I am in an exceedingly foul mood today for a variety of uninteresting reasons. I had started a whiny, bitchy post that detailed each and every one of those reasons but I realized that it was just making me crankier and who wants to read a post like that anyway? So instead I have decided to challenge myself into attempting AE’s birth story. I thought remembering Miss T’s was hard – this kid will be 6 in September! Here we go:

The Scene: Saturday evening, September 14, 2002 – six days before my due date. N and I were in the basement of our Colorado townhome playing a riveting game of Scrabble. I started noticing that I was having a somewhat crampy sensation in my very large belly. Having never been pregnant before, I didn’t know if I was feeling contractions or just having indigestion, so we started timing the cramps. They were coming pretty irregularly, but started to get closer together so we opted to call the Kaiser Permanente after-hours nurse helpline. The nice nurse that took the call listened to my symptoms and said that since I was so far along it would probably be best to come to the hospital and get checked out. I grabbed my bag and off we went.

We were living in Golden – a western suburb of Denver (and home of Coors Brewery) – but I was set to deliver at St. Joseph’s Hospital downtown. The drive took about 25 minutes in the light Saturday evening traffic. We arrived at the hospital around 9 p.m. We were immediately ushered up to Labor & Delivery, where I was evaluated and told that I was not yet in labor. However, given the imminence of my due date and the not-so-close proximity of our house, I was given the option to walk the hospital corridors in the hope of kickstarting productive contractions.

So we walked, and walked, and walked, and about an hour later I was strapped to a fetal monitor and re-evaluated. It was determined that I was still not in active labor and I was going to be sent home. The nurse left for a few moments and I took the opportunity to unhook myself from the monitors and hit the bathroom. I finished my business, plugged the monitor cables back in – and within seconds the tiny room was filled with frantic nurses.

Apparently my movements had caused AE’s heart rate to drop suddenly and dramatically, and it was quickly determined that I would not be leaving the hospital without having the baby. I was moved to a different room, carefully positioned in bed so that the heart rate remained steady, and a Pitocin drip was started. By this time we’re pushing midnight.

The nurses decided that since I was probably in for a long wait I should try to get some sleep. I couldn’t get comfortable in the awkward position they had me propped up in, so I was given something to relax me. And relax me it did. The nurse asked me to count to five and I think I made it to two.

For the next several hours I drifted in and out of sleep and don’t really recall much. I believe N was awake the entire time, though. You can ask him what happened during this period.

At some point early Sunday, I was deemed dilated enough to receive the blessed epidural. I wasn’t really in too much pain yet, but it was still nice to watch the contractions on the monitor but not feel a thing. And since having had an epidural with Miss T I now have a frame of reference, let me tell you that they must have had the drug flow set to “maximum” because I was feeling nothing. No pressure, no pain, no legs.

As St. Joseph was a “teaching hospital”, I think every nurse, medical student and doctor came in to check me over the next several hours. I recognized no one. But I was past the point of caring about it, and since our particular insurance plan virtually ensured that I wouldn’t know the doctor delivering the baby it didn’t really make a difference anyway.

I was hardly progressing at all. Since I was confined to bed to keep the baby’s heart rate level, they went ahead and gave me the epidural at about 3.5 centimeters and once that was in place things stalled out completely. I couldn’t walk or do anything else to speed up the labor so I stayed around 4 centimeters for hours and hours. By late afternoon there was talk of a c-section. Timelines were discussed and consent forms were signed.

I’m thinking it must have been around 8:30 that evening when a doctor quietly pulled my husband aside and told him that if I didn’t make some progress within the hour it would be time. I didn’t find this out until later, because I was busy asking for my epidural to be turned up. It had worn off a little and I was getting uncomfortable. The anesthesiologist was summoned and the dosage was adjusted – without checking my progress. This turned out to be a mistake.

Right about that time there was a shift change and the night nurse needed to see if I had dilated any more before she prepped me for the c-section. To everyone’s great surprise, I had miraculously gone from 4 centimeters to 10 in the space of an hour. It was time.

A doctor was called, and I started to push. Problem was, since my epidural had just recently been upped I couldn’t FEEL to push. The nurse (whose name I can’t recall, but I do remember her saying that the other nurses called her Sarge and I could too) had one of my legs and N had the other, and they pushed them towards my chest to help me. The baby’s heart rate was dropping with each contraction and I had to wear an oxygen mask. Someone removed my glasses, and I was blind and the mask was making me panicky and claustrophobic.

The next hour was filled with desperate attempts at getting that baby out but he just wasn’t budging. I can’t remember clearly (probably because I couldn’t see a damn thing so I barely knew what was going on) but suddenly they were talking about forceps. And with that, all my birth “plans” were shot to hell.

I had wanted N to stay up by my head, out of the danger zone, but there he was holding up my leg. I was terrified of forceps and episiotomies, but here we were. Whatever. At this point it had been more than a day and I just wanted it all over.

So for a while longer I tried to push when they told me and I cried around the oxygen mask and the doctor was doing God knows what with those forceps and Sarge and N encouraged and coached me and at 9:35 p.m. MDT – it’s a boy! the doctor exclaimed.

We had opted not to find out the sex and I was absolutely POSITIVE that I had been carrying a girl all those months. I swear to you, the first thing I said was “It’s a WHAT? Are you SURE?” N assured me that yes, it was a boy, and we started to cry and I finally decided on a name.

AE was measured and weighed – and everyone in that room was astounded by this 8 pound, 15 ounce, TEXAS-SIZED baby. Denver babies are runty, apparently, and no one could believe his size.

Since his heart rate had been so erratic AE was bundled off to the nursery pretty quickly and N was allowed to go with him. So there I was, all alone, confined to the bed, epidural wearing off and major hunger coming on. Eventually a nurse brought me a sandwich and it was the best thing I had ever tasted in my life. Then a little later that same nurse helped me out of bed and that was the worst pain I had ever experienced. Thanks to the epidural I had no pain at all during the delivery but wow, once that wore off, OW does not begin to cover it.

Lengthy, uncomfortable labor, scary heartrate issues and forceps. All in all, a pretty miserable experience even if the outcome WAS favorable. Oh well. It gives me something to guilt him about later in life.