Let me first begin this post by saying, Happy Birthday Terrance! And my, what a wonderful year it's been. These are 2 of my favorite pictures of Joe and Terrance. The first one was taken the day we came home from the hospital and baby T was 4 days old and the other one was taken on Saturday while we were at the park. I love that she's reaching to hold his finger. So sweet. =)
Okay, now what I'm posting next is something that I've been working on since, well, Terrance was born. I started writing it when she was a couple of months old and I got about half way through it. So, the last half has been written spiradically through out the rest of the year with the last page being written just last night. Which is why the beginning is full of details and the ending isn't so much. I really haven't had much time to edit and proofread so forgive any spelling and/or grammatical errors.
This is the story of Terrance's birth. I've written it for her and with her in mind.
Friday, June 22nd 2007 I woke up a little after 4 a.m.with terrible menstrual like cramps, a back ache and, I really had to pee. I got up, finished my business and crawled back into bed. After just a short time between the sheets, though, I realized that I still had really bad cramps and that I had to go to the bathroom. After 10 minutes of trying “to go” though, I suddenly remembered from my childbirth classes that everything I was feeling was associated with the first stages of labor. It was then that I actually recognized the “strange feeling,” that I up to that point hadn’t been so sure about, as a contraction. I acted fast shaking Joe until he was awake and told him that I was in labor. His reply was what I thought it would be, “oh, you are?” “are you sure?” and while the hesitance in his voice was annoying I knew it wasn’t because he didn’t believe me. It was because he knew and he was just as scared as I was. I barely waited for a reply before I hopped out of bed. He stayed put so that he could get a bit more sleep in before he needed to start his day. I, on the other hand, was too nervous and knew that even if I wanted to, I wasn’t going back to sleep.
I got out of bed, rifled through my birth class binder and found the worksheet I had to time my contractions. After timing a few I was really scared because they were coming so fast; they were between 4 and 6 minutes apart and were lasting 45 seconds to a minute. My first thought was to rush to the hospital, but thank goodness I took those classes and knew that I needed to time them for at least an hour and then, if they were still coming at such a speedy and consistent rate I could go to the hospital. But they didn’t. After 20 minutes or so they slowed down and stretched way out, coming every 7 – 10 minutes and not lasting nearly as long. Phew, I was relieved but I was still really anxious. I was going to have a baby! All of my day dreaming and wondering of how it would all happen was finally playing itself out. I don’t remember exactly, but I’m sure I woke Joe way before he needed to be up. I was in labor and I needed him! He got up and contemplated going to work. Would I be okay without him? I was kind of scared to be home alone and I really wanted him to stay with me. Knowing, though, that it could still be the whole rest of the day before anything else happened we decided that he’d go to work. I, on the other hand, was staying home that day. I called my boss to let her know, and then I called my mom and then I called Whitney. Now, Whitney just sucks. She had left the day before to Vale for a wedding and wouldn’t you know that she didn’t answer her phone for the first several hours of my calling. I think it’d been about 4 or 5 hours before I got a hold of her and when I did I confirmed the many messages that I had left, “Yes, I really am in labor and no, I’m not kidding.” She wasn’t too happy because all the week before she had told me (rather Terrance) to wait for her to get home. We laughed at the thought of me suddenly having the baby as soon as she went out of town because I was, in fact, a week from my due date. But as I had read many, many times, it’s more of a due month; the baby will come when she’s ready. And she did.
After laboring all day my contractions weren’t getting any closer together and they weren’t lasting any longer, but they were getting more intense. By 10 o’clockthat night I had had it. I couldn’t take it any longer, the pain was too much and nothing I had learned in my birth class about relieving it was helping. I convinced Joe that we needed to go the birth center.
Let me add that all through out my pregnancy I thought for sure that I would be able to have an all natural birth. “No drugs for me,” I said. “How bad can it really be?” Boy, was I in for a rude awakening. I was hurting!
After arriving at the birth center I was checked and found out that I was 3 cm dilated. I walked the halls for an hour, was checked again and had progressed to 4 cm and an hour later, at midnight, I was finally admitted at 5 cm. All through out my pregnancy I was a huge fan of the show, “A Baby Story” on TLC and watched it religiously at 9 and 9:30 a.m. if I didn’t have to work that day. So many times I had watched women labor in giant bathtubs and I had set my heart on it. I had also read that the water can help alleviate some of the pain and at this point I was looking forward to it more than ever. Once I was admitted and got into my delivery room I was given my IV and strapped to a giant machine so that they could monitor Terrance’s heart beat and my contractions. I remember that the nurse said, as she was strapping me in, “it’ll only be for 20 minutes or so and then you can get in the tub.” Well, as nice as that would have been, to be strapped in for 20 minutes, it turned out to actually be much longer than that. The whole time I was in pain and thinking that I desperately needed to get into that tub. And, the giant straps that kept the heart monitors in place and gouging my belly really weren’t helping my comfort level any. Once an hour had passed the nurse finally came in and released me.
It was now nearing 2 a.m.and Joe was fast asleep on the small couch in the room and I was finally getting some relief in the tub. It wasn’t, however, as wonderfully peaceful and relaxing as I had hoped and expected it to be. The first ten minutes or so were really, really nice but then a contraction came and the water wasn’t making it any better. It seemed that it was actually making the pain worse. Determined though to enjoy the luxurious bath tub complete with massaging jets, I stayed put. I had in fact seen and heard over and over that the bath was supposed to help and maybe I hadn’t been in long enough, I thought. Well, I was wrong. The pain didn’t get any better, just progressively worse, and I had now given up on my hopes of having a natural birth. I got out of the tub and told my nurse that I wanted an epidural.
