the story of us…

i had almost a week of really early labour before i actually started the real thing. here’s what happened, from what i can recall (the past 2 weeks are a blur, to be honest…damn sleep deprivation):

Monday~
4:30am – i wake up to pee for the millionth time in the past week and feel a warm kinda period-cramp like feeling in my lower tummy. i think “yeah right, this baby’s gonna take it’s sweet time and this is just more fake crap”. i pee. i wipe. i see blood. i do a silent “goooooooooooooooooooooal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” movement in the bathroom. now something is actually happening…

6am – fancy nancy calls in reply to my text message. she was planning on going to my regular obgyn appointment with me, since the doctor (now known as dr. daddy) had to go back to work this morning. late the night before, we decided that he would come, too, and just go to work afterwards. so it was going to be a obgyn party. i tell her about the bloody news and she says “YAY!” at a volume too early for 6am. i say we’re going to the obgyn as planned, but that if something changes and we have to go to the hospital sooner, i’ll call her.

6:15am – dr. daddy wakes up for work and while he’s having his first smoke of the day, hanging out the window of our apartment, i’m wolfing back a granola bar and making him coffee and happen to say “i don’t think you’ll have to go back to work today” which leads to a description of the blood and him saying “ah, you got me all excited about not having to work” (he’d been off for the past 3 work days, just in case). he thinks it’s all the crap fake shit, too. then contractions kicked in. real-er ones.

7am – we decide that i can wait it out until my obgyn appointment. call fancy nancy and let her know that and work out where and when to meet for the appointment.

8:05am – we’re waiting on the corner by the obgyn for fancy nancy and secret asian man when i have my first contraction that makes me cry. i’m sitting on the ledge of a window and bent in half and she comes around the corner and rubs my back as dr. daddy looks on worredly.

8:20am – the obgyn sends us to the hospital after doing something that i swear involves a screwdriver and my cervix and a clockwise motion. we’re not far along, yet, so we’re really just going for monitoring and they’ll likely send me home. she, the obgyn, wavers on whether, if i go home, i should go back around 2pm to be further helped along, but decides that we’ll wait and see.

8:30am – i hide around the corner of the hospital with dr. daddy, fancy nancy and secret asian man, sucking up a cigarette, in case i won’t be able to smoke in like, forever. and to take the edge off of the knowledge that i am about to have a baby. from like, the inside of me.

9am – baby is being monitored, contractions are clustering (they should be regular, my ass) so that i’m getting no break between 3 of them, then a 3 or 4 minute break between the next cluster. dr. daddy is sitting by my side, still looking worried and i’m aware that it’s because he’s not cool with seeing me in pain and not being able to do anything. fancy nancy and secret asian man are in the waiting room. at this point, i’ve figured out how to breathe through the contractions and as i’ll soon find out, they’re very manageable.

10am – we go home with advice on when to come back (in 4 hours or if anything changes or if i’m having trouble coping). we take a taxi (it’s only a 5 minute drive). we get home and i have hard core plans to eat something, before i won’t be able to. i manage a banana. within half an hour, contractions have built up and are super stacked. i’m lying on my side on the couch, have a hot water bottle on my back and with each pain in my back (the beginning of feeling like someone/thing is trying to rip my spine out through my ass) i push against the back of the couch with my legs.

12:30pm – contractions are getting so painful and longwinded and stacked that i am bawling. i’m thinking that i don’t want to do this anymore and that i want my daddy.

1pm – we go back to the hospital, an hour early.

4pm – fancy nancy and secret asian man go home to get some sleep, as it appears a long night might be ahead of us. dr. daddy and i leave the hospital, after i’m given some morphine and gravol to take the edge off. again, we’re to be back in a few hours or if anything changes. i take a nap and get about an hour and a half of sleep then contractions wake me up and i spend the next 2 hours pacing, pushing on my back and waiting for dr. daddy to wake up. i can still breathe through these, cuz the morphine hasn’t totally worn off. i wake him up early, so he can take a shower with me because i need the massaging heat but i’m feeling too weak to go it alone. he stands shivering out of the spray, while i lean into it and never want to leave.

8pm – we go back to the hospital. the morphine has worn off. the nausea that the gravol was meant to combat has set in. now, with each contraction, i almost throw up. we’re told that i should get into another gown and we’re going to be in the assessment room again, but after 5 minutes of almost throwing up while trying to get changed, the nurse takes us into a room. the room where i will have my daughter. the contractions are still getting worse.

9pm – they set me up with an IV and some gas. i’m supposed to breathe through the contractions using the gas and i’m breathing so hard and fast that this irish nurse is trying to coach me, while also trying to tell me that i’m doing good and all i can do is shudder-breathe and give evil looks in dr. daddy’s direction because i’m ready to tell the nurse to shut the fuck up and go away and just let me breathe.

