The most dangerous place in the world
Is between a mother and her child.
I now completely understand what this phrase means. Words cannot describe the feelings of being a parent. Before Lucas was born, I wasn't sure how I would feel as a parent. Sometimes I worried that I wouldn't feel an overwhelming love for him, especially since pregnancy had not been wonderful and all I really wanted was for everything to be over. But I couldn't love him any more. I can't believe Nathan and I created this tiny miracle.
On Tuesday, April 14th, I went in for a regular checkup with my OB. Nathan had the day off, so he came with me. At this point, I was overdue by 3 days. Because I was overdue, the first thing the nurse did after checking blood pressure, weight, etc. was hook me up to the NST- non-stress test. For some reason, the nurses couldn't get baby's heartbeat to rise like it should. At one point she even pressed a little buzzer to my belly. But his heartbeat stayed right around 130.
Then we had the tummy check with the dr. When he checked, I was still just a fingertip dilated and not very much effaced. He did want to schedule me for an induction. "How does it sound to get this baby out this week?" he asked. "That sounds good!" I was so relieved. Pregnancy was not kind to me!
He called the family birth center and asked about openings. When he got off the phone, he told us to check in to the birth center the next morning (Wendesday the 15th) bright and early at 7am. "It's going to be a long day. Be prepared for 18-20 hours of labor." (In my head I didn't think I would really be in labor that long. Boy, was I wrong!)
He left and I was shaking as Nathan and I left the hospital. I couldn't believe I was finally to that point. I wanted pregnancy over so bad, but now when it came down to it, I was terrified.
After dropping Bandon off at a boarding kennel, we arrived at the hospital. I started a quick timeline of when things happened, and Nathan kept it up for me after I got my epidural.
7am - check-in/hookup
Nathan and I wheeled our suitcase into the family birth center where a nurse checked us in and showed me to the room I would labor and give birth in. She started an IV and the pitocin and hooked me up to a machine that monitors contractions. Nathan and I went on a couple short walks to help things progress, watched How I Met Your Mother on his laptop, and played cards.
This was the easy part! The contractions were not painful, much to my surprise and pleasure.
8:30am - attempt to break water
Dr. Herzog (my OB) came in and told me he was going to try to break my water to get things moving along. Apparently baby was too high up, and all the discomfort was for nothing. I wasn't happy. The dr. told me he would try again later.
1:45pm - broke water; contractions hurt!
The dr. came in again and this time, successfully broke my water (it was quite uncomfortable!) Having your water broken is a very strange sensation. The dr. did tell the nurse to notify NICU because there was meconium in my water. I almost started crying. This meant that I would NOT be able to hold my baby right away. Instead, the first people he would be passed off to were nurses.
After my water was broken, the contractions became quite painful. They were coming every 1.5-2 minutes and it was hard to breath through them. I was looking forward to the epidural, but I had to be at least 2 cm before getting it, because an epidural slows down labor progress.
3:05pm - 2 cm; epidural
Finally the nurse announced I was 2 cm and I could have the epidural if I liked. Um...YES! She made the call and an anesthesiologist arrived shortly. Getting an epidural is really painful, much worse than I anticipated it to be. Getting things shoved up your spine is no walk in the park, especially when you have to hold perfectly still while having painful contractions. For a while, I honestly thought about telling him to stop and I would just skip the epidural. If only those contractions weren't so painful...
Once the epidural was in place, I felt amazing. All of a sudden, I couldn't feel any contractions. The only bad thing was that it made me feel incredibly itchy all over - like having the chicken pox only 1,000 times worse. Thankfully he gave me something to make the itchiness go away, and then I was happy.
3:30pm - sleep in and out
With the epidural in place, I was able to sleep because the pain of the contractions was nonexistent. I drifted in and out for a while and crunched on ice chips, imagining the big meal I would have when this was all over.
9pm - 3 cm
Surely with how painful and close together the contractions were, I must have made a ton of progress, right? Wrong! When the nurse checked at 9pm, I was only 3 cm. I wanted to cry. Dr. Rondeau came in and introduced himself. He was the OB on-call that night. "Hopefully we'll deliver your baby tonight." I hoped so, too! It seemed to be taking forever.
9:30pm - high temp; tylenol given and thrown up
Throughout all this, the nurse is checking vitals every two hours. At 9:30, all I know is that I had a high temperature. She wouldn't tell me how high. She went to talk to Dr. Rondeau came back with three tylenol pills. I took all three and threw them all up about 10 seconds later. She went and talked to the dr. again and then told me we would try again in a little bit.
