Monday, May 13, 2013

Mom Monday: The First Day (Part 2)

Part 1

When we arrived at the hospital I'll admit I was nervous but more than anything I was just ready to get on with it. Being pregnant for nearly 38 weeks is not comfortable, being pregnant for 38 weeks and gaining 20+lbs of water in a few days is extremely UNCOMFORTABLE. I was glad we got in pretty much right away.

They started the induction process by giving me Cytotec, a drug used to start labor. They assured me that it usually takes a while to start anything and I should just relax. Well my body must have been ready to go because within 20 minutes I was feeling contractions and all of the sudden I was a lot more uncomfortable. The nurses seemed surprised by the speed at which things were progressing so they moved me into a birthing room within the hour.

Once we got in there and were settled, I continued to have regular contractions but they were still manageable. This went on late into the evening, I did lots of walking up and down the halls but nothing seemed to be going anywhere. By morning things had sort of stalled out and they decided I should start Pitocin. This drug meant that I would now be in the bed for the rest of my labor and a nurse would be monitoring me constantly. Things started to ramp up pretty quickly now and it came time to break my water around noon (more than 24 hours since we began the induction). Once they broke my water things got drastically more painful. Within a few hours I decided I'd had enough, the laughing gas wasn't helping except for maybe 10 secs at a time, I wanted the epidural. Now when you watch TLC's a Birth Story it seems like they just come in from around the corner to give you the epidural... this was NOT the case, they had to call an anesthesiologist to come in... seriously! When they finally came I was pretty annoyed, but thankfully the epidural procedure wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

It gets fuzzy from here on out. All I know is sometime around 7:30/8:00PM it was time to push. This was terrifying and painful and it went on for two and half hours. I'd say after about an hour I could feel that things weren't moving forward and I kept requesting (in between contractions) to be checked because I thought he was stuck, but it took a while for everyone to get up to speed. Finally the consensus became he was stuck in the birth canal and we would be going to the operating room in preparation for a C-Section but we would try the forceps right before. The epidural had worn off during the pushing and I'd have to say this was the worst pain I'd faced all night.

Once they had me prepped and in the operating room and I was numb from the chest down they tried the forceps. I don't think they tried more than twice, the baby didn't react well and it was clear he wasn't coming out that way. It was now 20 minutes to midnight on 11/11/2011 the doctors and my husband made some jokes about rushing to get him out before midnight and I very loudly stated there was no need to rush cutting me open!

It took 3 doctors to un-wedge him and pull him out of the birth canal but at 12:01am on 11/12/2011 my little Griffin was born!
The first day I became a Mom was probably the most terrifying and wonderful day of my life.
Despite everything that happened during my labor and the complications I had following, I was blessed with a happy and healthy baby.

This was our first trip home from the hospital (we ended up going back about 48 hours later):
I had an inta-uterine infection and pneumonia, I most likely had both when I left the hospital with a fever. After another 10 days in the hospital I was so ready to be home and start our lives as a family of 3.

Yesterday I celebrated my second Mother's Day and I couldn't feel more blessed.

Happy Mother's Day to all you other Mom's out there!




2 comments :

  1. Memories of becoming a mom :)

    Hope you had a wonderful Mother's Day!

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  2. What a cool story!! Thanks for sharing! :0)

    ReplyDelete