Just as the anesthesiologist was putting the needle in my back Joe woke up which absolutely delighted me. I needed him to hold my hand. Now, talk about instant relief, that epidural was wonderful! The sensation was a bit weird, I could actually feel the cold medicine running into and through my spine. And just minutes after I had been given the first dose I wasn’t feeling my contractions anymore. This made me so happy. I was exhausted and had nearly been up for 24 hours. I needed to rest. With the epidural in place I rolled onto my side and fell asleep. Just four hours later though, I was abruptly woken up by a really painful contraction on the left side of my body. I pushed the little button that they had given me to release more medicine into my epidural, but I didn’t feel any relief. When I was able to, I pushed the button again hoping for the contractions to go away but they didn’t. My nurse called the anesthesiologist in to give me a stronger dose which lasted for about 20 minutes. When the anesthesiologist came in one last time I thought, “third times a charm,” but in my case it wasn’t. I was on my own. Well, the left side of my body, anyways. The epidural was working great for the right side which was just weird. So, there I laid on my right side with my knees to my chest, (or as far up as I could get them) in the worst pain of my life and wondering when my mother was going to shut up. Forgive me, I haven’t told you about my mother yet. Don’t get me wrong, I love my mom, but not more than she loves herself. When I got pregnant I was working at my local scrapbooking store with my sister, Whitney. Sometime in May she had created a calendar and posted it on the wall so that the staff and customers could try to guess the due date of the baby and win a prize. Well, wouldn’t you know that my mother had picked the day correctly, June 23rd, exactly one week before my due date. And it wasn’t like she picked it randomly or “just because.” She was confident, “you’ll have her a week early just like I had all of my babies.” So, because she had picked T’s birthday it had automatically given her the right to sit in my birth room and talk about herself, her labors, her births, and how she had picked day the ENTIRE TIME I was in labor. And to be very honest, it was annoying and it pissed me off. There, I said it. Mom, you’re annoying, but I love you. Back to the story. Now that it had been confirmed that the left side of my body had a very high tolerance of narcotics I was working on perfecting the deep breathing techniques that I had learned in my birth classes. And you know what? It worked. I could breathe deeply with my contractions and it helped, a lot. Fast forward to noon: I had been in labor for 32 hours and had been progressing wonderfully. I was 9 cm dilated and really felt the urge to push. The trouble, though, was that I had been at 9 cmfor more than 2 hours and my midwife and the doctor on duty were, at this point, advising me that a cesarean birth would be necessary. I was so against this. I wanted to have my baby naturally. I wanted to hold her the moment she was born. They persisted, though, and even pulled the “if you wait too long it may become a matter of life and death” card. I was so mad and really sad. The experience of having my first child was straying so far from my anticipated route. I had labored all day and all night and I was being told that I wouldn’t be able to give birth to my baby. I certainly tried though. I had an excellent nurse, Katalina, that encouraged me (once the doctor and midwife had left the room) to keep changing positions and that I was “going to have this baby naturally.” And so I did, which was hard considering half of my body was out of order. And after two hours of changing positions and even pushing for awhile, I finally surrendered. I was exhausted. I was going to have a cesarean. After being prepped to enter the operating room, I was rolled in with my hated midwife at my side. My nurse was there too, though, which eased my anxiety a bit. After the spinal was quickly administered I was laid down and the doctor asked me, as he pinched my stomach with forceps, “can you feel this?” “Yes,” I replied. “Now, can you really feel that or are you just saying you can because you know I’m doing it?” He said in a “I really don’t believe that you can” tone of voice. “Fuck you” I thought, but I said, “Yes, I can really feel it.” And it was those words that he was able to decide for me to be unconscious while my baby was born. The last thing I remember was hearing the doctor ask everyone, “what should we listen to while we do this?”
Terrance was born at 3:17 p.m. She weighed 7 lbs 8 oz and was 21 ¼ inches long.
I woke up around 5:30 p.m.in the recovery room freezing cold, shivering uncontrollably and in what was now the worst pain of my entire life. I screamed for my nurse to give me something for the pain and begged her to turn the heat up. After waiting for nearly 30 minutes for the nurse to hear from the doctor as to what pain medicine I could be given, I was finally warming up and feeling some relief. And that’s when she asked me, “do you want to see your baby?”
And I said, “no, I want to see my husband.” I feel so ashamed for not wanting to see her right away. I labored hard for 35 hours and wasn’t able to be present for her birth and it was devastating. I went to sleep pregnant and woke up not pregnant. My husband came and told me how beautiful she was and how he had been able to sit in the nursery with her for nearly an hour before he took her to see her visitors. He cried when he told me; he warmed my heart and filled me with joy. I wanted to see my baby now. The end, for now anyways. Phew! I told you it was a long post. This really isn't finished; I plan on writing about the rest of that day and the following few days as that is when I really became to realize that I was a mother and that beautiful little baby was all mine. =) Thank you for taking the time to read this. Have a great day! p.s. Sorry for the sloppiness of this post. I copy and pasted the story from a word document and just can't seem to get the paragraphs and fonts right.
wow...I love birth stories..they are all so different and yours is special!! Can not believe she is a year old!!! Such cute pics here too!!!
Posted by: Jane (photoscrapin) | 2008.06.23 at 02:56 PM