Where do i even begin? i suppose i'll start on Sunday Feb. 14th. I was at my mom's friends house because our power had gone out from a snow storm and our house had no heat. Around 10am i got a phone call from the hospital that my doctor had requested to move my induction up one day and they wanted to see if i could come in at 7pm that night. I saw no harm in it so i agreed.That night i got to the hospital and i went straight to Labor and Delivery where they told me that they had my room ready and then they lead me and mom to it. it was a huge room, which was a good thing because i think my mom may have packed our whole house to bring. i only brought my bag of clothes and toiletries, and the baby's car seat and diaper bag. My mom, on the other hand, felt the need to bring all kinds of stuff that we never even used like a portable DVD player and movies in case i got bored.... we had a tv.. but its the thought that counts. she just wanted me to be comfy.About an hour after i got settled into my room the nurses started to come in and do their prelim.s. so i they asked me all the medical history questions and all that jazz. they were having a hard time understanding my blood disorder and i tried explaining it but still had the deer in the headlights look, unfortunately my mom was downstairs filing my insurance with admissions so she could explain. and then another nurse came in and tried to get my IV. Since i know how to do IVs and i know exactly which of my veins are good for them, i tried to help her out by pointing out where to stick. that nurse was sort of a bitch though and she kapt saying "well, i cant see that vein. i have to use a vein i can see." [dont even get me started on how wrong that statement is.] i then told her that my veins are very deep and i have always been a difficult stick but i figured i would give her a chance. After 3 failuresshe finally asked me where to go and i told her and she got it straight away... ugh.the first night was spent resting and preparing for Monday. On Monday morning we started the pitocin. at first they started on the lowest possible dose and worked their way up to about the max allowed by the doctor. To be honest, Monday was a breeze. My cervix never changed beyond becoming effaced to 80% and i think i was at 2cm by that night. My dr. said that monday was primarily to ripen the cervix and that Tuesday the real work began. So around 8pm Monday night the pitocin was stopped so i could eat and they gave me Demerol to help me have a GOOD night sleep... and man-o-man, it was the best sleep i've had since.Tuesday morning around 4am they started the pitocin again at the lowest dose and started working back up. At about 730am Dr. Kolar came back in and checked me. [which i forgot to mention: the cervical checks on day 1 and 2 were the absolute worst part of the labor experience, even the contractions at 9cm werent as bad.] i still hadnt changed from 2cm/ 80% effaced. the doctor then broke my water to get the process moving and she said she pulled out my mucous plug which was very much intact and clearly had no intention on coming out on its own at that point. hahait felt like a river of fluid poured out of me but apparently there was hardly any, they even had trouble determining the color to see if anything was wrong with it. For the next 7hours i just laid there laboring. it was too horribly bad until around noon. After she broke my water though, i could feel that pressure in my pelvis, it even made it hard to get in and out of bed to go pee [which i did a lot]. After about two more checks during that time period they had concluded that i had progressed to 90% and 3cm dialated. they asked if i wanted any pain meds or an epidural at that point. i told them no because i thought i was handling the contractions pretty good. they were wearing me down fast but i think i did pretty good. i noticed i got really aggitated easily though.My mom's cell phone rang off the hook the entire time we were there and it made me so mad that she was in the corner of the room having these happy conversations when i really just wanted her to come talk to me and comfort me. that make me sound like a wimp but i missed erich so bad and i needed some support through all this. i know if erich had been there he probably would have been clinbing the walls in anticipation but he would have never left my side unless he made absolutely sure i was okay. so i yelled at my mom a lot and everytime she brought me the phone to talk to some curious relative i gave the most evil look. i realize this was wrong now but come on, you'd think she'd learn that at this point i cant speak through a contraction and i'm having them every 2min for a min each... i clearly was incapable of a civilized phone conversation.But anyway, back to labor progression: At about 2pm the dr. came back in and was talking to me about the possibilty of a csection. she was worried that the baby wasnt going to come on its own and after breaking the water, the baby has a time limit. She then said it would be okay to do the epidural and it would be easier to do it now rather than later because the labor was going to get more painful. thinking i was going to have a csection anyway, i agreed. The anes. dr. took what seemed like a lifetime to get to my room[it was only about 15min though]. he tried twice with the epidural and failed. the whole experience was terrible. I'm pretty sure i lost the most amnio fluid during the procedure from arching my back and bending forward for him. it was disgusting feeling. and the pain was exactly how i remembered from when had spinal taps in May of '09 when i had meningitis. He said he had to go get more supplies and he left. then the nurses came in and decided to put in the foley bag [bladder cath] while he was gone because i was going to need it if i had an epidural. that was horrible too. i felt like i had a UTI. that feeling like you have to pee constantly and it hurts when you dont. my mom kept telling me to relax and let it do its job but i couldnt.When the anes. dr. got called to an emergency my OB came back in and told me i could have some demerol while i waited. i was in so much pain from the contractions, the failed epidural attempts, and the foley bag that