what a crazy, amazing, exhausting and sometimes scary week this has been. all 100% worth it. as i write this morning, my feet are slowly beginning to recede to their normal size...something i secretly feared would never happen. in general, i feel a bit better every day.
as i expected, the hardest thing (now that the pain has begun to subside) is the sleep deprivation. i don't handle lack of sleep well, but i do feel my body has handled it far better than i had expected. other than the rare 4-hour stretch, my sleep comes in about 1.5 to 2.5 hour increments. despite this, during the day, i don't feel all that bad. it's the nights that are getting to me.
this little girl certainly has her own schedule, which is fine...except her schedule hasn't been posted anywhere yet, and we're having a hard time following it since it's not in writing. it seems like she feeds almost constantly from 9-2 or so, then we get some rest until morning. you know it's bad when you celebrate an uninterrupted stint of 3 hours sleep :)
however. we are just so in love with her. from the moment she emerged, i've been just overcome with emotion for her...and it grows every day. i wouldn't say i'm completely attached to her just yet, but it won't be long until i can't imagine my life without her.
as for the birth...
from the posts that derek and teresa (our sister-in-law) have put up, it was a sketchy story...i know teresa didn't give a lot of details, and that was because she didn't want to pull focus from the bigger picture -- that our beautiful daughter was born healthy and happy. by the time derek started posting, much of what was going on with us had been bouncing around with phone calls between family members and some close friends, so i don't think he felt the need to go into detail. but now that i'm fairly well on the mend, i'll give you a little more on how things transpired.
as you all know, i was scheduled to go in at 8am on tuesday the 20th so that the dr could break my water. all this went as planned. he broke my bag around 8.45am at family beginnings, the natural birthing center. teresa was with us shortly thereafter (and stayed until shortly after charis was born). we enjoyed the atmosphere in the room there...spacious and homey. we put in some movies and had lunch...we took lots of walks and i spent some time on the birthing ball to try and move her down.
shortly after lunch, when things really hadn't begun progressing at all, they brought in a breast pump for me. for those who don't know, breastfeeding releases the hormone oxytocin, which causes the uterus to contract. (the drug pitocin, used to induce labor, is a synthetic form of oxytocin.) so i got hooked up to the pump. while it did cause some stronger contractions about 5 minutes apart, they went away as soon as i was off the pump.
the dr had said we could try to progress for about 8 hours after he broke my bag...that 8 hours went by pretty quickly. the dr came in and we agreed it was time to go to labor & delivery and start pitocin. our little girl just wasn't getting the hint. :)
once we transferred over there, it took a while for the orders for pitocin to get finalized, so i think the drip actually started somewhere around 6pm. there was a definite and immediate effect. our nurse, erin, increased the pitocin about every 20-30 minutes, depending on how the contractions were progressing. i began to despise erin and her pitocin-pushing ways. (for the record though, erin was amazing the whole time and we were so glad she was our nurse...she even came to the icu the next morning to visit us and see how we were doing)
the dr came in periodically to check on me, and we had some fun conversations about some of our friends who had birthed with him. on that paricular day, a friend of mine from work was checking in at the same time i was, also to be induced by our doctor. the doctor got in the habit of giving us updates on each other when he saw us. that same day, a friend from our birthing class had her follow-up appointment with him, as did another close friend of mine...both of whom asked about me since they knew i was going in that day. the dr made comments to me about my knowing everyone and thought it was even more hysterical when i told him about another friend who had had all 3 of her kids with him... his response was "how do you know HER????"
so anyway, back to the pitocin. there were definite levels of intensity and pain that evolved. it was gradual, but incremental, if that makes any sense. the whole time, derek and teresa were helping me stay relaxed through the contractions...massaging my feet, stroking my hair, and keeping the calm music playing. but when the contractions got bad, they got really bad.
i quit watching the clock, but the contractions were sometimes coming 3-4 at a time with no breaks...and they were crazy painful. sometimes i'd get a few minutes break, but it never seemed like near enough to recover. at this point, when erin checked me, i was still only 4cm dilated...and that was after almost 6 hours on pitocin, probably the last 2 of which had been just beyond excruciating. through every contraction during those excruciating 2 hours, i was thinking in my head "i want the epidural, i want the epidural...i can't handle this any more" then i'd get a short break and think maybe i could do it.
