Sarah's Birth story part one

Saturday June 1st was just another day, isn't that what people always say? That this one day before your life changed forever was like any other day? I hadn't slept well that night and I was getting increasingly uncomfortable and realized I probably pushed myself to hard from cleaning trying to get the house ready for my baby shower so it was a lazy day for me.

My mom had been out ordering food for my shower and I had been laying on the couch when husband got home and we decided to go out and pick out my glider for the nursery. We walked around a lot and I just felt off, tired and just plain worn out. But we found the one we wanted and when they said they didn't have it but would by the 14th we said that was fine because "we had 5 weeks."

Feeling exhausted and not wanting to cook, we decided to hit up a little Mexican food cause baby wanted chimichangas. When we got our food I just wasn't hungry and we boxed up everything and headed home. I tried to relax and husband and I headed to bed around 9:30, I was restless but was able to sleep from about 9:30 until I rolled over around 2:30am with an uncomfortable amount of pressure and thought to myself " good lord I have to pee!" I stand up and immediately start "wetting" myself. I couldn't believe it, how embarrassing, I waddled to the bathroom trying to hold it but I just kept "wetting" myself. I finally get to the toilet and I am still gushing what I thought was pee. I think it is over and I wipe and there is blood....

It takes me 3 screams of husbands name to rouse him from bed and I am still leaking, he walks in, squinty eyed in to the bathroom and asked kind of out of sorts "What?!"  I told him there was blood and he asked what that meant, I told him I didn't know because this being my water breaking was the last thing on my mind. I told him to get my mom, she had been through this before so she would know right?

My husband runs down stairs and grabs her and they are both back upstairs in no time, crowding the bathroom door, trying to assess the situation. I am still leaking at this point and all I of a sudden I remembered my mom talking about her labor with me, her water broke before any contractions and that she had been right where I had been, on the toilet, thinking she was peeing but couldn't stop the flow. I couldn't stop the flow.... HOLY SHIT, IS THIS MY WATER!?!. I knew right then before my mom asked the first question, and I think she did too, my water had broken and I was 5 weeks early.

I told husband to call my OB and I had to clean up a little and get dressed, in the process we called Kelley my doula and she said we should stay home rest and then call her in a little while. I wasn't comfortable with that seeing as my water broke and this just wasn't the start of contractions, so we decided to go ahead and head to the hospital. As I was getting dressed, I lost it, the nursery wasn't done, our bags weren't packed.... we weren't ready, I wasn't ready. I thought for sure I was going to walk in to L & D and they were going to sign me up for a c-section.

I threw on husbands ratty pj bottoms and a hoodie and we headed to the hospital. We got there and after the hour or so assessment it was determined that I was in fact in labor, the issue was my cervix was as thick as ever and I was only dilated to 1cm. I knew right then and there this was going to be a loooooooooong day.


I waddled my leaking self down to my room and it was set up and Husband got the camera  out and started filming. I wasn't having contractions at this point but I knew I was going to have a baby, possibly within the next 24 hours. We called all the family and everyone's reaction was pretty much the same, they couldn't believe that I was in labor 5 weeks early. I was still in a state of shock laying there in the room that would welcome my daughter. It was a little overwhelming to see the warming bed all ready to go, to know that I didn't have "5 weeks" anymore this was happening. I wasn't in any pain yet so after the calls had been made I decided to get some sleep and luckily I was able too.

My family slowly yet surely made their way in to see me, and then the meds started. I have stated I don't know how many times that I wanted a med free birth, shoot I even wrote a damn birth wish list that said so. But when I was on my toilet and realized that my water had broken 5 weeks early I pretty much felt like Elizabeth Banks in the movie "What to expect when you're expecting" when she has to have a c-section she tells her doctor that she has a birth plan...she even typed it. I knew in that moment that it didn't really matter what my "plan" was because Sarah had one of her own. I knew when they said I was at 1cm with little to know effacement that intervention was going to be needed because the chance of infection was so high because my water broke.

I knew to sit back and enjoy the ride. So I watched ABC family, they were playing old school Disney movies, oldies like Cinderella, Peter Pan and one of my favies Pocohantas.... It was glorious.

They gave me over the course of 12 hours a pill abbreviated to meso that was supposed to thin and ripen my cervix in hopes to bring on labor more naturally. It did what it was supposed to do but because my body was totally unprepared for this the pills weren't enough. At this point my contractions were getting to the point where I had to breathe through them. Deep breaths in through the nose and out through my mouth. When they checked me, I thought for sure I would be at a 3 or even a 4.... I was still at 1, almost a 2. I was in shock, I thought for sure my body had been moving forward because the contractions were getting stronger and isn't that what it is supposed to do?

