Birth Story

I’m going to try to type up my birth story while Evelyn (still hard not to call her Gertie – Jake still does sometimes!) is content. She’s not content very often or for very long. :| She wants to be held all the time, which I understand because she was all warm and snuggly for so long, but I have to put her down to do stuff and she usually freaks out after around 5-10 minutes. Just a warning – There is some definite TMI here, but I have some pregnant friends who are probably interested in reading about this!

So on Thursday I had my first cervical check at the OB’s office. On Thursday and Friday I had light spotting and cramping, which I knew was totally normal after such an exam. Friday was my last day of work, and I just didn’t feel good. I couldn’t put my finger on it, because I didn’t have intense, regular cramping or anything, but I just felt crappy. As I was leaving work, the last thing I said was, “If I go into labor tomorrow I am going to be SO PISSED.” Heh. Jake and I went out for dinner and then I went to bed. I had trouble sleeping and kept waking up for various reasons: Weird dreams, I had the runs, and light to moderate period cramping that had no pattern whatsoever. At one point – I think it was around 3:00 AM but I am totally fuzzy on much of Saturday’s timing – I woke up and laid in bed for a bit because the cramping was slightly worse, but nothing lasted long and it was totally irregular. I got up to pee and woke Jake up and told him that maybe we should time the cramps just to be on the safe side. I don’t even think we timed two until I told him never mind and went back to sleep. Heh.

So around 5:30 or 6:00 I woke up with much stronger pains and they were pretty long (at least a minute in length) and around two minutes apart. I couldn’t decide if we should go to the hospital or not, because I was early and this was my first baby so I just KNEW I would go there and they would send me home. I was lying in bed with Jake when all of a sudden I felt a popping sensation. I said, “UH OH” and told Jake that I think my water broke, but I didn’t feel any gushes. He bolted to the bathroom and got a towel, I put it between my legs and went into the bathroom but nothing gushed. I had a little bit of clear fluid on my pad, so I didn’t know what to think. Very shortly thereafter, when I was sitting on the toilet and throwing up into a plastic bag, I figured we should get the hell out of here. Of course because I procrastinated, my bag was not fully packed. Jake was borderline panicked, looking all over for my list, and I told him never mind the list, just throw some underwear in the bag as well as deodorant and toothbrush and toothpaste and get the hell out of Dodge. The contractions were horrible. I couldn’t do anything while I was having one, so I had to do everything between contractions which gave me like two minutes at a time. “Okay, NOW I can get dressed. Okay, NOW I can walk downstairs. Okay, NOW I can make a dash for the car, GO GO GO!” The car ride was horrible, and we live 9 blocks from the hospital! I have no idea how laboring women can handle a car ride from the county or from farther away.

So we got to the hospital and Jake came running around to my side of the car. I think I remember barking something like “I cannot get out of this car until this contraction is over.” It ended and I got out of the car. I no sooner walked to the entrance, which was around 20 feet from my car door, and I was having another one. I stopped at the door and hunched over, holding my belly and saying “Owwwwch” over and over again. A nurse was coming in for her shift and I was blocking the door, and I remember absurdly apologizing to her for being in her way. She said not to worry about it, and she told me to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth. Then she helped me through the door. That nurse rocks, because I wasn’t even thinking about my breathing until that point.

