Urban Drool

DISCLAIMER #1 : This is a not-fun post. It’s really just an attempt at some emotional release of some nasty-ass, scared and generally negative shit that has been brewing inside me since the baby was born. So if you? Want to skip? I? Will not hold a grudge.

(on the other hand, I, as always, value and treasure all y’all’s views and opinions. So if you will read and maybe let me know what you think, it would be 1000% appreciated.)

DISCLAIMER #2: It’s also really freaking long. And tedious. You may want to take a pee and grab a coffee or some wine before you settle in.

OK.

So. There is something that I have been wanting to write about for awhile.

Actually, no. That’s not true. I don’t want to write about this. I feel I have to write about this. About 2 months ago is when I wrote the first part of the story.. If you haven’t read it yet, g’head and hop over to http://aradiailluminare.typepad.com/Illumination_Maybe. It's the second to last post (I think)

................................................................................................................

Done?

OK. First, the facts: I didn’t get to see Lucy for about 10 minutes after she was born. They were cleaning her up and getting her all warm and bundled. I could hear the Boy talking excitedly with the nurses. He came back to where I was lying periodically to check on me and assure me that she was beautiful and wonderful and totally OK. He was finally allowed to bring her over to me and I saw her gorgeous face for the first time. But they would not release my hands (which were bound to the table) to let me touch her. The Boy was so thoughtful – I think he could sense how desperately I needed to feel her, so he held her down by my head so I could smell her and kiss her little face.

I distinctly remember him saying “She looks just like Pappa Rudi!” (his grandfather. Heh)

They eventually made him leave. I didn’t want him to leave, but they made him. He left to inform the grandparents and I lay there for another 30 minutes. Getting stitched and put back together. And it was all of a sudden very cold and sterile and scary and I was unbelievably sad. I desperately wanted to be given my baby and to be left the fuck alone. Random strangers had been poking and proding at me for nearly 4 days without interruption and I felt like I had reached the end of my line. I was looking around the operating room for a familiar face, but there was none. My midwife? Gone. The nice anesthesiologist assistant who sat by my head during the delivery? Over in a corner, writing her notes. The random group of OBs and surgical nurses? On the other side of the blue curtain, doing…whatever the fuck they were doing. Not that it would have mattered if one of them had bothered to speak to me – they were all complete strangers.

It was a very lonely and sad 30 minutes. I felt terribly claustrophobic. I HATE HATE HATE lying flat on my back, and here I was, immobile. I could hear my baby crying, but could not see her. My vision was blocked by the damn blue paper. STUPID FUCKING BLUE PAPER HANGY-THINGY!! It was all so medical and sterile and lonely and not how I wanted the first 30 minutes of my daughter’s life to be. Aside from a brief kiss on her cheek, I had not even touched her.

I was finally transferred to a gurney (and finally put in an upright sitting position) and they tried to hand me the baby. But I was shaking so hard from all the pharmaceuticals of the previous 2 hours that I could not safely hold her. So I was sternly told to not pick her up. Imagine. My baby is 30 minutes old, and I am too weak and shaking and BROKEN to hold her for the first time. They wheeled me into the recovery room, with the baby cradled on top of my legs, sort of wedged between my knees.

The next 4 hours involved grandmothers in the recovery room, my first nursing session with the baby (about 10 minutes after they brought me into the recovery room), having my epidural line removed, begging the bitch nurse in the recovery room for a glass of water (my lips were cracked and bleeding, they were so raw and dry), begging the bitch nurse in the recovery room to give me something to stop the incredible shaking (which was getting worse) and getting transferred up to my postpartum unit.

They took the baby away for about an hour to bathe and examine her and the Boy and I crashed in my new room for a much needed nap. (nap? heh. We both could have probably slept like the dead for 24 straight hours at that point. But, I took the 60 minutes of blissful unconsciousness without argument).

During these four hours immediately following the surgery I was still very much in a state of shock, but my main focus was on the baby and how incredible she was. I was dimly aware of some truly angry and negative feelings regarding how the last stages of labor and delivery had played out, but I was stubbornly ignoring them, deciding that I was going to concentrate on the baby. I was trying to regain a sense of peace and keep the angry shit at bay - floating around the edges of my periphery until I had time and energy to deal with them.

There was a shift change in nurses at the hospital right about this time. All joking and snarkiness aside, I thank the heavens for the nurse who was starting her shift and in charge of my care for the next 6 hours. I think she saved my life. I cannot remember her name, which is a real shame, so I’ll call her Karen.

Karen came in the room to introduce herself. She was an excellent combination of caring, personable, smart and competent. There were some kind comments made about how beautiful our baby was, and how she read through my chart and my goodness, I had a bit of a rough time of it, hadn’t I and if we needed anything here was the call button.

She left.
I started to feel…odd.
I started to feel…wet. Very wet.

