On Monday at work, I had started to notice very tiny spurts of fluid sporadically. Since I had had so many false alarms, I assumed I was getting more incontinent. After all, these were just tiny droplets- not soaking anything. Incidentally, I had told nobody. I work in a nursing home & one of the residents wheeled herself up to me that afternoon & said, "You are going to have that baby tomorrow morning & he will be 7 pounds."
I came home that night knowing that my husband and I had put off our weekly cleaning schedule & had both promised to do our cleaning that night. We had a meatloaf dinner & I told him about that resident's prediction and my "very tiny concern" that maybe my water had broken. I told him not to worry because I wasn't convinced at all because of the tiny amounts, and promised that I wouldn't take him back to labor & delivery for another false alarm. I said, "But hey, maybe after cleaning tonight my water WILL break from all the squatting & bending."
We finished cleaning at 9 PM & had just sat down to check our laptops & watch a TV show. All of a sudden, I felt a warm gush. I yelled to DH to bring a towel & the hospital bag. This was it! I logged on one last time to update my online pals at pregnancy.org. And off we went.
When I got there I was so happy. We took a last belly shot in the L & D waiting room. I had no doubt in my mind that I would soon be a mommy! When we got back to the testing room, the nurse asked me if I was wearing a pad. I was, so I gave it to her to sample. She mixed something with it & said "Hmm, well, this is negative. If it was amniotic fluid, this would have turned ____ (whatever color it was supposed to turn)" But she told me to sit on this plastic pad & she would gather another sample. A couple of minutes later, I had another little pool under me & she took it. She gave it to the doctor on call & he looked at it. I heard him on the other side of the curtain saying, "It's negative. She's not in labor."
The nurse came back to us behind the curtain. We were so upset. Not only because we were disappointed, but we were so confused! I remained adamant about my water breaking. I knew there was no way I could have peed myself that much & not realized! But she told me that the baby had probably just been kicking my bladder, etc.... The nurse & I bantered a little bit about it because I was obviously very upset. My DH started to get pissed & pulled off all the monitors from me. "We're going home. If we leave now, we can get in bed by 11:30."
The nurse was a little jolted by his reaction. She said "Wait wait- I need doctor's orders to release you first." So she called my OB & he ordered a speculum sample.
That on-call doctor that I already resented for calling that second sample negative came back to do it. Not many words were spoken. I'm sure he was a little pissed that he was "wasting his time" on a false alarm.
About 2 minutes later, while my DH & I were discussing how mortifying this was going to be (we had already called all family members this time), the nurse comes back & says, "Good news- you're ruptured & you're getting a bed!" We were on such a roller coaster of emotions at this point, that we both were almost crying.
So we get to the room about midnight & i get checked. Still that blasted 1 cm. I told my DH, "This is going to be a long night." They started my IV & got some orders to start pitocin, which they did around 1:30 AM. DH & I thought we would try to sleep until it kicked in. Well, we never quite got to, because almost immediately, I started to have very bad menstrual-like cramps & back pain. At that point, I called it a 7 on the pain scale, but if I had only known what to compare it to!! After an hour or so, my nurse checked me again & I was still 1 cm. Damn. I had thought for sure those contractions were doing something because they hurt so badly.
Almost immediately after that second check, things turned very ugly. These "cramps" started to rip right through me. They felt like someone was taking a knife to my back & gutting me. I started to throw up. At some point, my previously "high leak" became a low leak & let loose. I remember when that happened, I was simultaneously having one of those torturous contractions & throwing up. I wanted to die!
Thankfully, I had told the nurse at around 3(?) that I needed my epidural. She assured me that he was coming because this floor had their own anaesthesiologist & this was not a busy labor wing. Turns out, he was sleeping, so it took a few pages to get him in there. Arg!! But I was so thankful to get that epi that I didn't mind that he was late once I had it. But when the contractions persisted & I was still throwing up after 30 minutes, I realized that I was only half numb. It hadn't worked on the left side. So they paged him again & around 4 or so, I got another bolus in my catheter & I was finally numb! I had about an hour of heaven...
I told the nurse at 5 AM that I felt like I needed to push. She was very surprised & decided to check me. 10 cm!!! In less than 2 1/2 hours! No wonder it bloody hurt like that! Well, no one was ready. They paged my OB, but he was in the shower apparently. He called back & said he was on his way & get ready to push.
My mom had arrived around 5. Fortunately, I told her, she had missed the bad part. Well, that was not entirely true, because sometime between when they had paged the doctor & when he arrived, we had a very scary incident. My contractions were very strong on the graph & they started to stress Corbin. At some point, his heart rate was reading in the 40's. It was a long enough period of time for 8 people to come racing into the room, including on call doctors & even the anaesthesiologist again. They had my doctor and the operating room on the phone at the same time. I heard them say to get ready for a stat c-section. I was screaming "Is my baby okay??" and no one was answering me. It was my worst nightmare.
My OB, who was en route, ordered them to give me terbutalline to stop the contractions. My pitocin had been stopped of course when I had been determined fully dilated. They had me switch positions a lot. Finally, we had a position that worked & his heartrate went back in the 120's.
Doc arrived around 7 & I could finally push. Can you imagine sitting around fully dilated for 2 hours? It sucks. But I didn't realize just how sloooooooow of progress I would make anyway with my pushing. Since I had had an extra bolus of epidural, I would NOT feel any pushing movements, so they turned off my epi drip & hoped I would start to feel it. Thankfully, I did, and after 3 very long, stressful hours of pushing, our little boy was born & everyone was crying & happy & exhausted all at the same time.
Corbin Jonathan was born at 10:03 AM,
November 20, 2007
19 inches
6 lbs 9.5 oz
Apgar scores were 8 & 9
We left the hospital yesterday & he weighed 6 lbs 9.6 oz. We are sooooooo thankful to have him here finally. We think he is just the cutest baby in the world, but what parents wouldn't think that?!
A very happy Thanksgiving to all!!!
