Harper's Birth: Yet Another Pudding Pop
Part I: Welcome to My Bloody Show!
Let
me begin the Fluid Pudding Birth Story with a bit of foreshadowing: In
the past nine months, I can’t even begin to count the number of times
I’ve been asked if I’ve been experiencing discharge or any type of
bloody show. Because I would rather change the subject and talk about
The Amazing Race or if my eyebrows are in need of a shape alteration, I
am always quick to stomp my foot and say, “No discharge. No bloody
show.”
Okay. Let the story begin.
April 28, 2005—Wednesday Night/Thursday Morning
2:45 am
I’ve
been waking up at 2:45 in the morning for the past several weeks. It’s
a bit unfortunate in that it’s the time of night when most folks would
rather be asleep than awake. However, the fact that I’ve been able to
sit and watch several installments of the Girls Gone Wild infomercial
can’t be a terrible thing, right? (Yes, I’m a bit prudish, but I’m no
Prude, got it?!) On this particular night, I didn’t wake up slowly. I
woke up with a HUGE pain in the baby region. Um, huge. It was huge.
Five minutes later? Huge pain. I immediately ate some cheese and began
charting.
5:00 am
The contractions were now lasting over
sixty seconds, and were arriving every two minutes. In other words,
this means one minute of horrible “I think I’m dying” pain, one minute
of slight relief, then one more minute of death pain. Repeat. Repeat.
Repeat.
Me: Jeff? Um, I’m either going to have the baby or else I’m dying.
Jeff (still in bed): What should we do?
Me: I think I’ll take a shower. I’ll wake you when I’m done.
I
took a shower for two reasons. Number one? When you’ve had several
false alarms (like I’ve had), you sometimes would rather stay at home
and take a shower than be The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Number two? If you
ARE going to have a baby, well, you should probably shave your legs and
try to smell nice for the kind men and women who will be sticking their
fingers inside of you for the next several hours.
During the
shower, the contractions grew in intensity. This means I would shave
for a few seconds, wince and grab the towel rack for a minute or so,
shave, attempt some of those breathing exercises, shave, wince,
shampoo, et cetera.
When I emerged from the shower, I told
Jeff that we needed to make the trip to the hospital. If, for some
horrible reason, these were NOT contractions, I was surely about to die
and would probably need some type of medical intervention. If these
WERE contractions, well, the kid is ready to do the vaginal polka.
I
applied a bit of makeup (Shut up! If pictures will be taken, I want to
sport mascara!), finished packing my bag, and cursed quite a bit until
5:45 rolled around. At that time, I called my mom and asked her to meet
us at the hospital at 7:00.
Game On.
The car ride to the
hospital sucked. It sucked for me, at least. MC, however, was having
the time of her life. “Suitcase! Wiggles! See Mombo! Elmo! Sixteen
military wives!”
7:00 am
We arrived at the hospital, entered
via the emergency room doors, and within ten minutes were on our way to
Labor and Delivery. The nurse asked me to pee in a cup, strip down to
my socks, and put the hospital gown on with the opening in back.
As I prepared to pee in the cup, I looked down and suddenly felt the most interesting combination of pride and mortification.
Ten minutes later, as the house doctor ran through his list of questions...
House Doctor: Have you had a bloody show?
Me: Um, yes! Yes! And I believe I’ll be playing the role of the mommy in this particular bloody show!
(Corny. Yes. Gotcha.)
I'm contracting! And my chest? She is huge!
Part II: Oranges and the Bare Assed Saunter
After
the house doctor ran through his list of embarrassing questions, he
decided to manually check my progress. 100% effaced, and dilated to a
2. In other words, sure, the baby is coming, but we definitely have
some time to waste before she makes her entrance. Knowing that my
C-section was actually scheduled for 4:30 that afternoon, I started to
become very nervous. Did I mention how painful those contractions were?!
Because
I’m very very lucky, when the house doctor called my OB, he found that
she was on her way to the hospital to perform a C-section at 8:00.
