10.26.2008

chapter 1: 1 am wake up call...

prepare yourselves...this is quite a long story through my roller coaster of emotions during my entire delivery process...i'll probably break it down into "chapters" since i probably won't have time to write everything in one session but i definitely want to try to journal my experience before it all becomes discombobulated in my mind.

so after a relaxing weekend, i woke up sunday night at 1:45am to go to the bathroom and saw some blood. it wasn't a huge amount but enough for me to be concerned and decided to call my doctor. she mentioned that it was probably just the softening of my cervix and wasn't anything to be too concerned about. however, if the baby isn't moving much, i can go to the hospital and monitor the baby if i'm really worried. baby l is usually very active in the middle of the night so when he wasn't really moving much i woke s up and decided to go to the hospital. at the same time, when i was going to the bathroom, i was having some strange fluid releases. i really didn't think my water had broken as it wasn't uncontrollable and it wasn't trickling or flowing like what i had read about. however, i still wore a pad to be on the safe side. the only beauty of going to the hospital at 2 in the morning...absolutely no traffic! on the drive in, s and i really did think it was a false alarm and that we were going to be there for maybe half an hour, have the nurses tell everything was fine and then send us home.

when i got to the ob triage, they tested my pad and it was indeed amniotic fluid! the reason why there wasn't more fluid coming out was because the baby was very low and his head was clogging the fluid from flowing out. oh dear, were we surprised! i was only 2 centimeters dilated and was not feeling any contractions - but they were happening! the nurses then made us go for a walk around the hospital for an hour to see if that will speed up my contractions. after my boring walk, they moved us to my labor room and this was now about 6am. i ate a light breakfast as this was probably the last meal i was going to have until after delivery. the walk didn't do anything to speed up my contractions so they started me on pitocin at probably 7am. several hours later...still no progress in my dilation. they increased my pitocin dosage and finally at about 2pm, i finally started to feel the contractions. haahaa. the nurse checked my dilation and i was only still at 2-3 cm!! seriously, that sucked! i decided i didn't want to be on the epidural this early, so they gave me a narcotic, fentanyl. it only relieved my pain for a few contractions but an hour later, i had to tell my nurse that the pain was increasing and embarrassingly admitted that it felt like i had bowel movement. she got excited and that was a sure sign that i was probably fully dilated. and she was correct - i was! amazing, at 2pm, i was still 2-3 cm dilated and an hour later, i was fully dilated! crazy.

so...it was time for the epidural. ummm...can i say, it was SO painful. what was suppose to be a 5 minute process lasted over 20 minutes for me!! apparently, the anesthesiologist said i have a VERY "strong back bone". he had to numb my back several different times and at different spots because he couldn't find the right location for the catheter. there was pressure each time he puts in the lidocaine and each time i felt it got more painful. after each numbed attempt, there was another needle attempt. s felt very helpless but he didn't even want to look since the needle is so disgustingly long. my poor nurse, i had to squeeze her hands each time. finally after the 5th attempt, the anesthesiologist was done and i was instantly pain-free. i just would have never imagined that the epidural ended up being one of the more painful processes during this entire labor.

shortly after the epidural, my blood pressure dropped dramatically and the babies heart rate dropped significantly as well to ~60! very dangerous. the nurse thought it was just the initial reaction to the epidural but had to inform my doctor. the nurse told us that if the pressure and heart rate does not increase, it might mean c-section. however, the doctor didn't agree and felt that it would be fine to deliver as planned.

okay, this is all i can muster for now ... the next chapter will be the delivery!

1 comment:

Jeanne said...

Ahhh! What a cliff hanger! At least I know this story has a happy ending =) Looking forward to reading the rest. A.J. is soooo cute!