Anyone having a baby or who is squeamish about TMI stuff should think twice before reading and not bitch that I didn’t warn you. Length warning too.
The birth of your child should be a beautiful thing. How can it be so beautiful with so much pain? It just is. At least for me. It seemed that none of the labor or the other bullshit that happened before or happened afterwards really mattered. What mattered was Nate.
I don’t have a happy birthing story. If you’ve read my archives then you know the period leading up to Nate’s birth was also a difficult one. My family and Jeff were basically non-supportive. I was exhausted all the time. I relied heavily on my friends, T-Bird and PC’s mom and dad. My friends at work gave me my baby shower. None of my family attended.
I cared at the time, but I don’t care now. Nate may be my only child. Not because I haven’t wanted more but because the opportunity just hasn’t presented itself. I was there the entire time. I felt every bump and roll. I was at my baby shower. I was there for the birth. I was there. They weren’t. Their loss.
At this time, nine years ago (July 7, 1996, 8:32 p.m. EST), I had been in labor 4 1/2 hours. I was on the phone with my German sister, asking about my nephew, whose birthday is today. He’s a year and a day older than Nate. Jeff had called during our conversation and totally bitched me out. He said, “I just wish you would have that goddamn baby.” I said, “You’re about to get your wish.” He said, “What?” and I said, “I’m in labor.” No shit. I had been in pre-term labor in May so I knew that pain I felt while talking to him was not Braxton Hicks contractions.
I think he said, “I’m sorry.” Or maybe that was when I told him I was pregnant. I asked if he was going to be at the hospital and he gave me a half-assed answer which meant, “No.” My child birth partner, a friend from college, was in Myrtle Beach, SC. T-Bird was driving home from Michigan. So, I waddled around, struck by a fit of nesting. T-Bird got home around 9 or so and called. I updated her and she said she would be over. I told her not to rush. It would be a while.
By 11:00 I was still doing fine. I didn’t want to go to the hospital. They wouldn’t let me eat there and I love to eat. Especially since when I don’t eat I tend to get very, very, very bitc... I mean cranky. T-Bird made me some toast. I still waddled around. She was urging me to go to the hospital. I still resisted. At 11:30 or so I told her I would go but I had to use the bathroom first. As I was sitting there, waiting, she yelled, “Hey, my mom thought she had to pee and her water broke.” On cue.... bpshsssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
I said, “Goddamn you!” She laughed hysterically. I waddled out with a towel between my legs in a dress (size 22 or 24 since it was T-Birds - it was still too big, thank you very much). I put a towel in her seat and off we went.
Number One thing they don’t tell you in child birth class - after your water has broken, when you have a contraction, it causes amnio fluid to squirt out. Which then caused me to go “Ew, ew, ew, ew” every time I had a contraction, which caused T-Bird to accelerate, which caused me to say, “Slow down, we got plenty of time.” Oh how right I was.
Once your water breaks, you’re stuck in bed. I totally and vehemently disagree with this. I think it wouldn’t have taken as long if I could have walked around. Its virtually impossible to get comfortable in bed. Its virtually impossible to move yourself period. T-Bird was useless since she hadn’t been the one to go to the child birth classes. I think I was 2 or 3 cm when I got there. It took until 5 a.m. and a shot of Stadol before I got to 5 and could get my epidural. They couldn’t get a good reading on Nate’s heartbeat so they had to screw one of those little internal monitor things into his head.
Number two thing they don’t tell you in child birth class. The intern with the shortest fingers and the worst attitude will put their fingers twice as far into your crotch as you thought humanly possible. She was a bitch as was my nurse. A skinny bitch at that and when you’re pregnant, everyone is skinny. Absolutely no compassion. May she have triplets born breech without an epidural. Fuck her. I still hate her. The nurse too, the old bat. Shut up.
The epidural was more pressure than anything since they did it in the middle of a contraction which registered 8.5 on the Richter Scale. T-Bird was trying to console me by wiping the copious amounts of sweat off my forehead to which I replied, “
Don’t touch me!” Yeah, I was a joy. I cried. I hated everyone except my baby. They were all evil and I hope they all have triplets born bree... never mind.
