May 21, 2011

At 8:30pm on Friday evening, May 20th, my doctor walked into my room and nonchalantly announced that he would turn the mag off at midnight. Just like that. No slow taper to off, no step wise reduction. Just off. Given that I had had some bleeding earlier in the week, I figured it was coming, and I had waited for four weeks for this moment, and yet it somehow snuck up on me and caused me to palpitate. Maybe it was because my doctor had told me that the mag was the only thing keeping me from delivering. (The cerclage had been taken out at week 33, due to pulmonary edema, a long and uninteresting story I have condensed to this sentence.)

So off it went. A wonderful nurse helped me sneak in a shower at 1am. I tried to sleep but failed. Jason had planned to come in at 10am but was going to wake early and stay home to try and get some last minute unpacking done. Of course I was to call him if anything changed. He made it in by 10:30. I was having some cramping style contractions, but nothing I hadn't had before. Of course, about every five to eight minutes. Around 11:15 he laid down beside me on the bed, cuddling me in a spoon.

POP.

WET.

GET UP GET UP GET UP! Jason, my water just broke! HOLY S#(%#* !!!
Him: Holy crap.

He ran out of the room, I heard him yelling at the nurses. "Her water broke, her water broke!"
Lots of commotion. Two nurses ran into my room. There's a lot of water. I think I'm peeing, I ask the nurses and they say no, it's just a lot of water. They are happy for me, for us. I see the excitement in their face and it is squelches the anxious, fear driven panic that is rising inside of me. I am officially freaking out. They say to go sit on the toilet to let the water out. I am sitting there. And then they hit. The contractions have intensified times three.

And then I know the obvious: I am in labor. Sadie is coming.

The water keeps coming, every time I move or shift, but they don't care. They stuff a giant diaper pad where it needs to go and then we are off to a different room. There is a flurry of action as they and Jason pick up all of the stuff we acquired in the month I was in my tiny apartment. I say good riddance to the room and walk slowly to the L & D room. My nurse that day tells me that if I want to go for a walk, which I have not done in four weeks, I should go now. But by the time I reached the room, the contractions are already painful enough that I'm not convinced it's a good idea. I look at Jason with a kind of fear and panic and I don't know what I've gotten myself into kind of look.

He looks back at me like this.

He is purely excited. Figures, no contractions for him.
Anyways, so the nurse tells me that they will intensify but that I can't get an epidural until I'm at least 4 or 5 cm dilated. So try to stick it out as long as I can. So I am trying. And they hurt. Like really hurt. But it's only been 45 minutes! I am losing my grip on them, they are taking control of me and my mind. The nurse asks the doctor to check my dilation to see if I can get the epidural, but he's in a csection. He tells her HE will check me when he's done, implying that there's no way I'm ready yet and that I need to stick it out longer. So nobody checks me. This is how I feel about it.

Another agonizing 15 minutes go by. I am writhing by this point. The nurse checks in with the doctor, is told the same thing. She can't continue to ask him or he will get upset, she tells me. So I must somehow hold on.

Somehow I make it through another 20 minutes or so. I've been in active labor for an hour and a half, and I am losing my grip on consciousness. I am diaphoretic with every contraction and I think I'm going to pass out. I don't think I will live through another hour of this. People say "oh, you forget how much pain it is." But it's not that. It's that you cannot conjure, you cannot imagine how much pain it is. Even hours after the labor, you know it was more pain than you could ever imagine, and you cannot get your brain to understand what you've just been through. I saw a comedic movie once where a woman was in labor. She yelled "It feels like I'm shitting glass!" That's the best description I have heard so far, and yet it cannot come close.

Jason cannot touch me. He goes to get the nurse as he is starting to get worried. She comes in, says she is going to just check me because he is still in a csection. I am worried because it hurts whenever anything comes near the area in question, but compared to everything else the checking is not so bad. I am so worried she is going to tell me I'm only 2cm. Please don't be 2cm.

