Astrid will turn three weeks on Wednesday and life is pretty good. But she didn't get here by any of my plans or expectations. Nothing about my pregnancy was as I expected. I was told that having a birthing plan was a joke, but I was going to at least try to be prepared. She was suppose to be born as natural as possible- with no drugs and to come on her own. That is not what happened at all....
On Tuesday the 31, one day and week after my due date, I was induced at 6am. My doctor didn't want the chance of her being too big or worse, my body starting to break down before the pregnancy was over. She was estimated to be about six pounds, so I wasn't worried about her getting too big. I wasn't too excited about the idea of induction, but I had also seen the hurt a lost pregnancy can cause. That was something I wanted even less and was willing to take my chances. Since I was given an medications to speed up my labor, I was bed ridden the moment I got to the hospital. I couldn't walk around and was hooked up to monitor the whole time, even when going to the bathroom (something I had to do often). At first, the drugs weren't so bad and I could take the contractions. My pain threshold is a little higher than moderate, so I can take a lot before I am worn out or ask to stop. As an example, for those who don't like needles or pain, I gave each nurse that tried to give me an IV line three chances. None of them took my challenge, but it took three different nurses one try each to get an IV in my hand. And it hurt but I dealt with it. So when my contractions finally started to come, I dealt with it...
...for 8 hours. Some women don't even labor for that long. By the time it was 3 in the afternoon, my contractions where three minutes apart and had been for at least the last three hours. I was in a lot of pain, the worse I had ever experienced. We had taken child-birthing classes, so I knew how to breathe and what to expect from the delivery. John and I had also discussed why we would or would not get pain medication, it being a worse case scenario. However, I had gotten to the point of trying to claw myself out of the bed every three minutes. My poor husband had to watch me suffer for what felt like forever. Eventually I would just moan and cry "help me", because I was in too much pain to do anything else. By the third time I was checked for dilation and had not made any progress, I was begging for an epidural. And I got one.
I was really scared while the anesthesiologist was doing his thing. I had heard or read so much about how this was the worst thing to do, EVER, that I had all the horrible things running through my head. My husband was told to step back away from me and he couldn't even hold my hand. And just because I was getting an epidural didn't mean the pain was gone. The anesthesiologist told me not to move, but I was still having severe contractions. The nurse stepped in and talked me through the last few contractions I had to feel and for the most part, held me down. Then, after about 20 minutes, all went numb. And I fell asleep.
Periodically, a nurse would wake me and check my dilation. Since I could rest, my body started to respond to the labor. By 8pm, I was six centimeters; at 11, I had dilated completely to ten centimeters. At 11, I could have started pushing, but I wanted Astrid to be born on June 1st, which was still at least an hour away. The nurse obliged and let me rest until a quarter till midnight. Then the pushing started. At about 12:20, my doctor was called and told to come back to the hospital. Yes, you read that right and I didn't know this until I was in the situation. You start pushing BEFORE your doctor arrives, since most of what s/he will do is catch. My doctor showed up and I continued to push. At 1:03am, Astrid was born and all the excitement started.
My late night/early morning concluded with a microwavable Cup-a-Soup and a short
introduction to my daughter. Then, I went to bed. When I awoke later in the morning around 8, I was surprised that no one had brought Astrid back to our recovery room. I began to get worried and had John go to investigate. He came back to let me know that Astrid needed to
be put on a little oxygen, her color was a little pale. I was in intense pain from the delivery so I waited for a nurse to come and help me with the morning after recovery routine (including going to the bathroom). Soon after, I waddled down to the nursey.
Poor Astrid, she was under a heat lamp and her head in a clear plastic "box" that was giving her extra oxygen. And poor me, because after 10 minutes out of bed, I started to get dizzy and almost passed out (worrying about my baby had made me completely forget the ordeal that I had just gone through). I was helped back to bed and waited for the pediatrician to come and talk to us. Once she did, we were told that Astrid needed to be transferred to another hospital with better Neonatal facilities, because of the oxygen worries. Astrid was picked up by 2pm.
Do I stay and recover? Do I check out and make sure I can be with my baby? It was hard to decided but I left my hospital at 7pm that day, hours after I had been in labor for 18 hours. I saw Astrid again at 8, in an incubator and hooked up to wires. She also had an IV in her hand because she was given anti-biotics. It was quite scary, since she wasn't even 24 hours old yet.
She was in the hospital for seven days, just long enough to bother me. Well, too long for me. After a few days, she no longer needed oxygen and was just finishing the anti-bolic regiment, which is why she needed the IV. We would visit her twice a day to feed and be with her. Adjusting to being a parent of a child in the critical care unit was overwhelming and sometimes too much for me. Thank goodness I have such a strong husband and my parents where here. I think I would have been a complete reck if I hadn't been able to be with my mother.
She arrived home on her one week "birthday". It was great to ride home with her sleeping in
the car and then being held and cuddled by the grandmas. That was all the fun. Soon, we had to get into a rythm and figure out what it meant to be parents. We had missed a whole week of her life and she needed to get use to us as much as we needed to get use to her. The biggest thing now is lack of sleep. Best way around that? Sleep when she sleeps. You can'talways, but it helps to try.
The hospital seems like it was the hardest thing to overcome. Being a mom feels like second nature. New things I have discovered:
1. My baby is very pale. Her skin is very red or pink and sometimes I worry that I have hurt her because of her color. You don't have to worry about that with darker babies, their skin does not leave red marks when you pick them up or put them down.
2. It is really difficult to wake her up. She doesn't just wake up when you make noise, it takes her at least ten minutes to stretch her way out of slumber.
3. I am really tired and cranky at 2:30 am if I have only slept for 4 hours.
4. All I want to do is be mommy to Astrid.
My plan "B" baby has been the greatest gift I could have been given, or made, depending on how you look at it. She has single-handedly improved my already great marriage and is the center of my world right now. I'm still learning about her (like how long to wait after she poops to know she is done, but before she starts to cry because she is uncomfortable or what each cry even means) and she is surly trying to figure me out. She is the new love of my life (sorry John).
More post to come.
