10:52 late Wednesday morning (20 November 2013)

Birth

I feel bad, this pregnancy is all wrapped up and I have very little diary entries to show for it.

Well, since October 3rd, Caleb's best friend from high school came to visit (Oct 6-13) with his girl friend on their way to NZ from North Carolina or Tennesee or something. Zeb met his girlfriend while being a counselor at summer camp a few years ago and they've been together long distance ever since. Hmm best friends are more alike than they thought? She went to Europe to see him last year while he was doing a work holiday thing in London. Damn, I wish I could go to Paris with Caleb. Anyway I really really like her, she's a great match for Zeb. Caleb agrees. Plus she's a beer drinker and we have the same tastes in beer. So even though I couldn't drink with her this time I know that when I see her again we'll have a good time, haha.

While they were visiting, I had my baby shower on Oct 12 at 36 weeks and 1 day pregnant. I felt really fat but I tried to get as cute as possible. Like legit fat, not just in my belly. my face, my arms, my legs, and my feet were all incredibly swollen and I was just ..ugh. fat. Plus it was getting really hard to walk because my hips hurt so bad. But at all my dr appointments she said "oh yeah, sorry, that's just a thing that happens to some women during pregnancies." Everyone at the shower kindly said I was beautiful though, so..I didn't think about it too much while it was going on (ha, I am so vain...oh well). We played the melted-chocolate-in-diapers game, opened presents, ate crepes and cupcakes with little white chocolate sperms on them, and chatted about how awesome boobs get when you're pregnant. Little girl got a LOT of clothes and blankets...and not a lot of really useful things like cloth diapers (though she did get some!), but hey. blankets are great and I don't have to buy clothes for her until she's like a year old. We still didn't have any of the big ticket items like a car seat, pack n play, etc. but didn't expect to get them at the baby shower (just hoped ;)).

The next day we went to SLC with our visitors, wandered around Temple Square and the Gateway mall, got a late lunch at the Red Iguana, then dropped them off at the airport and drove back home. I had wanted to stop at Target on our way home to buy the big ticket items like a car seat and a pack n play..but forgot my gift cards so we got back to Logan sans having bought anything baby related.

Tuesday the 15th was my next Dr's appointment, blood pressure was pretty normal (124/86 or something), I was going to ask her like seriously, what can I do about this awful swelling? Even my eyelids were swollen! But then a few minutes into our visit the nurse came in to tell the Dr. that my urinary protein levels were +3 and then suddenly the whole visit changed. Dr said I was probably toxemic (preeclampsia) and would be having the baby by the end of the next week even though my blood pressure wasn't all that high. She checked my cervix and it was somewhat soft and about 1 cm dilated so she felt like doing an induction would probably work. The baby's heartbeat on the doppler sounded fine but she sent me in to the ultrasound office to do a biophysical profile on our baby to make sure she was ok. So yeah. that wasn't freaky at all...I was expecting to make it to term and then some. The biophysical profile showed our baby was completely fine...just very small. She was measuring 2 weeks + smaller than she was supposed to, at the 17th percentile for gestational age. The ultrasound tech estimated her to be about 5 and a half pounds. We could see her hair in the 2D ultrasound and the tech said it looked like she had a mullet. After the ultrasound, I had some blood drawn to make sure my organs were functioning ok - especially my liver and kidneys and platelets. A few hours later the lab called me to tell me that my platelets were kind of low and the Dr wanted me to come in the next day for a blood pressure reading and another blood draw to make sure my platelet levels weren't dropping more. I thought it was stupid that I had such a small baby because I had gained so much weight...I was 174 lbs at that visit. Apparently that's another symptom of preeclampsia though. Anyway, Dr asked me to make an appointment for the next Monday and we might induce the next Tuesday. I was freaked out because Caleb's dissertation was due that day, and that Thursday, Caleb was flying to Minneapolis for a job interview until Sunday, and my Mother in Law was flying in on Saturday. So I was hoping we could just wait until at least Caleb got back from his interview.

