Get This Baby Out Of Me! (cont)
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I had been doing my best to clean the pipes every day leading up to now to avoid this trauma for me and my husband. But today was here and it was 8:00am and I hadn't had my hot tea yet, if you know what I mean. I asked a nurse if I could have an enema and she laughed at me and said they didn't do that. I almost blacked out, what was I going to do? She suggested that I park myself in the bathroom and hope for the best which I promptly did, but I didn't come out feeling confident. I was convinced this would be my biggest problem of the day.
My contractions started progressing to what I thought was painful, but would come to realize was not even close to being painful and I asked for the epidural. The resident checked the baby and she was positioned with her head resting on her shoulder. Not a good thing I promise you. Baby wasn't going to come out in that position, but not a reason to have a C-section. The resident calmly assured me, "it'll be fine, we can simply turn her to get it facing the right way" and I naively assumed no biggie.
Biggie it was. Simply turning her head involved the resident's hand up inside of me manipulating her head for what felt like hours. I could feel every minute of this even with the epidural. When my head finally exploded from pain, I grabbed the top of this doctors arm (the only part that wasn't inside of me) and explained to her in no uncertain terms that she needed to move on to Plan B. Her version of foreplay was not working so much for me.
Plan B was to try to practice pushing a little because that might help force her head to straighten out. OK, no problem, I liked this option. With two nurses flanking me I put forth my best pushing efforts, but out of the corner of my eye I saw the nurses shoot looks at each other. One finally turns to me and says, "you stink at this, have you taken Lamaze?" I was scheduled for Lamaze on Saturday, unfortunately it was Thursday. Stink at pushing? How is that possible? Women have been pushing out babies with no nurses or doctors or midwives for centuries, how can I not get this? I totally didn't get it.
To top it off, my leg fell asleep so they had to turn off my beloved epidural until it woke up. They lied to me about how they would turn it back on when my leg got feeling back and it's a good thing they did because I swear I would have tried to walk out of there if they had told me the truth. They had no intentions of turning it back on because I was pushing impaired. They knew there was no way I would ever been able to push that baby out if I couldn't feel down there. I came to find out I was barely able to do it regardless. Plan B was a failure too.
I remember being so mad at my husband at one point that I couldn't even look at him. He had done nothing to warrant this except commit the sin of putting a cold washcloth on my forehead instead of giving me ice chips (I had not asked for either, by the way). I am a really reasonable person, but to this day I honestly can't understand why he wasn't able to read my mind and know that at that moment I wanted ice chips.
Moving on to Plan C. Have you ever even heard of resorting to Plan C? Pitocin. I was willing to let them inject me with Liquid Plummer at this point as long as I didn't have to see the resident with the claw attached to her wrist again. The fun was just beginning. Pitocin is an evil drug. Probably not as evil with an epidural, but I wouldn't know and in retrospect I think I'd rather have had the Liquid Plummer. Pitocin did the trick though. She situated herself nicely in my birth canal and settled in. I pushed and pushed and four hours later I was still pregnant. She wasn't coming out and I was D-O-N-E, done. I begged them for a C-section, asked them why they hated me and wouldn't just cut me and told them they better not leave me alone or I would find a way to perform one on myself. I didn’t scare them one bit. The baby wasn't in distress so I was trapped in this never ending "push when you feel the urge to push down there, like when you need to poop" nightmare. The nightmare was, I didn't feel any urge. The feeling that every childbearing woman before me had felt, I did not. And after all my worrying about actually pooping, what irony.
Finally, an angel nurse walked in and took over. And when I say took over, I can't stress this enough. Where had they been hiding her all this time? She looked me straight in the eye and said "I can get this baby out of you by 12:30 if you do everything I tell you to do." I skeptically ask what time it is? It's 12:00. I ask her if she's lying to me. She confidently answers "No."
I trusted her. I really didn't have any better option at this point. My husband had long been shoved aside by the nurses and the last time I saw his face was when he accidentally glanced between my legs and almost passed out. Later he told me that I was so swollen he was sure that I would never recover down there. I can thank my brief relationship with the claw wielding resident for that terrifying development.
Angel nurse assumed position holding my right leg and for whatever reason she spoke my language and somehow we got that baby out. I should have added, got that baby out after having a heaven-knows-how-many-inches episiotomy. Angel nurse leaned down to my ear and said, "Just for the record, it's 12:27." It was the first time I smiled in over 14 hours. Yeah, done, healthy baby out, pain over, oops, not so fast there… stitches left to come and I felt every single one of them.
The one good thing I can say is, there was no poop, whew!
My second child was born at 34 weeks with much drama as well, pre-eclampsia, swollen like the fat lady in the circus, minus my OB/Gyn again, but I had the "push when you feel the urge to push down there, like when you need to poop" feeling. I was a step ahead of my first experience and cut my pushing time in half. Husband was helpful this outing, he had learned from last time and took mind reading lessons. And again, no poop.
By the time I got to number three, I was so smug. Got to the hospital early, got my epidural, was able to sleep for hours while on the epidural to be well rested and ready. My doctor was actually there this time and she was a rock star. All was right in the world. I even had pushing down like a pro, better late than never I guess. I had won this battle, until I realized "if it's going to happen, it'll happen to me" had to rear it's ugly head. For the love of all things holy, why don't they give enemas at my hospital?
So close, so, so close.
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Author: Shari Dabby
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