This is going to be long because 32 hours of labor makes for a rather long birth story.
As you can see from my last blog update, Wednesday, October 13, I was certainly not expecting anything to happen anytime soon. Well, I will admit, I was wrong. That day I felt our little girl really kicking and punching more than normal in my belly. I told Charles about this on the phone when he called to say he was leaving work. I then prepared dinner and lay down on the couch to wait for Charles to get home. At 5:00 p.m. Charles walked in the door from work. I proceeded to get up from the couch and the second that I did, my water broke. I ran to the bathroom while yelling, “Oh my gosh, my water just broke!” I am convinced that one of our little girl’s unusually strong punches or kicks broke my water. Guess she’s a future black belt like her parents. I am so relieved that she waited for Charles to get home before breaking my water.
After realizing my water had broken, I called my doctor. My doctor wasn’t on-call so I talked to Dr. Files instead. I said, in a panic, “My water just broke and I’m in Galveston! What do I do?!” She calmly said, “Just come in to the hospital.” This was not how our childbirth class had made the early stages of labor sound. In class our instructor would say things like, “Early labor lasts many hours. During this time you should finish packing, sleep, take walks, call your family, get your husband to give you a massage, etc.” Instead, we grabbed what we could and rushed to the hospital. At this point I still hadn’t felt a single contraction.
After a 45 minute drive, we arrived at Clear Lake Regional Hospital and checked in to labor and delivery. I thought your water just breaks and that’s it. What I didn’t realize is that it continues to “break” for the next 24 hours! They had me get into the hospital bed, even though I felt like I should be wearing a diaper! The nurse examined me and determined that I was only about ½ a centimeter dilated. They hooked me up to a monitor and surprised me by telling me that I was having contractions every 2-5 minutes, despite the fact that I wasn’t feeling them. Which was the problem, even though I was having many contractions, they were too weak to be doing any good. Around 8:00 p.m. that evening I was started on pitosin by I.V. to help strengthen my contractions.
As the contractions started to hurt, I became more comfortable standing up, rather than lying in bed. So for the majority of the night, I stood by my bed, unable to walk around because I was hooked up to the I.V. and to all the monitors. Charles slept for awhile on the chair in the room. I guess being in labor makes you really warm because I was comfortable, but he froze all night.
By the next morning, October 14, the pitosin was starting to cause some really strong contractions. The problem was, when the pitosin levels would get too high, it would cause me to have extremely painful contractions that would last up to 5 minutes. Such contractions were pretty unbearable because they felt like they lasted forever. When this would happen they would have to lower my pitosin levels for awhile. It was discouraging because despite hours of contractions, I was still only measuring ½ centimeter in dilation.
By late morning I was in a lot of pain and the nurses kept wanting to give me I.V. narcotics. Around noon I decided to give them a try. They gave me an injection (into my I.V.) of Stadol. I immediately regretted the decision because I started feeling really out of it. I couldn’t comprehend what people were saying to me and I couldn’t communicate with those around me. I also couldn’t stay awake but when I would drift off to sleep, apparently I would stop breathing. Charles would touch my arm and tell me to breath. This was absolutely terrifying to me. I would try so hard to stay awake, but when I couldn’t fight it, I would stop breathing. Apparently this only lasted about 10 minutes and eventually I started falling asleep and breathing again, but it continued to scare me for the duration of the medication being in my system.
By 4:00 p.m. my contractions were getting to be unbearably painful again. I didn’t want to have the epidural until I knew that I was at least 3 centimeters dilated. But because it was now almost 24 hours since my water had first broke, the nurses were told not to check me for fear of it causing an infection. The nurses insisted that it would be okay for me to go ahead and get the epidural and so I made the decision to get it. After giving me the epidural, the doctor checked my dilation and I had gone from ½ a centimeter to 3 centimeters in dilations. I was so happy to finally have some pain relief and to be showing some progress!
Another doctor, Dr. Johnson, was on-call that evening and she checked in on me around 9:00 p.m. When she checked my dilations she really surprised me when she said, “You’re fully dilated, 10 centimeters, you’re ready to start pushing now.” I was SO happy, excited, and scared all at once! I had already convinced myself that I would probably not get to 10 centimeters and would have to have a c-section, so to be at 10 centimeters and have the opportunity to try to have her vaginally was very exciting. Dr. Johnson told me she had to go but would be back to check on me. I asked what would happen if I pushed the baby out when she was away and she explained that all that is required is to have someone there to catch the baby and that the nurse was an expert at catching babies so everything would be fine. I later found out that the reason Dr. Johnson couldn’t be there was because there was another mother who was hemorrhaging and ended up requiring emergency surgery. I never did find out if she ended up being okay. I’m just glad at the time that I didn’t know about this because it would have scared me. My mom, who was in the waiting room, did hear about this and it made her more scared as she waited to hear that the baby and I were okay.
