Birth Story - Part 2!

To start with, how about a recap?

• Find out AFI = 4.1 (aka amniotic fluid is low!), induction is recommended. Currently 50% effaced and 0 dilation (darn that cervix of steel I prayed for!!)
• Arrive at Labor and Delivery - to get told we are full, please go have dinner and come back.
• FIVE rounds of oral cytotec - finally 2cm dilated, but still 50% effaced. Just as a timeline, each round of cytotec took four hours, two of which I had to lay in bed hooked to monitors, one hour I could eat something light, and another hour we could walk around. Made it this far with two extra strength tylenol. Contractions 2-3 minutes apart consistently.
• Pitocin is started - was on it for at least five hours, laying in those uncomfortable labor beds, hooked up to blood pressure cuff, penicillin drip, plus the contraction and baby monitors. Dilation finally up to 2.5cm with same effacement. Discouragement. Tears. Contractions are now 7 in 10 minutes. Pitocin is turned off. At this point we are over 24 hours in to the induction. Send James home to sleep because obviously it is going to be awhile still.
• Take a small break to shower, walk around, eat, and then Cervidil inserted. After 12 hours, I am checked again. No change, just irritated cervix. Joy.
• Decide to try cytotec again. SIXTH Cytotec...oral due to cervix irritation. No change. Surprise, surprise.
• SEVENTH cytotec - vaginal. Spread out to every 6 hours for dosing due to different doctor. no further dilation but getting "mushier" they didn't tell me how effaced I was.
• EIGHTH cytotec - vaginal. Right around 3cm!! YAY! 
• Doctor decides it is time to break water, learn I didn't have low AFI (I gushed!).
• Pitocin is started again. Officially in what I would consider active labor. Back labor too. Not so fun.

Back labor was intense, and with monitors I was forced to pretty much lay flat on back because it was the only spot Matthew would cooperate and allow them to have him hooked up. When the doctor broke my water they took off the contraction monitor belt, and inserted the vaginal contraction monitor. By the time I finally talked them into letting me try sitting on the side of the bed so I could have my back rubbed for the back contractions...my cervix was SO sore from the monitor being up there. Back ached from labor (and laying in that horrid bed for over 60 hours at this point), cervix too sore to sit up, feeling miserable.

I caved. This woman that was shooting for completely natural, no pain medications...caved. The back labor, lack of sleep, uncomfortable bed, all made for one grumpy painful Jessica. I asked for an epidural.

Which took three tries to get it inserted into the correct place in my back. THREE. Breathing through contractions hunched over, getting SO angry and frustrated at the process of trying to place the epidural. Before epidural I was not making any change, still hanging tight at 3cm. Moments after epidural and getting cathed (which btw, I had avoided getting up to restroom because of how much pain I was in sadly...they got almost a full bag of urine out of my bladder. Insert jokes about having a nurses bladder already. At least it gave me something to laugh about!!), I was a FOUR!!! WOOHOO!!

Nurse informs me that it usually takes about an hour per cm for first time moms from this point forward. So we figure we have about six hours. Two hours later, after a nap, they check me again and find out I am SIX cm!! WOOHOO!! Baby is trying to come down the canal with head tipped so Dr. P has me roll over on my left side to persuade him to move some. James is getting stir crazy, so he heads over to rite aide to get us toothbrushes and a couple razors. He comes back about 45 minutes later to find me feeling like the baby is coming. Rolling on my side must have helped him engage more! I am experiencing so much pressure I ask James if he will look and see if he can see the baby. His response? "I'm not a *#@$ing doctor." Both of us are on the edge from the induction process and ready for baby Matthew to be here. 

We call the nurse, and of course my nurse is busy! I tell the nurse that answered call light that I am experiencing some intense pressure. She asks if I am feeling it more in my bottom or towards the front. At this point it was towards my bottoms, so she informs me I have a little while still. FINALLY my nurse comes in. She has me roll on my back and agrees to check me. She is rather surprised and says, "We are having a baby! Let me go tell Dr. P." 

The nurse, Christie, has James grab my left leg. And looks at Missy and says, "Hey sis, grab the right leg!" The pushing begins. It was this crazy feeling, exactly what you hear from people that you just KNOW you need to push. I am pushing and feeling like the baby is going to be here so soon, and my doctor still is no where to be seen. Christie is applying the lube and stretching me, when I finally ask, "WHEN IS DR. P GOING TO BE HERE!?!" Her response? "Soon, I am doing what she normally does!"

