It all happened upon a new moon

HI Everyone...it is me, the Sprout

The fun begins

18/10/2009 01:00

For some strange reason I am bleeding, not in any horrifying way, just there are traces of blood where there shouldn’t be.  I calmly go downstairs and grab my pregnancy file with the Bradford Royal Infirmary Midwife numbers, say to Richard “I’m bleeding” and I dial the number.

The midwives think I should come in, so we call a taxi and my 70 hrs of constant leaking begin, I suppose you could call it the great flood.

When we get to the hospital, I am put into the delivery area in a huge room that is filled with birthing equipment.  My first thought is “Wow, this is so hospitally.”  Because, let’s face it, it is.  I don’t have that much experience with big major hospitals and the sterile environment is incredibly shocking.  The room is all white and smells of bleach, with horrible florescent lighting.  On top of that, all the equipment is a little frightening.

I am told they are going to do an examination and hook me up to the foetal monitor so we can hear the Sprout and see if there are any contractions.  I am also asked if I would like any pain killers.  Well, I am not in pain, so for the first time in my life I turn them down.

The midwife gets the doctor and they do the examination.  There is a small amount of fluid leaking (i.e. my water is beginning to break).  The midwife had to give it to me straight (the first Britain to do that with me) because it seemed the doctor wasn’t really willing to tell me what was going on and she could tell that I was the kind of person that wanted the straight truth and could handle it.  She told me that basically, I wasn’t going to make it to term, but I could deliver the baby tonight or in 3 weeks time, no one can tell.  But she told me not to worry because a delivery at 34 weeks is very successful.  Her following sentence is pretty scary when you weren’t prepared to go into the hospital for more than an assessment...she says, they don’t know how long I will have to stay at the hospital.  I could be here for the whole 3 weeks.  3 weeks is a long time when you didn’t bring a bag and left the house a complete mess.

They leave the room and within minutes, the funniest thing happened to me.  My water broke.  I thought I had pissed myself.  I kind of had to go pee (in fact I mentioned to Richard that I needed to get up and go), so that was the only thing I could think that had happened.  Plus why would my water break, I wasn’t in labour.  Anyway, it was the funniest thing and Richard and I were both laughing; because I couldn’t stop this warm fluid filling the space under me (it just kept coming) and what else do you do when you think you have uncontrollably pissed yourself?  You laugh.  I call the midwife  so I could get the bedding changed.  It is then that she confirms that indeed my water had broken.  All I could think of was, thank god I wasn’t in the cab (because this happened within an hour of getting out of the cab) or in public or in my bed (which was totally unprepared for this kind of disaster.  There was so much pink fluid it would be impossible to recover the newness of my bed).  The fact that I wasn’t in pain would have made the situation even more humiliating.  My What to Expect When You Are Expecting book said that you will not be embarrassed by this situation because you will be in labour.  What if you aren’t really in labour and you still have 6 weeks?  All you can think is that you just involuntarily peed yourself. 

SO TIP ONE OF THIS EXPIRENCE TO MY PREGNANT LADIES...WATER PROOF YOUR BED AT 32 WEEKS or ASAP, BECAUSE YOU NEVER KNOW.  TIP TWO: PACK YOUR BAGS AND BUY ALL YOUR GIRLY PRODUCTS EARLY, JUST INCASE.  I had my bag partially packed and had been thinking of buying all my personal supplies for a few weeks, but never got around to it.

Contractions Begin

OK so now my water has broken and I am hooked up to the monitor.  I start to feel tiny amounts of cramping.  No more than what a girl is used to when she isn’t pregnant.  They start to get a little bigger, but still no real difference and Richard and I decide that we could practise timing contractions since it seems we may not really have to do this.  They are about 5 minutes apart and last 30 seconds.  But again they aren’t strong enough to determine real labour.

The baby is happy and not freaking out so this is good.  The midwife asks me again if I would like pain killers. Since I am in a small amount of pain and this is the second time she asked me, it would be rude to refuse, so I say “yes”.  And then things got fun.

We were put onto the ultrasound so we could confirm that the Sprout was still breech.  If the Sprout was still breech then I would need a c-section if I was contracting with no real progress, but at 34 weeks it is fine to deliver a breech baby vaginally if labour is quick.  So either way, the baby was going to be delivered with no problems.

I let Richard go home at about 0430 because he was tired and obviously, not that much was happening.  I kept having tiny contractions 5 minutes apart for 30-60 seconds.  I was pretty sure that there would be no Sprout for the rest of the night.