Wednesday I went in, got a blood draw, had my blood pressure read (it had jumped up to 140/90), and I was still in total denial about the whole thing. I asked the nurse if it was possible I just had a UTI since they only checked protein and not white blood cells and other signs, and decided my blood pressure was high because I was stressed about having a high blood pressure. But she wasn't convinced. I guess UTIs don't also cause small babies and swollen eyelids the way preeclampsia does. I was told to call my Dr the next morning after she'd reviewed my blood work and blood pressure and see what she wanted to do. That night Caleb and I went to Walmart and bought a pack n play and a car seat, just in case the worst happened and we went in to have a baby that weekend. Also, I was put on modified bedrest so I wasn't allowed to drive down to Target and buy them later.

Thursday I called my Dr and she said to call Labor and Delivery because she wanted to induce me that day. my platelet count didn't fall but it didn't rise either so she wanted to get the baby out in case my platelets did start falling. So I called L&D expecting to get an appointment for an induction in the evening (After my last hypnobirthing class ideally...we could just go upstairs after class was over and start the process!) and they said to come in right away for an 11 am appointment. I was a bit shocked. Caleb had just left for work 10 minutes before I called and so I called him and told him to come home, we were going to the hospital, then numbly tried to put a hospital bag together. I knew this could take a long time since I wasn't very dilated and pitocin could just take a while to get things going so I packed my tablet for movies, my 3DS for Pokemon Y that Caleb had bought me as a present the night before, my nook to read the Great Gatsby...I was all prepared for a long boring trip through labor. I packed things like underwear and a night gown to labor in (I didn't want to be wandering down the halls in that awful backless thing they give you at the hospital). When we checked into our room I gratefully looked at the bathtub with shower, asked the nurse tech for a pump to inflate the birthing ball, and changed into the awful backless thing they give you at the hospital. Around 11:30 a nurse came in with a nurse-in-training, and I let the trainee try to put my IV in. She poked through my vein on my right hand, but she got it right on my left hand. I'm not sure if I'd be willing to be the guinea pig for another trainee in the future after that. At noon, they hooked me up to pitocin and penicillin and a saline drip and told me I couldn't eat or drink anything but ice chips and popsicles and dum dum lollipops until the baby was born. I wasn't even allowed to drink water or juice, but I could put flavor syrup on my ice chips. Then they hooked me up to a blood pressure monitor, a contraction monitor, and a doppler to measure the baby's heart beat, and was no longer allowed to move from bed except to pee. And with all the fluids they were pumping in me, I had to pee a lot.

I was starting to contract a bit, every few minutes apart but not very strong. I was breathing through them and they felt like waves of pressure with no pain, and Caleb was holding my hand and reading me relaxation scripts to make sure I stayed calm and cool. And then they hooked me up to a magnesium sulfate (mag) drip to prevent seizures because my blood pressure continued to climb, and the protein in my urine was off the charts. I was told it would make me feel hot in the face and I said that was fine because I was quite cold. Unfortunately, the mag slowed down my contractions and after a few hours I was getting woozy when I got up to pee so I REALLY had to stay in bed as much as possible, preferably lying on my left side to bring my blood pressure down. At midnight, my Dr came in and broke my water since I still wasn't progressing, and was still just about 1 cm + after 12 hours on the pitocin (though to be fair, I was also going on 10 hours of the mag slowing my contractions down).

A few hours later, after I almost passed out on the toilet, the nurse said I wasn't allowed to go to the potty anymore and I'd need a catheter. I did. not. want. a. catheter. that was the whole reason why I'd gone to hypnobirth classes in the first place, so I wouldn't need an epidural, and by extension, a catheter. So I had a bit of a cry about it when the nurse left and then Caleb and I decided that if I was going to have to get a catheter and not be allowed to walk around at all to help progress my labor, that I might as well get the epidural. So at 4 in the morning on Friday October 18, I got an epidural. My anaesthesiologist was tired and had a very terse bedside manner. And the epidural only worked on my right side; I could still feel them fuck up the catheter the first time and get it in on the second try. :(