We went to admitting and they processed me through pretty quickly. Jake wheeled me up to OB triage and when I arrived I was handed a gown and told to go into the bathroom, use the washroom, take everything off and put the gown on. It took me what seemed like FOREVER because my contractions were so close together and all I could do was sit on the toilet saying “Owwwwwwwwwwccccchhhhh” over and over again. Finally I made it out and they put me in a bed and started asking all the necessary questions. They seemed surprised when I told them that this was my first pregnancy, that I was 10 days early and that I hadn’t been having contractions very long and they were already this close together. She checked me and I was at five centimeters. She asked me if I was planning on having an epidural and I was like, “Uhhh, yeah!” and then things moved very quickly. They wheeled me into my room on the triage bed, and then transferred me to my bed. All of this is a total blur because I was in so much pain. The nurses came in and did their thing, but I don’t remember much about what they did or said. I also lost track of time. They paged the anesthesiologist and all I could think about was that I was not going to be able to get the epidural because everything was moving too quickly and I knew it could sometimes take the anesthesiologist an hour or more to arrive, depending on how busy the hospital is. I still don’t know how long it took him to arrive, but it felt like forever. The nurses checked me again before the doc arrived and I was already at 7-8 centimeters. All I kept saying was “Owwwwwchhh , this is way too fast, oh my god, I can’t do this without an epidural, how do people do this naturally and for longer periods of time? Owwwwwwchhhh.” I remember the nurses trying to make small talk, and I was having none of it. I was in a zone with my pain and tuned everyone out. Jake would ask me something or say something and I would just frantically shake my head to tell him “not now!”

Finally the drug doc arrived. He had me lie on my left side with my legs curled up as far as possible. He wiped stuff on my back – I’m assuming iodine or something – and then told me I would feel a pick for the freezing and maybe some burning. I probably did but I didn’t care because he was there to save the day. Heh. But then I started hearing the “Hmmms.” He was being really forceful back there, trying to thread the catheter in the right spot. “I can’t find a space. Hmmmm . . . I can’t seem to find a space . . .” He asked me if I have back problems and I told him yes. He played around in there for a while longer, then taped me up and said, “We’ll see if this works. If not, page me.” And he was gone. Well, it didn’t work. It did nothing. The nurses kept asking me if I felt this or that, if my legs were numb or tingly, etc. Nothing but the excruciating pain. I was starting to panic because that had taken a long time and I knew I was running out of time to get the epi. The nurses waited for a bit of time to see if it would take effect, and when it clearly wasn’t taking effect they paged the doc again. “We just want you to be comfortable hon, we’ll get him back here for you.” When he called back, he told them to just top me up. I groaned and was thinking, “Are you fucking kidding me?? It’s obvious that it didn’t take! Topping me up isn’t going to work!” One of the nurses was a mind reader, because she said, “I am calling him back and telling him to come up here, because topping her up isn’t going to work.” At this point I was very nauseous and thought I was going to throw up. Jake put the bed pan under my chin and I dry heaved into it a few times, but nothing came out. The nurses tried to be encouraging, God bless ‘em. “This just means you’re getting closer, honey!” She was trying to help, but she was freaking me out more because I wanted the effing epidural. Lol. So doc came back and this time told me to sit up and lean forward and the nurse told me to arch my back like a cat and she let me rest my head on her shoulder. This time he got it. Within minutes I was starting to feel less and less pain. It was seriously amazing. My mood changed almost immediately and I felt like I had woken up from a bad dream. I was able to have conversations with the nurses and my husband and I was able to joke around. I told the nurses that I wanted to marry the anesthesiologist, but that I was pretty sure that Canada frowns upon polygamy. One of the nurses asked me if I was American and I said yes, and she exclaimed “I knew it!” I laughed and asked her how, and she said she could tell by the way I said something.

Again, I totally lost track of time for a lot of this. I know they checked me again at some point and I was 9.5 centimeters and only had a little lip of cervix left. At this point Jake’s mom had arrived, then my sister, then my parents and my grandma. (Ugh.) At one point I was in the bed and there was a knock and Jake said to come in, and under the privacy curtain I could see my parents’ shoes and my grandma’s shuffling feet. My eyes got wide and I shook my head back and forth and mouthed to Jake, “I don’t want them in here.” He told them I was resting and he went out into the hallway with them. I felt a little guilty because I wouldn’t have minded seeing my parents, but there was no way I could have dealt with my grandma.

