The 2nd Labour Story Part I: In Which Castor Oil Is Put To The Test

Tags

baby, birth, castor oil, contractions, labor, labour

Most women I speak to tried something or other to kick start their labour. It seems strange to try to trigger an event which is generally recognized as one of the most painful experiences a woman will endure in her lifetime. But I guess we do it for the same reason that PH always eats the least favourite part of his dinner first – to get it over with.

For me, the real spur was fear of being medically induced, which I had already experienced and was not anxious to repeat.

I knew that castor oil was my best hope, but I also felt rather pessimistic about it. I suspect that if left to its own devices, my body would carry the baby past the 42nd week mark.

Probably, castor oil would just cause me horrible diarrhea and I’d still have to be induced on Tuesday.

So I started with a small spoonful on Saturday. Most recipes that I saw involved 1-2 tablespoons.

I took a TEASPOON and waited for the diarrhea.

No diarrhea.

No baby, mind you, but no diarrhea.

So with increased boldness, I took two tablespoons on Sunday, mixed in with my yogurt, and waited.

…and waited.

….and waited.

Because “Call the Maternity Admitting Office” Doesn’t Have The Same Cachet

Tags

39 weeks, birth, labour, midwife, ob, pregnancy

In case you’ve been wondering, I’m still thoroughly dissatisfied with my prenatal care situation.

I really, really wanted a midwife.

But I let fear stop me.

Because the wooshing noise was back and I was getting mysterious itchy rashes and I had internists talking to me about brain surgery.

But the itching has gone away and so has the wooshing noise, my optic nerves are back to normal, and it is way too late to find a midwife.

So I’m stuck with the OB who clearly wonders why she’s stuck with me, too. I can tell she is pretty uninterested in my case. She glanced over my history, asked me to make sure with the opthamologist that my intracranial pressure was low enough that it would be safe enough to push, and that was it.

My OB appointments don’t feel… like real prenatal appointments somehow.

Part of that is because the OB shares an office with several other specialists all of whom do completely different things. One is an oncologist, and she’s the only one whose specialty is actually listed on the door, so basically I attend my prenatals in a clinic which advertises ONCOLOGY.

The waiting room is very fancy. It doesn’t have that public-healthcare feel that other doctor offices have. But it’s also very generic so that all the specalists are equally accommodated. It’s the only doctor’s office I have ever been in that has NOTHING MEDICAL hanging on the walls. No informational posters, nothing.

Nor is there anything baby-related. My previous prenatal care clinic had corkboards filled with photos of babies they had delivered. Even my family doctor has black and white photos of Korean babies looking all artsy and charming.

Not this place.

This is what I see when I sit down to wait for my OB appointment:

Does that seem normal to you?

There isn’t even a little corner for children to play at. You know, the obligatory pile of worn out Golden Books and that ubiquitous wooden bead maze that you find in every single doctor’s office EXCEPT THIS ONE.

The only, the ONLY THING in the entire place that suggests “prenatal care” is the key to the bathroom, which has a teething ring hanging off of it.

Even the receptionist is generic. While I sit waiting for my prenatal, she is busy calling patient after patient for one of the other doctors, advising them to get fleet enemas before their appointment the next day. When I called to ask if I should be concerned about my liver hurting or craving cardboard she had no advice for me and told me that if I was concerned I should see my family doctor.

The OB is only actually there two days a week and those days seem to fluctuate wildly.

Clearly there would be no point in calling with questions about contractions, etc.

As for the OB herself, she’s… fine.

She’s young, friendly, and she seems relatively caring. But she doesn’t seem particularly INTERESTED.

She puts me on a scale, takes my blood pressure (it seems weird not to have a nurse doing these things before she comes in, but she doesn’t seem to have a nurse), measures my fundal height, and puts the doppler on me, and then asks if I have any questions.

I have lots of questions but I don’t actually think there’s any point in asking them.

She’s made it clear to me that there’s a good chance she won’t be the one actually delivering the baby. I get whatever OB is on call that day in the hospital. Could be her, could be someone else. But hey, they’ll have access to her notes, so there’s that.

So is there any point in asking questions like, “can we delay cutting of the cord? Will I be allowed to have skin to skin right away when the baby is born? Would it be possible to attempt a breast crawl, because I think that would be really cool to see”?

