My little bug is 6 months old today! I can't believe he's halfway to a year old already!
In
honor of Max's half birthday, I thought I'd share his birth story with
you all. Such a whirlwind of a weekend...best one ever!
I had big plans for the evening of Friday, May 16.
It was my last day of work before I began my
maternity leave, so I was looking forward to celebrating.
Victor was going to Baltimore with his
friends to see his favorite comedian, Demetri Martin (my birthday gift to him),
so I was going to have the house and TV all to myself.
I was going to have Chipotle for dinner and
binge-watch Gossip Girl on Netflix while I attempted to snuggle with Kenny on
the couch with my big ol' belly.
I just
needed to go to my 38 week check-up after work and then I'd be on my way home.
I wasn't
feeling any different than I did at my 37 week appointment, so I wasn't
expecting to get exciting news about baby being ready to come.
I thought it was weird when the nurse had to
re-pump the blood pressure cuff after she'd already started letting air out (is
that what's happening when they do that?) but she didn't say anything about it
so I didn't allow myself to worry.
Dr.
A came in and asked me how I was feeling while she looked over my chart,
then said, "Ooh, looks like I need to send you next door!"
Confused, I gave her a blank stare, to which
she responded, "Your blood pressure is high.
138/96.
You'll just need to get your blood and urine tested, and they'll monitor
your blood pressure for an hour or two and then make a decision about how to
proceed. Dr. G is on call at the hospital, so he'll be the one to decide.
Your blood pressure has been fine the entire
pregnancy, so you might just need to be sent home and take it easy until baby
comes, but we should check things out to be on the safe side."
As I
attempted
to maintain my composure, I gathered my things and headed next door to the
hospital (in my haste, I ripped a huge hole in the belly panel of my pants as I yanked
them on).
It was just after 5 PM.
I called
Victor as I moved my car and told him the situation.
I encouraged him to go through with his plans
for the evening since it would be a few hours before we knew if anything
exciting was going to happen that night.
But, just to be safe, I had him load the hospital bags and the car seat
(still not installed) into the car.
I
called my mom and my sister and relayed the situation to them.
Cindy, my coworker and good friend, texted to
see how the appointment went, so I filled her in too.
I remained calm through all of my
conversations and kind of laughed at the situation, but as I checked in with the emergency registrar at the hospital, I was fighting
back tears as I quietly went into shock/panic.
What's going to happen tonight?
What if they induce me?
What if
something's wrong with the baby?
What if
Victor can't make it back in time for whatever may or may not happen
tonight?
What am I going to do for the
next two hours while I wait it out?
I got up to
the Labor and Delivery wing, changed into a gown (which I put on wrong and
needed assistance to put on correctly), and climbed into the bed.
They put the blood pressure cuff on me and it
now read 154/96...I started to panic a little more.
They drew my blood and took a urine sample
and then...I had to wait.
My mother-in-law, Dorabela, and
Cindy came to sit with me, and we watched some Seinfeld reruns as we waited for
the lab reports.
The charge nurse came
in and asked a million questions for paperwork's sake.
Then Dr. G came by around 7:30 PM and
told me my labs looked good.
He
performed a pelvic exam and told me I was just under 2 cm dilated (up from 1 cm the week before) and about 60% effaced.
He
looked at my blood pressure record from the last two hours (the machine was
reading my BP every 15 minutes) and said, "Well, even though your labs are
good, I'm still concerned about your blood pressure since it's staying
high.
You're only 8 days prior to your
due date and you're dilated enough to have your water broken, so I'd like to
err on the side of caution and go ahead and induce you tonight."
Even though I was
not expecting that plan of action, I responded, "Ok, let's get this party
started!"
I called Victor, who was
on his way to Baltimore with his friends for the comedy show.
"You
need to turn around...they're inducing me, " I reported.
After a long pause, Victor responded,
"Are you serious?!
You're joking,
right?!"
The
funny thing is, when I gave Victor the tickets to the show for his
birthday back in April, I jokingly told him that the only way he
wouldn't be allowed to go is if I was in labor, not even considering
that it would actually be a problem. We decided that he should
continue up to Baltimore and see some of the show before he drove back since it
would likely be a while before anything happened.
Induced labors tend to take a while.
Cindy and
Dorabela stayed with me as they got me hooked up to the contraction and baby
heart rate monitors.
I started feeling a
little crampy as they got my IV hooked up (my veins were not cooperating because I was retaining so much water, so
THANKFULLY they called in the anesthesiologist to locally numb my arm as he
fished around for a vein...yikes!); turns out my contractions had started on
their own before they even broke my water or started a pitocin drip!
I joked that Dr. G
must've flipped a switch inside during the pelvic exam to get things
moving.
At around 10 PM, they got me
started on pitocin and shortly after, Dr. G broke my water.