Perfection! She told him that she could perform my surgery as soon as
she finished with C-section #1. With this news, I wanted to French kiss
everyone in the room. Come and get me!
The next hour or so is a
bit blurry. Between contractions, the nurse started my IV, drew some
blood, shaved my parts, and catheterized me. I clutched a pair of
balled up socks and tried not to cry. The anesthesiologist came in and
explained the spinal block and how “we don’t expect anything bad to
happen, but I need to discuss the risks with you” and blah, blah, blah,
permanent nerve damage and/or paralysis and sign your name on the
dotted line. Done. She then sat down in a big cushy chair and watched
me work through the contractions.
As I suffered through one of
the worst contractions yet, the anesthesiologist (let’s call her Betty)
ran up to my bedside and frantically asked, “What’s your favorite
color?”
Me: Hoo Hoo Hoo, I can’t really think about that right now, Hoo Hoo Hoo.
Betty: I know. I’m trying to get your mind off of the pain.
Me: If you really need an answer, I suppose I would have to go with orange.
As
the contractions worsened, I tried to astral project myself to another
time and place. Namely, London. I pictured myself with Jeff at the
entrance of the Tower Bridge. And it is raining. And I, wearing low
riding khaki pants and my FCUK jacket am Mary Tyler Moore-ing around
with my nose pointed skyward, letting the rain gently alter my
coiffure. Also, I’m a little drunk. (Please know that this scene never
actually took place when we were in London. Sure, I had the outfit, we
went to the bridge, I had a few beers, and it rained quite a bit.
However, my mascara is not waterproof, so I could never really achieve
the look I was going for during my contraction induced stupor.)
Believe
it or not, my British rain dance visions seemed to lessen the effects
of the contractions quite a bit. However, when Betty tried to help out
by yelling things like, “Oranges! Sunkist! A living room with orange
walls! Rust colored curtains!” while I desperately spun around in
London, well, everything quickly went to Hell, and I was once again in
a hospital bed with The Today Show blaring on the television. And
that’s when I heard the following conversation:
Nurse #1: They want her to WHAT?!
Nurse #2: This is a triage room. The gurney won’t fit through the door. There is no other way to get her to the OR.
Nurse
#1: So she’s supposed to walk out into the hall with her IV and
catheter and climb onto a gurney while having contractions?
Nurse #2: I know we should have thought of this earlier, but we didn’t. So, yes.
The
next few minutes found me slowly climbing out of bed. With my gown open
to the back, I had a nurse on my right holding my IV pole and a nurse
on my left holding my pee bag. And I had to walk out into the
hallway—bare assed and contracting—and hike myself up onto a gurney to
be delivered to the operating room. And this wouldn’t be a terrible
thing, except for the fact that the overly ambitious pee bag nurse took
off walking a bit too fast, which led to my pee tube being YANKED A BIT
FROM MY BLADDER.
Welcome to MY nightmare, Alice Cooper.
Love is all around, no need to waste it. You can have the town, why don’t you take it? You’re going to make it after all...
There I go! Off to have a baby! Push the gurney faster! Wheeeeee!!!
Part III: You Wanna See My Stuff?
When we last left the star of our show, she had just
jumped onto a gurney for the long and bumpy ride to the operating room.
Luckily, the gurney fit through the door, making the scooch onto the
operating table just that--a simple scooch.
At this point in the game, everything becomes a bit
frenzied. Big needles with paralysis juice were jabbed into my back, oxygen
prongs were shoved into my nostrils, paper hats were stretched around my
head, and little curtains were raised so I was unable to see The Slicing of
My Stuff.
As I was being prepped, Jeff was down the hall documenting
The Daddy Dance.
Finally, ten minutes after my arrival to the OR, they let Jeff join me for the festivities.
Me: Get a picture of my bladder. Oh! And my placenta!
Jeff: I’ll see what I can do.
Me: That’s not good enough. Innards! Bring it!
Okay.