I was also expecting her to check my cervix at my 38 week appointment, because I’m pretty sure my doctor did when I was pregnant with Owl. But maybe I’m wrong. Anyway, she didn’t. I guess she will this week at my 39 week?

This is all so not what I want.

After Owl’s heavily-interventioned birth, I want to experience something different. I want to go into a natural labour. I want my baby to be delivered by the person who provided my care, so I could have a sort of continuity. I want support during labour, because last time I just kept getting sent home to suffer through contractions with no real help. That being said, I also want to labour at home for as long as possible, because being in the hospital sucks.

Well, I can only have some of these things, if any.

I can still hope for a natural labour, although the OB likes to induce at 41 weeks, so I’m on the clock.

I can try to labour at home for as long as possible, and just kind of help myself through it (I mean, yes, PH and possibly my mother might be there to hold my hand but my mother only ever had one labour and that was in a hospital on a pitocin drip and that is still more labour than PH has ever experienced). I’ve been reading on recognizing signs of true labour, when to go to the hospital etc. My big goal is to only have to go ONCE. No more back-and-forth half hour drives over speed bumps while painfully contracting. NO MORE PLEASE.

That’s about all I can do, really.

I’m trying hard to focus on the positives.

For example, I’ve been having some mentrual-like cramping pains lately. I didn’t get that feeling until after the prostaglandin gel last time, so maybe my body might actually be preparing for a real labour?

I’m also negative for group B strep this time, which means I don’t have to get put on IV for penicillin the moment my waters break.

I’m also less scared of labour this time round. I’ve survived it before, and dangit, I’ll survive it again.

And, of course, most important of all, the baby seems ok. My diabetes is mostly under control, with insulin. She’s now only measuring two weeks too big instead of three, so that’s an improvement. She moves a lot still. All important things.

Cross your fingers for me. I have two weeks to get this thing going on my own, without an induction.

In Which We Risk Medical Emergency/Financial Ruin To Meet Firefly Stars

Tags

Andy Runton, comicon, emerald city comicon, Firefly, Gina Torres, Jewel Staite, labour, Owly, pregnancy, seattle, star trek, travel

Everyone said we were crazy to do it, and we knew that they were right.

You do not travel two weeks away from your due date.

You especially do not travel close to your due date IN THE UNITED STATES.

The cost of American health care is infamous. BC radio is filled with Pacific Blue Cross commercials featuring John Cleese, in which he plays a greedy American (?) doctor called Nigel Bilkington who does x-rays on you just to make sure you have your wallet on you before you even receive care.

(Want to hear? I found one here.)

On the way to the border there are big signs reminding you that even a day trip can result in a broken bone and thousands of dollars of debt.

It’s important to remind Canadians of this because we take free health care for granted.

PH and I have cross-border insurance.

But no insurance will cover you if you wander into the states while totally full-term and end up having a baby there. I can’t even imagine what an emergency C-section or something would cost.

So why would we go?

We go to Emerald City Comicon in Seattle every year. It has become a family tradition. Every year we get a new family portrait with some geeky-famous person. The first year was George Takei.

The next year was Patrick Stewart.

My new favourite family photo

I didn’t get around to posting about it last year, but we went again and got our photos taken with Alan Tudyk, otherwise known as Wash from Firefly as well as about a million other characters.

He put his arm around me. It was awesome.

This year, Levar Burton was scheduled to be there, and I couldn’t miss my chance at getting a photo with Geordie LaForge/The Reading Rainbow guy.

So we bought tickets. I bought a maternity shirt that read “The Next Generation” right over my belly.

We also packed a hospital bag.

We figured that if we drove like hell, we could probably get back to the border within a couple of hours, and there was a hospital just across the border. All I had to do was hold the baby in ’til we got there.

Everyone told us it was a bad idea.

They were right.