So more time went by and they checked me and the lip was still there but that her head was pretty low. They asked me if I had the urge to push, and I said that I could feel pressure down there but didn’t feel like I needed to push. I said something like, “I’ve never been through this before so I don’t know what to expect. I feel a lot of pressure, but no urge to push. What should it feel like?” The nurse answered me back with, “It should feel like you have to take the biggest poop of your life.” Nope, wasn’t feeling that quite yet! Heh. So some time later they checked me again and I was at 10. The nurse said that my vitals and the baby’s vitals were excellent, and that if I wanted to push now I could but if I didn’t want to, we could wait a while longer and let the baby do some of the work by coming down even further. They said that because my labor progressed so quickly, they wanted to avoid major tearing. They also said I could push for a half hour or three hours, and that they didn’t want me to get exhausted if the latter happened. Since I was deathly afraid of pushing, I went along with it. LOL. I stayed that way for a few hours I think, until I got the overwhelming urge to push. They called the on call OB, Dr. Jasey, and he was super super nice. The pressure in my bum was insane and the only thing that made it feel better was to push. So they brought the “Oh Shit” handles up on the side of the bed for me to hold on to, brought the stirrups up, and we went to town. With each contraction I pushed three times for a count of 10. It didn’t take me long to get dizzy, so they gave me oxygen. I guess I was pushing for about an hour, but it didn’t feel like it at all. It flew by. They told me that I was an excellent pusher and I was doing an awesome job. They kept telling Jake to look down and see her hair, and to my surprise he did it. Then all of a sudden I felt the burning sensation, so I knew it was getting close. The burning was not as bad as I thought it would be. Apparently she was turned in a direction that the doc didn’t like, so he turned her as I pushed. All of a sudden I felt a “pop!” and the doc told me to stop pushing. I’m not sure if he cleaned out her nose and mouth, but I was listening for it and couldn’t hear it. Jake thinks he was cutting me at this point, but I have no idea. I gave one more push and her shoulders slid out and at that point it was like instant relief. The rest of her body wasn’t even out yet, but I felt 90% better. The rest of her slid out and he put her on my chest. Jake told me my demeanor changed immediately. I went from being beet red, grunting and groaning loudly, to smiling and happy when she was out. They took her over to the warming bed to do their evaluation and clean her up and I kept trying to peak through the bars on my bed to look at her. All the while the doctor was massaging my stomach and the placenta came out. None of that hurt. Just felt weird. I thought she was super tiny, but they weighed her and she was 7 pounds, 7 ounces! The nurses were surprised too because they thought she was smaller. Turns out she’s just long and skinny. She has some looooong legs, fingers and toes. The doctor told me that I started tearing toward my clitoris (told you about the TMI) so he cut me. He started to stitch me up but I could feel it, so he told the nurses to get a specific needle so he could numb me up a bit. The nurses told him they didn’t have it. He said he would go get it himself then, because “It wouldn’t be nice to use a such-and-such gauge needle on her in that area.” He came back and poked me a few times, which sucked, and then he stitched away and I couldn’t feel anything but tugging. (Gross.) He finished up, congratulated us and disappeared.

So yeah, the rest of the hospital stay involves diapers for both mommy and baby, squirt bottles to clean sensitive areas, stitches from bum all the way up, a small hemorrhoid that still has mommy petrified to poop, AMAZING nurses morning and night, and a fussy and needy but beautiful baby girl. I would do it all over again for her, but not for another one. I still don’t think we’ll be having any more.

She's Here!

Evelyn Victoria Meloche
Born September 27th at 2:36 PM, 10 days early!
7 pounds, 7 ounces
21 1/2 inches long
Freakishly long fingers and toes

I had my 38 week appointment today and it was my first cervical check. It was like a scene out of a stupid comedy. I was nekkid in the room for like 20 minutes, and in walked a third year intern, AKA little kid. He asked me the usual questions, and then told me to lie back so he can feel for the position of the baby. He manhandled my belly for a bit, then got out the Doppler thing. Because he’s just a freaking kid he fumbled forever and couldn’t find the heartbeat. I wasn’t worried because he was looking in the wrong spots and I knew it, but who am I to instruct a medical student? Because I was lying on my back for so long I started to get dizzy and when I get dizzy I get sweaty. I told him I had to sit up, and then he left the room to get the doctor. While he was gone, I realized that my sweaty ass was stuck to the paper and it had broken off into little wet pieces on my ass. Embarrassing! And funny! So Doogie walked back in with my OB and he had his turn first. It hurt briefly, but then it didn’t. He hung around in there for a while and I wanted to ask him if he was going to bake a fucking cake in there. The OB said, “Okay, that’s all the time you get, you’re taking too long.” So in goes the expert - seemingly to her elbows - and I physically recoiled and exclaimed, “WOW, that’s not comfortable at all. OW.” I have never had a cervical check before so I have nothing to compare it to, but I think she swept my membranes without asking my permission. “We’re trying to get things moving!” I don’t want to get things moving. My last day of work is tomorrow and the last few months have been torturous, so I was looking forward to having a little time to myself before the baby comes. If I go into labor I am going to choke a bitch. It’s the two hour premiere of Survivor tonight, dammit! Heh.

