Tempest in a Teapot

Ok, so this is really long and probably way too involved for most of you, but hey, I wanted to remember it. [updated to add: this took me 4 days to write up] Here’s the story –

Monday morning around 5.15am, 10 days before Baby Madeline was due, I rolled over in bed and my water broke. All I could think was “I’m such a cliche – It’s a full moon!”

J & I took a little time to clean up, take showers, make sure we had all our bags, feed/walk the dog, call family, etc…so we got to the hospital about an hour later. I was already having very strong and painful contractions – which was exactly how things were supposed to go. Got checked out in triage of Labor & Delivery where they confirmed that yes, I would indeed be having a baby that day. So far, so good – whee!

The hospital is very nice – so we got moved into our room right away and settled in for a long day. No one expects a first time mom to have fast labor and I was no exception. J called into work, we called up some neighbors who had already agreed to help out with Sophie and told mom & dad Lucci to hop on a plane – their granddaughter was on her way. Then we settled in to wait. I had some pain medication to ease up the contractions pretty early in the day, but later on decided to go ahead and get the epidural as I was suffering. That’s when things got a little, um, exciting.

As far as I know, I’m not allergic to any medications or treatments – I’ve never even been in the hospital before. So the anesthesiologist came in and was very nice, charming and funny, but he put me through several of the most difficult hours of my life. In fact, this was easily one of the worst experiences of my life. He got the epidural in and ran the adrenaline test they run on every single person. The problem was, he didn’t mention that’s what he was doing OR that there was a chance I could “fail” the test if he had seated the epidural wrong. So when I developed what amounted to an immediate and uncontrollable HUGE panic attack – heart racing, body shaking, complete freak out – I had no idea what was going on. Absolutely. terrifying. Then my blood pressure crashed and they had to give me ephedrine. Again, scary as all get out, because I was lying there watching my BP fall on the monitor and didn’t know what was happening. Thank goodness for my nurses – they were really awesome.

So the dr. moves the epidural and tries the adrenaline test a second time. I pass this time, but about 20 min later realize I am numb almost up to my neck! My epidural had become a spinal block, which was NOT supposed to happen. Again with the scariness as the dr. has to be paged to come back…and sometime in there they had to give me ephedrine for my BP a second time. As you can imagine, I am not yet having fun. The doc shows back up and takes out the epidural completely and starts over. I think at this point I should have refused it, but I was in a bit of a daze from all the medications. This time, however, everything goes exactly as it was supposed to, but of course all of this has stressed the baby out, so they’re monitoring her closely.

I start to feel much better, but now everyone can focus on baby who is not really cooperating. She isn’t descending and I’m not dialating at all. So they start me on pictocin to encourage more contractions to help baby begin to move down. Several hours later, it’s not working. Then we lose baby’s heartbeat on the monitor. Dead silence. In fact, her heart stopped for a minute, we think. A whole team rushes in and they stimulate her quickly by tickling her head (I wish I was making this up, really I do) and she’s ok again. My doctor comes in and begins to tell us we should think about a c-section due to the distress on the baby, but she encourages us to wait a little longer to see if we can still do this naturally. I think this was around 5.30 or 6pm. But now baby’s heartrate is at the very top of the safe zone and the long day is wearing on her, so we agree to the c-section. We had to wait for the OR to become available, so it wasn’t until around 7.30 that we get in to start the procedure.

Fortunately, I have a different anesthesiologist this time who was fantastic (I wouldn’t have let the other guy near me). He was very soothing, had already had a complete rundown on my experience and was ready to help me out. This procedure went very smoothly – my OB performed the surgery and Madeline was born at 7.49pm. But after that, I’m not sure what happened, because my BP shot through the roof and the anesthesiologist quickly gave me a shot of something and I sort of faded in and out of consciousness. I should mention here that I have NEVER had BP problems in my life! My BP was excellent throughout my pregnancy, so this is all a little wierd.

But the important thing was Madeline was here and she was fine. In fact, by 9.30pm I was able to breast feed her a bit. My parents arrived on a 10pm flight from DFW and were able to drop by the hospital and meet Madeline right away, which was great too. She’s a beautiful baby and we’re glad she’s here. We just wish she’d sleep a little more soundly at night!!

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 20th, 2008 at 1:59 am and is filed under Baby Madeline, Pregnancy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.