The Story

Posted by Emily on February 25, 2010

I pulled this together from a few emails I sent people asking specific questions….

It really was smooth sailing until after the actual birth. I went in Wed night to be induced Thurs morning at my drs insistence, but I went into labor Wed night while at the hospital. Which I was really happy about because I was terrified to be induced! They gave me an ambien, but that was a joke, you can’t sleep through that. I think it put me out for two hours before the pain would not be ignored. Ha.

Around 6am I started having what I thought was back labor, but now I know that there literally wasn’t enough room in there (small uterus….) for her to change from the great birthing position she was already in. I think that when she dropped a little lower it aggravated my tailbone. Holy hurt! I was having hard, fast (about a minute and a half apart), often double peaked contractions and I was so exhausted that I would fall asleep for like 20 seconds in between them, only to wake up startled by the pain every time. Not super pleasant. It quickly got to the point that I couldn’t walk during contractions and David putting counter pressure on my lower back while I held onto the rails of the bed for dear life only got me so far.

At 9am I decided that nothing was worth feeling contractions, that BACK PAIN, and being startled by it every time (I think that’s what really got me, it was making me lose my mind… seriously, you don’t want to be startled by that kind of back pain over and over again). Got an epidural. I still had a lot of sensation. I could tell the difference between hot and cold and move around without any issues, not that they would let me, but I didn’t think I was dying anymore.

I had the urge to push before they would let me, they tell me that because of the way everything was going in there, that if I hadn’t had the epidural that I wouldn’t have been able to help myself, would have pushed, she would have come even faster, and I would have hemorrhaged my cervix. Clearly that would have been a disaster since the placenta thing was inevitable, and I’m sure it would have taken them longer to a) figure out that I was hemorrhaging in two places and b) get both places to stop bleeding… but will get to the placenta thing.

At around 2:10 I started pushing and 2:28 she was out. They tell me that the epidural slowed down my labor- a lot, but really, it’s not like it was very long.

This next part of the story took about forty minutes from start to finish. However, I’m a little hazy on things from that point on… and you’ll see why.

The problem began after that when the cord broke off and left the placenta in my uterus. Turns out I have a funny shaped uterus (unicornuate?), which would have been the source of my first trimester woes, anyway, the placenta was stuck in a little nook of uterus. They had to scrape it out (emergency d&c), some of it in bits, and call in a specialist. As this was happening, basically they were just giving me more and more drugs because… it hurt! I can’t imagine the pain if I hadn’t already had something going in my system.

(obviously this part was an explanation to someone’s question) When they give you an epidural they give you a big dose and then little doses to keep it up. What I mean by flushing is that they gave me two big doses (along with two shots of another narcotic- fentanyl) while I was lying there getting scraped out.

I know that they shot something into my leg too, I think it was something to try to stop the bleeding, and gave me antibiotics because a couple of people had to dig around in me…. but by that time I was pretty out of it….

Other than that, everything was great!

Also, turns out my placenta really was weird and they sent it off to the lab.

So two very good reasons to have been drugged up. Who knew? Well, clearly the Lord did. My husband is convinced that I fell down the stairs and busted up my tailbone so that I would have to get an epidural. Personally, I would have liked the Lord to send a postcard, but I’m sure He had his reasons and I’m not upset in the least.

I still think the fewer interventions the better generally, even though it may never be an option to me with what we know now about my body, but how can I really be anything other than grateful? Modern medicine totally saved my butt.

On a lighter note. No hemorrhoids, no stretch marks. I call them my consolation prizes.