so far...as i'm sitting there with some strange man in front of me holding my shoulders, and i'm having an awful contraction, the anesthesiologist says, "let me distract you". And he stuck me in the back with a needle! It was definitely not as painful as the contractions but sure did distract me for a moment. When he was done injecting me with the spinal, I was then instructed to lie back on the table, an odd feeling since during the whole pregnancy I was told NOT to lay flat. At that point I was in heaven.
They strapped my arms to the table and let Eric in. They put up the barrier between me and my belly and began the surgery. Eric has told me how they did the surgery because he stood up and watched the whole birth. He said it was weird because (getting graphic here) they had their arms elbow deep in my abdomen and i'm just laying there saying things like "oh that tickles!" (yes I really said that). Eventually the baby came! They took her out and showed her to me on the side and took her away to do her apgar tests. Eric went with to make sure everything was alright and they let him cut the cord.
Finally they stitched me up and Eric held Ella while they did. Once they were done they slid me to another bed and wheeled me into a recover room for about an hour or so. Once we were in there a nurse came in and just opened up my shirt stuck Ella on my boob! Ha ha! I was not expecting it, Eric's parents were in there and got no warning, it was pretty funny. But I guess they needed her to feed asap. Once we were done and we got pictures taken and the nurses determined I was well enough to be transfered to my own postpartum room, we got to enjoy the next 4 days with just the 3 of us and a few visitors. Then my life as a mom began!
It has been, a pain and a blessing all at once. I could not be happier!
