careful what you wish for
Feb. 26th, 2013 05:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thanateBaby achieved successful separation as of 3:58 on Thursday morning; I transitioned into active labor probably somewhere around the time Grauwulf came home from work on Wednesday night. My doctor tried stripping membranes (which sounds more disturbing that it actually was, in my case) at the appointment on tuesday which may or may not have been what sped things up, but I definitely started having much more, er, pointed contractions intermittently by tuesday evening. Oddly, through the entire experience I didn't have any backache whatsoever, and the upper abdominal contractions stayed barely perceptible, but as things ramped up I got more and more lower abdominal cramping, which began uncomfortable and got significantly worse. Early on, it was mostly a case of needing to straighten my torso (kneeling rather than sitting, or standing up) for a minute or two before things left off being painful again; by evening I had a little of the dinner that grauwulf kindly cooked and then retired to lying on the couch and yelling "starting" and "end" at him to record timing with increasing amounts of "ow" in between. It still stopped hurting between rounds, but at a certain point there became far less incentive to move when things didn't hurt.
Anyway, grauwulf called the healthcare provider's advice line twice to report timings and ask about heading to the hospital, and (possibly partly because both times the people he talked to caught me at coherent moments when they wanted to speak to me) kept getting told that oh, we should hang in there to [slightly shorter interval than last time] and they want to see X from a first-time mother. Shortly after the second of those I lost my dinner again (into the trash can that grauwulf had very conveniently *just* provided, with a bag liner and everything) which means this kid is now my leading cause of vomiting as an adult... anyway, by around eleven I was making increasingly funny noises and avoiding getting up to do things like go to the bathroom because moving set off the crampy bit again, and I told grauwulf to call and tell them I *was* going to the hospital now, and then yelled at the lady on the phone to talk to him, not me. Which seems to have worked, though then it took another half-hour to get out of the house, as I wasn't fit to get shoes and socks on myself, and had to time moving out to the car very carefully.
By the time we got to the hospital, they sent us straight up to the birthing ward and it took all of about three minutes to get assigned to a room-- apparently I made a much more convincing case in person, what with the intermittent coherence and ability to open my eyes. By that point I was 8.5cm dilated and my water broke when they checked that, so there was some question as to whether there would even be time to get the on-call doctor from our insurance or process the bloodwork necessary to give me an epidural if I wanted one before it was too late to matter. The nurse (Jodi, who was fantastic) asked grauwulf how long I'd been practicing hypnosis birth based on whatever of my vital signs they were monitoring; apparently I missed her response of something about, "wow, people can't *do* that," when he said that no, that was just me. I didn't feel particularly impressive from the inside-- there was the part that hurt which involved me mostly repeating "ow. ow. ow." a lot and having trouble pushing as long/hard as the nurse wanted me to, and the part where it was just my hip joints complaining about having my legs torqued up out of the way.
me: Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. [wordless howl, end of contraction without progress] Damnit.
Jodi: That's the quietest "damn it" I've ever heard.
grauwulf: Yeah, that's Ann.
The doctor on call, on the other hand, had what grauwulf described as the bedside manner of a ten pound sack of seaweed; another thing I apparently missed was grauwulf telling him to go away again if he couldn't be helpful after he said something to the nurse about if she couldn't get this working he'd have to look for some other way. (This might have been ten minutes after he got there...) I do remember Jodi coming up and explaining to me that I was doing a great job but I understood that was a threat, right? as the doctor wandered out of the room.
Other slightly achronological recollections include someone coming in and explaining that the anesthesiologist was busy in emergency & it might be a while before they could get to me; at that point the response was that they hadn't got whatever bloodwork they needed back from the lab yet so they could give me anything anyway. At some point I asked if there were any topical pain options, since it really was just the one muscle set, and was told at that point no, it was epidural or nothing. Someone else explained that there'd been a bunch of mecomium in the fluid and so they were having a team come over from the NICU to make sure that wasn't a problem as the kid came out... I'm not sure what all else; I spent a lot of time clinging to grauwulf's hand and mostly failing to push for counts of ten instead of three or five. My blood sugar spiked madly despite the lack of dinner (130-something when I came in, up to 155 the last time I heard it checked.) Everyone made comments about the baby having impressive amounts of hair.
Then they had a fifteen minute break between emergency room patients to send John-the-anesthesiologist up to offer an epidural, and I managed to communicate that yes, I would like to try that (after a bit of a false start; my brain function was still at about 80% when needed, but my ability to communicate was down well below 50...) so they had me roll on my side and he walked a tech (who could stay with me) through getting the needle in. I missed it entirely, but apparently she had some difficulty getting the needle into the right place, at which point grauwulf went off and quietly left *his* dinner in the bathroom. But everything got sorted, and about five or ten minutes later my eyes opened back up and I became suddenly able to talk again. Unfortunately, while I could now push for their count to ten (and was vaguely irritated with people for making me cut off to breathe at that point, since my lungs were up to a 15-count or so) the inability to feel muscle tension meant that I had a very hard time targeting properly to push in the right place. And the contractions slowed back down, which I'm sure didn't help any.
