So if you know me well (or if you read the story of how
Carter came to be), you know that I prefer to be in control and I always love a
plan! And as surprisingly as Carter was
created, his birth was just as exciting, if not more so. (btw I started writing
this before Christmas, and am just now finishing!)(and sorry, it's super long because I knew if I didn't write it now I wouldn't remember it!)
I had heard conflicting opinions throughout my pregnancy as
far as when he would arrive, although everyone agreed that making it to 40
weeks was not an option. Everything went
SO well though, the entire time, that I made it to 37 weeks with no issues and
the perinatologist said I should deliver in my 38th week, could wait
til 39, but she didn’t want to get too close to 40. My ob was going to be out of town for my 38th week though, so we scheduled my induction for the day she got back, the day
before I was 39 weeks, so Carter’s birthday would be November 25th. Yay, we have a plan, I can tell people the
plan, I can use the plan to make other plans (schedule house cleaners and
carpet cleaners, have Thanksgiving at my parents, etc.). But I should have known that God had his own
plan.
Two Tuesdays before Thanksgiving, Louis’ grandmother
Marianne passed away, so he was in Sweetwater from Wednesday through Friday to
be with his family. We agreed that I
shouldn’t travel (the hospital in Sweetwater is sub-par, and Abilene is better
but still not my preference), but Louis didn’t want me to be alone so he sent
me to my parents until he got back, which was a lot of fun really. I felt like Annie in Father of the Bride 2
when Bryan goes to Tokyo (?), but was praying we didn’t have the same outcome
with Louis running into the delivery room at the last minute! The whole time I was at my parents, and the
weekend after, I was fighting my blood sugar.
Usually I’m trying to keep it down, but I was constantly snacking trying
to keep it up! At some point I ate an
entire meal and didn’t take any insulin, and afterward my blood sugar was
perfect (this is not normal for me, especially while pregnant). On Sunday I finally put it all together. During the 3rd trimester of pregnancy
the placenta secretes a hormone that messes with the efficacy of insulin, bad
enough to cause some women to have gestational diabetes, and in my case,
causing me to increase my insulin dosages.
If I was no longer needing the big doses, of insulin, then my placenta
was no longer giving off the same amount of hormone, indicating placenta
failure/deterioration. (Which is normal…
at 40-42+ weeks, not at 38) I called the after-hours line for the ob and talked
to the doc, and she recommended I talk to the perinatologist on Monday. Well I called the perinatologist’s office,
and they said the ob had to refer me if they were to make me an appointment
(even though I already had one scheduled
for the next day!). So then I called the
ob, and they set me up an appointment with the Nurse Practioner, whom I love,
but when I saw her and explained the problem, she immediately said she didn’t
feel qualified to take care of me, so she sent me to an ob who had an opening
(remember my ob is out of town), and then
that ob said basically the same thing, and said I needed to see the
perinatologist (umm DUH that was what I wanted from the beginning)! Anyway, he fit me in, heard my story, did an
ultrasound, agreed with/confirmed my instinct, and said that even though we had
a 1 in 1000 chance of having a problem in the next 6 days, there was a smaller
chance of Carter needing NICU time, and it was worth that risk to get him out
early. He sent me home to get my stuff
in order and told me the nurse would call with my check-in time in the next
hour or so!
Well OK, we are having a baby tomorrow! I called Louis who got on the train, I called
my mom, and texted my sister so she could hit the road from Abilene, and drove
home to finish packing. We got all of
our stuff together and got back to the hospital where they admitted me and
started an IV and put me on the fetal monitors and gave me a drug to start the
process. My family came for a quick
visit and then Louis and I tried (and mostly failed) to get some sleep. Of course they woke me up frequently to check
my blood pressure and temperature, and every several hours to see if I had made
any progress, and also several times to check my blood sugar.
Anyway, we woke up before 7 the next morning and we packed
up our stuff to get transferred from the 4th floor down to the
ground floor where Labor & Delivery is.
We met our awesome L&D
nurse Katie, and they started me on pitocin!
I was barely dilated (1 “and a wiggle”) when we started, and at 10:00
when they checked me again I was all the
way to 2 =/ So the doc came into break my water. Now remember how my doc is out of town? Well LUCKILY the ob on call was AMAZING. She was very nice / kind / compassionate and
communicated well with me. I felt very
comfortable with her taking care of us. So she examines me (awful) and breaks my water (SO weird),
and pretty quickly the contractions that had been no big deal all morning got
more intense. Still something I could
handle, but definitely started having to breathe a little bit. Katie let me know that as soon as I felt like
I might want the epidural to let her
know, because the anesthesiologist would take a while to get down to us and to
get prepped and then for it to kick in, so she didn’t want me climbing the
walls and then let her know. The
anesthesiologist happened to be around the corner, so I let her know that
whenever he was finished he could come take care of me. Another awful
part… because 1) they kick the husbands out, 2) I had no idea what to expect,
3) the anesthesiologist had a weird bedside manner and poor communication (he
asked me if he was hurting me at some point… umm yes?! I never knew what he meant or if I wasn’t
supposed to be hurting at that point), 4) my blood pressure bottomed out near
the end and I felt like I was going to faint so they had to lay me down and
squeeze a bag of fluid in. The pain was
manageable, but the whole thing stressed me out. I thinking I started crying when the ob
examined me before she broke my water, and I don’t think I really stopped until
the epidural kicked in… I started because of the pain but then I was just so
anxious I couldn’t stop. BUT when the
drugs did kick in? Smooth sailing! Never felt another contraction or cervix
check!
