Jason's off from work and I've been feeling a little off all day long. Nothing to necessarily call home about, but just had this strange feeling. So I called my mom to see if her and Papa would take the kids for the night and they agreed. Wouldn't you know that as we were getting the kids ready, my contractions started picking up in intensity and frequency?
At Jason's urging, I paged Dr. Bourque just to touch base with him as it was 6:30 pm already. So I did and he asked me to stop by the hospital because he was already there so he could "check me and just see where we were". We arrived at the hospital around 8:00 pm after getting the kids settled at mom's. At around 10 pm, the contractions were four minutes apart but I was only 1-2 cm.
I wanted to go home. Dr. Bourque wanted me to stay. I asked if I could head out if the contractions petered out. He laughed and told me that the contractions weren't going to stop ... I was in labor. What I was in was total disbelief. And thank God we did not leave. Because about 20 minutes later, I was in agony. This wasn't the regular early labor I'd read about in the countless books I'd poured through in preparation of our natural birth. No. These were over-the-top-want-to-escape-my-own-skin-two-minutes-apart-lasting-90-seconds-can-hardly-catch-my-breath contractions. If I'd had a clear head about myself, I'd have thought to get checked so I could know I was in transition. But the only thing I could think about was getting this to stop. And it had to stop five minutes ago.
So in between running back and forth from the toilet to the bathtub to the bed (all of this without any clothes on), I was yelling at Jason that I wanted, no needed, the epidural. The sweetheart that he is, totally followed what we'd practiced and came back with, "Baby, we talked about this and we really want a natural delivery."
You know that scene in Look Who's Talking where Kirstie Alley's in labor and John Travolta is telling her to breathe and she gets that look in her eyes, opens her mouth to yell at him and what comes out is Satan's voice saying, "FUCK MY BREATHING"? Yeah, that's what it was like. So it dawned on me ... the code word! We'd decided on a code word for me to use in case I was really serious about wanting pain relief.
But I was so outside of myself that I couldn't even remember the word and all I could get out was, "Code. Word. The. Fucking. Code. Word. Can't. Remember. It. But. I'm. Using. It."
And about ten minutes later, I'm squirming uncontrollably trying to hold still for the anesthesiologist, which I was hardly able to manage. And about ten minutes after that, I'm starting to feel some relief, Dr. Bourque comes in to check me and I'm 5 cm.
No wonder I was out of control. I was dilating like mad.
So it's 11:30 pm now and I'm thinking that this is really going to happen. So is everyone else. Dr. Bourque tells me he's not leaving, but he's going to sleep in the on-call room and he'll be back later. (Bless his heart).
At some point in the middle of the night, the epidural started to wear off and those crazy contractions were back. I was clinging to the bed rails yelling, "no no no no no" over and over and so the nurse anesthetist came in to re-dose me. Relief again.
Checked. I'm 6 cm.
Epidural starts to wear off again. Re-dosed again.
Checked. I'm 5 cm and my cervix is swelling. Shit.
About an hour later, I'm 7 cm.
An hour later, I'm still 7 cm and the baby is starting to have heart decels. And the epidural's wearing off again. This is not good.
They tell me the baby's not in distress. I tell them that he/she may not be, but I am.
I'm done. And it's very clear to me that it's time for the repeat section.
So Dr. Bourque is paged and they're prepping me for surgery. I'm sad because I've spent months preparing for something that's obviously not going to happen. But I'm also going into this knowing without a doubt that this baby is ready to be born. And that brings me some much needed comfort. Another measure of comfort is that Dr. Bourque's agreed to not announce the gender of the baby, but to walk around the surgery drape to show us instead. (What a doll).
Here's where the story starts to go downhill. They can't get me numb enough with the epidural. They're dosing me with enough to tranquilize a horse and are reaching the limit on what they can give me. They explain that if I don't numb up, they've got to put me under and that means Jason can't be in the OR. Crap.
So with every fiber of my being, I silently pray and beg God to help me get numb. My prayers are answered and we head into surgery. Mom arrives just in time to attend and I'm quietly crying and simultaneously praying the Memorare over and over that I deliver without complication.
The section begins and immediately I can tell that something's not right. It's taking what seems like forever for her to be born so I ask Dr. Bourque if everything's okay. He assures me that it is but explains that there is a lot of scar tissue and he's taking his time working through it. After more time passes, and I notice that he's noticeably more silent than he's been in my previous two sections, I mention to him (and I mean this with all my being as I'm saying it) that I'm so glad that he's my surgeon. And he replies with, "So am I because this isn't work for an ameteur." Yikes.
A few minutes later, the baby is born, and we hear that beautiful cry. And then we see this:
And we are beside ourselves! Another girl! A beautiful baby girl! Jason can't believe it. Neither can Mom. They really, really thought we were having another boy. And they were so sure of it, I was almost convinced of it as well. But I was over the moon when I saw girl parts!
They get her cleaned up and bring her over to meet me. But I get to watch Jason meet her first and it's a moment that I'll never forget. The look on his face was absolutely precious. One of those father-daughter moments that is a miracle to even get to witness.
Shortly thereafter, Mom and Jason (and our new baby girl) head to the recovery room to wait on me, which they assure us will only take a few minutes. Yeah, those few minutes turned into about an hour.
After Dr. Bourque had finished sewing my uterus, he pulled out the bladder retractor to put everything back in place before sewing me up and I hear him say, "Oh no." Oh no, indeed. My bladder had torn about three inches and had to be repaired immediately. Thankfully, it was only my bladder and it wasn't anything like my uterus needed to be taken out, but I gathered from the reactions of everyone in the OR that this was pretty serious.
Nonetheless, they got me repaired and into recovery and the only thing I knew was that I wanted to nurse my baby (GIRL!). When they wheeled me in, she was rooting around and Mom and Jason said she'd been doing that the entire time. This girl was ready to nurse and we were about to learn that she was a professional at it ... get out of her way.
You can see her rooting on Mom's hand here:
And us nursing for the first time:
Later that afternoon, Mom and Papa brought the kids back to meet her and we had a birthday party complete with cupcakes that Dad picked up for us. So we sang "Happy Birthday" to the new baby (still unnamed at this point and would be until Sunday) and welcomed her properly to the family.
Here's Sam kissing her for the first time, which was something he'd been waiting and waiting to do:
The kids left and Jason and I settled into the realization that we'd be in the hospital for an extended stay because of the bladder repair ... which included an additional surgery the following morning and a catheter for what would be the next week. (Not to mention a hurricane on the way!) So we hunkered in and made the most of the next several days. Spending some good one-on-one time with our new daughter before heading home to the madness.
At some point over the next couple of days, I started running fever and my blood pressure started going way up. I was in bad shape. But the baby, now named Eleanor, was perfectly fine. Nursing like a champ (and even gaining herself quite the reputation amongst the staff) and even bringing my milk in by Saturday afternoon, a mere 48-hours after her birth! She was past her birth weight by day five, which was amazing to all of us, but especially precious Miss Evelyn, the lactation consultant. She was so impressed!
By day 7, I was ready to head home. I was still running fever in the late afternoons but it was time to get on with our new life. So thankfully, I was de-catheterized and sent on my merry way.
It was a long week. And I'm heading back to Dr. Bourque's tomorrow for another checkup (my second since leaving the hospital). I'll hopefully be taken off the blood pressure medication and have the many questions I have for him answered ...
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