My Baby Delivery Story…for Posterity Sake, I Guess!

http://www.qtpies7.blogspot.com/ Over at her site, she is hosting a ‘contest’ for birthing stories…well, I only have one story, but it’s a good one, so I figured I’d join in. 

If you’re the type to get grossed out about ‘baby stories’ this would be a good time to just pass up this particular blog entry…

  The birth of my only,  my little Kiki ~  I was labeled "high risk" from the beginning, but only because of my age… I was going to be 36 years old when I delivered her (I was 36 by one week….she was born a week to the day after my birthday).  I wasn’t concerned; I actually thought it was a little silly.  I didn’t feel old.  I do now, by the way!  I threw up at least once a day, every day, for the entire 9 months.  And every time I threw up, it was with such force that I broke blood vessels under my eyes (so I had these constant tiny red circles under my eyes) not to mention that each and every time, I wet my pants.  Lovely.  During delivery was no exception.  But, let me start from the beginning…. My doctor kept changing my due date, and I never did know exactly why.  All I know is, at one point she was supposed to be born on my birthday, and I thought this would be a total rip-off…you know as the mom, I would be the one who never got a special day again!!  It’d be all about that baby!  About the time my birthday came and went, the doctor decided I was overdue, and if I didn’t have the baby by the following Friday, she was going to induce labor.  I was totally freaked out about that, because I had heard all these stories about how induced labor was much worse than if it starts on it’s own.  I guess it’s all about the power of the mind, because I went into labor that Thursday.  Late in the afternoon, we went to the hospital.  I had this bag full of stuff, mostly goodies, because my little sister had told me I would want to snack.  Whatever.  My poor hubby had to take me to every market in Western Washington because I just had to have Butter Toffee Peanuts.  Had to.  They were very hard to find, but we did!  I don’t think I ever ate any of them.  I’d bought this beautiful white and blue robe, with tea cups on it, that the nurse took one look at and told me "honey, you don’t want to wear that lovely thing…it’ll just get messed up."  Huh.  At one point, before I had any IV’s or anything, I had to go throw up…I remember being embarrassed because, of course, I peed on the bathroom floor when I  did….it wasn’t until days later that I realized the reason it was a major flood was because that was when my water broke!  I didn’t even know…duh.  Later, as I lay on the delivery table, the nurse had to bring me a bucket…she said, "wow, I’ve never had anyone throw up at this point!"  Lucky me, I guess.   Then they gave me my IV…it took 6 pokes, and a puddle of blood on the floor from my hand.  I had decided to try to go without any drugs, but I wasn’t too proud to take something if it got wicked…well, wicked it got, so I asked for some Stadol…now, this had been described to me as just a very strong aspirin type deal.  Which is completely ridiculous, and I should’ve slapped the birth instructor who told me that!  Well, they gave me some, and I tell you it made me absolutely loopy!!  I immediately fell asleep and began dreaming…as soon as a contraction hit, I’d wake up, then fall back asleep the second it ended.  I remember at one point, I woke up, and saw the nurse talking to me…saw, not heard.  I could see her mouth moving, but that was it…I looked over at Alan and asked "Is she talking to me??"  Another time, I was dreaming of Thanksgiving dinner (even tho this was August!) and when a contraction woke me up, I asked Alan to "please pass me the butter."  You should have seen the way the poor guy looked at me!  Geez, what a strange trip!  Eventually this wore off, and I was grateful…until the next stage of labor hit!  I started begging for an epidural…the nurse tried to talk me out of it…she said if I just "hung in there" I’d be done in 20 minutes, but the epi might drag it out for hours.  She may have been correct, but all I could think was that even 20 more seconds of this would kill me…Give me an Epi and give it to me now!!  Well, they did, and that nurse was totally scowling at me.  It did stop my labor, but who cared??  Now I felt soooo good, I didn’t care how long I lay there!   That nurse cared, tho, and let me know it.  I was just glad it made me numb, because now my feet weren’t freezing…at least, not so that I could tell!  Eventually, the nurses told me I needed to push…but I was so numb, I had no idea if I was or not.  I"d  never done this before…I couldn’t tell.  I kept asking "Am I pushing?  Am I doing it?"  and they’d just sigh, and say no.  I felt so upset that they seemed mad at me… I mean, they get paid for the shift, so what did it matter if I took 10 minutes or 10 hours??  It annoyed me.  I started to cry.  Finally, this super nice male nurse came in, and started to speak kindly to me…then he brought in this metal frame thingy, that sort of made a pull-up bar over the bed, and he tied a towel to it, and helped me to sort of pull myself up, and gravity kicked in and the lame pushing I was doing began to work.  Thankfully, the Epi had worn off a bit; not so much that I had any pain, but enough that I did have some feeling… and I was so glad, because I had realized I might not even have felt my baby being born, and that would have totally sucked.  So I did feel the birth, but no pain.  I’m all for that!  Now, my doctor was totally excited because we didn’t know the sex of our baby, so she would get to yell "It’s a ____!!"  Did you ever realize what a bummer it is for doctors that they don’t get to tell you anymore?  So she yelled "It’s a girl!" and I said "It’s a …WHAT?"  Because I wanted a daughter so badly, and I’d had so many dreams that my baby was a boy…I couldn’t believe it!   What happened next, well, thankfully I didn’t see it…my husband said it was ‘messy as a pig slaughter’….but I had a beautiful, precious little girl, and I would do it all again!  Well, actually, I never did…so, maybe I’m a wussie!  Or maybe you just don’t mess with perfection…I got my little girl!