The Labour Story, Part III: In Which A Son Is Born

Tags

birth, bonding, childbirth, epidural, episiotomy, labour, pregnancy, umbilical cord around neck

Sept 8th, 11:45 am

Omar Sharif coached me through a couple of experimental pushes. Reaching his hand indecently high up inside my gooch, he asked if I could feel his hand. I could. He asked me to push against it, holding my breath, which I did, and he praised me. He told me to try again, this time smiling as I did so (because apparently smiling helps pushing? Is this why babies smile when they’re gassy?). I did. Then he left me to it, with the nurses to help urge me on. I couldn’t really tell when my contractions were happening at first, because of the epidural. The monitor on my belly gave the nurses a vague idea, and soon I began to recognize a tightening in my abdomen which seemed to correspond with the monitors. The nurses began to rely on my judgment rather than the monitors, because they said that even with the epidural, I would still be more accurate than technology.

So with each contraction I’d hold my breath and push until my face turned red. I was sure I was bursting blood vessels in my eyeballs. Perfect Husband held my hand and watched with fascination, encouraging me through each push. I guess my efforts began to be visible on the other end, because he began saying “Oh, wow, love, you’re doing amazing, oh WOW…” a lot. He seemed deeply impressed with my achievements. I would push as long as I could, and when I couldn’t hold my breath any more I’d collapse onto the pillows, huffing, and wait for the next contraction. They seemed to be coming every couple of minutes so I just had enough time to try and catch my breath before the next one would hit.

Then there was an expression of shock from the nurses.

“Oh, the catheter is out!”

They had put in a urinary catheter when hooking up my epidural, and apparently I had pushed so hard that I had pushed the catheter right out. Now here’s the thing – apparently they keep those catheters in by inflating a little bulb on the inside, to kind of serve as a plug. I had pushed it out, inflated bulb and all. The nurses had never seen that happen before.

To my relief, there was no pain. I could feel everything that was going on down there, and I could feel the slight tightening of the contractions, but absolutely no pain. I was so relieved that I’m sure it added to my ability to push – the freedom from fear.

After about half an hour (I think… I wasn’t really watching the clock, just gasping for breath and then screwing my eyes shut and pushing like hell) Omar Sharif returned.

“She’s a great pusher,” said the nurse in greeting. Then they told him about the catheter, and he was duly impressed. I worried about damage to my urethra, but he said I’d just have to work extra hard at my kegels.

He took her place at my bottom and took over coaching me through the contractions. He demanded two pushes per contraction – when I finally let out my breath, he’d tell me to take another one and push again. Perfect Husband continued to watch and encourage me, and his amazement and praise were really what got me to milk just that extra drip of effort from each push.

The head began to be visible, and Perfect Husband’s encouragement went up several more notches.

“Would you like a mirror?” Omar Sharif asked me, “some women like to be able to see their progress.”

I don’t think I actually said “hell, no.” I think I politely declined. But since I was feeling no pain, I was able to pretend that everything was sunshine and roses Down There, and the last thing I wanted was anything to give me a frightening reality check. Perfect Husband’s intrigued look as he stared at my progress suggested to me that I would not see sunshine or roses in that mirror.

An hour in, the doctor reached behind him and pulled a wheely metal cart with medical supplies closer to him. Then he got out some scissors, and suture material and laid them out neatly.

“I’m going to give you some lidocaine,” he said, approaching me with a syringe.

“What, no! I said no episiotomy!” I said in alarm.

He looked at me steadily in the eyes, and said, “I think that the umbilical cord might be around the baby’s neck. I don’t want to cut you either, but I am going to give you one more push. If you can’t get the baby out, I’m going to have to make the cut.”

Now, I wish I could say that the whole “umbilical cord around his neck” thing frightened me into giving a monster push through a surge of mother love. However, that part barely registered. It was those scissors that gave me my motivation.

So when I felt the tightness of the baby’s head against my vulva, I found that hidden reserve of strength which I had not yet tapped into, and pushed for that extra couple of face-reddening, eye-bursting seconds.

Sept 8th, 12:57 pm

There was a popping feeling, and a slither, and suddenly the doctor dumped a blue, gape-mouthed baby onto my chest.

I put my arms around him feeling the slimy warmth, and stared into two massive eyes that looked almost green against the smurf-like blue skin. His face was open wide, but there wasn’t much sound coming out. I looked at the toothless void and at those eyes and tried to recognize this person as mine. It felt very surreal. His skin was peeling off of his arms, legs and body in rolls. He looked like he had been badly sunburned, except he was blue instead of red.