Since I had the epidural, I couldn’t always feel when I was having a contraction. So the nurse would watch the monitor and when she could see a contraction she would tell me to push. I pushed as hard as I absolutely could. Even though I couldn’t feel the pain in my uterus, it was extremely tiring to continue pushing. I noticed the pain the most in my neck, chest, and upper body. The nurse told me that they might lessen the medication to my epidural in order to allow me to feel the contractions, which might help with my ability to push. Instead of lessening the medication though, they allowed my epidural to run completely dry. Meaning that by about 11:20 p.m. I was no longer receiving drip medication. I started to be able to feel my legs again and eventually started feeling the very painful contractions. This time it wasn’t just the contractions that hurt but the fact that I could feel her head pushing very hard onto my pelvic bone. I tried pushing laying down, sitting up, and squatting. The pain was the worst I have ever felt in my life and I kept asking, “Why isn’t the epidural working? Please do something! It hurts!” I was mad at the nurse whose response to all of this was that I was feeling more pain because I was in active labor and because I was moving around so much. Charles told me that at this point they were convinced that I wasn’t going to be able to push her head past my pelvic bone, thus requiring a c-section, so they didn’t want to use a new epidural bag on me. But they still wanted to give me the full 3 hours in order to try to push her out. At around 12:15 p.m. Dr Johnson came back in and asked if I wanted the last 15 minutes to continue to try to push or if I wanted to go for a c-section. I asked, “Do you think I will have her in the next 15 minutes?” She told me, “No”, so the decision was made to go for the c-section.
During my pregnancy I had often thought of how I might react if I was told I would require a c-section. I grew up hearing my mom’s stories about how painful of an experience it was and so I was very scared of this outcome. I thought that I would be extremely upset and might even start panicking if told I would need a c-section. But sometime during the 32 hours of labor and the extreme pain of un-medicated pushing, I came to accept that this was how my baby was going to be born. I was still very scared and arrived in the OR shaking uncontrollably. Luckily they restarted my epidural so my lower body was free of pain again and not shaking. But all I could think of in the OR was how bad my jaw hurt from being clenched and how I couldn’t unclench my jaw even if I tried. I also became extremely tired and wasn’t sure why. I could barely keep my eyes open when it occurred to me that maybe they had put something in my IV that was causing me to be so tired. So I asked the man standing at my head, who I thought was the anesthesiologist, “Did you put something in my IV to make me tired?” Well since he was just a nurse and hadn’t given me anything himself, his response was, “No, I didn’t give you anything.” I found out later that the real anesthesiologist had given me a dose of Demerol in my I.V.
Payton Ashley Falgout was born at 1:01 a.m. on Friday, October 15. She weighed 7 pounds 12 ounces and was 19.5 inches long. I heard them say, “It’s a girl!” and “Wow, she’s bigger than we thought!” I heard them say this but what I didn’t hear were any cries from my baby girl. I got scared and asked Charles, “Why isn’t she crying? I don’t hear her.” Charles just told me, “I don’t know why she isn’t crying but she’s fine” And when he would hear a little peep from her he would say, “Do you hear her?” Then Charles got to see her and watched them footprint her. After that they let him bring her, all wrapped up to her face in a blanket, over to me so I could look at her. Her eyes were open but she wasn’t crying. Charles said it wasn’t until they were taking her to the transitional nursery that she really started wailing. He told her, “Why didn’t you do this for your mother?!”
After she was born, Charles went with her to the nursery and I stayed in the OR so they could finish stitching me back up. Then they wheeled me back into the birthing room where my mom was waiting for me. My mom had had the opportunity to see Payton in the nursery before coming to join me in the room. I remember being very thirsty and my body was still shaking uncontrollably. After about 4 hours, Charles left the nursery and joined me in the birthing room. He then packed up our things and we were transferred to a room in post-partum. Here they wheeled in a bassinet that had my little girl Payton in it. I was able to hold her for the first time and the nurse showed me how to nurse her. Around 6:00 a.m. we put her back in her bassinet and closed our eyes for an hour until the new nurse showed up at 7:00 a.m. to examine me.
We stayed in the hospital until Monday evening. I never did really sleep during this time and I also never did stop shaking. Payton was wonderful! She rarely cried and was very alert for a newborn. When my doctor came to discharge us on Monday evening we discussed how my blood pressure readings seemed high. It was determined that it was probably the result of not being able to rest in the hospital and that I should go home and keep an eye on it.
We were so excited to be leaving the hospital. I could not stop smiling and was so proud to be holding my baby (in her car seat) as we left the hospital. By the time we arrived home around 9:00 p.m. Monday evening, I was delirious from being so tired. We went to sleep and although I was up numerous times in the night to check on and feed Payton, I felt much better in the morning. Unfortunately around lunchtime I remembered that I was supposed to be keeping an eye on my blood pressure. When I checked it, it was 186/110. I called my doctor and was back in Clear Lake at my doctor’s office by about 4:00 p.m. Tuesday. My blood pressure was still dangerously high and so my doctor made the decision to put me back in the hospital. In the hospital they put me on an I.V. drip of magnesium. It was so miserable as it felt like fire being pumped through my veins. Everything hurt and I felt like I had a horrible case of the flu. The magnesium was to prevent me from having a seizure or stroke due to the high blood pressure. By morning they had started me on blood pressure medicine and were able to stop the magnesium I.V. I was transferred to the Antipartum wing where I stayed until Thursday afternoon.
During this time, Payton, Charles, and my mom were able to stay with me. We actually benefited from having additional time to spend with the lactation expert, which was good because I became engorged when my milk came in. But I was definitely happy when I was finally able to go home again on Thursday afternoon.
My mom stayed with us the remainder of that week and the following week. It was so helpful to have her there. Recovering from a c-section and caring for an infant is no easy task and I would have really struggled without her.
Payton is an absolute doll and despite all I went through to have her, I would happily go through it again in a second. We love her more than words can express. She is beautiful and perfect. She makes the funniest faces that make us laugh and already has an adorable personality. I can’t take my eyes off of her and am so thankful that I am able to stay at home with her and enjoy every second with her. God had blessed us beyond what we could have imagined and I hope we never take this blessing for granted.
