Spoiler alert: I am back dating this post to the date and time all of
this started to happen. You can probably guess how it ended.
So the doctor had arrived by the time we got to pushing. I remember that they wanted me to try to push before I was fully dilated. At that point, they suggested some pitocin to finish my cervix out that last half centimeter or whatever. I had a hep lock in as my intention was to go no drugs (you'll note I have NOT mentioned pain medication to this point. I'm going to bring it up again because I'm hella proud) - so it was pretty easy to get that on. After the pitocin did it's job it was show time.
I'm told I pushed for about an hour and a half. Fact is, I don't understand how ANYONE with pain medication or feeling blocking medication could ever possibly push a child out. You have to be so aware of what you feel working, and even when you can feel it working it is very hard to get right back into that same feeling with the next round. It also helped to have the doctor placing fingers to give me an area to focus on. At some point they put oxygen on me and it gave me a moment of clarity in the midst of the mental avoidance of the pain where it hit me and I remember asking if they were worried about the baby.
That last little bit did indeed hurt like crazy. But then she was here, in this world. They placed her on me for a rather short period of time as she was grunting rather than crying and they wanted me to get a moment but they also wanted to take care of her. It seems like while she didn't poo before my water broke, she did somewhere between when it did and when she arrived so they had some concern there, although that wasn't necessarily the breathing thing.
It wasn't long at all before my placenta was out... I'll do the follow up comments here as it seems relevant: they later assessed the placenta and saw no cause for my bleeding in the week leading up (as in it was not deteriorating or starting to separate from my uterus, so it wasn't causing her to not get enough oxygen and create any other issues there).
After a little while with Daddy watching over her on the sidelines they took her away to the level 2 nursery. Return reports said that blood worked showed some of the white blood cells were elevated, so they started an IV, at which means she needed to stay in the level 2 nursery until that was removed. It also means she was receiving fluids, so she wouldn't be getting early early milk - a big disappointment to me. She remained there with both the IV and oxygen for the first twenty four hours. As the blood levels started to normalize we started bringing her pumped colostrum they were able to slowly bring the level of IV fluids down.
Once we were to a safe level she was returned to our room at 2am - 23 hours after her birth. They then were testing blood sugars, which seemed to be too low and lower each time a test was taken after each meal. So we had another slight worry on our minds. If it had gone any lower she would have needed to head back to the level 2 nursery. Fortunately, a secondary type of test showed things were okay and suddenly the in room test was starting to give better readings (thank the Lord).
All of this did still mean that she was not going to get released with me the next day (Saturday). Fortunately, the hospital gets it - and they allowed us to stay another night after I was discharged to room in with her. We also got lucky and the L&D department didn't get over run so we got to stay in the larger room the whole time. It was nice to have meals coming from the cafeteria and attentive care and guidance from the whole staff (nurses, peds, lactation consultant, and even the clean up and meal delivery folks) - truly, I appreciate what they did for us.
Other things that surprised me:
- You spend hours with a conscious exhale going on to breathe away the pain. Then you get to pushing and their expectations of you to hold your breath for 10 seconds x 3 feels like an absolute eternity.
- This shouldn't really surprise me, but - Good golly, having an oxygen mask, doing all of that breathing with your mouth open, and allowing a few screams (oh yes I did) out sure dries out your throat. I ended up asking them for losenges.
- Again, no pain drugs. I did it! This is the one thing I wanted so much as I do feel that one intervention leads to another. I had my doubts (and voiced them) even before we left the house with the doula.
- After the head came it felt like a limb, another limb, another limb, another limb... also came. Did I just give birth to an octopus?
To make the formal announcement:
Avery Violet joined us on Thursday, August 24 at 3:05am. She was 7 lbs, 15 1/2 oz, and 19". My good girl listened and waited to not be a Leo!