You might not want to see the following pictures. If you are a bit on
the namby pamby side, take this as a warning: You are about to see
Fluid Pudding Stuff! Not my Stuff stuff, but, well, you’ll see.
This is the surgical team slicing into my lower abdomen! As they
sliced, they talked about restaurants in Chicago, which totally put me
at ease. They felt absolutely no need to say things like "Number One:
Gently slice into abdomen. Number Two: Suck blood, push bladder to
side, and pull out baby."
Here is Harper getting her first glimpse of the harsh and
unforgiving fluorescent lit world. Do you see my belly button?! I do!
You're loving these pictures. I don't care what you say.
And she's out! And it's a girl! And there's the umbilical
cord!
Shortly after this picture was taken, Jeff and I sucked
down the umbilical cord all Fear Factor style.
And then we stuffed the placenta with rice, ground beef,
and onion and baked it at 375 for 45 minutes. Birkenstock!
Part IV: The Daily Rundown, in which I almost die (but not really)
Immediately following Harper's birth, I was stapled up and wheeled back to my room where I nursed the baby. And without going into weird detail, please know that I was (and still am) totally amazed by how well she latched. Onward! After we nursed, Jeff went to the waiting room and asked Meredith to join us for a bit. Of course, I was expecting some sort of beautiful moment to occur the first time Meredith saw Harper. Angelic bell choirs would play, eyes would fill with tears, everyone would hug, the room would fill with heavenly lights, etc. Instead, Meredith was more impressed with the controls on my bed than the sight of her new baby sister. Luckily, I was still numb from the waist down, so I was unable to feel the constant upward and downward motion resulting from Meredith taking my bed for a drive.
After Meredith visited, my mom and Jeff's mom visited. It
was during their visit that I became sick from the anesthesia. And I thought
I was going to die. But I didn't.
This was Meredith's 2nd birthday. And it made me really sad that I couldn't jump up out of bed and sing to her and shower her with presents and cake. The only substantial event occurring on this day was the visit from The Lactation Station. You know, I try to be cool and all. However, it's impossible for me to keep it real when a woman is squeezing my breast with one hand and holding my baby's head against the aforementioned breast with the other hand. Picture me staring up at the ceiling and trying to recall Enya lyrics.
Saturday, April 30, 2005
It was on Saturday that Harper refused to wake up for her nursing sessions. Because I was a bit reluctant to call The Lactation Station, I called the nurse station and asked for some assistance. Unfortunately, I called during the change of shift, and the only nurse available to assist was a woman wearing lots and lots (and lots) of Mr. T-like gold jewelry. Also, and more importantly, she had just finished smoking three packs of Marlboros. So, she entered the room, took Harper away, jiggled her, held her up to the window, and started yelling, "You HAVE to wake up, Ma'am! WAKE UP!" Thinking back, I wonder if this woman was actually a nurse. When she handed Harper back to me, Harper smelled like she had been bar hopping. And that made me sad and thirsty.
Sunday, May 1, 2005
Remember back on Thursday when I said I thought I was going to
die? Well, on Sunday night, I suddenly became dizzy and it felt like my heart
was slowing down, and I once again thought I was going to die. And for people
who know me, that probably sounds very very funny! Ha! Ha! She's such a
hypochondriac! Well, get this, Jerkies: When the nurse came to see what the
hell I was complaining about, she noted that my resting heart rate went from
72 (which it had been all week) to 50. So, yes. My heart was slowing down,
and for all I knew, was getting ready to stop. In other words, I was dying.
And I do not have a living will.
Upon further inspection and an emergency EKG, it was determined that I was experiencing a post-surgical migraine, and all of the pain medications blanketed the actual headache part and probably slowed my heart rate. But because I thought I was going to die, I called Jeff and asked him to come spend the night with me. Because I wanted him to be there when I drew my last breath. Because till death do us part.
Monday, May 2, 2005But I didn't die! And I woke up on Monday feeling something like 72% better! So I went home! The end!