In any case, I am dilated to 2. I know that I can remain that way for weeks, so I’m not too worried about it. Though, it is a little unnerving to go to the washroom and see blood after not seeing it for so long. I also feel crampy, but I know that’s also normal. Stay in there, Gertie!

We still need to buy a few things for the nursery and I needed to pick up a few last minute items, so Jake and I went shopping yesterday. I don’t even know why I bother at this point. I can’t stand for more than 10 minutes without feeling the need to sit down NOW. We didn’t wind up getting the shades and curtains for the nursery because I couldn’t handle the thought of walking around another store. Jake’s going to go one night this week to pick those items up because he can move around more efficiently when he doesn’t have me waddling behind him. Heh. One of my biggest fears is that I won’t get some of my energy back after the baby is born. I don’t expect to have energy as soon as she pops out obviously, but I hope that my body is not this run down and exhausted once I lose a few pounds of baby and water weight, and when I don’t have a baby all up in my ribs making me feel like crap all day. I expect to be tired, but I hope that I can at least walk around a store for more than 10 minutes without wanting to die.

My last day of work is Friday! You have no idea how excited I am about that. My standard answer for any bullshit is going to be, “Just call me Phil Collins because I don’t care anymo’. I don’t care anymo-o-o’.” I can’t believe I’m going to have a year off. And that I don’t ever have to return here, ever.

I had my 37 week OB appointment this morning. My liver function test results came back totally normal, so that’s good news. The bad news is that I just have to deal with the annoying itching and the resulting bleeding from scratching incessantly. Oh joy! Gertie is head down and her back is on my left side. The hard part near the top of my belly that I’ve been poking at is her bum. Next week my OB starts the cervical checks. I can hardly wait.

This is part of a conversation Jake and I had last night.

Me: Are you going to cut Gertie’s cord?
Jake: I don’t know!
Me: What do you mean, ‘You don’t know?’
Jake: Isn’t it slimy and gross?
Me: Probably, but they clamp it in two spots and you just cut in between. You don’t have to actually touch it.
Jake: I’m not the grand marshal of the opening of a new Denny’s, for chrissakes!

I feel like I am woefully unprepared for Gertie’s arrival. I have an obvious belly, she moves throughout the day, I have to sleep alone because a queen sized bed has suddenly become too small for two of us, rolling over is a total chore, my body itches from head to toe, my ankles are swollen, my due date is in three weeks, her room is nearly done, and yet the reality that I will be having a baby in a matter of weeks has not fully hit me. I don’t have my bag packed and I keep putting it off. I haven’t put together the list of people to call after we’ve had her. I need more diapers and wipes and bottles and I haven’t gone out to get them yet. I haven’t sterilized the bottles that we do have. I just keep thinking that I have more time, when in reality I can go into labor at any point now.

I went to my family doctor today about my itching and he thinks it's a liver condition that some women get toward the end of the pregnancy. It's basically like jaundice and the increased bile in the bloodstream make women very itchy. He called my OB about it and discussed it with her. He talked to me about it like it was no big deal and ordered up blood tests to check my liver function. I'm going tomorrow morning for the blood tests. I just went online to read about this condition and I am freaking the fuck out. Doctors like to deliver babies early due to risks of stillbirth, maternal hemmoraging is more commmon, blah de blah. So now I am sitting here scratching myself all over like a crack addict and hoping that my test results tell me that I have something else.