“Whoa,” said a nurse, “really post due.”

“Make him cry!” the doctor said, “stimulate him!”

So I rubbed his neck and jiggled him a little, “hey, hey…” I kept saying, “welcome to the world… hi… hi… hey…” and I tried to believe that this was MY baby. I had been expecting generic squish-nosed, Winston-Churchill newborn, but this baby had a very distinctive little face, which made him look like a real individual, and it was no one I had ever met before.

He was whimpering a bit but I guess that wasn’t good enough. He was whisked away from me and taken to the other side of the room and placed on the warming table. My husband went with him, and stood in the huddle of people surrounding the baby. I couldn’t see the baby for the people, but I could hear his cries beginning to strengthen, and PH would occasionally look up from the baby to send me a serious but reassuring nod across the room.

It wasn’t until later that I would understand how serious the situation had been. The monitors had been pointed away from me, which I had thought inconsiderate but now realize was probably purposeful, so as not to worry the labouring mother. So Perfect Husband, the nurses and doctor saw what I didn’t know – that his heart rate had been dropping frighteningly. Apparently there had been worried whispers among the nurses, and that was when the doctor reached for the scissors. My husband told me that until that point, he had been working hard to protect my perineum, keeping pressure on it during my pushes. But I guess the drop in heart rate scared him into reaching for the scissors.

So I avoided the episiotomy, but of course I tore anyway. While the nurses continued to stimulate Babby and weigh him (3.8 kg, 8 lb 6 oz), Dr. Sharif came over and removed my placenta, then explained to me that there was “a little tear” which he was going to sew up now. He proceeded to camp down there with his needle and thread for half a frigging hour, stitching me back together.

Meanwhile, the nurse brought Babby (looking much pinker) back to me and laid him in my arms, skin-to-skin against my belly and draped a towel over both of us to keep him warm. She placed his head near my nipple in case he wanted to latch by himself, and after a while she showed me how to position him for breastfeeding and how to get him to latch. We tried a couple of times, but he didn’t get a good latch and didn’t seem particularly interested in getting one, either. He clearly had no idea what a breast was or why I kept shoving one into his face when he had just has such a rough day. So after that I just held him, and I looked at his face and tried to recognize him while Perfect Husband sat by my side and stared at his son.

He told me that the umbilical cord HAD been around Babby’s neck, but he got overwhelmed describing it and shook his head, not wanting to continue thinking about it. Suddenly nervous, realizing fully for the first time that there actually HAD been a problem, I asked for his Apgar score and was given a reassuring 8. The 52 hour marathon was telling on me, and I was feeling exhausted and a little confused. The adrenalin of giving birth was wearing off, and my memories for this time period are hazy at best. Thankfully, we have some videos. I look tired – near asleep – but Perfect Husband looks exhausted, but radiant. You could tell, looking at him, that he had gotten the hormone dose that seemed to have missed me.

“Does he feel like yours?” I asked him as he bent over the two of us, and he nodded mistily.

“How are you feeling?” he asked gently. I think he could see that I wasn’t in quite the same state.

“He doesn’t feel like mine,” I confessed, touching the tiny stranger.

“That’s okay, he will.” Perfect Husband squeezed my hand.

“Yes. I know.”

And I did know. I was disappointed that I wasn’t feeling that big gush of mother love. I would have liked to experience that. But I trusted that it would come.

In the meantime, I just held the baby and we looked at each other and I tried to get to know him… without falling asleep.

Read Part IV: The Aftermath

The Labour Story, Part II: In Which Mohammed Ali and Omar Sharif Make An Appearance

Tags

birth, childbirth, induction, labour, mucous plug, oxytocin, pregnancy, prostaglandin gel, water breaking

Sept 7th, 5:00 pm

When we got home, PH and my mother put me to bed and I slept -fitfully- for several hours. I had vomited once in the car and once when we arrived home, but did not end up needing the bowl next to my bed. I woke up for a contraction shortly before 5:00 pm, and thought “Oh good, it’s almost 5, we can call the hospital and ask if they have a room ready for me yet.”

I felt a warm wetness between my legs, almost as if I was leaking urine…

Painfully, I rolled myself out of bed and looked at the drips trickling down my legs. I hobbled to the door and opened it. I could hear the shower running, and the TV on downstairs.

