Labor & Delivery

I’m going to start my Labor & Delivery Post with the happy ending and then work my way backwards through the miserable beginning. Jack’s delivery took just under 15 minutes. I pushed 4 times during 3 contractions and Jack entered the world beautiful, pink, and screaming. For the faint of heart, you can stop reading since you know the Labor & Delivery story ends well.

For those of you who have been through the trenches of giving birth and harbor a deep curiosity about the depths of misery of other people’s Labor stories, keep reading.
I checked into the hospital on Monday, March 29th to be induced because of the high blood pressure that hit at the end of the pregnancy. Rob and I were in the delivery room, happy as clams, waiting for the doctor to induce me when she came in and explained that there was good news and bad news. The good news: my blood pressure and other tests indicated that I did not have preeclampsia. The bad news, although I didn’t have it, I had enough warning signs that they wanted to preemptively treat me for preeclampsia, because, if it developed, it could lead to seizures during labor and delivery.

Cue the tears.

The treatment for preexlampsia seemed simple enough- a magnesium drip through an IV in my arm. Seems simple, but let me list for you some of the side effects of a magnesium drip (ALL of which I got)

Your eyes don’t focus
You feel loopy and drugged
Your skin, especially, your face and throat, feel like they’re burning from the inside out
Violent and repeated vomiting
Your hands and arms and legs don’t work right (ie, can’t grasp things with your fingers)

I had to stay on the drip until the baby was born and then for 24 hours afterwards. To combat all the side effects I was hooked up to all sorts of machines including:

A blood pressure cuff on my arm that took my blood pressure every 30 minutes for 36 hours
Inflatable cuffs around both my calves that inflated and deflated every few minutes for 36 hours
Something that was clamped to one of my toes, that I still don’t know what it was for
An oxygen mask for several hours until delivery
A catheter
An internal and an external fetal monitor
A monitor for contractions

Rob said later that I looked like some sort of human/cyborg creation- part human, part machine. Because I was loopy from the magnesium, I don’t really remember much of that time but poor Rob remembers everything. Apparently, I didn’t like the catheter and asked every few minutes, until I got an epidural, if the epidural would make the catheter pain go away.

Apparently, I also tried to take the oxygen mask off because, as I reasoned, it made it hard to breathe. I kept telling Rob that I just wanted to go home because we didn’t really need another baby. Rob was such a trooper- because my skin felt like it was burning he spent several hours rubbing my face and neck with cold compresses and fanning me with a piece of cardboard he found. His arms were sore for two days from hours of fanning.

When the nurse came in asking if I wanted an epidural, Rob jumped in with, “yes, please. Now, please.” The epidural was a blessed relief and it wasn’t long after that that the doctor realized that I was fully dilated. A few pushes later, and at 3:21am the discomfort of labor was replaced with the comfort and love of cuddling little Jack.

The doctor asked what his name was but I wanted to see him before I decided. As soon as I held him, Rob and I looked at each other and said, “He’s Jack Philip” (Philip after Rob’s grandfather).

Unfortunately, I had to stay loopy and burning on the magnesium drip for 24 more hours. That’s why we didn’t have many posts and no phone calls on that first day. I was officially unhooked from everything at 4am on Wednesday morning and from that point on, life's been great!