When we last left off, I was in labor and found out I had a fever. Though I was not feeling sick (aside from feeling freezing) and I was still comfortable from the epidural, I became anxious to get the baby out and make sure she and I were okay.
For another several hours, I lay on the bed waiting. The nurse turned out the lights and told me to get some sleep. According to her, it would be the last time I would be able to get a real restful sleep for a while (she was so right!). Unfortunately, I was so worried about my fever causing complications that I couldn't sleep much.
Finally, my doctor came in, checked my cervix, and declared it was time to start pushing. She turned the lights on and dropped the end of the bed. The change from being in labor to getting ready to push seemed to happen out of nowhere since the epidural prevented me from feeling contractions.
The proper way to push, the nurse said, was to wait for a contraction, then take a deep breath and push while counting to ten. Though in movies and on TV, women often scrunch up their face to push, the nurse said not to push with my face but with my body.
I severely underestimated the difficulty of pushing after having an epidural. Though they stopped the epidural medication, I did not gain back enough feeling to have an "urge to push," as many people describe.
My daughter was +2 already by the time I started pushing, which meant she was in the birth canal and I just had to get her past the bone. No matter how hard I pushed, she would not budge. After a few minutes of trying, my doctor said the baby was not tolerating the pushing. Her heart rate went down significantly every time I had a contraction. Hearing that scared me. The nurse gave me an oxygen mask because "more oxygen for mommy means more oxygen for baby."
"We're probably going to have to do a c-section," said my doctor.
A c-section! I was not prepared to get a c-section! Not mentally, not emotionally...I was a mess.
Yet, I had a fever, the baby wasn't tolerating the pushing, and she wasn't making any progress in the birth canal.
"I really don't want a c-section," I insisted. After all, I had only just started pushing! Maybe I would get better at it.
Thankfully, the baby responded well to the extra oxygen, so I was allowed to continue trying to push her out. My doctor left for a while, but the nurse stayed. She was amazing. She shouted at me like a coach shouting at her star player. When it was clear I needed more help, she tried various strategies to help my pushing along, such as elastic things for me to pull while pushing.
I kept having to take off the oxygen mask to push, then put it back on while I caught my breath and waited for the next contraction. I was starting to feel the contractions again, but could still barely feel enough in the right areas to push effectively.
After about an hour and a half of pushing, my doctor returned.
"We need to do a c-section," she said.
Sweaty, exhausted, and frustrated, I started to cry. But I nodded my head, because I was tired of all the hard work with no progress.
"Don't cry," said my mom. "It's perfectly okay to have a c-section. As long as the baby is born healthy, that is all that's important."
I was scared of having surgery, and I felt like a failure in the pushing department, but I was also a little bit relieved as they wheeled me into the maternity operating room. I was so tired.
The operating room was at the end of the hallway in the labor and delivery ward. Z changed into scrubs and came with me. At this point, my father had arrived at the hospital--he and my mother waited in the family waiting area.
Thankfully, they started giving me epidural medicine again (those contractions were starting to get painful!). They also took away the oxygen mask and gave me oxygen through my nose instead. The anesthesiologist joked around with Z and me, and generally made us feel much more comfortable. Truthfully, Z seemed pretty comfortable anyway and mostly excited to finally have his baby.
They dropped a blue paper curtain down at around my chest area, blocking my and Z's view of the actual surgery. Several surgeons surrounded the lower 3/4 of my body. I could hear them talking and felt some odd tugging and pulling. The anesthesiologist gave us some general updates in his good-natured manner.
"This is it!" he said after a while. "You're going to feel a lot of tugging now!"
"There he is!" said my doctor. I felt a big tug and then heard a cry.
He? I thought. I knew what we were having, and it wasn't supposed to be a he...
I could vaguely see my doctor hold something up and declare, "Ooooh, he is a SHE!"
That was more like it!
They showed me my red, screaming baby with a cone-head from the pushing and I could hardly hold back my tears. Then they took her to another part of the room to clean her up.
Things got quiet for a little bit and then a bunch of doctors came rushing into the room.
"Is this a real code?" One of them said.
"Yes! A real code!" Someone else said.
"What's going on?" I asked the anesthesiologist, who was still hanging around by my epidural as the doctors sewed me back up.
"Oh, everything's fine," he said cheerily. "You'll see a bunch of doctors come in but that's all."
Several more doctors came in, then I heard my baby crying again and a general relaxed feeling permeated the room as the other doctors headed out in a more leisurely manner than they came in. I later learned that M had stopped breathing briefly, but she was fine. Apparently, this happens a lot. It's called a Code 100.
Finally, my doctor brought over my daughter all bundled up and in a snug little hat. Her skin was so white it was almost translucent, and as I took her in my arms, she stared at me with huge, round, bright blue eyes.
I could not believe I was actually holding my daughter.
...I could not believe I had a daughter.
After all those months of pregnancy and kicks and hiccups and worries, here she was in my arms.
Finally.
After I held her, Z held her, and then they took her away to the NICU.
Z was sent out as they finished sewing me up. They took out the epidural, but kept in the IV and the catheter. Then they wheeled me to the recovery area, where I met my parents.
I smiled at them.
"It's a girl."
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