The Birth Story, Part 2

So, I had been on the Pitocin all day, and into the night, I started feeling very uncomfortable... the whole day I had been having contractions, but they weren't consistent and they didn't feel very strong. By midnight, hubby was asleep and the intensity began to increase... the monitor showed they were coming every 2-3 minutes. I began breathing through the pain and thinking to myself, wow this could be it... my second thought was, wow, i'm so tired, how am i going to do this?

And then.... i fell asleep. Yes, passed out, fell fast asleep, had a one way ticket to la la land.

When I awoke a few hours later, the contractions had almost stopped completely. I was now actually pumped up to the max dose of pitocin (20mL) and barely feeling a thing. The pain was on par with light period cramps... say what!

Dr J was back on call for the weekend and she came to check me. Another fun internal (note the sarcasm in that) revealed NO progression. Still only 3.5 cm dialated and only 50% effaced. I was presented with 2 options. They could give me a bit of a break, then go in and break my water and restart the pitocin and hope that breaking my water would give me a better outcome, OR i could opt to just go for a scheduled C-section. The dr and nurse left hubby and me to chat about what we wanted to do. Let me say, this was one of the hardest decisions I had to make. This entire time the words C-section had never even crossed my mind. But at that point, it was Saturday and I had been in the hospital since Wednesday, basically just "hanging out"... After talking to a few mommy friends for their opinion, I made the decision to just go for the C-section. It was time to get this baby out. My reasoning behind my decision was that Baby Camb was behaving perfectly... everyone said his heartbeat and movements were text book perfect. What if I opted to break the water and he went into distress? He was happy as a clam in there, so why not just go in and get him out and not stress him out... and in the end, that's just what we did.

Once the decision to do the C-section was made, things moved quickly. Forms were filled out, scrubs were given to the hubby and we walked down to the OR. I was scared the spinal block was going to hurt, but I had a great anesthesiologist and it really was no big deal. It's basically the same kind of procedure as the epidural, they shoot you up with some lidocaine and then administer the block. Then they laid me down on the operating table and waited for me to numb up. There were a bunch of people in the room, my dr, an assistant OB, scrub nurses, neonatologist and finally hubby at my head.

The whole experience of a C-section is completely surreal. The fact that I knew I had legs, but couldn't feel them was wild. It's like when you go to the dentist and get novacaine and feel like your lip is huge. I felt like I had elephant legs... and I knew they were there, but when I tried to wiggle my toes, nothing happened! Soon they were cutting into me, and I felt all kinds of tugging and pressure, but no pain. After a while, I felt lots and lots of pushing on my chest/stomach area... like someone was literally standing on me jumping up and down... I started mini freaking out and hubby was quick to calm me down and told me that I was fine and to just look at him and our son would be there soon. And then.... a very loud wail!

Our son was finally here. Cue the sobbing from both the hubs and me. They cut his cord and whisked him over to the neonatologist while he screamed his head off (a very good sign!). After a few minutes, hubby was able to go over and see him and they brought him over to me... and he was perfect in every way. 10 fingers, 10 toes, chubby little cheeks, and a hell of a wail! He measured a 9 on the Apgar scale and weighed in at 7lbs, 5oz and 20" long. In that moment, I fell in love...

After letting me see him for a few minutes, hubby went with him to recovery, while they put me back together - more pulling, poking, pressure. Then finally I was wheeled to recovery for some skin to skin with my son.