I made an appointment with my family doctor because of an itchy rash I’ve had for a while now. My belly itches which I know is normal, but my legs and arms also itch and I have little bumps there. I’m hoping he can give me a prescription to help ease the itching, because over the counter crap just ain’t working. While I am there I am going to essentially beg and plead for him to write me off early. Jake doesn’t seem to think he’ll have a problem doing it (he’s done it for Jake before) because all he wants is his $40 to sign the paper. I am only asking to leave 2 ½ weeks early, for crying out loud. I started crying in frustration at work today because I’m totally stressed out.

DEWD, I would kill for a cigarette and a rum and Coke right now.

Jake and a friend moved the dresser into the baby’s room last night, so I spent two hours in there trying to figure out how to arrange her things. The room is tiny, so we thought we would need to stock up on different storage options: Decorative boxes, a plastic four-drawer storage unit on wheels, etc. As of right now, all that storage isn’t even 50% used! The dresser is not a child’s dresser, so there are huge, deep drawers. I put all of her newborn and 0-3 clothes in the dresser and I still have empty drawers! I also realized that I don’t have many newborn sleepers. I actually only have three. The rest are all onesies or gowns, and you can’t use gowns when putting the baby in a car seat, right? I have plenty of 0-3 clothes, but it might be a few weeks before she grows into them. Should I buy a few more newborn sleepers? I also don’t have any preemie outfits, so should I just buy one or two of those? I don’t think I’m going to have a tiny baby, but should I have some on hand in case I go early? I also took stock of my diapers, and all I have is a 40-pack of NB-10 pounds and a 66-pack of 8-14 pounds. Do I need more diapers in those NB sizes, or should I just buy size 1s? We’re going to go to Costco to buy the size 1s.

I think I spent 30 minutes last night just sitting in her room and staring at everything and imagining her in there and imagining how the room is going to look when it’s totally done. We still need to buy shades and curtains and I need to finish drawing her pictures to hang on the wall.

Good God, we have so much baby stuff. The dresser is being moved into the room on Tuesday, and I cannot wait because we have Gertie's stuff all over the house. I'm a messy slob and it's even driving me nuts. I started putting her books onto the bookshelf (Note to self: Gertie needs more books!) and we got some more organizers for the room. I also thought we were done with laundry, but more socks/blankets/towels/outfits/sheets turned up, so we have another garbage bag full of stuff to wash. I also need to sterilize bottles and nipples and get them put away. I finished my Windsor thank you cards and now I have to start on my Michigan ones.

Today I had an OB appointment and I flat out asked her if she could write me off a few weeks early for sick leave. I even lied and told her that the stress is causing cramping and bleeding. (I know, but I wanted to drive my point home: I want to be off work and I NEED to be off work.) She told me she couldn’t do anything for me unless they can prove that my problems are a result of my pregnancy. That is utter HORSESHIT, because my coworker’s OB wrote her off on sick leave for her back even though she continued to bowl on a league every week. Also, how are cramping and bleeding not a result of being pregnant? And she didn’t seem at all concerned that I had cramping and bleeding. She didn’t ask me any specifics and didn’t suggest any testing or anything. My OB said, “You can certainly take your mat leave early.” I told her if I do that, I have to give two weeks notice, and after two weeks I might as well stay on for one more week, which is when I planned to go off anyway. She said, “Oh, I didn’t know that. I don’t know the rules.” Yeah right, you deliver babies for a living and you see a gazillion patients a day and you don’t know the government’s maternity leave policies? Nice try. So I came into work today to a desk LOADED with paperwork and the phones ringing off the hook and my adrenaline is pumping and I am angry and snippy and UGH, I want to cry because I don’t want my last few weeks of work to be this stressful.

Apparently it's not enough to have sometimes crippling back pain, a belly covered in itchy stretch marks, and a body temperature gauge that's completely out of whack, rendering me sweaty and gross by lunch time every day. Now I seem to have some kind of lovely rash on my arms and legs! What else will pregnancy have in store for me?