I told the Boy that I thought I needed a change of my pads already. You see, a “certain amount of vaginal bleeding will probably happen, even after a C-section, because your uterus is losing the last small amounts of blood that were not suctioned away during the surgery” or so I was made to understand. So, I had been wearing mammoth-the-size-of-a-Cadillac-sanitary-pads to try and absorb the blood. I was also told to NOT try and change them myself (I was not yet even allowed to get out of bed), but call the nurse to have her change them for me. Bear in mind that I was still catheterized up the hooha (and into the bladder) at this point, and they didn’t want me jostling the tubing.

Anyway, it seemed that the next 30 seconds played out in slow motion. The nurse came in the room in response to the Boy’s request, I explained that I thought I needed my pads changed and I’m feeling a little odd and can she check me please and then she pulled back the warm covers of my bed and there was blood and so much blood and I heard a “ssshhhlllllump” and felt some very large and very wet things slide out of me and the Boy said “Oh my God” and there was more blood and the nurse yanked the back of the bed down into a completely prone position so I was once again flat on my back and I hate being flat on my back and she told me to not move and she ran out of the room and the blood kept coming and coming and coming out and all over me.

It was soaking the sheets and the mattress underneath. It was gushing down the bed and all over the floor. It kept coming and coming. And the nurse came racing back into the room.

The events of the next 40 minutes are simultaneously kinda blurry yet etched distinctly in my mind. The nurse paged the on-call OB, who was in my room in a matter of seconds. He threw back the covers and plunged his hand up my vagina, trying to locate and assess the reason for the bleeding. There was lots of loud and urgent speaking. There were many decisions being made very quickly. I was not informed of any of it. There were nurses. And then more nurses. It ended up that there was a total of 2 doctors and 12 nurses in my room. And then the doctor was so angry, constantly yelling at the nurses that they “Weren’t moving fast enough” and “Dammit, I needed that IV in her 10 minutes ago!” and “Page Dr. M____, we need him here STAT” and “Book another OR..tell them I need OR 3 ready in 5 minutes. We’re taking her back down.”

Then Dr. M_____ showed up. The head of Maternal-Fetal Medicine. This is the part where (later on) the Boy told me he got scared. This entire time they had him shoved in the far corner of the room, out of the way. I could see him. He was holding the baby tight against his chest, staring unbelievingly at the proceedings. He seemed to be keeping a relatively cool head, occasionally calling out things like “You’re going to be OK, honey” and “Hang in there…hang in there with me, OK?” But when Dr. M_____ showed up, the Boy told me that he started to get really worked up. Dr. M___ rushed into the room, dressed in a very nice suit. They didn’t ask for another on-call doc. They didn’t ask for a P.A. They asked for the head of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, a specialist who heard what was going on with me and apparently felt it serious enough that he rushed into the room to assess and assist. A guy…in a suit. That is what made the Boy seriously worry.

Another strange hand up…way WAY up inside me. And then one hand inside me and another two hands pressing down onto my uterus from the outside. And my catheter tube was yanked out of my bladder. This was absolute agony. These two men rubbed and massaged and pressed and pushed for endless minutes. Minutes that stretched into an eternity. The nurses were still rushing about. By this time I had a total of 5 IVs in me, with various tubes leading to various bags filled with various kinds of fluids that were separated amongst 3 IV stands surrounding my bed.

My perception of reality was so amazingly skewed at this point that this entire episode could have been 5 hours long, or only a matter of seconds. I later realized that it was about 30-40 minutes. Slowly things began to calm down from “emergency” to “critical” and then to “serious.” They cancelled the operating room. I was not going to need a D&C. I was not going to need an emergency hysterectomy. The bleeding was slowing. Then the bleeding was nearly stopped. The first doctor stopped yelling at the nurses and even took a moment to look me in the face (for the very first time since he entered the room) and said:

“I know this is scary. But you need to continue to stay very still. You’re going to be fine, but stay very, very still.”

I whispered, “I know.”

And the thing is, I think that I did know. I could see all the blood. I could smell all the blood. I could feel the blood pouring out of me. I did not know why I was losing so much blood, but I think I realized, even in my dim frame of mind, that if I screamed or panicked or tried to sit up or got worked up in any fashion, it would only make it worse. I need to stay still. To stay quiet. To breathe slowly and deeply and try and keep my heart rate low. If I got upset and my heart rate increased, the blood would start pumping out of me at an even faster rate.

So I knew. And I was quiet. And I stared for endless minutes at the Boy in the corner. Not allowed to come to the side of my bed. Not allowed to hold my hand. Clutching the baby to his chest. I am crying right now as I type this. I won’t forget that image ever, I don’t think.

This was the fifth hour of my baby’s life.

And then it was all over. And someone (I honestly don’t remember who) explained to me what happened. The uterus is just one large muscle. And my uterus, having been through 2 inductions, 21 hours of hard-core labor, way, WAY to much pitocin and then the incisions of the C-Section, no longer had any strength and was no longer working as a muscle. It completely gave out. All the blood in that area starting pouring through the uterus and out of me like a sieve. The doctors had been “vigorously massaging” (ahem) the uterus both internally and externally to get it to shrink down and had to actually push it back into it’s proper place inside me. The IVs were providing me with saline, antibiotics and more pitocin (does anyone else think that this last one is absolutely hysterical??). I was also the happy recipient of 2 (or maybe 3) blood transfusions.