“Mum…? Perfect Husband?” I called, like a little girl who has woken up from a nightmare.

“What is it, Love?” My husband called up the stairs.

“I… think my water is breaking.”

There was a couple of thumps on the stairs and Perfect Husband appeared in the doorway within seconds. I had shuffled over to his bedside, and was mopping at my legs with kleenex.

“See? I don’t THINK I’ve wet myself…” I said, showing him the wet kleenex. As I spoke, there was a moist, slithering feeling between my legs, and then something went SPLAT on the ground.

We looked down and saw a reddish-brown gelatinous blob wobbling on our carpet.

“Huh,” said Perfect Husband. “That’s a mucus plug.”

“Yup,” I said.

There was a jingling of a dog collar and a black and white flash of fur whisked towards us.

“NO… LEAVE IT!” we hollered in unison, diving for the dog.

Just in the nick of time.

I cleaned up the gelatinous blob while my husband called Admitting to tell them my water had broken. Now, don’t get me wrong. Of course my husband would have cleaned it up, rather than leaving it to his water-dripping, contracting, pregnant wife. In fact, he was  going to. But there are some things that I feel a husband should NEVER have to do even in the most dire of circumstances, like watch me on the toilet or sit through a knitting group, and cleaning up my bloody, blobby, gooby mucus plug is one of those things.

So I posted on Facebook and the blog while PH and my mother initiated the phone trees, and then we drove to the hospital. AGAIN. I was in more pain than ever, although the pain seemed more concentrated in my abdomen and less in my back than it had been before.

Turns out the hospital still didn’t have a room for me. They put me back in one of the curtained-off beds, attached the monitor, and left me to continue my vomit-drink juice-vomit cycle. The morphine had worn off so contractions were coming close together, sometimes on top of each other, again. The nurse hooked up nitrous oxide for me, which did NOT make me laugh or even really seem to do anything at all. When a doctor finally got around to checking me (2 cm, maybe, nothing else to report), I got another morphine shot which helped space the contractions back out again.

Time passed.

Every 20 minutes PH would make me get up and walk around for 20 minutes before he would let me rest again, in an attempt to get things moving a little. He and my mother brought me juice. I would throw it up and then beg for more, which they would only let me have in small, controlled sips. I would doze a bit when on the bed, between contractions. They continued to hurt.The sounds of women screaming, followed by babies wailing, continued as background noise.

Sept 7th, 11:00 pm

We were beginning to resign ourselves to the fact that our son would not be born today.

It was nearly 11 pm before they finally had a room free for me, and more time after that before a nurse was available to initiate and monitor my oxytocin drip. The room was nice – big, private, with its own bathroom with a shower and stool for labouring in warm water, and a big chair that folded out so my mother and husband could take turns lying down on it.

They hooked up the oxytocin on a low dose, telling me that they would steadily increase it until it had the desired effect. By this time my second morphine shot had worn off, and my contractions were back to being one on top of the other. I believe it was after I had the four and a half minute long contraction, which had at least three peaks, that the tears started to come into my eyes and they offered me the epidural.

I’ve never been good at handling pain, so I always expected to need an epidural in the end. I accepted without hesitation.

Sept 8th, 1:00 am

The epidural guy came in, and introduced himself as Dr. Mohammed Ali. This is not a pseudonym. That was actually the man’s last name. I shook his hand gravely and didn’t mention the name at all, because I’m sure he gets ribbed a lot about it. But after he left there was a lot of joking about how he “knocked me out” and “stung me like a bee, then I floated like a butterfly.”

The epidural didn’t take long and the needle itself didn’t hurt much, but sitting up and leaning forward so that I was pressing into my painful abdomen was almost unbearable. It didn’t take long, though, and soon I was lying on my back in a warm puddle of bliss. The pain was gone. I could feel my legs and move them, although they were heavy and I didn’t have proper control of them. I felt warm and cozy and very comfortable. The only downside was a kind of itchy feeling, which I would scratch idly, but a slight itch was really nothing to complain about, now that I was out of pain.

I remained that way for almost 12 hours.