So there was some of that, and the baby continued to wash back and forth just crowned but not quite out and people started talking about time limits before this became detrimental to her, and they handed me an oxygen mask which wanted to slide into the way of my eyes slightly, and then the doctor started pestering me about doing an episiotomy. I think there was also a bit of a time limit on the epidural chemicals, since John-the-anesthesiologist had gone back down to emergency and it was just the tech monitoring the equipment at that point, though I might have misunderstood that part. Anyway, I said give me one more try, and the doctor gave me two or three more contractions before coming back and asking again and I gave a grudging oh, all right. So he did his thing with the snipping, and the next contraction got the baby right out, and the placenta went the one after that. (In between, the doctor managed to fail to clamp off the cord properly when he cut it, and sprayed blood all over everything, which I also missed, as I was busy tracking the baby as the NICU team carried her across the room and kept getting in the way of my getting to see her. Also grauwulf says she came out with the cord around her neck, but it was a nice loose loop that the doctor just slid over her head, so it wasn't a problem.)
Anyway, the doctor said I tore a little bit but not too much, and then finally explained as he was about to sew me back up why it is that anyone thinks it's a good idea to cut muscles under serious tension-- you're trying to control the *direction* of tearing so it's easier to fix/heal. Then the sewing up bit took an inordinate amount of time, but so did the cleaning up & inspecting the baby, so they were both done at about the same time and I got to hold her and try to interest her in nursing for an hour or so before they came and carried her off to the well baby nursery for a few hours and told us to get some sleep. That worked about as well as I'd expect-- I slept until the sun came up (not very long), was briefly disappointed to find that the white outside the window was a steam vent and not snow, and then it was light out so I napped a little until the nurse came back and let me take a brief supervised shower so I that stopped itching all over and explained the postpartum coolpacks and other toiletry supplies. And then she brought me a giant thing of cranberry juice, which was also awesome, as well as on the list of things that, being by definition no longer gestationally diabetic, I no longer am supposed to avoid.
I haven't done a real blood sugar check since to see if I actually process normally w/o the placenta; they did a 6-hour fasting number for me in the hospital under extremely adverse conditions and came up with 108, which is several points higher than any other fasting number I've ever gotten, and the tech who did it said, "oh, that's fine." They also checked the baby's sugar several times and despite taking a while to prioritize eating over sleep she stayed well within spec. And despite everyone's dire predictions of giantness, she came out a whole 7lbs 6.6oz, which is slightly smaller than *I* was. Thus far I have restrained myself from saying "I *told* you so" to anyone, but yeah. I admit that it was probably good that I was monitoring blood sugar the week my metabolism started to drop so that I was able to figure that out & keep moving, but [thing with not a problem.]
So then there was another day and a half of hospital where I had to promise not to fall asleep without putting the kid down first, and nursery people kept trying to offer to take the baby away so we could rest, to which I would say that really, after we'd gone to all this trouble to get her we would really like her back when they were done with their diagnostics. (Grauwulf pointed out that we weren't going to have a well-baby nursery at home, so we might as well start as we meant to go on, which was apparently a concept the pediatric nurses didn't consider much.) Post-partum, the only thing that really hurt was the stupid stitches, though the recovery room had one of those ridiculous hospital beds that's not only proportioned just wrong and filled with slippery pillows, but that self-inflates and deflates any time you move, which somehow completely fails to be ergonomic.
Various minor adventures later we got ourselves cleared for release; in my case this involved being told off not to do anything for six weeks (no lifting anything heavier than the baby, no exercise, no doing anything that might disrupt the stitches...) and the somewhat alarming advice to call the doctor if I start passing golf-ball sized blood clots. (um... I think I'd do that anyway?) Then a series of people went through and asked things like, "You are going to have the child sleep on her back in the crib, right?" and "you're not going to shake the baby, right?" (which I still find slightly odd given that large numbers of things one does with babies could accurately be described as shaking-- yes I know what they mean, and of course not.) and confirmed and reconfirmed that I had a car seat to put her in. And then we got wheeled downstairs and escaped.
Oddly, I do have a little more sympathy for the woman saying earnestly that "it's ok if you don't bond with your baby right away because giving birth is such an *interesting* experience." I would still not consider it useful advice for someone who's eight months along, but I kind of get where she's coming from. There's definitely an extent to which birthing uses up a lot of mental circuits, and the full understanding of this tiny creature who you've never met before and to whom you've made a lifetime commitment takes a while to fill in.