Throughout the following 36 hours, the nurses were charged with checking my blood pressure, heart rate and temperature every 30 minutes. Every 30 minutes for 36 hours. Then it was every 60 minutes, then every 2 hours, then every shift change. There were many comments made from people wandering in and out of my room for the next few days…

“Oh! So you’re the one that I’ve been hearing about. Wow. What a rough time you’ve had.”

and

“Wow, you’re looking so much better then the last time I saw you.”

and

“I’m so happy that you ended up alright after all.”

and

“I just had to come and see you…see how you were doing.”

And every time they would leave I would ask the Boy, “Who was that?” He would answer “They were here in the room. When it happened.”

When it happened.

When it happened.

The natural, loving, gentle, friendly, happy birth with my Boy, my doula and our wonderful midwife that I so wanted was replaced with a cold, sterile, MEDICAL, stern, terrifying and ultimately, life threatening birth amongst total strangers.

I was in the hospital for one full week.

Most of the time I just kind of smiled and slept and answered questions and nursed the baby. And for several days – kind of pretended that it didn’t happen. Or at the very least, sort of down played the seriousness of it all, even to myself. Mostly to myself. I think I was not yet ready to acknowledge the horribleness of it all. And besides, there was my wonderful baby to take care of. So for the majority of the first several weeks, I concentrated on that. On her. Because the joy she was bringing me and the Boy was (and is) monumental. Mind-alterting joy. And I really, REALLY didn’t want that joy infected by all this negative shit.

I think that a lot of this is now re-surfacing and I am compelled to look at this whole thing full in the face because we are gradually moving past the initial “survival” phase. The baby is doing wonderfully. She is eating, growing, thriving. And thanks to the Boy’s determined efforts, she is on a (kind of) schedule of sorts. I am back at work (grrr….). Life is calming down and falling into place. Sort of.

The point is, I now have a moment or two every day to think. And thinking? Ain’t always good.

I can categorize all the muck-ity muck into two big “issues” (gah – I hate that word):

1) I feel horribly inadequate regarding the “birthing” aspect of being a mother. I am still so sad that Lucy’s birth was not anywhere near what I wanted. I wanted to push her out into the world with the Boy at my side, encouraging me and cheering me on. I wanted to hold her on my belly and wipe her off and hand her to her father. I loved the dim, quiet, homey-looking room that I labored in for days on end. I was really looking forward to birthing the baby in that same room – the room that I came to know so well from hours upon hours of rocking, squatting, moaning and laughing – soaking in the tub. I knew that room and I trusted that space. It felt safe and good. The operating room, in contrast, was so bright and sterile and unknown and scary. I felt so angry and frustrated with myself that I could not see her, hold her, comfort her. To hear her cry and cry in the OR and not be able take her in my arms and tell her I loved her and welcome her into the world. To not be the very first person to cradle her in my arms and have her hear my voice. It’s awful. And to feel so….violated. I wanted a midwife and a doula because I wanted to surround myself with women that I knew and trusted. I wanted the moment of the baby’s birth to be such a happy time. Instead, so many strangers were put in charge of my care and the delivery of the baby. Sometimes I think that I could do it better, do it right if I had the chance to have a “do-over.” I want to take back those last few hours and put right what went wrong. I guess…in simpler words…I feel guilty. I feel like it was my fault.

2) We want more children. And I am absolutely terrified that this will happen again. My midwife had a serious talk with me at my 6 week post-partum appointment. She told me that any future pregnancies would be “carefully monitored” and that my chances of another C-Section are greater than normal due to the post-surgical hemorrhaging. Also, I will not be allowed to go past my due date. I will not be induced. If I do go into labor on my own, I will only be “allowed” to labor for about 10-12 hours tops. There will always be a rather significant concern that my uterus will give out at any point towards the end of a pregnancy or during labor. If that happens, I could start bleeding out again, and they may not be able to stop it next time.


Great.

So. I guess that’s about it. In summation: I am very pleased with the care we received at the hospital I was at. They saved my life and took very good care of Lucy. (they charged the Boy nearly $75 total in parking for the whole week we were there, but hey, can’t have everything). But it was scary and I feel sort of traumatized and violated by what had to happen in order for all of us to come out on the other side alive and in one piece. One thing that I am eternally grateful for is that none of the events surrounding Lucy’s labor, birth and the aftermath have affected my relationship with her. Not one thing has interfered in our bonding and nothing has diminished my incredible love for her.

But there is all this…leftover stuff. And it’s ugly and it hurts. And I want to come up with a way of expelling it somehow so that it does not plague any future pregnancy and birth of future children.

That’s all. I love my baby and I love my husband and I sure am glad that I didn’t die.