Finally able to doze for more than a few minutes at a time, I conked out quickly. But it was still not a prolonged and restful sleep because of course the nurse was there monitoring me. Every hour she would run ice down both my sides, asking me to tell her where the cold feeling stopped so she could make sure my epidural was still doing its job. They also kept waking me and getting me to shift positions, because the monitor kept losing the baby’s heart beat, and they weren’t sure whether the problem was the baby’s actual heart beat, or the monitor/my position.

At one point, the night was shattered by the most ear-piercing shrieks which went on and on. A woman was clearly being vivisected by Jack the Ripper in the next room. Polite conversation between my mother and the nurse ground to an awkward halt. I half sat up in bed. “Did that woman have an epidural?” I asked nervously. Would the birth still hurt that much, even with the pain medication?

When the screams finally died away, a nurse came in to spell-off my oxytocin nurse. She told us that that woman had arrived 10 cm dilated, no time to for her doctor to arrive, definitely no time for an epidural. The nurses ended up catching the baby on their own. That poor woman. If I could have found Dr. Mohammed Ali and hugged him, I think I would have.

Sept 8th, 4:00 am

The problems monitoring the heart rate continued. Sometimes it would drop down low. I couldn’t see the monitor, though my mother and husband could, and I think this was to prevent me worrying. Finally they decided to attach a sensor to his skull so they could monitor him more accurately. They went up my gooch with a little plastic stick and somehow pinned a little monitor onto the baby’s head. They told me I was at 4 cm.

By morning the right side of my epidural had worn off a little, the icy feeling lasting almost to my waist, and I could feel slight aching in that side, which made me nervous. They talked about topping me up if necessary.

Sept 8th, 9:00 am

The Wednesday OB showed up at around 8:30 or 9 in the morning. I had never met this one before, but he seemed nice. He looked like a bearded Omar Sharif in his late thirties or early forties. He pronounced me at 9 cm, and left again. I remained at 9 cm for a very long time. The nurses kept checking me and saying that there was a “rim” still and therefore it wasn’t time to push.

Sept 8th, 11:45 am

Dr. Omar Sharif returned, probably just before starting his lunch break (he was running back and forth between me and the OB clinic, you see). Though the nurses had told me only a little while before that the “rim” was still there, he pronounced me ready to push!

Read Part III: A Son is Born

The Labour Story, Part the First: In Which Absolutely Nothing Happens.

Tags

childbirth, induction, labour, overdue, oxytocin, pregnancy, prostaglandin gel

Monday, Sept 6th, 8:00 AM

Induction day. Officially I was overdue by 7 days, according to the date of my last period. According to that early ultrasound we had at 12 weeks, the baby was overdue by 11 days. Either way, my OB clinic induces at one week, since they say that reduces the occurrence of stillborns. We went in to the hospital and they put me in a bed with a monitor strapped onto my belly,told me to push a button whenever the baby moved, and left us for a while.

PH got a big kick out of being able to tell ME when the baby was moving simply by watching the heart rate spike.

“He’s kicking again”, he’d say and I’d say “Yes, yes he is”.

Then they felt up my gooch and told me that I was not at all dilated (still) and Babby was floating at -3 station (still). The hospital induction OB, who looked like Jane Lynch, warned me that there was a good chance his head might not be able to pass into my pelvis, which felt narrow to her. I’ve always thought of myself as being wide-hipped, but I guess I’m not so wide where it counts. She wanted me to prepare myself for a probable C-section.

“But still, we want to give it the old college try,” she said, “obstetrics is full of surprises, and we won’t give you a C-section until we KNOW you won’t be able to achieve a vaginal birth.”

Then she shoved the gel up my gooch and left us for an hour to think about it. It kind of burned a bit, but I didn’t feel any of the cramping or contractions they had warned me about. Then they sent me home, and told me to come back at 2:45 pm for another dose unless I suddenly went into active labour in which case I should obviously come in sooner.

I had some mild menstrual-like cramping but that was it.

Monday, Sept 6th, 2:45pm

We returned to the hospital for my next dose. They were rushing around busy so they put me in a bed with a monitor and we waited and waited for them to get around to me. The women next to me was moaning and crying behind her curtain, which I didn’t find very encouraging whatsoever. PH read out loud to me from the Princess Bride for a while and then started wandering around the ward.