I am grunting some at this point, and feel like I am being ridiculously loud. So much that I apologize  and everyone laughs and asks me if I have been hearing the other women on the hall! The screams you hear are quite ridiculous at times let me tell you. I remember thinking if the woman put more effort into pushing and less into screaming maybe their baby would be there sooner. LOL And I have to say I still think that to this day!

Dr P finally comes in, looks at me, and stunned says, "Wow! We're going to have a baby! How long has she been pushing?"

"10 minutes."

"Woah! I thought I had time, went to my office, got my pen to sign the birth certificate...." Everyone laughs, except me. Dr P tries telling me to breath through this next contraction. 

I try, I really do, but my body is unrelenting. I manage to say, "I can't my body is pushing on it's own! I need to push!" 

Christie and Dr. P keep telling me I am doing great, especially for a first time mom. Each contraction I get a good three pushes in. And I tell you, I felt like a warrior (minus the epidural that I caved and got haha!). I even got to reach down and feel his head. It was AMAZING!! The monitor keeps losing his heart rate, and I can sense the concern from my doctor. So they do the heart rate monitor on baby that screws into his head with a small needle (SO glad I didn't know this at the time, all I knew was it was internal and could get the one off from my belly!).

At one point I yell (or rather it felt like yelling to me), "I want him OUT!" The nurse and the doctor laugh and again reiterate how wonderful I am doing, and Christie even adds that I am going to beat the woman next door that has been pushing for 2 hours already, with what I believe she said was her second child! 

Finally I am asked how I feel about a small cut, not an episiotomy, just a small cut to help give direction to the tear that is inevitably going to happen. I had been SO against getting cut, but at this point I say yes. She does a small little cut and one more push and little buddy's head is out! SUCH a relief. 

A friend once described the body coming out as kind of like the feeling of a fish flopping out of you, and I definitely have to agree!! One more push and out came our little man! And the shock and disbelief of seeing him. It was love at first sight, I couldn't believe he was finally here. I couldn't believe that he came out of me. 

He cries for the first 30 seconds and then is just alert and looking around. Immediately he is placed on my chest, and James gets to cut the umbilical cord (which James said was like cutting leather!). They take Matthew and clean him up, he isn't turning pink like they want him to, but his pulse ox is 100% with the oxygen on his face. So they continue with foot and hand prints. Then take him over to get weighed. Our little man is officially here weighing 6lbs 3.5oz, 20inches long at 6:24pm, 71 hours after beginning my first dose of cytotec, 6 hours after having my water broke, and only 30-45 minutes of pushing.

Yet this isn't the end. I give a small push and out comes the placenta. At this point I can see the concern mounting on Dr. P's face. My uterus keeps bleeding without ceasing. Thankfully the pitocin is still hooked up. They crank that and the fluids up and slowly my uterus contracts down and bleeding stops. 

Matthew is handed back to me and immediately his color improves. It was amazing to see! I am in awe and with tears in my eyes I ask James if he wants to hold him. His response, "I don't know how!" It was so cute and made my heart so happy to see him with tears in his eyes looking at us. He let me know so many times how great I did, and how beautiful I was. And how perfect our son was. James is a keeper, that is for sure!

I ask the nurse to help pass Matthew to James as I am still hooked up to the IV and the blood pressure cuff at this point. She says to him, "Here you go dad, your little burrito." And his nickname was born :-)

The doctor finishes stitching me up, informs me it was a very small tear and it won't take six weeks to heal. The epidural is starting to wear off and I am ready to get up to go to the restroom, they make me wait awhile and cath me instead.

I got to breast-feed our little guy, he does awesome and latches right on. Not going to lie it brought tears to my eyes to be able to experience such an amazing thing. 

Our favorite nurse came back on at this point, and she lets us know that Matthew needs to head to the nursery within an hour. James went with him. And I finally get to get out of that uncomfortable bed to go to the restroom. 

They warned me about the stitches hurting, but they were NOTHING compared to my bruised tail bone! It was the WORST and it still bugs me some days. We got to move over to the Mother/Baby Unit, and I got to push the birth button to make that amazing sound come across the hospital intercom. 