i agreed. So as a last ditch effort she gave me the Demerol again to relax me. she told me it would only last about an hour and she'd come back to check me again afterward.i was shocked at how well the Demerol took effect. i mean it didnt even touch the contraction pain but i was able to fall asleep between them instead of freaking out on the impending contraction to come. i also didnt feel the foley bag anymore and my back stopped hurting from the spinal taps.well, an hour - my ass. it worked for about 20-30min. and i went back to level 9 on the pain scale for the remainder. the nurse came in and said my doctor got called away to a delivery so she was going to check me instead. [in some ways i was thankful, this nurse had long fingers, whereas my dr. had small hands and it felt like she was reaching for my damn tonsils everytime she checked me]. i asked her if we cold wait for a second so i could turn on my left side for a minute because my back was really hurting again at this point. so she agreed and instead starting redoing my vitals. Wheni turned on my side and i started having another contraction, something changed. i felt this involuntary urge to push. my mom saw me and she knew what face i was making. after all she was a L&D nurse for years, she was good and helping me when i needed it most. But anyway, i looked up to her and i said "i think i need to push". Keep in mind, just an hour ago i was 3cm dialated. my mom was, needless to say, confused. the nurse was shocked too and she did the check. Then wehn she was done she looked up at me and said "sure enough, your about 9 and half centimeters and 100% effaced but i'm sure you can push through to 10cm."My mom immediately grabbed the video camera and i just sat there as a two more nurses came in to get me ready and get all equiptment ready. We called Erich's parents who had come down from St. Louis for the birth and told them to get to the hospital ASAP. They got there in 10min flat. Before i started to push they asked who i wanted in the room, i said my mom [obviously] and erich's step mom. Erich's step mom already has 2 grandkids but she had never been a part of the births so i wanted to give her that experience. At 4pm they told me to start pushing with every contraction. i hadnt taken any classes about how to birth a baby because i figured that women had been doing this for thousands of years and i could figure it out. well i started to push as i thought i should at 4pm and not much was happening. luckily my mom was there coaching me and she told me to relax my pelvic muscles and push from my diaphram. Once started that i shocked everyone, after 4pushes the baby was crowning. [they had expected me to take a lot longer because the baby was so big]. they told me to stop pushing until the doctor got there and they ran of to page her. i looked at my mom because i had no idea how NOT to push during a contraction. it was like i was being forced to go against my body, which at that point seemed like the wrong idea. my just said to do those goofy breathing exercises through the contractions, which helped but still felt wrong.Dr. Kolar got there very fast but she hadnt realized how fast this birth was going so she started taking her time getting all her gear on and i screamed at her that i was READY TO PUSH NOW.she came over and said 'ok, go ahead.'the first contraction came and i pushed like my life depended on it. With that first contraction, the head was out. the second cntraction came and i pushed again, like my life depended on it. The dr. mentioned something along the lines of the baby wasnt turning her shoulders. then my mom started givng me this face like something was wrong and she was really in face to push then. the baby was stuck. her head was out the torso was stuck in my birth canal and the umbilical cord was being compressed so the baby wasnt getting enough oxygen and she was turning blue, fast. i later found out that the dr. did an episiotomy at that point but i can honestly say i never felt a thing. the third contraction came, and i pushed not only like my life depended on it, but like my daughter's life depended on it. at that moment i didnt care what happened to me, i had to get her out and safely. with two pushes she was out. that was a total of about 6contractions [3spent pushing] from the time the doctor had arrived. At exactly 4:33pm my mom cut the cord in the place of Erich and the baby was placed on my belly. My mom and Jan [Erich's step-mom] started crying and i just stared at this new human being laying on my stomach. it was surreal, i was a mom. my life had changed forever. Then i started crying .. it all happened so fast from there. the nurse didnt leave the baby on me long because she wasnt crying as much as she needed to and she was still pretty blue.i birthed the placenta in one push and the dr. started to stitch me up. To be honest, at that point in time it was like i wasnt aware of anything else going on in the room, i just kept staring over towards the direction of Annaliese's crying. there was a nurse in the way trying to stimulate her bloodflow and keep her crying so i couldnt see anything they were doing but my mom got it all on tape [they didnt allow us to tape the actual birth, only up until right before and right after].the room started to clear and i kept being told what an amazing thing just happened, beyond the obvious miracle of life. apparently the speed in which the birth took place was a thing of magic. i was awesome! hahathe nurse that was assigned to me for that shift and had been taking care of me all that day said to me "i've been doing this for 40 years and i have never seen anything like that before. she just came right out! a nearly 10 lb pound baby, came out with no drugs in a matter of a little over 30min!"Once the room was nearly empty again, and the nurses had cleaned Annaliese off [mostly], they laid her on my chest and we were skin-to-skin. i cant even explain how surreal it was to go from having a baby inside me knocking holes in my pelvis to holding this tiny little person.All in all it was a profound experience and although it didnt happen as planned and yes, some things could have been avoided all together, i wouldnt change it for the world.