I was starting to get stronger contractions (but they were still very far apart), and I had only dilated to about 3 cm after all of that time on the pitocin. I suggested they turn off the magnesium for a little bit but instead they turned off the pitocin for 20 minutes to let it get out of my system, then turned it back on and cranked it to the maximum level my Dr. would allow. Then at around 8:30 in the morning when my right leg was numb and my left side could feel everything, I got my epidural redone. Then I got some sleep and the rest of the day was a bit of a blur. I was so thirsty and my mouth was getting drier, but I still wasn't allowed anything but ice chips and popsicles and dumdums. I threw up three times, sort of. The first time I felt relieved after I puked, got some water out and felt better after I threw up. A few hours later I felt nauseated again and dry heaved for a long time, got a little bit of bile out but not much. Then several hours after that I dry heaved for ages and nothing really came out and I never felt better. I was begging my nurse to at least let me drink some water so that I could have something to throw up and make me feel better but she said no.

My contractions never got much closer than 8 minutes apart really. some were 5 minutes apart and some were 15 minutes apart, but mostly 7-8 minutes. I grew progressively weaker in my limbs, my speech got more and more slurred, and my eyes became harder and harder to focus on anything. The baby's heart rate started dropping significantly during contractions and a Dr came in and decided that since my water had been broken too much fluid had come out and the weight of the baby was putting too much pressure on her cord. They decided to do an amniotic infusion, where they pumped half a bag of saline into my uterus to cushion the baby's umbilical cord. Thankfully that worked, and the baby's heart rate even jumped up during contractions like she was excited. I was very glad because I was really hoping to avoid a c-section. However, as the day grew longer and my progression was at a steady clip of incredibly slow it wasn't looking good. The hospital policy is generally not to allow your bag of water to be broken for more than 24 hours before the baby is born to prevent infection. So they turned off my pitocin again, let it drain out of my system, then cranked it back up to absolute max. I was at a 6cm dilation for a really long time, and sometime during the evening the nurse came in to do a check and I was at an 8. She was really relieved because this was the last check she was going to do and if I hadn't progressed past that 6 I would be prepped for the section. I was relieved too. the contractions were getting stronger and less comfortable, and I was trying really hard to visualize my uterus opening up my cervix. around midnight I felt like I had to poop really bad and since I wasn't allowed to get up I thought I would warn someone so I called the nurse and told her about it. She checked my cervix and I was fully dilated and thinned out and my baby was ready to descend. I was so excited because it meant the end goal was close and I could finally eat something. I sent my dad to mcdonalds to get me a hot apple pie, a hot pumpkin pie, and an oatmeal.

Caleb and the nurse put my legs in the stirrups and coached me on how to push. Finally to the pushing phase. I begged the nurse to let me drink some water, just little sips, because my mouth was so dry and I felt like the ice chips were only drying it out more. I told the nurse I'd like to try to breathe her down my birth canal, but after an hour of that I gave up and pushed while holding my breath. or at least, trying to hold my breath, but actually screaming. It isn't that it hurt per se, just that it was really really hard. and I felt awful because my contractions were still 8 minutes apart and I felt like it would just never ever end. I couldn't push unless I was having a contraction (trust me, I tried), and even with the mirror and seeing the baby's hair, I couldn't get her out. I felt like such a failure. She was right there and I couldn't get her out. And she was a small baby to boot, so what was taking so long. The nurse kept saying things like "if you were having normal contractions she'd be here by now" in a tone that was trying to be comforting to me, like it wasn't my fault, but it kind of made me feel bad anyway. The Dr had to stand there for ages, it felt like, and was warning me that once I got her head out it was important that I push again to get her body out. And then finally I pushed with all my motherfucking might and she popped out, head and all, into the Dr's hands at 2:54 am, Saturday Oct 19. It sort of felt more like she slithered out. and she was blue and limp. and she wasn't breathing. and I was freaking out and crying and asking if she was ok; she was whisked into the hands of the NICU team that was in the room and they inserted a device into her lungs that inflated them and made her breathe mechanically until she was breathing on her own. Once I was confident that she was alive, I demanded my hot apple pie. But was told no because I hadn't yet pushed out the placenta. Thankfully it was only a few more minutes and my placenta fell out and into a tub. Then Caleb held the pie for me and I chomped at it desperately while he was telling me to calm down and take it slow. Fuck that shit, I'm eating my fucking pie.