Victor showed up around 11 PM, and that's
when Cindy and Dorabela left for the night.
Dr. G came by one last time before he left for the night to put a
wire on the baby's head to monitor his heart rate (they were having a hard time getting consistent readings with the external monitor).
He told me I could get
an epidural whenever I wanted and that he'd be back around 6 AM to check on my
progress.
I told him that I was going to
try to get through labor naturally and asked him whether that was a good idea
in my situation.
He said I could do
whatever I wanted, but typically in induced labors, the best way to get things
moving was to make the mom as comfortable and relaxed as possible to give the
cervix a better chance to dilate faster.
He told me that if I decided to get the epidural, all I needed to do was
ask the nurse.
I thought the
contractions hadn't been too bad so far, so I was pretty determined to make it
all the way with no meds.
My nurse
for the evening, Dina, came in periodically to check on me and the baby.
She put me on oxygen a few times to stabilize
everything and make baby comfortable, and she kept telling me to get some
rest, but I had a hard time getting comfortable.
I was doing my best to breathe (and eventually moan) through the contractions,
but they were getting very strong thanks to the pitocin.
After
learning about all the different labor positions from our childbirth
and Lamaze classes, I had hoped to be able to labor out of the
bed as much as possible. Unfortunately, hospitals (as opposed to
birthing
centers) pretty much confine you to the bed to allow for constant fetal
monitoring.
I knew being confined to the
bed was not going to be ideal, but I had no choice at this point.
I was also afraid to adjust my position much
in the bed because of the wire on the baby's head, so I pretty much stayed
lying on my side, which got uncomfortable after a while because my bottom leg
was going numb.
On top of all that, I
was lying in the after-effects of having my water broken, and the "juicy" sensation was getting to
be more than I could bear.
I put up with
it all for as long as I could before asking for an epidural at 2 AM.
Luckily the anesthesiologist was able to come
fairly quickly and got me all set up right away.
Victor had to hide in the bathroom while they
got me all settled because he was afraid he was going to pass out after seeing
the doctor's tools (I don't blame him, I would've done the same thing.
Luckily I didn't see any of it!).
After I was all taped up, I fell into a sweet
slumber for the next 4 hours.
Dina came
in to check on me around 5 AM and told me I was 5 centimeters dilated.
They increased the pitocin to help dilate me
fully, but baby's heart rate dropped considerably as a result, so they took me
off pitocin completely.
Dr. G came
in around 6 AM, as promised, and told me that since they had to turn off the
pitocin, it might take a bit longer for baby to arrive.
He had first anticipated that he'd be born
between 7 and 9 AM, but now he guessed anywhere from 9AM - 3PM.
He asked me how I was feeling and I told him
about some increasing pain on the left side of my abdomen.
He got the anesthesiologist in there right
away to adjust my epidural meds and the pain went away fairly quickly.
Meanwhile, my sister, Holly, was preparing to
drive out to meet the little guy!
Dr.
N, the new doctor on call, came in to check on me around 10 AM.
By that time, I was fully dilated but the
baby was still pretty far up the birth canal, so she decided to try to put me
back on a low dose of pitocin to bring him down.
Baby continued to be stubborn and his heart
rate dropped, yet again, so they took me off pitocin and told me I'd have to
wait it out.
Thankfully, the epidural
made all of this waiting a breeze! I felt nothing!
Waiting...
My new
nurse, Dolly, came in around 11:15 AM and said, "PLEASE tell me you're
getting some urges to push!"
I told
her I was, but the urges were at least 10 minutes apart, if not more.
However, within 45 minutes, my urges were
very frequent, so they got Dr. N in the room for delivery!
My legs
were so heavy and numb from the epidural, so Victor and Dorabela helped hold one leg
while Dolly used her body as resistance against my other leg.
For the next hour, I would check the
contraction monitor each time I felt an urge to push (to confirm that I was
really having a contraction), then bear down and push while Dr. N and
Dolly counted to "10" three times, giving me time for a cleansing
breath in between each 10-count.
It was
hard work, pushing that little nugget out...and luckily I didn't feel any of
it!
I pushed for an hour, most of which
was dedicated to just getting his head out ("He has red hair Rachel!"
Victor announced as he watched me push him out), and then the rest of him
slipped out fairly easily afterward.
The
umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck once, which I didn't know until
several minutes after he was born (thankfully); Victor later told me that the
baby was as
blue as denim when he came
all the way out.
Of course, Dr. N
was prepared for such an occasion (1/3 of vaginal deliveries involve the cord
being wrapped around baby's neck at least once) and clamped, then cut, the cord
immediately when she saw what was happening.
Once he started crying, Dr. N placed him on my chest so I could
admire the little thing that had been squirming inside my belly for the last 9
months...I was immediately smitten and cried tears of joy!
