Yeah, second children truly get ripped off! Not as many pictures or videos as the first. I can say though that at least I have been keeping up with his monthly, Dear Ian, letters. Getting them compiled is another story (Skye’s is almost done though, ha, three years later). Since the next couple of weeks will be busy, I am going to post his birth story (since I never posted is last year) now even though his birthday isn’t until next week. (BTW love Google documents! I wrote his story right after he was born there, but never post here). I guess I’m feeling a little emotional about Ian getting older, as we say goodbye to baby-ness, probably forever. It’s a little heart-wrenching leaving your childbearing years, but I am so thrilled for the years to come.
Without further delay…
Ian Birth Story
I was 35 weeks and 2 days pregnant when I started having irregular contractions on Sunday, April 11. They felt more like cramps than contractions since I only had back contractions with Skye. Still, they were pretty constant, painful and irritating. I went up to Dads in Park City for dinner around 4 and Benjam stayed at home to game with his friends for his birthday… Around 5-6pm at dinner it finally dawns on me that these “cramps” have been pretty steady all day and I am finding that I have to hold on to something to tolerate them. I call the on-call OB doc at the hospital for a second opinion. He tells me to come in if the spacing becomes more regular or too painful to tolerate. Once I get home, I drink a bit of water and lay down. They seem to subside, so we don’t go to the hospital. I even manage to sleep for a few hours. However, around 2-3am, I can’t sleep through the pain and once I time the contractions, I discover they are still irregular, but now closer together. I tolerate it as long as I can, but because of the previous episodes of bleeding and the fact that I’d had a previous cesarean, I decide not to mess with it any longer. We call Veda to come and watch Skye and we were off to the hospital at 5am.
On the way there, the contractions are now more painful and I am finding myself breathing through them and having to brace myself for the next one. We go and check in at the OB ER triage. I can’t tell you how time slowed down and every little thing seemed to take for-ev-or. I had about 5 contractions on the way to get my urine sample and I had to stop for breaks, even though the bathroom was literally right around the corner. It took forever for the nurses to see me, or so it felt, as each contraction became just a bit stronger. Luckily, there was only 1 other patient so I was examined fairly quickly, or so it didn’t seem. When they examine me, I am dilated to 1cm. Well, this is just great, it took 12 hours of induction meds to get this far with Skye. What is happening here!? I notice that my breathing is a bit more strained and not helpful with each contraction, now just minutes apart. Still, the doctors want to wait and see what happens since I am not technically in active labor. And hour later, an eternity to me, I have dilated another cm. I keep expecting the next nurse to say they are going to admit me any second, and give me lots of pain meds. No such luck. I have to wait another hour and dilate to 3 cm before they’ll admit me. I’m thinking, I can’t believe how painful contractions are at only 3cm dilation!! I can’t stand it any more and I keep thinking – this next contraction will be the one that does me in. Thank heavens one of the first things the nurse asks me when I get into my room, is if I want an epidural. YES!! And even more great was that the ani came in pretty quickly after that. It took a while to get it in, but the distraction of doing it helped with the contractions, even though it was very difficult to hold still during the trembling contractions. What can I say, I am a wuss with a low tolerance for pain! The epi finally kicks in, and this time around (vs with Skye), it works right the first time and I finally feel relief from the previous 3 hours of nothing less than contained hell that has no exit. Phew, I think, thank goodness the worst it over. HA!
Well, even though the labor was progressing very quickly at the beginning, after the epi, everything all but halted. In 9 hours, I only dilated half a cm more. Even more, because I was still in latent labor, they are entertaining the thought that I could go home and just be 3cm dilated until my due date! However, because of the bleeds, Cesarean and the fact that I am feeling some of the contractions through the epi, they will keep more a bit longer and wait and see what happens. After all, I am only 35 weeks and it would be best to let the baby stay inside a lot longer. I am torn at this point. Part of me wholeheartedly agrees that that best thing for him is to stay inside for a few weeks longer and offer him the best chances. The selfish part of me can’t help but thinking that I am already there, with epi, everything’s ready to go; it would be hard to walk away without him in my arms and of also having to go through this all over again for the real thing, and how can I possibly not take the epi with me!!
After all of my visitors leave around 7pm and I am ready to call it a night and see how things look in the morning, a nurse semi-rushes in. This is never a good thing; nursers wear their concerns on the quick or slow way that they complete a task at hand. Her increase in speed worries me a bit, but she’s not quite moving with utmost urgency, so I am not panicing yet. She tells me that his heart rate has increased quite a bit and hasn’t come down. She leaves to go a talk to the doc. I, meanwhile, just had 2 redoses of the epi and am floating happily in epi land when a doc comes back with the nurse. Uh oh, more urgency. He explains to me that his increase in heart rate, along with my rise in temperature, are signs of a uterine infection, which, is best treated to the baby by being delivered. In my epi-land, I’m not quite understanding his subtle way of telling me that they are now going to start pitocin and break my water to see if that progresses my labor. These are THE two things which I have been hearing all day they really won’t do at 35 weeks, unless really necessary. The only word that takes me down from Epi Land is Pitocin. Oh wait, what!?!?!