“I’ve found the Christmas decorations”, he announced at one point. “At this rate, we may need them.”

FINALLY Dr. Jane Lynch showed up and poked me in private areas, which was much less comfortable now, with the cramping and all that. I mean, it was not exactly a comforting massage at the best of times. Now it was like “Oh dear gawd, what did I ever do to you?”. She told me that I wasn’t dilated at all, but Babby had moved down to -2 or so. We found this encouraging. She shoved more gel up my gooch and left me for an hour. Babby’s heart rate remained fine and I didn’t burst into active labour, so they let us go. They gave us the option of either coming back that night for a third dose, and then getting pitocin in the morning if nothing had happened, or waiting til the next day for the third dose, and getting pitocin that afternoon or evening.

We wanted to get the show on the road. We were afraid that if we held off the third dose to the next day, the baby might not even be born on Tuesday at all, and my husband would have taken a day off work for nothing. By going in late on Monday, we thought we would actually be able to produce a baby by the end of Tuesday.

We were so naive.

Monday, Sept 6th, 10:30 pm

They were still incredibly busy. We waited and waited and waited, and now I was feeling QUITE crampy and out of sorts. Finally Dr. Jane Lynch showed up and told me that absolutely nothing had changed. Oh, no, I might be almost dilated one cm. Kind of.

Another dose of gel, an hour of waiting which resulted in much stronger and more painful cramping, and the promising encouragement of “come in when you wake up and we’ll give you oxytocin”.

Good to know they had faith in their third dose of gel doing the trick.

Tuesday, Sept 7th, 5:30 am. 5:32 am. 5:35 am…

I did not sleep at all. The cramping had been kicked into contractions by the gel, but they were apparently not real contractions that actually did anything, since they had sent me home with them at 1 in the morning. I suppose it was basically the first stage of labour with  very frequent contractions. The pains started in my lower abdomen and shot up my back, with an added stabbing pain between my legs which made me really sympathize with that poor pig in Lord of the Flies. They came every two to four minutes, so I would doze of for a minute only to be woken up by another pain. I watched the clock the whole night. 2:48 am. 2:51 am. 2:54 am. 2:56 am. 2:59 am…

I took a warm bath, but I needed PH to pull me out of the tub when it got cold. I breathed deeply. I remained quiet so as to not wake PH up, since there was no point in all of us losing sleep. I rolled onto my knees and arched my back. I got up and checked Facebook. 4:21 am. 4:23 am. 4:26 am…

PH woke up to find me desperately trying to get comfortable during another contraction at around 5 in the morning. We debated about whether or not to go in. On the one hand, contractions 3 minutes apart seem to scream “active labour” but since they had sent me home like that, clearly such measures didn’t count when you had pig prostaglandins on your cervix. Eventually he called Labour and Delivery and asked them, and they seemed unconcerned. They said I could come in if I wanted my progress checked or some pain meds, but that I was not likely to be in active labour. We held out until 6:30 or so and then PH and my mother helped me, walking as gingerly as an old lady and moaning, to the car. On the way, I opened the passenger door and vomited onto the road at a stop light.

I was eased back into the damn uncomfortable hospital bed and a monitor was strapped to me again. We waited for quite a while for a doctor, occasionally assured by sympathetic nurses that we weren’t forgotten about, but they were extremely busy. Apparently the entire population of Vancouver chose to be induced/have their c-sections on the 7th, because it’s a lucky number don’t you know.

The contractions kept coming. Most of them I could breathe through but every now and then I’d get several continuous waves with no break in between, and I’d begin to whimper with tears springing in my eyes. I am not known for my stoicism. The pain seemed aggravated too by the unabashed moaning and crying from the woman next to me. She was clearly in a lot of pain and very unhappy about it, but she kept turning down pain medication. I was really motivated to breathe deeply and not whine during contractions because I didn’t want to sound like her.

Tuesday, Sept 7th, sometime late morning

Finally my own OB (who works Tuesdays) came in and told me that I was 1 cm dilated and Babby had not moved any lower. She told me that I needed oxytocin but that they were far too busy to be able to give me a room and a nurse at the moment. She offered me a shot of morphine with gravol, which I accepted.

