Finally. The final part. I wrote it a couple of months ago but never seemed to post it. But, if this helps even one woman in their birthing journey, it is worth posting.
My new nurses rotate me from side to side with a big "peanut" ball between my legs. I cannot move on my own with the epidural, but they do try some positioning to get the baby moving. They start me on pitocin, but end up taking me off of it as I have been having consistent contractions without it. I feel like this is a small victory, and I am a little proud of my body for doing what it was designed to do.
Dave sleeps. My doula sleeps. I cannot believe my husband is sleeping. I swear he did this with Isla too. He can't even go one night without sleep, and I am on night 5 with little to no sleep. My water breaks and no one knows because they are sleeping. My entire bed is completely wet, but no one has come to check on me so I am stuck in a wet bed. (But I do feel so much better after my water breaks!).
At some point it is early in the morning. Maybe it is 3am or so? The nurses are super worried that if I don't have this baby by the time the doctor gets to work around 6 or 7am, I will get a c-section. I don't know what to do. What can I do? The baby has not descended into the birth canal. Nothing is moving.
And I don't know why or how....I probably should have written about this months ago while my memory was clear.... but my contractions are excruciating. They are so consistent I know exactly how much time I have before the next one hits. I have never felt this much pain in my life. Everyone is up and trying to help me. I just decide I have to find some way to make the baby move down. With every contraction, I strain and push with my abs, back, bowels.....EVERYTHING. I don't have a desire to push. It is not time to push. But, I know I must make my body become active. I have to make that baby move! I hold Dave's hand with every contraction, say a Hail Mary, and scream. Seriously. Like a horror film. I can't believe something can hurt like this. How can this be the worst pain of my life when I had an epidural? Nothing moves. Nothing changes. Just wave and wave of pain every 1.5 minutes. But, I spend the next 3 hours pooping on myself just trying to get the baby to descend.
I am such a character apparently, that there are 7 nurses and residents in the room watching me. Everyone really wants to see what will happen. Will I beat the clock? Why is the baby not coming? Didn't I get an epidural? So why am I screaming?
So- about that epidural. Yea. I hit that button about 4 times. They kept telling me it was pressure I felt. No. It was 10/10 pain. Searing pain. Why me? Why does everyone else just push out their little baby, like they didn't even feel a thing? You know, they get the epidural and the baby slides on out? I felt every knifing moment of those hours.
I hear the doctor is around, and I am still tearing my own guts out with every contraction. Finally, I make him move. I get him into the canal. I have been crying and grinding for a few hours now. I hear Dave try to explain to one of the nurses that I actually have a pretty high pain tolerance...that I do endurance racing....I am not a crier. (except that at this moment in time, I am the biggest crier and weakest woman in the whole maternity ward, it seems).
And the doc walks in and I make some weak joke asking where he has been. He looks down and sees the baby is ready to come and everything is a go. But then he looks at me and tells me, "Damie, I need you to push him out immediately. You need to push him out now." The process has been too long and he is worried about the baby. I know I shouldn't push so hard, but he scares me and just tells me to push. I push with everything I have and I rip the holy hell out of private parts. This is NOT what Ina Gaskin said to do. No one provided counter pressure. It was just a one big rip, and then he was out. Hell ya!!!!!!
Luke Aren Roberts: 8' 11" and 21 inches. Boy was I surprised at that size. I cannot believe I pushed him out. And he was sunny side up (posterior presentation) like Isla.
Okay, but about that ripping. Anus. Vagina. Labia. Fortunately nothing more than stage 3s. But still, they sucked. So I am trying to hold my baby and the doctor is stitching me up. There is a big mirror above me where he is shining the light to do the stitching, and I see a ton of blood coming out. Then, I see him just start shoving gauze inside of me over and over again. Then he looks up at me and says, "I can't see from where you are bleeding out. I am taking you to surgery." And then without waiting for help, he grabs the hospital bed and starts pushing me down the hall.
It is just surreal. I watch all of the nurses scramble. I wonder if I have a uterine rupture thanks to decision to have a VBAC. When we get into the surgery room, it is like a movie. There are like 10 people in there, and everyone has a role to play. I am so drugged up and exhausted, I am having trouble even talking or keeping up. They give me some more painkillers or something in my IV because what he finds is that I have an internal laceration and he could see abdominal fat coming out of the laceration into the cavity. And that, my friends, is probably why those morning hours of labor hurt so damn much. So he had to repair me internally as well. The doctor told me he has not had to rush someone to the surgery room for something like that in over a decade, and he never wants to do that again. I am positive he will never let me have another vaginal delivery again.
Two packets of stitches on the inside and more stitches on the out...and here I am. I still, 11 months later, wear a pad every hour of the day. And that, my friends, is what labor and delivery looks like for me. For a second time, it was complete chaos, despite my desire to have a natural and happy birth with a midwife at home. I could honestly look at Dave after this baby and say.... we are done. I do not want to go through that again.
I can make light of it now, and I am proud of myself. I willed every bit of that to happen with sheer determination. It was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.
Thank you to my loving husband Dave, my sweet, sweet Doula Gina, and my best daughter Isla for helping me through that wild experience.
(As if I could forget, but I won't blog about this....the horrors of this hospital and their treatment of jaundice. I got to take Isla home with "jaundice" and we were just fine- nurse, poop, pee, sunlight protocol. Luke, oh no. Even though he was nursing, pooping, peeing just fine... he was taken away from me for almost 24 hours. Worst damn day ever. I am still mad about it. So mad. So much to say. Luke, just know I love you, buddy, and I was fighting to keep you by my side. And of course you were totally fine. Our system has to change on these separation tactics of mother and baby.)
