I have been blessed by a sweet baby girl for the past 22 days. She's been my will to survive for months now and finally being able to hold her in my arms has saved my sanity. She was born June 15th at 2:27 pm after 30 hours of labor and a failed induction. I never dilated past six cm. my body wasn't ready for her to come out...yet she had to because my amniotic fluid levels were too low for their liking. I went in around 2am on June 14th just to have her checked because she wasn't moving as much as she normally did at night. Little bugger had been keeping me awake at odd hours for weeks on end and that night she was barely moving. We got to the hospital and I was taken to maternity triage where they hooked me up to monitors and told me she sounded great. A little while later a doctor came in with an ultrasound machine just to look things over. When she measured my fluid levels (they were at a 5, for anyone who knows anything about AFI), she told me "you're at the very low end of ok. I don't think we'll be sending you home."
I was completely unprepared. We had nothing with us. I did grab my charge cable for my phone and all my medicines but that was it. We had our two year old with us since this was supposed to be a quick check thing then back home. My husband couldn't get hold of anyone for a while but finally started driving to our friends' house in hopes that by the time he got there they would have gotten his message that I was having the baby. We knew it would be hours before anything exciting would happen.
They hooked me up to pitocin around 4am. Around noon I got a foley bulb placed. It took a few hours for it to work. I believe it was around 4pm when it finally came out. It could have been a little later than that...I don't have a great sense of what time it was when they did stuff. About ten pm they decided I was dilated enough and her head was far enough down we wouldn't have to worry about cord prolapse. So they broke my water. Again, it may have been a little later than that...time is a wacky thing when you're in labor. After they broke my water they put internal monitors in which I was thankful for since my skin was having a bad reaction to the external ones. They had had to wash off all the gel they use for the fetal heart rate monitor and use fragrance free lotion instead because it was causing such bad itching. At this point my contractions, which had been quite bearable, became super intense. I asked for something to help with the pain. They gave me stadol, which didn't really help with the pain at all. And to top it off it made me feel like I was high. Yuck! I asked for an epidural about 11 or 11:30 because I just couldn't take any more pain. The nurse put in the order, had me sign for it and said it wouldn't be long since I was first in line. She then disappeared. By midnight I was screaming from the pain and crying that I couldn't do it anymore. Pretty sure I bruised my husband's hand! He was helping me the best he knew how but I needed relief yesterday! Around 12:30 I remember my cries became "where are they?! They said they were coming!!" By one am I was a total wreck and couldn't quit crying and screaming through the contractions. Finally my nurse came back. They had had an emergency csection and that's where both she and the anesthesiologist had been. After a few intense contractions I was able to relax enough for them to place the epidural. Relief!! It was short lived because baby's heart rate started having decelerations. They made me turn on my side, which meant the medicine drained to that side of my body. So only half of me was getting relief. At some point the anesthesiologist came back to give me a bolus. When she did that I was able to get some relief and sleep for a little bit. I woke up with tons of pain in my back. My only option was to roll to the other side because whenever I was on my back baby's heart rate would drop. This continued until around noon when, after twelve hours I had only progressed to six cm, and had been stalled there for at least four hours. Both I and the doctors decided my body wasn't going to get there on its own. I had also developed an infection. I was put on antibiotics and given Tylenol to get my fever down. Baby needed out. So we went into csection prep mode. This was my third section so it wasn't like I was unprepared. I knew how things would progress. They turned off the pitocin and while I had some minor contractions still, they weren't nearly as intense and they had no real pattern to them. After waiting for the OR to be ready, I was finally wheeled in. The surgery took longer than my last one...there was a lot of scar tissue that had to be taken care of and when they cut into my uterus, it tore some on the right side. When it was all done, I was told having any more children is a really bad idea. Good thing I am done anyway! Miss Melody arrived at 2:27pm. She weighed 7lb 14oz. She came out screaming and full of life. After they wiped her down they wrapped her up and let my husband hold her for about five minutes. Then they took her to the nursery. I made my husband go with her. It seemed like it took the doctors ages to sew me back up.
What happened after that I'm not ready to talk about. It still makes me too angry.
Anyhow! That is the story of how my sweet girl got here. What I didn't expect was to feel so sick still. I had to stay on my anti nausea meds just to function. This was supposed to be a thing of the past! Yet there I was, ready to throw up and so scared of it at the same time because I knew how bad it would be with my fresh incision. I prayed I could keep it together. Thankfully, God granted that prayer with a yes!! I was able to keep from being sick. But I still had the nausea.
Over the last few weeks, it has been sporadic. It usually happens more at night. Though there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to when it strikes. Right now I'm fighting off horrible waves of it and I have no idea why. I took a reglan for the first time in days. I pray I keep from getting sick as my incision is still pretty tender!
I found out apparently breastfeeding can make the postpartum HG worse. It has something to do with hormone levels. This knowledge really messed with my head! I am determined not to let this disease defeat me. I will prevail and feed my child what's best for her.
Well this has gotten quite lengthy. I think I have gotten out some of my frustrations. I hope and pray this disease finally finds a cure.