I was moved up to Ward M3 early afternoon, where they keep all the “wait and see” patients.  At this point all that is all we could do was wait and see.  We were wary of taking the Sprout out early; I could only have the C-section if I was in labour because what would be the point of taking him out of his cosy hammock if he didn’t have to.  The aim was to make sure I didn’t get an infection because I was constantly leaking (gushing even).  It was the most boring and frustrating time ever.  During the day, I hardly contracted and at night I did.  Early Monday morning the contractions were bigger than the night before but they came every 10 minutes and lasted a minute.  Monday, during the day, not many pains.  And early Tuesday morning hardly any contractions, they were all irregular, but were more painful than early Monday morning.

Tuesday evening was a different story all together and was the most frustrating.  For some reason all the stupid midwives were on duty.  I was hardly checked on all day and when I complained of things, which was very rare, they ignored me or took their sweet time.  I had irregular contractions all day which just got worse and worse.  The pain began in my sacrum and spread to the front of my pelvis following the illiatic crest followed by a less than impressive hardening of the uterus.  I mean my uterus was not awake or something, the pain was certainly horrific, but my uterus wasn’t playing along and guess what the midwives care about?  The hardening of the uterus. Finally the pain was so bad that breathing wasn’t helping me.  I was hooked up to a monitor and again didn’t really prove to be in labour.  Finally one midwives just started telling people that I was obviously in pain and we should get the ball rolling.  Now the pains and mini hardenings were happening pretty regular, every 2-3 minutes and lasting 1-2 minutes.

The Delivery

The first plan of attack was to dope me up to see if we could get the pain under control so I would calm down and maybe we could delay having to deliver the Sprout.  After the vicodon (co-codamol) didn’t work, we moved onto entonox, phenergan, pethidine and syntocinon.  So basically, I was given everything and I still wanted to cuss and give out blood curdling screams (yes, I ended up being a screamer, although a censored screamer.  The “fuh” in fuck is a good noise to make when you need help breathing out).  I was clearly in a horrible amount of distress.  I couldn’t stop shaking and my vitals were through the roof as wells as the Sprout’s.  It felt really good when there were no contractions, but it was clear that no amount of drugs were curing this pain.  It was finally decided that we needed to get the Sprout out.

I was wheeled into the operating room, or “theatre” (I love that) and all of a sudden there were men around and large lights and people giving me directions in a strange dialect.  Everyone was rushing around while one of the midwives kept reminding me to breathe the entonox while I was having a contraction.  (I love me some nitrous but it is super hard to breathe in and out in a calm manner when you are in hyper pain mode, especially when all you can think to do is scream).  I was finally able to get into the “position” in which they could give me the epidural...which was awesome once it started to work.  All of a sudden Richard appeared in scrubs next to me.  He was so cute.

So they cut me open at 12:06 a.m. (or 0006) on the 21^st of October (I think they waited until he was officially 35 weeks) and the Sprout came out and he made cute little noises that told me he was fine (probably drugged out of his mind), he wasn’t freaked out or unhappy just...OUT.  While Hewie Lewias and The News belted out “That’s the Power of Love,” they wrapped him and gave him to Richard to try to show me, but I wasn’t really in a position to see him (and really I didn’t care, I was just happy to know I wasn’t going to be feeling the burning and stabbing anymore and I was soon to be in a calm safe place).  My four and a half hours of labour was over.

Afterwards

For the next few hours, I had no legs (I kept having the vague feeling that they were bent, but I was assured they were lying flat).  I was carted into the Intensive Care Unit to see the Sprout and he was so cute.  He didn’t need a ventilator and he looked completely happy sitting in his little bubble.  I was glad that he wasn’t nearly as stressed out at the ordeal as I had been (he is just like his dad). 

And that was that.

Wednesday morning I was able to get some colustrum (I was told it was an impressive amount, 20 millilitres) out of me and we went down to see the Sprout, he was fine.  He didn’t like his feeding tube and had pulled it out, but that was to be expected.  Wednesday night was the same.

Thursday morning (October 22^nd) I was told that he was ready to come out of his bubble.  So we put him in a cot and I was able to hold him for the first time.  Richard had gone to work, so I was by myself, which was good.  I enjoyed it very much (cried a little of course).  I even got to change his diaper (gross)!  When Richard got off work, we went down to see him again and Richard got to have some Kangaroo time as well (bare chest contact).  We tried a little tit to lip action but no real feeding took place.  It was just a little introduction.

To be continued...