My Crazy Birth Story

Monday, August 4th

I went to my normal midwife appointment. My blood pressure was too high, so my midwife had me give a urine sample. There was protein in my urine too. She told me I needed to go straight to the hospital for more testing. If they confirmed preeclampsia, I would need to be induced.

So I called my parents. Nothing was completely ready. I had packed most of my hospital bag but there were still things I needed. I had to give my parents directions on what to bring while I went to the hospital alone.

My parents got there about 30 minutes later. After around 4.5 hours of testing, they confirmed that I needed to be induced.

I didn’t want a lot of medication and I especially didn’t want the same medication I had been given during my miscarriage because I had horrible side effects from it. So we decided to start with a balloon to try to get me to 3 to 4 cm.

Around 8pm they started the induction. There was one balloon in my uterus and another in my cervix.

The contractions started. They were painful but honestly whatever. The balloons were the horrible part. I couldn’t sit or lay down comfortably. So for four hours I basically stood through the contractions. I was too stubborn to ask them to deflate the balloons because I wanted them to be as effective as possible.

After four hours they partially deflated one of them. About two hours later they removed both of them, which was horrible, but I had made it to 3 cm.

I was still having contractions around every two minutes but they barely hurt anymore. So I finally slept for about three hours.

Tuesday, August 5th

Around 5:30am my contractions had spread out, so they started me on a low dose of Pitocin. They continued increasing it every 30 minutes.

By around 10am there still wasn’t much progress. I was already on a pretty high dose of Pitocin, so I finally called my doula to come.

We started doing circuits. Basically different exercises and positions to try to help me dilate. My contractions were coming every 2 to 3 minutes but I could hardly feel them.

Eventually I got to around 5 to 6 cm.

And then I stopped progressing.

They started talking about breaking my water. I really didn’t want to do it, so we agreed to let me continue doing circuits for another two hours first.

Still nothing.

Close to midnight they broke my water.

Wednesday, August 6th

Now we were going into Wednesday and the contractions were stronger, but they kept spacing out.

They stopped the Pitocin for about an hour because I had been on it for so long. Then they restarted it.

Still nothing.

Wednesday morning they suggested an epidural.

I was confused because I felt completely fine with the contractions. They thought maybe I was clenching without realizing it and that could be keeping me from dilating.

I didn’t think that was what was happening. I had taken the classes. I knew what clenching felt like and I felt relaxed.

At this point I started thinking something was wrong and I was completely fucked.

But I agreed to the epidural.

I was terrified of getting it. It hurt af going in and the entire thing scared me. Once it was in, I couldn’t leave the bed anymore. Then came the catheter, which I tried to convince them I didn’t need. They refused lol.

I slept again.

They checked me.

Still 6 cm.

At that point they told me we probably needed to do a C section.

In my head I already knew that was going to happen. I had even told my mom that I didn’t think the epidural was going to magically make me dilate.

So I agreed.

The anesthesiologist came back to explain everything. I immediately told her I didn’t want to be awake for the C section. She reassured me that I wouldn’t feel anything and that they would test me first. She also explained that being awake would be better for the baby.

Then the doctor and midwife came in to talk to me.

And that was when I finally started crying.

I had been in labor for around 42 hours at that point. I had walked. I had done circuit after circuit. I had stayed positive. I had tried everything they asked me to try.

They told me I had done more than most people would and that everyone had seen how hard I tried.

I just remember crying and saying, I tried so hard.

Then everything happened really fast.

They started prepping me and my mom.

They took me into the operating room first and I was scared af. I hate not being in control.

The anesthesiologist started putting more medication into the epidural while they moved the table around to distribute it. It hurt. My arms were out to my sides and I felt like Jesus on the cross.

My midwife came into the room just to hold my hand until my mom could come in.

They tested me and thought the anesthesia was working.

My mom came in.

I could still feel a prick close to my belly button, but they told me the incision would be lower.

They put the sheet up.

Then they started.

I immediately started having a panic attack. I was crying. My mom was crying. Even my midwife was crying.

But I couldn’t move.

Then all of a sudden I felt this intense pain from the inside.

And I had this voice in my head telling me: “Something is wrong. Tell them to knock you out.”

So I started screaming that I was in pain.

They were telling me that I shouldn’t be feeling pain. At one point they said they weren’t even touching me.

But I knew what I was feeling.

And the voice in my head just kept getting louder and repeating. “Something is wrong. Tell them to know you out”

So I kept screaming.

“Something is wrong.”

“Knock me out.”

“Knock me out.”

“Knock me out.”

Over and over again.

My mom was yelling for them to stop because I was screaming and crying in pain.

