Only 1 of my 3 children was born at home. The 1st time, I would never dream of having a baby anywhere but in a hospital or birth center. I thought women who gave birth at home were like the pioneer women who died in childbirth by the hoardes. Little did I know how wrong I was!
During my 1st pregnancy, I spent a lot of time reading birth stories. It became kind of an addiction. One website I saw troubled me. It listed the births along with their respective number and type of intervention(s). A cursory glance told me that with a hospital birth, the chances of going natural was slim to none!
I'd read up on a lot of those interventions and had come to one conclusion - avoid if at all possible!!
Under the home birth stories category, I saw no interventions. None. Not even a c-section listed, while fully 1/3rd of the hospital births were! Hmm...
But I didn't let it bother me. It wouldn't happen to me. After all, I had a birth plan. I'd told my doctor exactly what I wanted and didn't want. It was all covered. Can you spell n-a-i-v-e??
Shock of all shocks, after about an hour in triage, all 5 copies of my birth plan were "lost" by the hospital staff. Hmm... But it didn't bother me much. I was going all-natural. I'd been in labor 8 hours already with no drugs. I was unstoppable! Nevermind that my water had also broken 8 hours prior - with light meconium staining, and I was therefore lying flat on my back with an IV and external monitor strapped to me.
I remembered how much I hated hospitals. And I was wondering why no one told me that labor hurt so much. I was screaming. Why hadn't I taken a breathing class or something?? There was nothing to do but stare at the cieling and yell at people. This sucked!
Then a nurse came in with a syringe. She sneaked up on my left side so I don't even see her. But my husband did.
"What do you think you're doing?" He interrogated. But it was too late. Whatever was in the syringe was now in my IV and shortly to be in my veins. It was a narcotic (I can't remember the name now) that when I researched later on, I learned is riskier than an epidural, and MUCH less effective. "It will take the edge off," the nurse replied.
I informed her that I'd already said no to drugs. She shrugged and walked off. The fact that she would do that without my consent really ticked me off. But I also lay there thinking, "I hope this works!". It didn't. I felt worse. I felt kind of hot all over and suddenly very agitated.
Time passed. Suddenly the monitor on my belly started beeping. Nurses rushed in to fit me with an internal monitor - intervention that I specifically didn't want #2. Baby was fine. The external monitor was bought on sale at Kmart, apparently, and had had a false alarm.
More time passed. It was now 10 hours since my water broke. One of the 18 zillion people who came in to painfully check my cervix every 5 minutes told me I was still only at 1cm. (And no wonder, I hadn't gotten off my back in 8 hours.) I'd been fitted with a catheter - intervention #3 that I didn't want - and told it would make things faster "Just in case there's a problem".
It was then another beeping sound was heard, and 20 people in scrubs rushed in with panicked faces to wheel the bed I was laying on into the operating room. Oh crap.
"What's wrong?" I yelled to them but they didn't answer me. I was scared to death, and they were banging everything all around, ripping my catheter and IV painfully against my skin.
In the OR I was told that the heartbeat was no longer to be found on the internal monitor. I was going to need an emergency c-section.
No no no. This was exactly my worst nightmare!
Now either baby was going to die or I was going to bleed to death. I had never bought the common myth that c-sections are safer. It always made more sense to use the hole I've already got!
I begged the surgeon to wait and try again. After all, one machine had messed up, who's to say another couldn't? He agreed. We waited and I prayed while they fitted me with an epidural. Intervention #4.
Then I heard it. The miraculous beep beep of my baby's heartbeat. It was back on the monitor, and I was outta there. 'Thank you, God. I totally owe you one!'
But there was still the problem of me being stuck at 1 cm. And now I could feel nothing from the waist down. Out comes the pitocin. Intervention #5.
The contractions start coming faster than I imagined they could. One side of my body hurts so much I feel like I'm being run over by a truck, which backs up and runs me over again every other minute. Why isn't the epidural working??