On the other hand, everyone talks about postpartum depression (presumably on the theory of being aware of potential problems before they arise) and we'll see where I end up as the sleep deprivation sets in long-term, but thus far I appear to have postpartum endorphins instead. It's rather like the high from a new crush: this person's existence makes me incredibly happy. I don't think I've ever had that thing where you look at something for hours and it stamps itself on the insides of your eyelids when you close them happen with a person before, but she was right there by day two. So, yay for that.
Xposty from dreamwidth.
Anyway, grauwulf called the healthcare provider's advice line twice to report timings and ask about heading to the hospital, and (possibly partly because both times the people he talked to caught me at coherent moments when they wanted to speak to me) kept getting told that oh, we should hang in there to [slightly shorter interval than last time] and they want to see X from a first-time mother. Shortly after the second of those I lost my dinner again (into the trash can that grauwulf had very conveniently *just* provided, with a bag liner and everything) which means this kid is now my leading cause of vomiting as an adult... anyway, by around eleven I was making increasingly funny noises and avoiding getting up to do things like go to the bathroom because moving set off the crampy bit again, and I told grauwulf to call and tell them I *was* going to the hospital now, and then yelled at the lady on the phone to talk to him, not me. Which seems to have worked, though then it took another half-hour to get out of the house, as I wasn't fit to get shoes and socks on myself, and had to time moving out to the car very carefully.
By the time we got to the hospital, they sent us straight up to the birthing ward and it took all of about three minutes to get assigned to a room-- apparently I made a much more convincing case in person, what with the intermittent coherence and ability to open my eyes. By that point I was 8.5cm dilated and my water broke when they checked that, so there was some question as to whether there would even be time to get the on-call doctor from our insurance or process the bloodwork necessary to give me an epidural if I wanted one before it was too late to matter. The nurse (Jodi, who was fantastic) asked grauwulf how long I'd been practicing hypnosis birth based on whatever of my vital signs they were monitoring; apparently I missed her response of something about, "wow, people can't *do* that," when he said that no, that was just me. I didn't feel particularly impressive from the inside-- there was the part that hurt which involved me mostly repeating "ow. ow. ow." a lot and having trouble pushing as long/hard as the nurse wanted me to, and the part where it was just my hip joints complaining about having my legs torqued up out of the way.
me: Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. [wordless howl, end of contraction without progress] Damnit.
Jodi: That's the quietest "damn it" I've ever heard.
grauwulf: Yeah, that's Ann.
The doctor on call, on the other hand, had what grauwulf described as the bedside manner of a ten pound sack of seaweed; another thing I apparently missed was grauwulf telling him to go away again if he couldn't be helpful after he said something to the nurse about if she couldn't get this working he'd have to look for some other way. (This might have been ten minutes after he got there...) I do remember Jodi coming up and explaining to me that I was doing a great job but I understood that was a threat, right? as the doctor wandered out of the room.
Other slightly achronological recollections include someone coming in and explaining that the anesthesiologist was busy in emergency & it might be a while before they could get to me; at that point the response was that they hadn't got whatever bloodwork they needed back from the lab yet so they could give me anything anyway. At some point I asked if there were any topical pain options, since it really was just the one muscle set, and was told at that point no, it was epidural or nothing. Someone else explained that there'd been a bunch of mecomium in the fluid and so they were having a team come over from the NICU to make sure that wasn't a problem as the kid came out... I'm not sure what all else; I spent a lot of time clinging to grauwulf's hand and mostly failing to push for counts of ten instead of three or five. My blood sugar spiked madly despite the lack of dinner (130-something when I came in, up to 155 the last time I heard it checked.) Everyone made comments about the baby having impressive amounts of hair.
Then they had a fifteen minute break between emergency room patients to send John-the-anesthesiologist up to offer an epidural, and I managed to communicate that yes, I would like to try that (after a bit of a false start; my brain function was still at about 80% when needed, but my ability to communicate was down well below 50...) so they had me roll on my side and he walked a tech (who could stay with me) through getting the needle in. I missed it entirely, but apparently she had some difficulty getting the needle into the right place, at which point grauwulf went off and quietly left *his* dinner in the bathroom. But everything got sorted, and about five or ten minutes later my eyes opened back up and I became suddenly able to talk again. Unfortunately, while I could now push for their count to ten (and was vaguely irritated with people for making me cut off to breathe at that point, since my lungs were up to a 15-count or so) the inability to feel muscle tension meant that I had a very hard time targeting properly to push in the right place. And the contractions slowed back down, which I'm sure didn't help any.
