induction, lessons on.
it might be difficult, but birth story, here we go:
so. we had an appointment with good ole dr. hersh for 10 am, monday morning the 26th of april. it would be our second attempt at the stripping of the membranes, and he wanted to talk induction. andy and i very much didn't want to talk induction, and we spent much of sunday getting our stories straight, strategizing and making plans of how we would convince dr. hersh to wait until friday, april (god, i don't even know what that friday was? the 30th?) to induce. rushing things seemed...unsavory. plus, i had spent the weekend reading horror stories.
i could not sleep sunday night. on the way to the appointment, we got caught in a bout of horrific la traffic, enough to make me call the doctors office and tell them we'd be late. once we got to the doctors office, we ended up waiting almost 45 minutes to get in. for those who know me well, you can already tell that the morning was gearing up toward catastrophe in my head.
but we got there, and he was glad to see us, though very dubious regarding our friday plans. he stripped the membranes. it hurt only slightly less than the first time. he did an ultrasound, and immediately looked a whole lot more dubious. prognosis: i was running a bit low on amniotic fluid. he was going to send me to another more involved test to measure, but if i came in under 8 (not sure what unit), induction would commence, pronto.
the other test took not long enough at all, and we were told that our amniotic fluid number was 5ish. nowhere near the needed 8. she pointed us in the direction of labor and delivery.
and, see, here? this is where the whole thing gets pretty cloudy for me. i know i stood in the kaiser corridor for a long time looking out the window. i know i called my mom and cried. i might have called my dad. i know that both andy and i talked to our doula aimee. she kept telling me not to be frightened. i kept trying to hide the fact that i was crying.
its a long walk from my obgyn's office to labor and delivery. and i remember none of it. really. none at all. i remember the corridor of tears, and i remember getting off the elevator on the fourth floor of the new hospital wing, and not knowing where to go. that's all.
it was the most crowded that kaiser's labor and delivery department had ever been. leave it to us to have a baby when the barometric pressure was off the hook, one day away from the full moon, and on a tuesday, to boot. all the rooms were full, so they had to put us in an "isolation room." really. plus, they rarely have to use that room, so no one knew, at least until we had been there for a few hours, that:
1. the clock didn't work (this was the last thing, though it should have been the first, that we realized).
2. the bed was broken. really.
3. the sink didn't make hot water.
(they did bring us a new bed, and a very scared young man named jeremy came that evening to fix the sink, but the clock confounded us well into the next day).
now this? this is where things get REALLY cloudy. i was having mild contractions when i got there, which was probably around noonish (hard to tell, what with the broken clock). at 1pm, they started the pitocin drip. at first, it felt like rough cramps. stay home from work cramps, but nothing that would make you cry. sometime around 2, my mom came and together with andy, we started to play cards.
an aside: i need to learn some card games. collectively, we only knew 21 and crazy eights, and we had to explain crazy eights to andy.
it was during the card games that things began to increase steadily. at 3 we called our doula and suggested she hurry.
by 4, i was in hell. the contractions were huge, with no time at all between them. aimee pushed on my hips, my mom watched the contraction chart, and i cried and eventually made a hard decision: i threw my "natural" birth plan out the window, right onto la cienega boulevard, four stories below, and told the nurse to get the epidural guy.
i had so wanted to go without the epidural, we had such faith in our "natural" birth plan, but the pitocin had only been going for a few hours, the doctor had mentioned the potential of the boy not even making an appearance until the next day, and the pain was just magnificent. magnificent. nothing i could take even a couple more hours of. and so, i caved.
sergio the epidural man made everyone leave the room, which made me incredibly nervous, until it made me stronger. i took the shot like a champ, and felt fine (not great. but fine.) for the next several hours, as my l&d room got kind of crowded between aimee the doula, andy, my mom, my dad and andy's mom. that doesn't sound crowded, but when you're fastened to your bed with monitors, ivs, blood pressure gauges and catheters, and five other people are there, hanging out, telling funny stories, bringing gifts and calling other people, life can get very overwhelming. still, i'm glad they were there. i was still pretty terrified of what could happen next, and having my family with me assuaged a lot of anxiety.
hilarious aside: once they left, i tried to watch gossip girl. really. half numb, in labor and delivery. surprisingly, it seemed like the most vapid show ever. huh.
around ten pm, the midwife came to break my water, and i think they lowered my pitocin. it was also around this time that i realized for sure that my epidural had only numbed one half of my body. yes, only one half of my body. amazing. for the first of many times that night, we called sergio back.
aimee and andy remained through the night, trading off between the sofa and the very uncomfortable looking chairs in the room. they might have slept more than i did, which was good as i needed a little alone time to buck up a bit, but we all got a little bit of sleep that night.
sometime around 4 or 5 things started to get intense again, as i was approaching 9.5 cm dilation and 100% effacement. again, the pressure was intense, and the urge to do something about it difficult to manage. i kept begging, and then demanding to push, and all the nurse kept saying is not yet not yet. which is NOT what i wanted to hear. it was around this time that she became my mortal enemy.
aimee and andy did what they could with hand massagers on my lower back, and i did what i could to not strangle our nurse (which was not much considering i could only move one half of my body and was literally tethered to the bed with wires and tubing).
the minutes between 5 and 7 am ticked by so slowly, with very little progress between 9.5 and 10 centimeters. do you know how big half a centimeter is? most of the time? tiny. when it counts? HUGE. for two hours, i hated half-centimeters. and centimeters. and, considering the clock, all units of measurement.
but sometime around 7, after yelling at aimee that i HAD to push (i was no longer talking to the nurse, so i resorted to yelling at aimee), she looked me in the eye, and said, "go for it."
(also a bonus? you know when hospital shifts change? at seven a.m. so literally, right in the middle of this, something like 8 brand new people in the room. magically. i literally opened my eyes and there they were. and i had this thing about knowing everybody's name, so right in the midst of all of this, i'm introducing myself and making sure i'm pronouncing everybody's name right...)
i don't know how many pushes. aimee and andy said it all took less than 40 minutes. i know at one point, the doctor looked at me and said, "just one more!" but i was making three pushes with each contraction, so i had to stop the process and clarify if she meant one more push, or one more contraction (which would mean three more pushes). i caught her rolling her eyes at me.
she was right, though. the very next push had me thinking i couldn't do another. the one after that i could barely breathe through. halfway through the third, though, i caught a second wind, and thought that maybe i would make it through this after all, wow, its not really THAT bad, and then i heard all the nurses yelling and cheering, and the doctor call out "there's some light curly hair here", and squilish, there he was (see the previous post for more on this part).
arlo jacob sorrentino snavley was born on tuesday the 27th of april (my nana's birthday) at 7:52 am. he weighed 7 pounds, 10.2 ounces and was 19.75 inches long.
tomorrow is his three week birthday. at his pediatrician's appointment last wednesday, he was 8 pounds, 5 ounces, and 21 inches long, growing speedily and well.
there are days when he is an absolute peach. then there are nights like last night, when he shoots poop across the room while andy is trying to change him. i have never, in my life, been this tired, which is a lot to say given my twenties in portland. but, just when i think i can't do it anymore, that its just too damn hard, i'm too tired, my body is killing me, etc, (and a lot that i don't feel like alerting the world to is falling under that "etc"), i look down at him and he's looking up at me, and...i...i don't even know. i am owned. i have never loved anything more.
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