And in case anyone is curious, I didn't poop during delivery. :-) HAHAHA I had warned Missy and James, "I'm probably going to poop. A lot of women poop." Missy and James both let me know I didn't and it was quite exciting ;-)

And that my friends is the story of Matthew's Birth. But it wouldn't be the end of waiting and being frustrated for us. It was just the end of one chapter and the beginning of another chapter!

Two Weeks Old

Matthew,

How is it that two weeks have already passed? Two weeks. 14 days old already. I love every thing about you. Your little grunts, squeaks, that little noise that sounds like a billy goat, or the one that reminds me of a squirrel laughing. I adore the gassy little smiles. And the cuddles late in the night. Your long fingers, and skinny little toes. The Hillard thought/scowl lines. Your wrinkly old man butt and legs (I cannot wait to see you get some meat on your bones!), and your kissable little cheeks that are just now starting to fill out some.You are so perfect.

You have only been here two weeks but my heart feels like I have known you much longer. Before I carried you in my womb, I carried you in my heart. I carried you in my hopes and prayers. I begged, pleaded, cried, and fought depths of sadness to get to you. All the while somehow keeping the hope alive that one day God would bless us, and give us you. And you are so incredibly worth every moment of that journey.

Today I got out some "My First Christmas" items from my Christmas tote, and Daddy asked me where I got them from. I told him, I bought them before we had ever lived together, on clearance one year. He looked at you and said, "Mommy has been planning for you for a very long time." And it is true. To be honest, before I even knew God, before I would have even dreamed about getting married, I knew that one day I would be a mom.

Right now you are laying on my chest. And you always manage to scoot and squirm yourself so your head is over my heart. You could sleep there for hours and hours. You are so precious to me. My heart is so full. I have to be honest, I was concerned about baby blues and postpartum depression, but I look at you and I don't know how I could be sad. You are an answer to my prayers. You are a miracle. And you make my heart so happy. Any tears I have cried are over how amazing God is, and how incredibly blessed I am. The other day when taking you to town it still felt like a dream, could it be that you really were mine, that I wasn't simply babysitting like I had done all my life? I decided if it was a dream, anyone that came up to pinch me to wake me up I would punch them in the face and run away :-)

You have had a busy first couple weeks meeting family, and friends of Mommy & Daddy's. Then came your doctor's appointment, you gained an ounce! Your next appointment is this coming Thursday and I cannot wait to see how much you weigh. You have been eating like a champ, but last night you had such an upset tummy from gas that we had to give you gas drops for the first time. I am so sorry you got my side of indigestion issues. You get hiccups every time you eat and then we lay you right down.

I am pretty sure you had a clogged tear duct, so I made sure to use a warm clean wash cloth several times a day to clean your eye and rub the duct on each inner eye. It has gotten better, so I am assuming my guess was right, otherwise daddy and I were thinking allergies.

Funny moments have happened for us as well, I cannot tell you how many times you have peed on yourself, in spite of my best efforts to keep it from happening. Then came the time that I decided to try to be lazy and change you on my lap. That back fired on me, and on my light pink shirt. Lovely yellow breast milk poop. All down the front. Hilariously disgusting. I think the shirt is forever stained!

Well it is time for me to go pump, and for bed time.

Love you little man. You are so precious to my heart.

Mommy

One Week Old

Two Weeks Old

Birth Story - Part One

Wednesday morning (11/21/12) came and James and I headed into the OBs office knowing I was going to ask for an earlier induction. Matthew's movements had slowed and were making me anxious as in the back of my mind I heard the statistics of loss during the third trimester for women with a unicornuate uterus. To go that far and to lose him was NOT an option. at 36 weeks, I knew that he would be strong enough to survive on the outside, while my womb was seeming to be a more and more dangerous place by the day.

My NST took a little while to pass, he just didn't want to cooperate. Then came the ultrasound. James and I could both clearly see in the Right Upper Quadrant, and the Right Lower Quadrant there wasn't any fluid visible to measure. Then came the left, and all she measured was one spot of 4.1....4.1 is well below the 6 where they decide to induce. I had been warning James that Wednesday was going to be the day, I had spent all weekend and the beginning of the week cooking food to freeze, attempting to finish some chores around the house, and just mentally preparing.

I was right. The doctor said that it was the day for Matthew to come meet us as faces and not just voices. We went home, took a nap, got the rest of the hospital things around, and ran the errands that were needed. At 4pm we showed up at the hospital to start the induction, for them to tell us that they were full and to come back between 5 and 6. I guess that was the first warning of how my induction was going to go: hurry up, and wait.