Then the word Pitocin came up and I immedately wanted to talk it over with husband, which the nurses respected. I called Kelley, whom we had been in communication with through this whole process and tell her my progress. To say that at this point, after 12 hours of labor with no clear end in sight I decided something while dialing that I never thought I would. I told her that after the meds to ripen my cervix didn't really work that they wanted to give me Pit and I gulped air to hold back tears and said... "I think I am going to get the epidural." It wasn't because the pain was too much or that I couldn't handle it. It was because I didn't know how much longer I was going to be in labor, it could have been 5 more hours or 15, only Sarah knew. I told Kelley that my ultimate goal was to avoid a c-section at all costs and deliver her as close to natural as humanly possible. She totally agreed with me and I didn't feel like such a puss/failure after all. She reassured me that she was early, my body wasn't ready for this and that getting her out vaginally should be my number one priority and if getting an epidural so I could rest and be ready for the birth then I should do it.

I had originally told the nurse that I was going to see how bad the pitocin contractions were and see if I could handle them naturally but that I wasn't against getting the epi. Then after getting the uplifting words from Kelley I decided that I was already pretty tired and why put it off any longer? The nurse came back in and I told her to go ahead and put the order in for the epi, I needed to get some sleep.

Things up to this point were fine, and manageable, my contractions were getting more intense but I was handling it well. Then the anesthesiologist came in and f-ed that up royally.

They started my pit and not even 10 min later Dr.Asshole we will call him came in to administer my epi. I was nervous, I had read how a bad epi can lead to chronic back pain down the road and other problems and I didn't want that to happen, so I said a little prayer that this doc had a steady hand. He comes in and immedately starts to comment on my "dense back tissue" I am pretty sure this is him calling me fat (husband said he heard him tell the nurse that I shouldn't be a problem because his record was 691lbs) but at this point I don't care because I am trying to breathe through my contractions so I don't move too much while a long needle is being inserted in to my spine.

Epidurals hurt. The stuff they give you to numb the area hurts, when they are moving the giant ass needle around in your spine it hurts and it hurts too if they hit a nerve and your back spasms WHILE the giant ass needle is in your spine. While Dr. Asshole is poking around back there and says he has the epi set I tell him I am still feeling everything (and to add to the list I am feeling a giant ass needle in my back). He again tells me that with my dense back tissue it was hard but the meds should take effect in about 20 minutes. I find this information unsettling because he keeps asking me if my legs are numb or can I feel this contraction and on a scale of 1-10 how bad is the pain. I am not going to lie it did take the edge off so the doc leaves after he thinks he has sucessfully administered my epidural.

This is the beginning my of my 5 hours of hell.

My epi was given to me at 7pm, by 8pm I knew it wasn't right. I was feeling everything and by this point the pitocin had really kicked in. The thing was I could only feel it on my right side, the asshole doctor had only numbed my left side. The contractions, granted only on my right side were terrible, I was moaning through them and they had rendered me useless when one would come. Then the nurse came in to give me a catheter. When she did it I lost my mind and started bawling my eyes out. I had been in labor for 18.5 hours, I was tired, in a lot of pain and confused as to why I was in so much pain. I had seen the effects of an epidural on women before, they were so clam, relaxed, joyful that they weren't in any pain, I was not one of those women. When the nurse left my mom and husband rushed over to me and I told them something wasn't right, I was in way to much pain for having an epidural and I was so tired and done being poked and prodded.

Husband told the nurse when she came back in that I was in a lot of pain still so she put a call in to Dr. Asshole who sent one of this minons down to give me a straight shot of pain killers. This would be the routine for the next 5 hours.

After 5 hours of being on the strongest setting for pit, feeling it on half of my body someone finally said "You know this doesn't seem right." And called Dr. Asshole and in he came and he watched me for 20 min and said that the epi catheter probably had shifted and when he dug around my spine some more and realized that no, he had just plain effed it up he stayed and re-administered ANOTHER epi. I cried the whole time. Husband just held my hands and put his forehead to mine and told me how amazing I had been through all of this. I found strength in his words and rounded my dense back tissue for Dr.Asshole.  I was so beyond exhausted,when he finally hit the sweet spot and I went all tingly and exclaimed "This is what it is supposed to feel like" I just wept tears of joy.

They got me positioned in bed and then I sat up for some reason and then it happened....

My eyes got wide, my arms flailed searching for the sides of the bed, I yelled

"I AM FALLING, I AM FALLING"

My mom and the nurse caught me and got me nestled back in to bed.

In an instant the epi had rendered my core muscles useless and I couldn't have been happier.