Even the anesthesiologist who originally didn’t want me under general anesthesia finally said they needed to knock me out.

They made my mom leave the room and waited for the neonatal team.

Then they knocked me out.

The next thing I remember is waking up with my mom and my baby next to me. I couldn’t stop dry heaving.

The doctor asked me for permission to send my placenta to pathology. I basically said what, yeah, whatever.

I asked what my baby’s Apgar score was. Then I went back out again.

When I finally came around enough to understand what had happened, I learned that getting my son out had gone fine.

The problem came afterward.

When they tried to remove my placenta, it wasn’t coming out whole like it normally should. My doctor told me she had never seen anything like it. It was coming out in pieces.

Then I started hemorrhaging.

They had to manually remove and scrape out the remaining placenta and give me medication to control the bleeding.

I lost more than 3 liters of blood. 

I had already been anemic during pregnancy, so I was starting from a bad place to begin with.

They gave me a blood transfusion.

My doctor later told me that if I had delivered vaginally, she believed the outcome could have been catastrophic. She told me I could have died from the blood loss or needed a hysterectomy to control it.

I was also told afterward that it ended up being a good thing that I had asked to be put under. They felt that being awake during the hemorrhage would have made an already terrifying situation even harder for me.

After surgery I was completely out of it. Super dissociated.

Even when I finally held my baby, I couldn’t process what was happening correctly because I was still so affected by everything.

Because of the hemorrhage, they kept the epidural in for another 24 hours.

I couldn’t move from the bed.

I had another balloon inside my uterus to control and monitor the bleeding. I still had the catheter too.

I couldn’t get up and go to my baby. I couldn’t independently pick him up. I couldn’t change him. I couldn’t really do anything.

My mom had to take care of him.

Around 10pm Wednesday night I finally started coming out of the dissociation.

Then I developed a fever.

So all night I was working with the nurses trying to bring it down. Ice packs. Cooling myself down. Whatever I could do.

I didn’t want my mom to freak out any more than she already had. She was also taking care of a newborn for the first time in 37 years.

She wouldn’t let the nurses take him to the nursery because I had told her long before delivery that if anything happened to me, someone needed to stay with the baby at all times.

She even fought with them to make sure he came with her to the recovery room.

Thursday, August 7th

By early morning my fever had finally come down.

Then they told me my body wasn’t making blood fast enough and I needed another transfusion.

They gave me another bag of blood with Benadryl.

I remember thinking, oh yay, I can finally sleep after four days.

Nope.

Every time I fell asleep someone was back in the room. Do this. Check that. More blood. More tests.

Eventually they removed the balloon from my uterus and took out the epidural.

About an hour later they finally removed the catheter too.

Then it became, now you need to walk. Now you need to pee. Now we need to measure the pee.

My postpartum contractions started too.

More pain.

I originally had two IVs, one in each arm. The one in my right arm had already gone bad and they removed it. That night the left one went bad too. Since I was supposed to leave the next morning, they decided to remove that one too.

That night my baby didn’t sleep well. Which meant I didn’t sleep either.

I was still basically useless. My mom was doing everything and I just had to watch.

Mentally I was done.

Friday, August 8th

Friday morning they told me my blood counts still weren’t recovering the way they wanted and they wanted to give me IV iron.

Except they had already taken both IVs out.

I have horrible veins. It runs in my family. Getting an IV usually means multiple attempts and someone moving a needle around trying to find the vein.

I told them I didn’t want another IV. I was exhausted and I genuinely couldn’t handle any more pain.

They offered to bring in an ultrasound guided IV. I still didn’t want it.

My mom started arguing with me that I needed the iron and it would help me recover faster.

I finally said I was done. I needed to go home.

The ultrasound tech came in and told me she would just look first. She said she could see the vein and wouldn’t need to poke around. She would numb the area first.

Fine. She numbed it. Didn’t do shit.

Then she started trying to get the IV and it hurt af.

I started having another panic attack. I was crying so hard that my mom started crying too.

Finally I told her to stop.

I just kept saying I wanted to go home.

Then the pediatrician checked my baby and said he was good to go.

Finally…

Then the pediatrician came back and told me my baby was borderline jaundiced.

I’m like what.

He explained that he didn’t have significant jaundice yet but needed to be checked again the next day.

Except the next day was Saturday. So now we had to figure that out too.

They also gave us a light blanket to use with him.

Finally around 2pm on Friday, August 8th, we left the hospital.

After four days.

My dad and I couldn’t even figure out how to get the baby positioned correctly in the car seat.

Every single bump in the road home felt like I was going to die from the pain.

But we were finally going home.

And somehow that was only the beginning of my postpartum story.