We went to dinner together at Applebee's. I started having contractions 5 minutes apart and thought surely we were going to have a Thanksgiving baby. Boy was I wrong. The doctor had checked me at the appointment I was 50% effaced and not dilated at all. Cervix of steel wasn't ready to let Matthew join the world. I wish I would have asked after the first day on IV fluid and not doing anything all day for them to check on his fluid level again. It would have saved us several days in the hospital, and probably the struggles we later had with our little man.

They decided the first line of defense was going to be cytotec by mouth. I was SUPER anxious, because I remembered how painful doing the miscarriage with cytotec was. Then they explained to me that with an at home miscarriage they usually use 600-800mg and for induction it is only 50mg because baby would not tolerate a higher dose (I looked once home I had taken 800mg vaginally, and then 400mg by mouth). When doing cytotec you are allowed ice chips, and are continuously monitored for both contractions and fetal heart rate the first 2 hours after taking the pill, followed by a two hour break where you can move freely and eat the first hour if you are feeling up to it. And I was! We walked so much around that third floor of the hospital I got to know the faces on the walls pretty well. After several (I cannot remember at this point if it was four or five...) doses of cytotec by mouth, they decided to just go for the pitocin. I was 2cm dilated at the point and not any further effaced. In the hopefulness of the nurse, she started my penicillin IV for my Group B Strep. Bad choice...after two doses that vein was trash, it ached, it was inflamed  and let me tell you I could deal with the contractions much better than the burning of the medicine going into my vein. Crazy how certain pains affect people differently.

The pitocin really did nothing for me other than make my contractions too close together (7 in 10 minutes, I was miserable without any time between contractions to re-cooperate from the previous one) so they ended up shutting it off. And taking another try: Cervidil. They let me have a little break, I showered, ate and then said OK I am ready to go. I believe by this time it was Thursday night. My sister stayed with me and I let James go home. James was fighting off a cold (actually Thursday they said he was showing signs and symptoms of bronchitis but his lungs sounded clear *they did this when he had pneumonia last time as well* so to play it safe for both his and Matthew's sake they gave him antibiotics) and the spot they had for him to sleep was horrid. Especially for being a bigger guy.

The nurses kept telling me that by looking at my little guy on the fetal monitor strip they would not guess he was a low AFI. I guess I should have taken this as their hint to tell me ASK FOR ANOTHER ULTRASOUND! By Thursday I was miserable. I was tired of laying in the hard beds, by back ached from back labor, and I was getting cranky in general with so many contractions but lack of change in my darling cervix.

Finally I was at 2.5cm, but still 50% effaced. Doctors came in and gave me the option of c-section. But I stood my ground, I plan on God allowing us to have at least one more child, and I did not need the c-section to add to my risk factors. They decided to go ahead with another dose of oral cytotec because I was feeling SO tender near my cervix due to the cervidil. Surprise, surprise...it did nothing. THEN came the big guns, cytotec vaginally.

My contractions got a bit stronger, I started to feel my cervix change a little bit. One pill wasn't enough though, another vaginal cytotec was used. FINALLY I was somewhere between a 2.5 and 3cm and really "mushy" when Doctor P came in and told me she thought it was time to break my water. I was entirely for it at this point! And boy were we in for a surprise.

It took a little bit, but finally my water was broke. And the flood gates opened. I GUSHED, it felt like gallons of water. Definitely like I had just peed all over the bed. But good news, the fluid was clear. :-) The doctor was surprised and kind of looked disappointed in the fact that I had laid in bed all this time for essentially nothing, she said, "Well, that's definitely not an AFI of 4. But there's no going back now. You're going to have a baby!" Pitocin was started back up, and labor had officially begun to progress for me at this point.

And now bedtime for me, Matthew has made a few squeaks, so soon he might want to eat again then praying for a 3-3.5 hour stretch of sleep. I am going to pump and then see if he is waking up by then. I will leave you with one picture of my little peanut today, as he is now one week old (how CRAZY is that?). My heart swells with how blessed James and I truly are, and I cannot believe that this little being came from inside of my body. That James and I created this little boy that is so perfect in our eyes. He is handsome and everything I have prayed for during the pregnancy for him has came true for the most part. God is too good to us. My heart overflows.