2/02/06

So I am going to try and post my birth story. It may end abruptly as I am not sure how I am going to handle it.

On Tuesday night I woke up at about 10:30 with awful pain at the top of my uterus. It was so bad that I was crying and I normally handle pain pretty well. It was a constant pain, not like contractions. I took some Tylenol, put a heating pad on it and fell back asleep sometime after 3:00. Trey woke up to go to work at 3:30 and accidentally set off the truck alarm by hitting the panic button. He felt so awful. I fell back asleep at about 4:30 and my alarm went off at 5:30 Wednesday morning. I called my mom to ask about the pain. She told me to call the after hours nurse. I didn't think I needed to, but I did anyway. The guy was a JERK. He asked me why I decided to call now after being in pain all night. I started to say because I had to go to work and moving around seemed to aggravate it. I got as far as saying, "Because I have to go to work..." before he cut me off by laughing at me. Guess he thought that I was trying to get a day off. Then he asked my if the baby had been moving like normal. I told him that I normally don't feel her move. She has trisomy 13 and doesn't move much. So he asks, "Well, is she moving though?" So I just told him, "As much as she normally does." I tried several times to tell him things like that my amniotic fluid was low, I had just recently had a version and that the pain was in my upper back and uterus. I was interrupted each time. He then concluded that I should call the office when they opened because lower back pain (umm, I said UPPER) and pain in the upper uterus weren't signs of labor. Then he asked if this was my first in a mocking tone. He also told me to go ahead and stay home. So I went to work.

I called the doctor at 8:00 and they told me to come in ASAP. I waited in the school nurse's office for my mom to come pick me up (Ha ha, I never realized how funny that sounded). Trey was working really far away and I didn't think I was in labor anyway. I was nauseated and feeling kind of funny, so she took my blood pressure. It was 160/100. Not such a great number. My mom got there and we went to the doctor. Now, in defense of my doctor, I have always received excellent care. There is this one nurse though that doesn't know her butt from a hole in the ground. This happened to be the nurse that checked me that day. She had to weigh me twice because she did it wrong the first time. Yes, she weighed me wrong. When she checked my urine for protein and sugar she stared at the little chart on the bottle so long I got worried. I guess she decided all was well though because my doctor never mentioned anything, and he would have. She even took my blood pressure so fast that my mom even commented that there was no way she got an accurate reading. She got 120/70. I guess going to the doctor soothes me. This lady is a gem. Why I didn't mention my previous bp or my other concerns to my doctor, I don't know. It would have been smart and saved me some trouble in the end. I tend to underestimate the value of my own opinion sometimes. So I was hooked up to the NST machine and Keiran did super. My doctor sat in the other NST chair and chatted with me and my mom. There were only a few little contractions. He sent me home to take a hot shower and sleep. We were walking out to the car and the pain started up again. I just went home.

I didn't shower or sleep, but I did rest. The pain got awful again at about 5:00 that night. I made Trey call the after hours number. I didn't want to chance talking to that man again. It was a really nice woman who happened to know that my doctor was on call at the hospital and called over there to talk with him for us. He wanted me to come in so he could figure out what this pain was.

I called everyone on the way there and told them what was going on. I was having contractions at this point, but they were still small and pretty far apart. I was feeling nauseous again too. I had a coughing fit when Trey was pulling into the parking garage (I was still getting over bronchitis) and the nausea got worse. I thought I just had to burp and relieve some pressure. Turns out I just need to projectile vomit all over the inside of Trey's truck four times. In between each time I was vomiting I was apologizing to Trey. I felt so bad for puking in his truck and he also cannot deal with vomit. He was a trooper though. I actually felt a little better too. We pulled some clothes out of our suitcase and I changed right in front of his truck in the parking garage. I did not care who saw me.

I was admitted and my doctor ordered bloodwork and a urinalysis. He told me that he thought it could be my liver or my gallbladder that was causing the pain. My bp was up again (or still) and my contractions had caused me to dialate to 1.5 cm. When the labs came back he found that my platelet count was low, I had protein in my urine and my liver enzymes were out of whack. He had been predicting it for the majority of my pregnancy and it had finally happened, I had pre-eclampsia. They started me on magnesium sulfate to prevent seizures caused by high blood pressure. The stuff made me feel awful. Better than having a seizure though. He also told me whenever I wanted an epidural to just say the word. I said the word pretty quickly as my contractions were get more intense. They also decided to help my body along and give me some cervidil. I like cervidil. Very good stuff. During the epi the poor guy had a hell of a time fitting the needle where it needed to go. Turns out I wasn't sitting in the right position. He tried for so long that the numbing agent wore off and he hit a nerve. It felt like every nerve ending in my right leg had exploded. I almost looked at my leg to make sure it hadn't actually exploded. He numbed me again. I repositioned my body and it went right in. I also like epidurals. Very good inventions. Unfortunately the epi caused my bp to plummet making me throw up some more. After that though everything was good. I actually slept until 3:30 the next morning.

When I woke up I had this urge to push. I called the nurse at about 4:00 and she said I was 10 cm. I about had a heart attack. We called everyone. They doctor came in to check and said it would still be a while, but if bearing down helped I could do it. Oh, it helped and I did it. My parents, uncle and MIL all got there and my sister was still on her way when I thought I felt something coming out. My mom checked and sure enough there were some baby legs hanging out. I called the nurse and a bunch of them came running. I asked them if they wanted me to try and stop pushing, but they said to go for it. I pushed twice more and she was out.

It was really quiet after that. I asked if she was alive. I knew she wasn't though. The nurse told me there was no heartbeat. The cord wasn't even pulsing. She had been gone for a while, but not really long because her coloring was ok. She looked like she was sleeping. She was absolutely perfect. I was so calm. I was a woman on a mission. All I wanted to do was hold her, kiss her, look at her, tell her I loved her. Dead or alive it didn't matter. I wanted my baby. They gave her to me as quick as they could. I counted her fingers and toes. There were 20. We had miss counted on the u/s. I couldn't believe how much she looked like Trey. He got to hold her then too. Seeing him hold his child for the first time was so amazing. He kept rocking her and patting her. He looked so natural. Then while I delivered the placenta they cleaned her up a little. I wanted to give her a bath, but they said that they weren't sure how her skin would react. I couldn't have dealt with that, so I just held her.

My sister came in not knowing she had already been born. The look on her face was awful. She felt so bad that she hadn't been there for her birth. She kept apologizing. She got to hold her next. She just kept saying how beautiful she was.

I'll have to finish later...