Birth Story, Part 2 (a reluctant telling)

Me and my little dream come true

It's hard to believe a month has passed since Will came into our lives. I can hardly fathom how fast infants grow, and in some ways I want time to slow down, but in other ways, I want more distance between me and the day that Will was born. I keep putting off writing the rest of his birth story and sharing it here because in all honesty, it was the scariest, most pain-filled day of my life. The only shining point was the moment that Will was born and I heard him cry...at that moment I was on an operating table, limp with exhaustion, simply worn out from labor that had gone nowhere. When I heard him cry, my own tears fell -- tears of such unbelievable relief, because I knew I had delivered him safely into the world and he was no longer in danger inside of me. Any woman who has experienced pre-eclampsia or even the threat of pre-eclampsia knows what I'm talking about -- there is nothing quite like knowing that your body is slowly becoming a toxic environment for the child you so desperately love and want. In the days leading up to his birth, I felt truly betrayed by my body. I couldn't understand why my blood pressure, which had been textbook-perfect up to 38 weeks, was suddenly climbing quite steadily toward toxemia. And the betrayal I felt eclipsed the day my labor was induced. I'm going to give the short version of what happened, because I just don't like re-living it.

I spent the day on massive amounts of medicine that were supposed to tell my body to deliver Will -- only my body didn't quite get the message. I had contractions -- very painful contractions, in fact -- but contractions that accomplished nothing. My body didn't dilate and Will didn't descend. After 14 hours of labor, I was only at 4 centimeters. After 14 hours, after going through 2 epidurals (the first failed and the second one wasn't administered for 2 hours after the failure of the first), periods of vomiting, and body-shaking, teeth-chattering pain, I was running a fever, Will's heartbeat was decelerating with each contraction, and suddenly I was wearing an oxygen mask -- after all that, I knew I was done. Dr. Pickler came into my room and I knew she had come to talk realities with me. I was ready to beg for a C-section but I soon realized that begging was unnecessary -- she was in full support of doing one and I barely listened to the benefit-risk-ratio speech that she gave. I said "Let's do it" and quite literally 5 minutes later I was watching Marty don scrubs and I was being prepped for surgery. Ten minutes later I was in a freezing-cold operating room, nodding my head to the anesthesiologist that I couldn't feel my legs or belly. Fifteen minutes later, right before she hung the curtain, I locked eyes with Dr. Pickler and she winked at me. Funny, but that wink communicated so much -- it said, "I've done this a zillion times and I'm going to take care of you." Then the curtain was hung, Marty sat down behind me, and I felt the first sensation of the C-section being performed. I felt pressure, then lots of pressure, then tugging and pulling, then I heard Dr. Pickler say, "Well hello, cutie-pie," and I heard my son take his first breath and let it out in a precious little cry. He was taken immediately to a warmer and I looked back at Marty and said, "I'm fine, please go to Will." Marty got up and then my nurse, Teresa, who had been such a help to me all night, ducked under the curtain and crouched down to squeeze my shoulder and she had watery eyes when she said simply, "Congratulations." A few minutes later, Marty came around the curtain and perched my little boy on my shoulder, and as I laid eyes on him for the first time, I was shocked at how beautiful his little face was. Of course I expected to love my baby no matter what his appearance at birth, but it's true that C-section babies are really more adorable because they don't get squished! More than that, I saw his stunning blue eyes blinking at me, and I kissed his unbelievably soft cheek, and I couldn't believe he was mine. I had tears streaming down my face and all I could think to say was, "I love you my little William." All too soon Marty had to give him to the nurses because my surgery was finishing. I was rolled to one side so my epidural could be removed, and I remember thinking, don't take that away so soon! Because of a previous "chemical reaction" to morphine I was not put on the morphine drip post-surgery, but rather given an IV injection of a different painkiller. The last thing I remember in the operating room was my teeth starting to chatter again...then I woke up back in my room, in the worst, most terrible pain I've ever experienced in my life. Understand that I've had my appendix taken out and I've had a softball-sized cyst removed from my right ovary -- abdominal surgery wasn't exactly new to me. But I'd never felt anything like this and I couldn't understand why I wasn't being given painkillers. I was in such a fog but I knew that the only person with me was Teresa, and I looked over and saw that she was injecting something more into my IV. Because my teeth were chattering so badly, I struggled to tell her, "I'm in terrible pain." She nodded her head and told me she was administering painkillers every 5 minutes, and she had just given me all she was legally allowed to. Then Marty came into the room and quickly saw that I was in a bad way. Teresa explained to him that I'd already been given all the medicine she could give me and she was going to have to leave for a minute to get permission to administer a different medicine. I don't remember much after that. Marty says I looked at him and said "Help me" and then passed out from the pain. He says I came to and then passed out once more before Teresa was back to give me something else. Whatever she gave me finally worked because I felt the pain level go down just a notch and the relief was tremendous. We still don't know why, but the initial painkiller I was administered following surgery just didn't work, and as Teresa said, I came down from the epidural and suddenly "felt everything." Anyway, I must have dozed for awhile because the next thing I remember is a nurse wheeling Will's bassinet into my room and my family being there, speaking quietly in the soft light. The nurse put William into my arms and I started rocking him gently and touching his face. I felt like we both had just survived a tremendous ordeal and I felt badly that he had experienced any stress from the whole thing. Then I remember smiling to myself and thinking that parental guilt starts right away!

And there you have it -- Will's birth story. I hope it doesn't scare anyone away from having kids because it goes without saying that getting William was worth all of it. You hear horror stories about births and I reluctantly find myself in possession of my own such horror story. But, like Marty has said to me since, anything worth having is often something we have to struggle to get, and getting Will here was a mighty struggle. So will I face this struggle again and have more kids? To answer that, I first want to point out that I shared a happy picture above to show that a month later, the struggle is beginning to fade from memory -- well, at least the sharper edges of it. And secondly, here's a final anecdote from the story...I remember at last getting the green light for the second epidural and sitting up in my bed to curve my back over and be administered some blessed relief -- I trembled through another contraction before I felt the bee-sting of the needle, and then I looked at Marty and said, "You know, after all this, I still want more kids." Marty smiled and said, "Honey, you're more of a man than I am." The doctor (a man) behind me joined in and said, "It's so true -- if it were up to men to have children there would be no people." It's one of the few things I like remembering about that day -- I know I was a real trooper. I felt the strength of my maternal instincts and the power of womanhood in the hardest thing we're called upon to do. I've heard that some women who have C-sections feel like their surgery was somehow a cop-out; trust me, I am NOT one of these women. Because trust me, enduring a C-section is no picnic! And for me, for this birth, it was the obvious, clear, correct choice. And now that I've had one, I'll always have the option to give birth this way again. That's a decision we'll make later on when we get there, but I like to imagine that the next time I give birth, it will be something that happens in a scheduled way, with lots of drugs (that work), and in a manner that I'm now accustomed to -- so that might answer that! I think I'm entitled to an easier birth next time, don't you think? :)