Alina Angelika GloverApril 28th, 2008
8:57 PM
4 lbs 15 oz
Born @ 36 weeks
She's finally here! If you're interested, here's my labor/birth story...
I went into the hospital on Sunday because I had been having really high blood pressure and wasn't feelin well at all. So they monitored me in labor and delivery and saw that my blood pressure was through the roof and my heart rate kept dropping. Then I had a couple of braxton hicks during which the baby's heart rate dropped.
So then they moved me to an observation room and kept me over night monitoring the baby and me. The doctor did two ultrasounds to measure the baby and make sure that she would be developed enough to be ok outside of the womb in case they wanted to induce labor.
In the morning they decided to do a contraction stress test so they gave me some pitocin and monitored the baby's heart beats (which dropped during some of the contractions). The doctors then decided that it would be safer to induce labor than to send me home and let me go full term because the baby's heart beat kept dropping.
So they took me off the pitocin and put me on something else (a pill) that I took by mouth and started inducing labor. They then moved me to a labor room and I was in labor from 6 am until 8 pm with strong contractions but I wasn't dilating past 1 cm.
Then, suddenly, at around 8 pm I was having very strong contractions during which the baby's heart rate dropped and stayed low during the entire contraction (7 minutes) and the doctor said "OK that's enough. We need to do a c-section."
The funny thing is that 10 minutes before that they told me and Anthony that I would probably be in labor another 24 hours so to relax. Anthony decided to run home really quick to feed our cat and to grab my hospital bag and some dinner for himself. I had to call him and tell him to turn right back around because they were going to do a c-section the second he arrived. So he threw some cat food in the bowl, grabbed our digital cameras and came back to the hospital.
I cried and I was really upset because I did NOT want a C-section. I was so upset about it because I felt robbed of the whole birth experience. I WANTED the contractions to hurt and to feel them until the end. I WANTED to push my child out and get to hold her the second I delivered her. I wanted all that and now I knew I wasn't going to get it.
So they rolled me into the operating room and gave me the epidural and started preparing me for the c-section. Anthony came in at the last minute and sat by my head. I was crying and shaking because I was terrified that they would mess my c-section up (umm....this WAS a military hospital after all....). But then, they cut me open and told Anthony to look if he wanted to watch his daughter come out. Anthony stood and started snapping pictures and I fel a lot of pressure and then one of the doctors started pushing down on my uterus really hard and I felt my baby slide out.
A full minute went by before my baby made a sound. I started panicking because I assumed all babies (healthy ones anyway) scream their heart out the second they come out. The anesthesiologist saw that I was getting nervous and told me not to worry because they had to wake the baby up. She came out asleep and was just wriggling around and making faces instead of screaming. Then I heard her squeak a couple of times and she started screaming once they began to clean her.
I started crying REALLY hard because it was th most beautiul sound I had ever heard. I could not believe she was finally here and I just wanted to know she was healthy. They finally finished cleaning her and weighing her and brought her to my face so I could see her and kiss her. I kissed her little eye and they whisked her away again.
So I cried. I was pissed off that I couldn't follow her because I had to wait for them to sew me up and stuff. After being put back together, I was wheeled into recovery. I was laying in recovery and was told that I couldn't see Alina until I could feel my legs enough to lift my ass off the bed. Let me tell you- I moved and wiggled my toes and shook my legs and MADE my damn legs wake up. The nurse was totally surprised at how quickly I was able to lift my ass off that table.
They moved me into the maternal/infant unit and I was asking "So when can I see my baby???" and the nurse told me that I would have to be able to STAND on my own and lower myself into a wheelchair. Fuck. Well, I kept moving and shaking my legs and wiggling my toes nonstop and within 5 minutes I told the nurse to bring me the damn wheelchair. She had doubts, but I did it and she was amazed.
My hubby then wheeled me into the NICU and I saw my baby hooked up to all these machines and I was terrified. They explained to me that she was fine, perfectly healthy but just neeeded a little extra oxgen. She was able to breathe on her own but was only getting 70% of oxygen. So they put her under an oxygen hood to supply her with the additional 30%. She remained stable and within 24 hours she was off the oxygen. I couldn't hold her in the mean time, so I was kind of losing my mind by Tuesday. Wednesday morning I was able to hold my baby for the first time. It was amazing.
Everything went well, I felt fine, she did amazing and we were discharged on Friday.
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