So the room starts to get very busy with starting me on antibiotics and pitocin, breaking my water and me trying to call Benjam and have him come back to the hospital. In addition to the epi, IV and catheter, they also install an internal monitor while he is breaking my water. This feels like me peeing my pants with really warm water, even though I had no control on releasing the water. Once every possible tube and wire known to man is in place, I wait. Still not quite sure what is happening. Dad comes back and waits with me while waiting for Benjam to return from checking on Skye. Even though they induce me, they still expect the labor to progress within 5-8 hours. There was no reason to have the whole family pacing around me as I dilated one cm at a time, so Benjam is the only one that stayed with me. A few hours later, an exam shows that I am dilated to a 7! 7! I was in disbelief as I hadn’t really felt like anything had been happening because of my return to Epi-land.
Very subtly, the contractions/pressure started making their way through the pain medication. I kept pushing the epi button as often as I could and had them do a redose a few times. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was sure that nothing was going to stop me from feeling this excruciating pain. Contractions are odd events; they come on slowly and you know where they’re going, and you just kind of have to hold on and ride out the pain wave. Each time, the pain is a little more intense and each time I think there is no way I will be able to handle another one, knowing full well that I have no other choice but to do just that. The meds also gave me the “chill shakes”, which were uncontrollable body shakes that I couldn’t stop. I carried most of the tension from these in my neck and as hard as it is to believe, my neck hurt almost worse than the contractions. Benjam was exhausted and I didn’t want to bother him any sooner than I had too; I had absolutely no concept of time or it’s passing. The nurse tried to help rub my back and neck, but honestly, there was nothing to be done, except keep riding each wave. This sense of helplessness of your own pain is torture and just knowing that you can do nothing to elleviate it. I was later told that each contraction lasted 1-2 minutes, but to me they all were 10 counts. No matter how long they were in minutes, they always stopped by the time I counted to 10 in my head – from 1 cm up to 10cm dilated. 10 counts. My body must have been more aware that I thought. It was the only thing that got me through each one, I can count to 10 and it will be over. Just get to 10.
At one point, I went to a place where I would visualize the pain instead of just riding it out. It’s almost automatic since it’s just me and the pain, alone together and intimate. My eyes were closed and I was in a black void, the pain would creep up from a corner of the void, red and orange rippling emanating from a circle. I could visualize this circular vision getting larger and larger with each hellacious, explosive pain wave. It came to a point when I finally gave up. I simply said to the nurse “I’ve had enough and I can’t do this anymore.” I started to cry because there was nothing left to do but melt down, everything coming to the surface: fear, exhaustion, defeat, pain. My meltdown – and by meltdown, I mean full on bawling and hiccup crying – prompted the nurse to get a doctor to examine me. Finally, FINALLY, 4 hours later from being a 7, I was finally to 10cm. I barely heard him make this announcement because I knew full well it was time to get this baby out of me. He left the room, again, for an eternity and it was just Benjam and I. I just kept saying the baby’s coming, he’s coming NOW. I don’t know what the doctor’s were doing or why in the hell it was taking so long, but I really thought this baby was going to come out on his own with no one in the room but Benjam. Only one doc came back in after being harassed by the nurse (Apparently, they assumed because it was my first time, it would take hours of pushing.) I thought it strange only 1 doctor came back in, but he finally said it was time to push, so I didn’t care. I only got to push through 2 cycles, when he said “Hold on”. What?! you want me to hold on and wait and suppress this immense sense to push!!?? I was appalled. I tried to breathe through the contractions and not push, but I just let things happen on their own; I didn’t push but I also didn’t try to suppress the urge either. Finally, I knew everyone believed this was really happening now when the room quickly filled with people, magically appearing out of no where.
Earlier, when the nurse was talking and teaching me about pushing (since I never actually believed I would get to this point), she asked me what my biggest fear was about the delivery. To my own surprise, it wasn’t the pain, because surely, there was no other pain to be felt that was worse than what I was feeling in my pelvis right now. To me, my biggest worry was that I wouldn’t be able to find the strength to push and do what I finally needed to do, now that it was time. I was beyond exhausted and still having lingering effects of my meltdown. Fortunately, there wasn’t much time to dwell on this incompetent possibility. Before I knew it, everyone was yelling at me to push, push, push. There wasn’t much time to breathe between pushes as I was only being propelled forward automatically by everyone elses commands. Full-on team effort. Pushing when they said, taking a breath when they said and trying to relax between pushes when they said. Benjam was standing to my left and his voice stood out the most and gave me the sense of how quickly the delivery was taking place. Merely a reflex, I pushed and “dug deep” from where, I don’t know, each time thinking this had to be the last. I went through 3 cycles of pushing when I suddenly felt the damn break. In two sensations, he was delivered; his head and shoulders in one large expulsion and his little alien legs wiggling away from my body.
I was beyond exhausted and to be honest, a little detached by the time he came to me. Because he was so early, they would only let us touch cheek to cheek before they whisked him away. It wasn’t until 5 hours later that I would be able to hold him in my arms and never let go. They were worried about the infection and had to give us both a battery of tests and antibiotics. Luckily, we were both sent home 2 days later and I haven’t looked back since. I feel very fortunate to have been able to experience a vaginal delivery and although it was the hardest night of my life, I cherish and value it above little else.
Even now, almost a year later, I read these words not with horror of reliving the pain, but instead with the utmost pride and sanctity. I had no inclinations towards having a VBAC, rather I was quite complacent about the whole thing. I thought I would just labor until I had to have the inevitable c-section. Now, I am beyond grateful that I had this ceremonial, once in a lifetime experience.