10:00pm - high temp; more tylenol
My temperature was still high, so I was given more tylenol. This time it stayed down.
10:30pm - temp still high
The nurse came back again to see if my fever was getting any better. It wasn't. She disappeared to find the dr. He came in and asked what I was allergic to. I am allergic to sulfa so he couldn't give me what he originally planned to. He left to find alternative drugs.
11:45pm - gave ampicilin & gentamyacin
The nurse came in with two more bags of fluids to put into me. I don't know exactly what they were, but they were to bring my fever down. "We really need to get it below 100.4," she told me. She checked me a little bit later and it was starting to go down. That's all I really remember, I was dozing in and out.
1:30am - 7 cm
It was time for another cervix check (yay). I expected to be maybe 5 cm since it seemed like I was progressing so slowly. I was shocked to hear I was at 7 cm! I remember thinking "It wont' be long now!" Haha. Try another 6 hours!
4:00am - 9-10 cm
The nurse came in again at 4am to check me. She said I was between nine and ten centimeters. It was almost time to push! She told me she would come back soon to check again.
This is where I really started to get nervous. I couldn't believe it was practically time and my baby would be here soon. It all seemed very surreal.
4:55am - 10 cm
Almost an hour later, the nurse checked again and said I was definitely at 10 cm. She began to prepare the room (dropped the bed, etc). She told me she was done with her shift at 7, so she hoped the baby was born before she had to leave. I thought for sure he would be born before 7am - that was two hours away!
Pushing is hard work, and I mean HARD work. Nathan held one leg and the nurse held the other. I pushed and pushed and it felt like I was not making any progress. I wanted to give up. After an hour, I was exhausted. The dr. came in to check on me and told the nurse that I needed to have oxygen for the baby (he wasn't getting enough.)
So 7am came and one nurse left and another came in. I kept asking about when the dr. would come to deliver my baby (I wanted him OUT) but I only got a vague "soon" as an answer. It wasn't much past 7 when I was so tired and so uncomfortable that I was crying, begging the nurse to call the dr., telling her I needed help and that I couldn't do it. Every minute seemed like an eternity.
She did her best to reassure me, but after every contraction, I asked her to call the dr. Finally, at about 7:20ish the baby had crowned and it was time to call a dr. in. She told me she would first page Dr. Herzog, and if he couldn't make it, then Dr. Rondeau would deliver my baby. She paged Dr. H. About five minutes passed and she says kind of nervously, "I'm going to try again, sometimes the page doesn't go through." She paged him again. And I went through another horrid contraction and cried for her to get a dr. She said she would call Dr. Rondeau and called the nurses station. It was 7:30 and Dr. R. had just left.
I screamed, "There's no dr. here?!?" She paged Dr. H. again and assured me he was coming and on his way, then she called the NICU. I remember her telling me, "In just a few minutes this room is going to be very crowded. Don't panic. Blah, blah, blah." I just remember that her trying to calm me down actually freaked me out more.
Finally, Dr. H. rushes into the room, throws on a gown and gloves while I was in mid-contraction and doesn't hesitate to cut me. Thank heaven I had the epidural! It still hurt and I could feel it, but the pain was dulled.
Even with the episiotomy, pushing was hard. It still took a lot of work, but finally Lucas was born after 3 hours of pushing.
7:53am - Lucas Arthur Remmich born
The first comment I heard was, "He's a big boy," as the nurse held him right in front of my face. I remember thinking how beautiful he was, but I had no more touched his cheek with the tip of my finger when he was passed off to the NICU nurses.
When I heard his cry, my heart melted and I ached to hold him.
I watched the NICU nurses examine him, suction out his lungs and clean him off while I was stitched up. The nurses talked about how strong our son was and also that he was big. One said he must be over 9 lbs. (That explained why delivery was so hard!)
The placenta was still high, so the dr. had to knead my stomach to work it down to be delivered. This also hurt. I was under the impression that delivering the placenta was relatively painless!
I didn't get to hold him very long - Nathan and the nurses took Lucas to the nursery to be checked in. I was cleaned up and changed.
That is my delivery in a nutshell. There's actually much more to tell and maybe one of these days I'll write more about what happens after delivery, especially since Lucas' story isn't quite finished yet - he had to be readmitted to the hospital for jaundice. But I will tell that another time.