Max
was born at 12:57 PM on Saturday, May 17, 2014, weighing 7 pounds, 8.5 ounces,
and measuring 20.5 inches long.
Dr.
N announced that Dr. G predicted an average 7.5 pound baby, and he
was right on the money!
"Heyyy, where'd my warm hot tub go?!"
Victor
watched as they cleaned Max up while Dr. N took care of me. When the nurses were finished cleaning him up
and checking him out, they brought him to me to hold and nurse him. Victor and I both agreed that the name we had
been favoring, Ricardo, didn't seem right for our little redhead, so we were
back to the drawing board for names. Dr.
N came over to look at him once she was finished with me and said,
"Awww, he looks like a Max! I'm
sorry...I never associate names with the babies I deliver...but he looks like a
Max!" Victor and I had to pick our jaws up off the floor because Max was
actually the first name we had considered months earlier, but we had abandoned
it when we couldn't decide on a longer form of the name. We both agreed that the name "Max"
was meant to be, and we took the next 24 hours to decide on the name
Maximiliano Phillip for our new bundle of joy.
Baby burrito
***
About
an hour or two after Max was born, my nurses got me up to use the
bathroom and change to prepare for my move to my postpartum room. And
then I hemorrhaged. I hemorrhaged all over the bathroom floor. I
didn't know what was happening. In fact, I actually asked, "Sooo...is
this supposed to happen?" thinking that it might be normal...right
before I got lightheaded and almost passed out. Thank goodness it
happened in the hospital, and thank goodness the nurse was right there. She called for assistance as she helped me sit down, and the nurses got me cleaned up and back into my delivery bed.
Dr.
N came in and ordered bloodwork, a drip of pitocin (to help my uterus
contract and hopefully slow the bleeding), and some IV fluids. She and
the nurses massaged my belly (it sounds pleasant, a belly massage, but
it was AGONY!) to encourage the uterus to contract. They had to put
another IV line in, and since my veins were still crap, I had to get a
local anesthetic again to get hooked up. They had to take my blood to
make sure my cell counts were good; if they weren't, I could need to
receive more blood since I had lost so much. When the lab tech came a second time to take more
blood, I cried...where else was she going to prick me?! I already had one "blown" vein in one arm, and I had IVs in two others. She had to go
between my knuckles! I felt like a pin cushion.
After the hemorrhage...looking and feeling awful
The
doctors and nurses think I hemorrhaged due to my bladder being full for
too long after having my catheter removed. I didn't have a sensation
to use the bathroom because I was still somewhat numb from the epidural,
so my uterus wasn't able to begin contracting since my bladder was so
full. I will be sure to FORCE myself to use the bathroom as soon as I'm
able to next time around to hopefully avoid this. I'd rather not go through that again.
I
stayed in the delivery room overnight so the nurses could keep a close
eye on me. I still wasn't allowed to eat in case they needed to do D & C
to curtail the bleeding. I had another catheter put in, and I didn't
move from my bed. Victor had to do all the diaper changes, and he
brought Max to me for every feeding. My arms and wrists hurt so bad
from my IVs...they had to put them in some uncomfortable places due to
my silly veins. It was awful. But my baby was safe and healthy, so I
tried to count my blessings.
On the mend. Had to get better for this sweet guy.
On
Sunday, they took my blood AGAIN to check my cell counts, and
everything looked good. They wheeled me into a postpartum
room, and by mid afternoon, I was off of the pitocin, fluids, and the
catheter. It felt so good to be disconnected from all those machines! A
nurse told me that I would need to try to get up to use the bathroom,
and I got really scared. I felt the tears welling up and my throat
tightening, but I tried to remain composed. The nurse, Victor, and my
sister saw right through it and asked me what was wrong. "What if it
happens again? What if I start bleeding like that?" I said through
tears. The nurse assured me that what happened to me was incredibly
rare, and the possibility of it happening again a day later was even more rare. The nurse helped me to the bathroom, and all went according to plan.
On
Sunday night, I got to eat for the first time since lunch on Friday. I
got to shower on Monday for the first time since Friday morning (I was
the vision of beauty before that shower. Ha!). And Monday afternoon,
we headed home with sweet Baby Max.
Heading home!
***
Even
though I was induced, Max still made his debut within about 16 hours.
Many of my friends who had to be induced endured much longer labors and
eventually had to have a c-section. It makes me wonder if I would've
gone into labor that night anyway, especially since my contractions
started on their own before my water was broken.
While
I had some traumatic events occur during and after giving birth, I
would do it all over again in a heartbeat. The end result is completely
worth it. However, I'm a worrier, so next time around I'll probably
still worry about my blood pressure spiking, and I'll most likely worry
about hemorrhaging afterward. But it won't scare me enough to not want
any more babes. I loved being pregnant, I'm in awe of the fact that I
brought life into this world, and I adore my little blessing more than
anything in the world.
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