The shot was extremely mild, obviously, and it didn’t really do much for the pain, but it had the blessed benefit of spacing out the contractions to every 5-7 minutes, and giving me the ability to doze between each contraction. PH and my mother sat there for hours, holding my hand, talking softly to each other while I dozed, and timing my contractions. They brought me juice, which I would then vomit up. Someone brought me breakfast, but just looking at it made me throw up, so that was a wash.

After I don’t know how long (my sense of time was totally shot at this point) the doctor returned and told me that she was sorry but there were STILL no rooms available and likely wouldn’t be until at least 5 pm. Did we want to just go home and wait?

Yes, yes we did.

Read Part II: In Which Mohammed Ali and Omar Sharif Make An Appearance

It sounds better if I call it swooning.

Tags

fainting, labour, pregnancy, prenatal classes

I had my glucose screening test today. Everyone told me that the stuff you drink is nauseatingly awful, but either they got the more concentrated tolerance test stuff, or my taste buds are deadened from years of Coke and Diet Pepsi addictions. It just tasted like orange pop to me.

Admittedly, sitting still in uncomfortable waiting room chairs for an hour was not fun – my legs were dancing by the end of it.

I’m curious to know what the result is, largely because I nearly fainted again last Thursday. What worries me about it was that I

a) had not been on my feet for a long period of time, but had been sitting comfortably for a little over an hour

b) was not low blood sugar, since I had just downed a bag of popcorn while sipping on some Sprite

c) was not in a stressful situation, since Perfect Husband had taken me (in celebration of my freedom from the Den of Inequity) to see Babies, which could not in any way ever be called upsetting or stressful by anyone with normal standards.

Yet, by the end of the movie (which is not long, 80 minutes or so maximum) I was extremely woozy and on the verge of passing out. Didn’t mention this to Perfect Husband, lest I ruin his saccharine boredom, until the end of the movie when the lights came up and he looked at me.

Getting up and walking around helped.

Now, maybe I was just cutting circulation off sitting for that long, but it’s not like we were sitting through frigging Avatar or Titanic or something.

I’m worried it was HIGH blood sugar.

Brings to mind that the New York Subway episode happened not twenty minutes after I’d scarfed a bag of Skittles.

OR maybe I’m a big fainty wuss and this is standard pregnancy stuff. Highly believable since my penchant for fainting goes right back to my babyhood, when my mother had me tested for epilepsy because of it (I found out about this test many years later, and it explained the bizarre memory I have of sitting in a dark room with gel and wires on my skull). I fainted when I bumped my elbow. I fainted when I had my fingers stepped on by my heavily built Jehovah’s Witness friend. I fainted when I came down with the flu (that was in a tourist trap at the Curacao Marine Aquarium while surrounded by elderly American tourists. That was fun). I fainted New Years 2009 when I sprained my ankle making up the futon for our guests.

But nearly fainting at the movies is a new one.

In other news, I’ve beginning to think about labour more. The pregnancy still has a sense of unreality to it, despite the squirming of a baby which the books tell me is very clearly a baby now – 14 inches long and making faces at me all day long. However, I know I’m going to go to the OB on Monday and they’re going to ask again if we’ve signed up for prenatal classes.

I’m not sure what it is that makes me not want to do it. When I was younger I always assumed I would. But now, the idea of paying 300 dollars so I can huff and puff in front of other couples and be forced to listen to dumbed-down pep talks explaining things I already know from grade 11 Family Studies plus the BAZILLION pregnancy books I’ve read… really sounds like a waste of money. Especially since Lamaze has been shown in studies to be no more effective than a placebo, and Perfect Husband and I don’t really value the “meet other people” angle, since we don’t really like people.

But at the same time, I would like to be able to practice breathing techniques, self-hypnosis and so on, which HAVE been proven to have an effect. I would also like it if Perfect Husband knew what to do when I started to freak out and (knowing me) pass out from the excruciating pain. I’m expecting to accept pain medication (probably an epidural) but I want to learn how to keep my anxiety down, since I know fear and tension will only make the pain worse and slow down my labour.

Are prenatal classes really worth the 300 bucks (keep in mind that we are down to a single income until my EI decided to come in, probably three weeks or more from now)? Can anyone recommend a book about staying calm during labour?