I had a “hot spot” on the inside of my left thigh up next to my inside-out crotch. A hot spot is just a spot where the epidural decides its not going to work. It didn’t keep me from sleeping though. I woke up to a new nurse... YAY!! Who had four kids of her own. She was fantastic. I nominated her for sainthood but I never heard anything back. At high noon, she said, “You’re ready.” Yippee and boy was I ever ready... wait... you want me to do what with my ankles? Put them behind my ears? I wish now I had used the squat bar but... lessons learned.
I had called my mom about 8 o’clock and she was there but I kicked her out. Why? Because she hadn’t given me anything but a hard time for 9 months. She didn’t deserve to be there. Plus, I didn’t want her trying to tell me what to do. Sometime around 12:45 to 1 o’clock my epidural wore off. It wore off because the anesthesiologist was in OR with twins. And no one else was allowed to change the bag. Oh yeah, so I felt IT ALL.
At birth, the baby’s head should be one-quarter the size of its body. Meaning, the head should be smaller than the shoulders. Nate didn’t learn that lesson in pre-birth class. He decided his head would be the SAME SIZE as his shoulders except, his head has to come out all at once, instead of one at time like his shoulders. So, after 20 hours of labor and an hour and a half of pushing and the encouragement of being told he had hair, Nate was born at 1:29 p.m. 8 lbs. 14 oz. 20 1/4 inches long, 14" head. Yeah, yeah, that hurt. Took the doctor forever to sew me up, even with the episiotomy.
Nate was pitchin’ a fit and when they laid him in my arms, I cried and said, “Hey there,” and he stopped crying and looked up at me like, “Oh,
there you are!” I was even more in love than I had been before.
The fun was just beginning though as they took Nate off to warm him up and took me to a regular room. Seems the nurses were a little busy with those twins and such and kinda forgot about me... for three or four hours. I woke up in a lot of pain, which I thought was normal. I just spit a big kid out of me. I felt terrible. More than terrible. I was ill. The nurse came in and pushed on my stomach to rub around on my uterus to make sure it was firm and all... her hands stopped and she said, “Honey, where’s your uterus?”
I hoped that was a rhetorical question because I felt like shit washed over death and my mom was holding my baby and I wanted him. It was not to be as suddenly there are 6 or 7 or 8 nurses around my bed and if I thought I felt shitty before... it doesn’t compare to a nurse sticking her fingers up a crotch with 5000 stitches who just delivered a very big baby, and that crotch happened to be mine.
What had happened due to the negligence of the nursing staff to keep a proper look out on my bladder was, it filled up... and I couldn’t feel it because of the medication given to me when the doc sewed me up down there. Now, had the nurses done what they were supposed to have done, they would have monitored by input/output and realized... yo, no output... so my distended bladder pulled my uterus out of place. This is very bad. See, when the placenta comes out it leaves this great big raw place in your uterus and that’s why they rub your uterus and that’s to keep that big raw place from bleeding. When your uterus is disrupted, it bleeds so now I’ve been bleeding for... a long time. And they have to manually remove the clots.
Let me tell ya. It hurt worse than the worst labor I had felt. I fought all of those nurses and I was extremely annoyed by the bitch down the hallway screaming her head off and wished someone would give her an epidural. When they had fished out the two clots, one of which was about half of Nate’s size, the other a little smaller, it was immediate relief. Until the next second when my head started swimming and I looked up at the nurse beside my head and said, “I’m gonna pass out.”
The whole time my mom is standing against the wall holding Nate and her face is whiter than the wall. One of the Einsteins put a BP cuff on me and I heard, “70 over 40.” Folks, I don’t know about you but that was not what I wanted to hear. The kicked me back in Trachlenburg or Trendlenburg or Trafalgar or whatever it is and they turned my IV on hyperdrive. All the time I’m thinking, “I’m going to die and whose going to take care of my baby?” Finally, they got me stabilized and I was able to hold Nate and nurse him and get to know him.
Oh, and that lady screaming down the hallway, my Mom told me, "That was you, honey." Talk about disconnected.
There’s more about those stupid fucking nurses and how they treated Nate and how I had to go back to the hospital and carry around a catheter bag for a week... but I won’t go there. Nate was worth it. I’m just glad to be here and I’m glad to be his mom. He’s enriched my life beyond measure.
I love you Nate. Happy Birthday from your Mama.
<< Home