While they were doing this the Dr. was stitching me up, I had a small tear but nothing scary. She weighed 4 lb 12 oz and was 17 inches long. We were all kind of shocked because that was almost a full pound off of what the ultrasound had estimated. She was so small she wasn't on the percentile chart at all for either weight or height. she went from 17th percentile to 0.

Once she was breathing on her own and they had weighed her and measured her, they put her on my chest and I tried breastfeeding with the help of a nurse. She latched on after much effort and was getting some colostrum, I think (she was sucking and swallowing so it seemed like she was). I thought she was so beautiful. But I couldn't hold her with my arms, they were too weak. And I couldn't see her unless she was about 12 inches from my face, which is the only place where my eyes could focus. I was able to cuddle her on my chest for a little while until they took her to the NICU for monitoring and I was wheeled up to the recovery room, mag and pitocin and saline and antibiotics still in place. 39 hours of labor and finally a baby to show for it.

She was in the NICU for an hour and then they wheeled her into our room, I was finally allowed to eat whatever I wanted, and at around 8 am they finally turned the mag drip off because the magnesium levels in my blood were getting kind of high and I was starting to have a hard time breathing. It took many hours for me to feel normal again, many hours before my brain was clear, my mouth wasn't impossibly dry, I could see straight, and I had strength in my arms. I still had the catheter for a long time.

My friend Hailey came to visit but my daughter was in the nursery for some testing, and she had to leave before they brought her back. Caleb's lab mates came in to visit too while she was gone, but they were still there when the baby came back, so they got to hold the baby and coo at it for a while. I had visitors on and off throughout the day, and I couldn't sleep because I was too excited about my baby. But in the afternoon, I was told that my baby's blood sugar was low so I would need to supplement with formula. What we did was get a small syringe and a feeding tube, and snaked the tube into her mouth while she was latched on to ease a few drops of formula in with whatever colostrum she was getting. We did this every feeding and it was never an easy trick. Sometimes she took the tube well and sucked down the formula very quickly, other times it felt impossible to get any formula in her at all. But her blood sugar came up so something was working.

In the afternoon on Saturday, as the effects of the mag were finally lifting, I felt like I had to pee REALLY BAD. Which didn't make sense, because I had a catheter. I told my nurse this, and she was like, no you shouldn't need to pee. Luckily (?) I had to poop and she believed me for that so she helped me carry my catheter bag o pee into the bathroom and I got to go to the toilet for the first time in almost 2 days. I happily was able to take a nice crap with little problem (probably because my bum was numbed from ice packs and novacaine type numbing creams. Thanks hospital ice packs!), but I had to pee SO FREAKING BAD. I strained and pushed and finally...I peed. A blood clot had formed from when they fucked up my catheter insertion the first time and it was blocking the flow, if you will. I forced that out with much pain and duress, then peed like 2 liters of pee. It was glorious. and very very disconcerting. Pretty much everything about this kid's birth was disconcerting though so, whatever.

Unfortunately, the next morning, her bilirubin levels were really high so they put her on this really bright bilibed and I wasn't allowed to take her off except to feed her. So any visitors that day weren't allowed to hold her, and worst of all, I wasn't allowed to hold her. It was really hard for me.

Monday we went home at 7 pm , having to take with us a rented bilibed to keep the baby on until her jaundice levels went down and we were instructed to make an appointment with her pediatrician on Thursday. She was on the bilibed all Monday and all Tuesday and much of Wednesday morning. Tuesday morning we took her to the hospital lab to get her blood drawn again for bilirubin levels and were told we'd be called about what they were, if they were going down, staying stable, or what. They didn't call us and when I called the lab I was told to call the pediatricians office and when I called the pediatrician they said to call the lab...so I called the pediatrician the next morning and asked if we needed to go get bili levels checked again and the nurse said no, her levels were fine and we could take her off the bilibed. I was so relieved! But Caleb was worried and not sure we should take her off after all. But I said screw it, I'm holding my baby. Luckily it was a sunny day so I placated Caleb by promising to hold her in the sunlight which would be even more powerful than the bilibed.

Anyway....she's doing great now. She's my perfect angel. I didn't know I could love anything as much as I love this child.