finally, the dr came back to check on me...i asked him if it would hurt more than it already did as things continued to progress. "yes." i asked him if it would hurt less if i got the epidural. "yes." so i made the decision that it was time for the epidural. erin (who had read our birth plan and knew we had wanted a natural birth) was great because she didn't make the call to the anesthesiologist until i told her explicitly, "i want the epidural." i had said "ok" several times after we discussed it, but she didn't do anything until i told her definitively that was what i wanted.
then i asked if there were good people to do it...erin reassured me that one of the best anesthesiologists was there that night..."i'm not just saying that," she said. "he really is one of our best." then i asked her how long until he got there..."well, if he's free, it could be 10 minutes...if he's doing another epidural or a c-section, it could be up to an hour" i didn't ask any more questions after that because i couldn't handle the idea of waiting another hour for relief.
thankfully, he was there pretty quickly. and then came probably the hardest part of the entire labor -- sitting perfectly still through those insane contractions, while he stuck a gargantuan needle into my spine. yeah. it's amazing sometimes what we can convince our bodies to do when there is no other choice.
after the epidural went in around 12.30am on the 21st, the contractions gradually relieved themselves over the next 15-20 minutes and i was actually able to get some rest. the next several hours were mainly filled with short bouts of sleep and the feeling of pressure from the baby's head moving down. erin checked me once in a while to see how i was progressing...6cm...then 2.5 hours later, 9cm...and not long thereafter, 10cm. it was time to push.
pushing apparently lasted about 2 hours, but it really didn't seem that long to me. maybe an hour, if i was pressed to tell. again, there was little or no pain, but the epidural was such that i could feel the pressure and know when to push.
and then she was born :)
they brought her up to me and i just bawled. derek and i looked at her and looked at each other, and i don't think i've ever felt more in love with him than i did in that moment. it was indescribable.
the dr delivered the placenta, and derek cut the cord. and then, i started to feel kind of wrong.
all of a sudden, i got really light headed, felt nauseous and just knew i was going to pass out. there was so much commotion in the room at that time, and i barely had the voice to speak to tell them that someone should take the baby from me.
i don't remember much about the next 5 hours, except a few more bouts of feeling i would pass out, and a lot of arguing among the nurses about what might be wrong with me. the next day, the dr would tell us that he did observe me losing a little more blood than normal, but not enough to make me that ill.
through blood tests before and after the birth, they learned that my hemoglobin levels had dropped from 11.7 to 7. they transfuse when you get to 6. i was stabilized and finally moved into the perinatal icu around 12.30 that day. i was on iv fluids and constant blood pressure monitoring, (and later was hooked to an ekg machine for constant monitoring of my pulse and heart rate) as my blood pressure had dropped at times to 57/29.
they watched me in icu for the next 24 hours, but the blood tests continued to come back more dismal than before. finally, when my hemoglobin came back at 5.4, i was given 2 units of blood. that was on thursday, and on friday morning, my hemoglobin was back up to 8. i was moved out of icu that afternoon and began feeling better.
saturday, we were discharged, and being at home has helped my spirits immensely.
throughout all of this, derek was just amazing...taking care of the baby because i couldn't, and taking amazing care of me as well. i know he was pretty freaked out after she was born because i had lost pretty much all color very quickly. he was not happy with the care i was receiving at that time, while they were trying to figure out what was wrong with me. but all worked out in the end.
our girl's birth was nothing like we had hoped. but derek and i feel confident that the decisions we made, the deviations from our plan, were the right choices. we feel we gave her every opportunity to come out on her own, and it just got to the point where her safety was at risk. i didn't want all those drugs, but looking back, i don't know how it could have gone any other way. our nurse, erin, did tell me later on that watching me labor with the pitocin that long, and how i handled it...she had no doubt that without the pitocin, i could have handled a natural birth with no problems. i told her thank you...even if you're lying, thank you. :)
my recovery continues...slowly, but definitely. a little more strength every day, a little less pain every day.
and this little girl grows on us more and more each day...despite all the sleep she steals from us :)
so thank you all for your thoughts and prayers. we certainly needed them. God's hand was most definitely upon us through the birth and the aftermath of my recovery. we've always known that Charis was a gift from God...now she's just even more precious.
finally home!
first bath
our little girl with the bright eyes
entranced by daddy
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