I now completely understand what this phrase means. Words cannot describe the feelings of being a parent. Before Lucas was born, I wasn't sure how I would feel as a parent. Sometimes I worried that I wouldn't feel an overwhelming love for him, especially since pregnancy had not been wonderful and all I really wanted was for everything to be over. But I couldn't love him any more. I can't believe Nathan and I created this tiny miracle.
On Tuesday, April 14th, I went in for a regular checkup with my OB. Nathan had the day off, so he came with me. At this point, I was overdue by 3 days. Because I was overdue, the first thing the nurse did after checking blood pressure, weight, etc. was hook me up to the NST- non-stress test. For some reason, the nurses couldn't get baby's heartbeat to rise like it should. At one point she even pressed a little buzzer to my belly. But his heartbeat stayed right around 130.
Then we had the tummy check with the dr. When he checked, I was still just a fingertip dilated and not very much effaced. He did want to schedule me for an induction. "How does it sound to get this baby out this week?" he asked. "That sounds good!" I was so relieved. Pregnancy was not kind to me!
He called the family birth center and asked about openings. When he got off the phone, he told us to check in to the birth center the next morning (Wendesday the 15th) bright and early at 7am. "It's going to be a long day. Be prepared for 18-20 hours of labor." (In my head I didn't think I would really be in labor that long. Boy, was I wrong!)
He left and I was shaking as Nathan and I left the hospital. I couldn't believe I was finally to that point. I wanted pregnancy over so bad, but now when it came down to it, I was terrified.
After dropping Bandon off at a boarding kennel, we arrived at the hospital. I started a quick timeline of when things happened, and Nathan kept it up for me after I got my epidural.
7am - check-in/hookup
Nathan and I wheeled our suitcase into the family birth center where a nurse checked us in and showed me to the room I would labor and give birth in. She started an IV and the pitocin and hooked me up to a machine that monitors contractions. Nathan and I went on a couple short walks to help things progress, watched How I Met Your Mother on his laptop, and played cards.
This was the easy part! The contractions were not painful, much to my surprise and pleasure.
8:30am - attempt to break water
Dr. Herzog (my OB) came in and told me he was going to try to break my water to get things moving along. Apparently baby was too high up, and all the discomfort was for nothing. I wasn't happy. The dr. told me he would try again later.
1:45pm - broke water; contractions hurt!
The dr. came in again and this time, successfully broke my water (it was quite uncomfortable!) Having your water broken is a very strange sensation. The dr. did tell the nurse to notify NICU because there was meconium in my water. I almost started crying. This meant that I would NOT be able to hold my baby right away. Instead, the first people he would be passed off to were nurses.
After my water was broken, the contractions became quite painful. They were coming every 1.5-2 minutes and it was hard to breath through them. I was looking forward to the epidural, but I had to be at least 2 cm before getting it, because an epidural slows down labor progress.
3:05pm - 2 cm; epidural
Finally the nurse announced I was 2 cm and I could have the epidural if I liked. Um...YES! She made the call and an anesthesiologist arrived shortly. Getting an epidural is really painful, much worse than I anticipated it to be. Getting things shoved up your spine is no walk in the park, especially when you have to hold perfectly still while having painful contractions. For a while, I honestly thought about telling him to stop and I would just skip the epidural. If only those contractions weren't so painful...
Once the epidural was in place, I felt amazing. All of a sudden, I couldn't feel any contractions. The only bad thing was that it made me feel incredibly itchy all over - like having the chicken pox only 1,000 times worse. Thankfully he gave me something to make the itchiness go away, and then I was happy.
3:30pm - sleep in and out
With the epidural in place, I was able to sleep because the pain of the contractions was nonexistent. I drifted in and out for a while and crunched on ice chips, imagining the big meal I would have when this was all over.
9pm - 3 cm
Surely with how painful and close together the contractions were, I must have made a ton of progress, right? Wrong! When the nurse checked at 9pm, I was only 3 cm. I wanted to cry. Dr. Rondeau came in and introduced himself. He was the OB on-call that night. "Hopefully we'll deliver your baby tonight." I hoped so, too! It seemed to be taking forever.
9:30pm - high temp; tylenol given and thrown up
Throughout all this, the nurse is checking vitals every two hours. At 9:30, all I know is that I had a high temperature. She wouldn't tell me how high. She went to talk to Dr. Rondeau came back with three tylenol pills. I took all three and threw them all up about 10 seconds later. She went and talked to the dr. again and then told me we would try again in a little bit.
