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Ian's Birth Story By Trista |
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Birth Stories -
First Baby Birth Stories
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Thursday, 12 February 2009 13:43 |
I had a wonderfully uneventful first pregnancy. I discovered I was pregnant when I was about 11 weeks along. The news was stunning, mostly because my husband and I were living almost 3 hours apart while I was away for my last year of law school and we only saw each other on weekends. I took three home tests but didn't believe it until the Dr. at the Walk-In clinic called me "Mom."
I had no morning sickness, and all of my tests came back fine. Even the chronic allergies and asthma that I usually suffer from even cleared up while I was pregnant. About one month before I was due, I went into slightly premature labor, most likely from dehydration, but it was easily stopped. As the due date neared, I began to worry because four days later I was scheduled to take part of the Bar exam half-way across the State. My OB finally agreed to induce me three days before I was due.
At my last check-up they stripped my membranes, which did absolutely nothing. My husband and I tried walking, sex, spicy food, and lots of other ideas to try to avoid the induction, but nothing worked. Not even castor oil. Alot of castor oil.
So, we reported to the L&D floor at 6:00 am on a Wednesday morning and a cytotec pill was inserted. I was already having regular, unnoticible contractions before we started. The contractions increased, but I was still hardly feeling them. The worst part was being stuck in bed, with the monitors, and a bed pan. Four hours later, I got another round of the pills, then a third. After three rounds, the contractions were two to three minutes apart, but still very weak. I was allowed off the monitors and we decided to start again in the morning.
Day Two (Thursday) began at 7 am when the Pitocin was begun. I was still having very mild contractions and I had made it to three cm. before we started. The mild contractions quickly became ferocious after the OB broke my water and at 10 am I received my first pain medication, a shot of Stadol. I slept for about two hours and when I woke I was checked and I got my epidural.
My wonderful husband had slept in my room the previous night but all through those first two days, he kept leaving the L&D floor to go to the first floor, where the clinic that he works in was located. The only hard to deal with times were while he was gone. I was making steady progress and it looked like I would have our child (we didn't find out the sex ahead of time) shortly after dinner time.
My epidural was topped off but I began to feel very uncomfortable despite it. By 8 pm I was in transition, with chills, shakes and vomiting, but still in tremendous back pain despite the epidural. A different medication was used in the epidural, and it gave me relief for about an hour. Finally I was fully dilated with just a thin lip of cervix and I was allowed to push. I pushed for over two hours, from several different positions, but my baby wasn't descending and the pain was increasing.
Our expected dinner delivery target had long since passed and it was now early Friday, day three of my induction. Finally, my OB decided I was not going to have my baby vaginally, and said I needed a c-section. Within 10 minutes of this decision, I was in the operating room. My husband was changing into scrubs to be with me. In the OR, they decided I needed a spinal, because the epidural wasn't working enough, but the spinal didn't take either. Although it reduced sensation alot, I could still feel almost everything.
Since the locals weren't working I had to receive general anesthesia. Because of this, my husband wasn't allowed into the OR. He stood outside the door, pacing and worried, beccause as a medical professional, he knew of the extra risks involved with the baby receiving general anesthesia. About 30 minutes after the c-section decision was made, our dear son was born. At 8 lbs. 4 oz., he was perfectly healthy, except for an extreme conehead that dissapeared by the next day. My chart indicated the need for the surgery was because he was posterior and facing up.
They woke me up as soon as I was out of the ER and, with help of a nurse who him to me, I was able to nurse my son for his first feeding. This was solely because my husband wouldn't let the nursery staff give him the sugar water they wanted to use to raise his sugar level. His sugar level was low because I had been in labor without food for over two days. I barely remember meeting him and think of the next morning as our first real time together.
My recovery went very easily. I left the hospital with him on a Monday morning, and Wednesday, I was back at school. That Friday I took the part of the Bar exam that we had induced for. For the next on, I want to try a VBAC but either way, the method is certainly worth the prize: a beautiful baby.
He was born at 1:34 am of the third day since I entered the hospital.
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