Part Three-A Baby Story

Still working on Princess' birth story....
Wednesday, May 31st 2006
I was awakened several times during the night because of the faulty blood pressure cuff which was cutting off my circulation in my left arm (literally.) Needless to say when Wednesday morning arrived my migraine was still hanging around. I was hooked up to some pitocin to help labor progress now that I was all ripe. DH was right there beside me the whole time as the contractions grew stronger. They weren't showing up on the monitors as "strong" contractions so no one was really believing me when I told them the amount of pain I was in. I just breathed (tried not to panic) through each contraction and held DH's hand for support. My parents, sister, and nephew came that morning in full force. Everyone was great and very supportive of my decisions. While my family was there, DH decided to take a shower to prepare for the day's events. I was not supposed to eat or drink anything....and we know what happens when I don't get my coke in the morning. DH was dead set against getting me one so I sweet talked my daddy into sneaking me one while DH was in the shower. BIG MISTAKE. I threw up the rest of the morning. It was awful. My doctor came in several hours later only to tell me that I had only progressed to 1 centimeter (didn't I say we needed to go home?) Anyway, she decided to break my water in the hopes of speeding things up. It took FOREVER to break my water. How hard could this be? DH said it looked like a coat hanger was the instrument of choice. TMI: Apparently I have a "dip" in my pelvic bone which you have to go under to reach the water bag. I felt it when she pricked it....it was a tiny, tiny little trickle. It was awful to have your waters slowly leaking out. It was embarrassing (still at this point) to have your bed linens changed every few minutes. It was at this point that my doctor could see my discomfort and she and an RN were reviewing my printouts to see how "large" the contractions were. I had the monitors on the outside of my belly and they were hardly registering any contractions. She decided then that I should have an internal monitor put in. (Fun.) They were ALL taken aback when the saw the size of my contractions. They were HUGE. (Well duh, I've been trying to tell you.) She went ahead and ordered my epidural. Stat.
My wonderful epidural was threaded up the left side of my spine. I'm sure the RN that was holding me wanted to slap my face as I was literally pinching her sides when he stuck me. I ripped the fault BP cuff off and she started panicing, "You can't take that off-we need to monitor your BP while doing the epidural." I said to her (in a VERY angry voice), "Well you need to find a damn one that WORKS!" I looked up at my DH and Sister and said, "I bet my hair is sexy right now." They just died laughing and said that was exactly what they were thinking. Being that my epidural was threaded a little to the left, after a couple of hours of blissful laboring I started to have a "feeling" on my right side. At the time I didn't realize that I wasn't numb on the right anymore, that I could actually move my right leg. I just knew that something didn't feel right. My doctor was in to check on me and was sitting on the side of the bed. She was looking at the monitors and looking at my face. She said as I was grimacing, "you felt that?" I simply nodded my head and she called for the anesthesiologist. He had to come in several times to "up" my meds for my epidural. I was resting and finding myself drifting off to sleep. I could still hear everyone around me as I started to slowly drift off. It was a wonderful, peaceful feeling. As soon as I felt this calm, I heard alarms and my family shouting my name and to "wake up!" Soon after that an RN rushed into and began checking over my printouts and monitors. I was VERY irritated as I was finally getting some much needed sleep. They flipped me on my left side and slapped an oxygen mask on me. Several hours later and I had only progressed to a little over 2 centimeters...after 12 hours of labor. So she decided that it would be best if we did a c-section. I agreed as I had always entertained this as an option.