9cm. I am 9cm. Thank you Jesus, I am 9cm. I love you 9cm. 9cm, I will be your slave forever. 9cm, you are my hero.

Another flurry of activity. The nurse runs out of the room, runs quickly back in dragging the anesthesiologist by the arm. Jason is kicked out. They tell me I could just give birth without it right now and start pushing. I can barely see them or hear them or understand what they are saying because I am in so much agony. Of course I still want the epidural. So I am rolled over, the epidural is placed within six minutes (and 3 contractions) and I think everything is good. Except that now the IV line in my hand is kinked and hasn't been operative for who knows how long and I need an emergent IV. But because I've had multiple IVs in my hands and lab draws every six hours from any vein that looked juicy, I've got nothing left. There are no good veins in my arms. They start looking at my feet. The Epidural is starting to take effect, but I can feel it - they ram an IV line into my right foot and start pushing in fluids like it's going out of style. Finally they are happy.

And then, bliss. I cannot feel anything below my waist. Anesthesiologist, I love you more than 9cm. And that's a really lot.

I take a nap. Yep. Active labor. Took a nap for an hour and a half.

The nurse eventually comes back into the room and tells me it's time to push. I gear up for all that chaos you see in the movies when someone starts pushing a baby out. But it never comes. The nurse and Jason calmly grip my legs and pull them to my chest. The nurse helps me figure out where to push, because I can't feel anything at this point. I hold my breath and give it a try, she counts to 10, I exhale and do it again twice. Then I rest. We repeat this for about another hour. I gradually become winded and it begins to be work for me, and then I get my reward - she says she can see the head. Jason concurs, and suddenly he is filled with excitement and enough energy for both of us to get through this. A few more pushes, and the nurse tells me to wait, she needs to go get the doctor for the rest of the delivery.

It finally hits me - Sadie is minutes away from being in my arms.

Dr. Tabsh comes in and quietly surveys the situation. I push twice more. I get an episiotomy. I push once more and there she is. Sadie has arrived.

She is not placed serenely on my chest like on the Bravo documentaries like "A Baby Story". She is whisked away to the warming table where the respiratory therapist and the neonatologist start working. She is not crying. She is making no sounds. They are rubbing her chest. Jason and I wait for what seems like an eternity. And then there it is, the weakest, feeblest cry you've ever heard, coming from a tiny little throat that's full of fluid. Actually it's a gurgle. But it's a sound. She is making her first sounds. And it's beautiful.

They suction her throat and get a bunch of goop out. I am delivering the placenta, and Jason is hovering over the baby. She is going to be ok they finally decide. I am getting sewn up. I can feel a tiny bit now, not fun but not bad. And at long last the two words I have longed to hear since the contractions started 20 weeks ago, those two words that helped me hang on when I just wanted her out already.

No NICU.

I cry now just writing them. Jason cuts the cord while a nurse takes a photo.

Dr. Tabsh is done sewing me up. He takes a long look at Sadie before quietly leaving the room. And then he leaves. After 26 weeks of ultrasounds, four trips to the hospital, a cerclage placed and then removed, reading lab work every six hours, getting phone calls nightly from nurses caring for me that my contractions are now every 5 minutes and reassuring them repeatedly that for me, this is normal, four weeks of daily check ins while hospitalized, false alarms about water breaking and bleeding and pains, and my constant nagging to please read the future for me, his work is finally done here.

And then we are alone, and she is in my arms, on my chest, feeling my body and hearing my heart from the outside. And it is the most miraculous, beautiful, painfully happy moment imaginable. This, also, you cannot conjure in your mind. And my heart is breaking with thanksgiving and wonder and happiness and exhaustion and the purest form of joy. It is finally over. With six pounds, six ounces of living, breathing, crying, pink flesh in my arms, I can rest assured that this pregnancy is finally, undoubtedly, over.