Unfortunately sometime after that Katie noticed that after
every contraction Carter’s heart rate dropped.
She had me roll over, roll the other way, lay on my back, check my blood
sugar, lower the pitocin, stop the pitocin - basically try anything, but it
kept happening. At about 2:00 (7 hours
on pitocin, 3 hours on the epidural), she explained that she was going to go
grab the doc, because if the baby couldn’t handle this amount of stress, the
stress of labor really wouldn’t be
good. Doc examined me (I was dilated to
a 3), checked the fetal monitor and agreed.
She said the heart rate wasn’t bad by itself, nor was the super slow
progression, but together they didn’t make for a rosy outlook. My Bishop’s score was a 4 when we started,
making a successful induction more difficult (best is 7+). She recommended a c-section. I suppose I had a choice but when the baby’s
well being is jeopardized, I don’t know who would say no! We had that conversation around 2:45 & he
was born at 3:14! She warned me that
they would be moving very quickly, but not because there was any kind of
emergency, but because the OR & necessary people were all available and
ready. I think they wheeled me in around 3:00, prepped me & then
began. It’s crazy because it actually
would have been over even sooner except that Carter has a huge noggin, and it
was in there kind of wonky & caught on my pelvis, so after trying to get
him out through the original incision they stopped, cut another inch, and then
he came out! The doc told me afterward
that he may have never come out vaginally because of how his head was situated
(so thank you God for sending me in to the c-section before I labored all the
way & pushed for several hours…)!
The c-section was no big deal, though I did feel sort of detached from
the birth since I didn’t do any work. I
cried the whole time, but that was just my reaction to the stress &
fear. For whatever reason I had not
considered a c-section so I was processing that, & that my baby was minutes
away from birth, & that two docs are chatting while my insides are open
& I can feel them touching and pushing, but no pain. The sweet anesthesia nurse petted my head the
whole time! Anyway, he popped out &
they cleaned him up & I got to hold him one handed for a couple minutes. Here comes my only complaint with the whole
experience: they took him away at that point and I didn’t get to see him until
almost 3 hours later. The thing was that
they needed to monitor his blood sugar – babies born to diabetic moms often
have super low sugars and have to be given sugar water – so they took him up to
the nursery to do that. His sugar was
fine, great, normal actually, BUT they couldn’t bring him back down to L&D,
he had to stay on the recovery floor until I got up there. Fine, except that I couldn’t go up to recovery
until I could move my feet, a process which took a couple hours. So I was stuck in L&D with my dad, Louis
was stuck outside the nursery watching Carter, and my mom and sisters floated
back and forth. So of course I got up
there around 6:00, they brought him to me, and by then not only had I not
gotten to hold him, no one else really had either. So Louis and I held him a bit, then he got
passed around to my family. Then Louis’
family arrived and he got passed around to all of them. Which is not a problem at all, we’d all been
waiting to meet this kid for months, but Carter and I didn’t get skin to skin
time until 10:00 I think. I think I was in
shock, because that didn’t bother me at the time and my face is hilarious in
all the pictures. I don’t look happy at
all, I think because my kid was born in like 15 minutes and I hadn’t really
accepted that he was HERE. That first
night I kept him for awhile but then sent him to the nursery so I could get a
few hours sleep without feeling like I needed to watch him breathe. That second night I held him the entire night
and just stared. That is when I think
we really bonded. Next time I will
insist that they monitor baby’s sugar wherever I am and not take it away, and I
want skin to skin time within the hour, and if I have a c-section the baby will
stay with me that whole time we’re waiting for my feet to come back to life and
we can bond and then the rest of the
world can have at it.
I’m not saying it was like the most exciting birth of all
time (except that fact that it was my first!), because babies are born in cars
and planes and in bathtubs, and I’m pretty sure few births are completely
without surprises, but it certainly was nothing like I expected. But it was wonderful! Louis was amazing and only left the hospital
once in 6 days. My family was great, took
care of Sadie, brought us non-hospital meals (because the hospitals definition
of a diabetic menu is not the same as mine), came once or twice a day to hang out,
Kara even gave me a shower and a pedicure, and thanks to the timing Macy got to
be there and stay for a week after!
Louis’ family got to come even on very short notice when the plan
changed. I don’t know if next time we’ll
do a scheduled c-section or a VBAC (I haven’t even asked), but I did learn a
few things and know better to expect next time either way. My pregnancy was great, the labor was fine,
the recovery manageable, and motherhood has been nothing short of the best
thing ever, so we’ll definitely do it all again, sooner or later!