So there was some of that, and the baby continued to wash back and forth just crowned but not quite out and people started talking about time limits before this became detrimental to her, and they handed me an oxygen mask which wanted to slide into the way of my eyes slightly, and then the doctor started pestering me about doing an episiotomy. I think there was also a bit of a time limit on the epidural chemicals, since John-the-anesthesiologist had gone back down to emergency and it was just the tech monitoring the equipment at that point, though I might have misunderstood that part. Anyway, I said give me one more try, and the doctor gave me two or three more contractions before coming back and asking again and I gave a grudging oh, all right. So he did his thing with the snipping, and the next contraction got the baby right out, and the placenta went the one after that. (In between, the doctor managed to fail to clamp off the cord properly when he cut it, and sprayed blood all over everything, which I also missed, as I was busy tracking the baby as the NICU team carried her across the room and kept getting in the way of my getting to see her. Also grauwulf says she came out with the cord around her neck, but it was a nice loose loop that the doctor just slid over her head, so it wasn't a problem.)
Anyway, the doctor said I tore a little bit but not too much, and then finally explained as he was about to sew me back up why it is that anyone thinks it's a good idea to cut muscles under serious tension-- you're trying to control the *direction* of tearing so it's easier to fix/heal. Then the sewing up bit took an inordinate amount of time, but so did the cleaning up & inspecting the baby, so they were both done at about the same time and I got to hold her and try to interest her in nursing for an hour or so before they came and carried her off to the well baby nursery for a few hours and told us to get some sleep. That worked about as well as I'd expect-- I slept until the sun came up (not very long), was briefly disappointed to find that the white outside the window was a steam vent and not snow, and then it was light out so I napped a little until the nurse came back and let me take a brief supervised shower so I that stopped itching all over and explained the postpartum coolpacks and other toiletry supplies. And then she brought me a giant thing of cranberry juice, which was also awesome, as well as on the list of things that, being by definition no longer gestationally diabetic, I no longer am supposed to avoid.
I haven't done a real blood sugar check since to see if I actually process normally w/o the placenta; they did a 6-hour fasting number for me in the hospital under extremely adverse conditions and came up with 108, which is several points higher than any other fasting number I've ever gotten, and the tech who did it said, "oh, that's fine." They also checked the baby's sugar several times and despite taking a while to prioritize eating over sleep she stayed well within spec. And despite everyone's dire predictions of giantness, she came out a whole 7lbs 6.6oz, which is slightly smaller than *I* was. Thus far I have restrained myself from saying "I *told* you so" to anyone, but yeah. I admit that it was probably good that I was monitoring blood sugar the week my metabolism started to drop so that I was able to figure that out & keep moving, but [thing with not a problem.]
So then there was another day and a half of hospital where I had to promise not to fall asleep without putting the kid down first, and nursery people kept trying to offer to take the baby away so we could rest, to which I would say that really, after we'd gone to all this trouble to get her we would really like her back when they were done with their diagnostics. (Grauwulf pointed out that we weren't going to have a well-baby nursery at home, so we might as well start as we meant to go on, which was apparently a concept the pediatric nurses didn't consider much.) Post-partum, the only thing that really hurt was the stupid stitches, though the recovery room had one of those ridiculous hospital beds that's not only proportioned just wrong and filled with slippery pillows, but that self-inflates and deflates any time you move, which somehow completely fails to be ergonomic.
Various minor adventures later we got ourselves cleared for release; in my case this involved being told off not to do anything for six weeks (no lifting anything heavier than the baby, no exercise, no doing anything that might disrupt the stitches...) and the somewhat alarming advice to call the doctor if I start passing golf-ball sized blood clots. (um... I think I'd do that anyway?) Then a series of people went through and asked things like, "You are going to have the child sleep on her back in the crib, right?" and "you're not going to shake the baby, right?" (which I still find slightly odd given that large numbers of things one does with babies could accurately be described as shaking-- yes I know what they mean, and of course not.) and confirmed and reconfirmed that I had a car seat to put her in. And then we got wheeled downstairs and escaped.
Oddly, I do have a little more sympathy for the woman saying earnestly that "it's ok if you don't bond with your baby right away because giving birth is such an *interesting* experience." I would still not consider it useful advice for someone who's eight months along, but I kind of get where she's coming from. There's definitely an extent to which birthing uses up a lot of mental circuits, and the full understanding of this tiny creature who you've never met before and to whom you've made a lifetime commitment takes a while to fill in.
On the other hand, everyone talks about postpartum depression (presumably on the theory of being aware of potential problems before they arise) and we'll see where I end up as the sleep deprivation sets in long-term, but thus far I appear to have postpartum endorphins instead. It's rather like the high from a new crush: this person's existence makes me incredibly happy. I don't think I've ever had that thing where you look at something for hours and it stamps itself on the insides of your eyelids when you close them happen with a person before, but she was right there by day two. So, yay for that.
Xposty from dreamwidth.