9:40pm – “oh, there’s that gush that everyone was asking about” i say as my water breaks. and keep breaking. they have to change the bed and it’s still gushing. i’m warned that my next contractions will be more severe, since i’ve ruptured my membranes. no shit, i think. then it comes and i change my tune to oh shit. now this is someone/thing is trying to rip my spine out through my ass with a rusty nail. i keep saying through the following contractions “can you please give me something besides the gas? it’s not doing shit.” they don’t.

sometime around 10pm – the nurse checks me and says that i’m 8cm dilated. she bluntly says that i probably won’t get to have an epidural and that the baby is coming fast and i’ll have to deliver it. i start to cry, anxious and whine that we had been so early, so careful to watch for labour so that i would be guaranteed the epidural. dr. daddy continues looking concerned. and maybe a little pissed off, on my part, for the nurse’s lack of tack about my presumed lack of drugs. i continue crying and start officially screaming. not just wincing and wimpering like before, but actually screaming.

a little later – a lab tech comes in to take my blood and check my platelets. if they’re normal, i can get the epidural right away. i’m told it will take about 20 minutes for the results. that seems like forever. she’s trying to tie off my arm while i’m having another stack of contractions and i tell her in no uncertain terms no and then she tries to explain that she needs to take it for the epi – which i already know – and i say in my bitchiest tone “you’re going to have to wait.” she waits, then jabs me, then they start before she’s done and i will be left with a bruise on the entire inside of my elbow.

about 20 minutes later – i’m screaming, hyperventilating a bit and the anesthesiologist comes in. i’m so grateful for his presence that i start to inwardly sigh. then they tell me that i have to sit up and lean over and sit still while he inserts the needle/catheter. even during contractions i’m not supposed to move. i’m crying that i can’t i can’t i can’t. and they provide all kinds of praise and a pillow to put my head on as i lean over a table and i manage to stay still enough, i guess, and it seems like it only took a minute, because there were all of those fucking contractions in the time it took, but i guess it really took longer.

then it gets turned on. and i feel a cool icy feeling down my entire back and i remember sighing out loud.

Tuesday~
by 12am – my legs and waist and everything below my waist is numb. in fact, though i don’t remember when i noticed it, my entire right leg is dead to me. it only exists because i can see it still attached. the nurse is telling me that i should get some sleep while i can. save my strength for pushing. you know? then she talks for the next 2 or so hours about the stock market. did i mention that the nurse also discovered that she’s mismeasured me (this is the same one that told me i wouldn’t get the epi)? i wasn’t 8 cm, i was more like 4-5. but you know, it was probably how i was lying, according to her. cuz you know, she obviously knows what she’s doing.

4am – i wake up and i have some pains in my ribs and even though i can’t feel the contractions in my back or front anymore, these pains feel like contractions, so i tell the nurse (yup, her again) because i’m worried about the epi wearing off. she assures me that it’s likely the baby’s feet in my ribs. then she checks me. i’m totally dilated. the baby’s head is down. i might as well start pushing, she says. i want my doctor there. my baby is not going to be guided into this world soley by this mismeasuring nurse. i can’t feel the contractions, anyways, so she tells me that it’s best to push when i can feel them. i don’t, so i don’t. my doctor arrives.

mismeasuring nurse says that i won’t push and i think i try to explain that she basically told me not to. and my doctor says that they’ll just coach me through the contractions, sicne i don’t know when they’re coming or there. dr. daddy is holding up one of my legs and mismeasuring nurse is holding the other and i’m grabbing my thighs and pulling them towards me and i’m pushing with every ounce of oxygen i’ve got. and apparently i’m good at it because after about 3 pushes, the baby’s head is showing and i’m getting a lot of praise.

i decide to try lying on my side instead and continue pushing, but mismeasuring nurse is looking around and chatting and not really paying attention, so i have to look to dr. daddy to tell me if i’m having contractions and i mostly have to hold my left leg up myself when the nurse has wandered away.

they’re talking about how the heart beat is lowering during a good push and then i’m told to stop pushing and they’re using the vacuum to pull the head out. the heart beat has dropped during pushing but isn’t coming back up and it had dropped a lot.

fancy nancy took pictures from the first moment that you could see the head. it was about 15-20 minutes of pushing to this point.

5:30am – i’m told to do some little pushes and more gushing is taking place but as soon as the baby’s shoulders pop out a huge gush almost hits my doctor in the face. she had to jump back, a little. dr. daddy said he stepped in it, and it was like, deeeeeep. the baby is apparently mostly out and the cord is wrapped around her neck and she’s grey and quiet and they quickly take care of business and then…

5:40am – my daughter is slid up onto the sheet covering my belly and i’m so shocked and it’s a girl and i look at fancy nancy and we both eye each other with that “a girl!” look. and then the ob is about to cut the cord and i panic and say “dr. daddy wants to cut the cord!” and so i guess he gets to. it’s asked if i want then to wait for the vitamin k shot and eye crap and i say wait and all i’m really aware of after that point is a lot of people there, everyone but me getting to look at and hold and measure and love my baby and the fact that my epi is starting to wear off as i’m getting stitches put in. they pinch a little.

dr. daddy tells me that she weighs 6 pounds and 6.6 ounces and this is worth a huge laugh because: a few nights before, he had jokingly bet her soul to the devil (we’re agnostic/atheist – like it was serious) if he would get a 6 while playing online poker – he’d already had a pair. he got the 6 he bet her soul for, making trip sixes and won the hand. i said our kid would be the antichrist. like the omen. this was the first sign. HA.

then i’m handed her and i cry and i find out that everyone else has cried or is crying, too and the first words out of my mouth are “she doesn’t look like a frog or a chicken or anything.” and that made sense at the time.

we didn’t get to bring her home for 3 days after that, but that story is for another time – and don’t worry, mismeasuring nurse makes an appearance in that one, too.

the following/past two weeks have been equally as blurry. it’s getting both more natural and more frustrating. everytime i feel like, okay, i’ve got that down, she goes and changes it. she’s just like her mommy and daddy and i’m proud of her for being her own person, from the very first moment of her existence.