10:00pm - high temp; more tylenol
My temperature was still high, so I was given more tylenol. This time it stayed down.
10:30pm - temp still high
The nurse came back again to see if my fever was getting any better. It wasn't. She disappeared to find the dr. He came in and asked what I was allergic to. I am allergic to sulfa so he couldn't give me what he originally planned to. He left to find alternative drugs.
11:45pm - gave ampicilin & gentamyacin
The nurse came in with two more bags of fluids to put into me. I don't know exactly what they were, but they were to bring my fever down. "We really need to get it below 100.4," she told me. She checked me a little bit later and it was starting to go down. That's all I really remember, I was dozing in and out.
1:30am - 7 cm
It was time for another cervix check (yay). I expected to be maybe 5 cm since it seemed like I was progressing so slowly. I was shocked to hear I was at 7 cm! I remember thinking "It wont' be long now!" Haha. Try another 6 hours!
4:00am - 9-10 cm
The nurse came in again at 4am to check me. She said I was between nine and ten centimeters. It was almost time to push! She told me she would come back soon to check again.
This is where I really started to get nervous. I couldn't believe it was practically time and my baby would be here soon. It all seemed very surreal.
4:55am - 10 cm
Almost an hour later, the nurse checked again and said I was definitely at 10 cm. She began to prepare the room (dropped the bed, etc). She told me she was done with her shift at 7, so she hoped the baby was born before she had to leave. I thought for sure he would be born before 7am - that was two hours away!
Pushing is hard work, and I mean HARD work. Nathan held one leg and the nurse held the other. I pushed and pushed and it felt like I was not making any progress. I wanted to give up. After an hour, I was exhausted. The dr. came in to check on me and told the nurse that I needed to have oxygen for the baby (he wasn't getting enough.)
So 7am came and one nurse left and another came in. I kept asking about when the dr. would come to deliver my baby (I wanted him OUT) but I only got a vague "soon" as an answer. It wasn't much past 7 when I was so tired and so uncomfortable that I was crying, begging the nurse to call the dr., telling her I needed help and that I couldn't do it. Every minute seemed like an eternity.
She did her best to reassure me, but after every contraction, I asked her to call the dr. Finally, at about 7:20ish the baby had crowned and it was time to call a dr. in. She told me she would first page Dr. Herzog, and if he couldn't make it, then Dr. Rondeau would deliver my baby. She paged Dr. H. About five minutes passed and she says kind of nervously, "I'm going to try again, sometimes the page doesn't go through." She paged him again. And I went through another horrid contraction and cried for her to get a dr. She said she would call Dr. Rondeau and called the nurses station. It was 7:30 and Dr. R. had just left.
I screamed, "There's no dr. here?!?" She paged Dr. H. again and assured me he was coming and on his way, then she called the NICU. I remember her telling me, "In just a few minutes this room is going to be very crowded. Don't panic. Blah, blah, blah." I just remember that her trying to calm me down actually freaked me out more.
Finally, Dr. H. rushes into the room, throws on a gown and gloves while I was in mid-contraction and doesn't hesitate to cut me. Thank heaven I had the epidural! It still hurt and I could feel it, but the pain was dulled.
Even with the episiotomy, pushing was hard. It still took a lot of work, but finally Lucas was born after 3 hours of pushing.
7:53am - Lucas Arthur Remmich born
The first comment I heard was, "He's a big boy," as the nurse held him right in front of my face. I remember thinking how beautiful he was, but I had no more touched his cheek with the tip of my finger when he was passed off to the NICU nurses.
When I heard his cry, my heart melted and I ached to hold him.
I watched the NICU nurses examine him, suction out his lungs and clean him off while I was stitched up. The nurses talked about how strong our son was and also that he was big. One said he must be over 9 lbs. (That explained why delivery was so hard!)
The placenta was still high, so the dr. had to knead my stomach to work it down to be delivered. This also hurt. I was under the impression that delivering the placenta was relatively painless!
I didn't get to hold him very long - Nathan and the nurses took Lucas to the nursery to be checked in. I was cleaned up and changed.
That is my delivery in a nutshell. There's actually much more to tell and maybe one of these days I'll write more about what happens after delivery, especially since Lucas' story isn't quite finished yet - he had to be readmitted to the hospital for jaundice. But I will tell that another time.