The anesthesiologist comes in and ups the drug in the epi. Then he does it again. It takes them hours to figure out that it's in wrong. They take it out and re-do it. Unbenownst to me, they tell my husband that because of their lousy epi job, it's possible I'll never be able to use that leg again. But I don't hear this. Finally the epi is fixed and life is good.
7 hours and 40 minutes pass while I stare off into space, totally trippin' from the epidural drugs. "This is awesome. I like drugs." I told my husband. I'd never even taken so much as a prescription pain pill before in my life, but suddenly I completely understood drug abuse. Then I slept.
All the while my contractions were coming like a map of the alps on my chart, but it didn't phaze me until transition hit. Then for some reason I couldn't breathe. I felt like I was going to die. I started shaking violently and my teeth rattled. They told me I was just in transition and it was normal.
It passed and before I knew it I was ready to push. Except that I couldn't. The Dr. wasn't there yet. So I had to wait and try to grit my teeth and bear it. It was like trying to hold back when you have to puke. When the doctor still didn't show up after several minutes, the nurse told me "Honey if you feel like pushing just push!" So I did. Except that I didn't know where my butt was. "Push what? Push where?" I could feel nothing from the waist down. I was buttless and legless.
I pushed what I thought might be the right body part. It was more like imagining I was pushing. It took about 20 minutes. During this time I noticed that they had left the door to my room wide open, and any curious hospital guests, nurse, or janitor could peer right in and see all the parts the sun had never seen! I was vaguely pissed but too distracted to say anything.
The doctor arrived just in time to cut the cord and fling my baby to the nurse, who flung her thru a sponge bath and finally into a little bassinet thingy. My husband brought her to me.
Not the gentlest of introductions to life outside of Mama.
It was a magical time, perhaps enhanced by how stoned I was. My baby was soo adorables. I cuddled and kissed all over that soft lil face. Amazing. I wanted to breastfeed her, but she was too tired (or drugged up) and wouldn't even open her mouth to yawn before she drifted off.
Giving up on trying to breastfeed while baby's sleeping off her drug buzz.
I told my husband I just wanted to get some sleep. Our insurance required that I stay in a tiny lil depressing room with a window that didn't open for 2 days, so that if I was fixing to bleed to death they could possibly prevent it. They gave me awesome things like pads that were bigger than my baby's diapers, lovely ice packs that went right where it hurt, and a spray that made it possible for me not to feel the excruciating sting from my tiny, stichless tear when I peed.
The best thing was, I left a gnarly bloody trail all the way from the bed to the bathroom and didn't have to clean it up. They sympathy points with the husband were immense. The worst part was, I could barely walk. My leg was swollen to twice it's size by intervention #4 gone awry.
And there I was with a tiny t.v. and nothing else in a hot room that smelled like bleach. The nurses came in with blood pressure cuffs every few minutes to make sure I wasn't getting any sleep. One of them heard my baby cough, turned her upside down and hit her, hard, on the back. I was no expert, and apparently she was, but I was pretty sure babies ought not to be treated like that! I'd never seen it in any baby care book!
Being in the hospital was depressing. I mostly sat there bored stiff, sleepless, and crying. They brought me milk after I'd specifically said I'm lactose intolerant, so they brought me a soda and white bread and pork and all other sorts of crap I didn't eat. They kept wheeling my baby out and back again, but at least she had a sign on her bassinett that said "DEMAND FEED". I guess if they can bottlefeed your baby, they will.
After 2 days, I went home. I was so happy - overjoyed, ecstatic, to be out of there!! I hadn't seen the light of day except through the window of my lil prison in 3 days!
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Finally escaping the hospital woohooo!!
I knew that if I ever got pregnant again, there was no way in heck I was stepping foot in a hospital unless one of us was at death's door.
I always think how differently her birth would have gone if I'd been at home. I know that I would've dilated on my own. I did it with baby #2 with no problem. She was my homegrown baby.
Her story is coming up next...
1 comments:
I hate hospitals. Your little girl looks precious. Did I mention that I hate hospitals? ;-)
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