This pregnancy was a pretty tough one. After suffering a miscarriage, DH and I decided to wait 3 months before trying again. We fell pregnant with Zane first try. Everything was going well until I got to the 20 week mark. My blood pressure had risen to 160/100 and I was admitted to hospital. My OB told me we may have to terminate the baby if my BP does not go down. I was terrified.
From then on I was monitored very closely and was in and out of hospital. I ended up on blood pressure medication at 33wks. At 37 weeks my appointment with my specialist did not go so well, he hospitalized me until the birth of my baby. Only, my OB was on holidays and wouldn’t be back for a few days. So, I stayed in hospital wondering what was going to happen? When was I going to have my baby? How would they induce me? Would they give me a caesarean?
I was having blood tests every 3 days and CTG’s everyday. By this time I was going mad. Being stuck in a bed was awful. I had a breakdown, crying my eyes out to my OB’s midwife and she talked my OB into letting me go home for the weekend. I was given a “Sanity Pass” for Friday and Saturday Night and had to be back on Sunday. DH and I decided to go to the movies on Saturday night, who would I run into? My bloody OB. He sees me and tells me to go home and get some rest or I’ll be in trouble! During the movie, I was having some pains, but nothing to sinister (glad my OB was around though!!! LOL)
I got back into hospital on Sunday. I’m now 38wks and OB promises me a vaginal examination on Wednesday (lucky me!) He tells me that my cervix is favourable for induction and I’ll be having Prostin Gel inserted on Thursday night, Friday morning and Friday noon. This has to be one of the yuckiest things I’ve been through. The gels caused some very irregular contractions, but Little Fletch was doing fine.
Now I’m 39 weeks and wake up on Saturday morning crying my eyes out because all the pains had disappeared. My OB tells me to go home for the day and go to the movies and relax. I get another internal exam, and OB does a stretch and sweep. We get ready to go home, but I’m having some pains. They do a CTG and tell me I’m having some contractions, but they are too irregular to be real labour. So I go home. As soon as I get home, I plonk myself on the lounge and start to catch up on my missed Home and Away episodes. The pains are getting worse and uncomfortable. I started to time them and they were coming at 8 mins apart. After about an hour, I couldn’t sit with the pain anymore, I had to walk around and breathe through them. They are now coming at 5 mins apart and I feel like I’m going to throw up with every contraction. DH rings the hospital and they tell us to get back in there straight away.
At the hospital waiting for Zane
We arrive at the hospital at 2pm. I go up to the Delivery Suite and the midwifes are shocked to see me back. I have an internal done by my OB and he says I’m 4cm dilated and he’ll see me at 7pm when I have my bub!!! I get in the bath for an hour and ride out every contraction, until I could no longer handle the contractions lying down. I hop out and put on a disgusting blue hospital gown and walk around the Delivery Suite moaning and breathing through the contractions. At that point I threw up and started sweating profusely, I stripped down to nothing and DH wiped me down with a cold, wet cloth every contraction. The midwife Vicki (who we knew from Basketball, and that’s what we talked about during the labour!) decided to break my waters at 5pm. What a gross feeling. After every contraction this warm liquid stuff would ooze out and it felt yuck! I continued to walk around as this helped and the contractions started coming almost on top of one another. I started thinking about an epidural and the midwife told me to try the gas, it did work, I preferred my breathing to the gas.
At 6pm I started dreading each contraction and saying no more, I can’t do anymore. I told the midwife to get me an epidural (I couldn’t think of Anaesthetist at the time) She took a good half an hour to get him in the room and when he came in he asked me if I knew everything about them and I said, I just want it! So I had to lie down in the dreaded ball shape. DH and the Midwife had to put me in the position because I could move with the contractions. Staying still was the hardest. They kept telling me, you’ve got a needle in your back don’t move. I kept saying, but I’m having a contraction!! There response was so what, don’t move! When Mr Epidural was inserting the catheter, I started pushing. The midwife said that we are going to have a baby soon, but continue with the epidural anyway. My right leg went all tingly, but I was getting contractions on my left hand side and pushing with each one. Mr Epidural had to pull the catheter out a few centimetres so it would numb my left side too. My OB turned up at 6.50pm and asked the midwife to check my bp. It was 180/120 and they couldn’t detect the baby’s heart rate so a scalp monitor was put on Little Fletch’s head. His heart rate had dropped to 80bpm. The OB said we have to get this baby out and told me I was going to end up with stitches. I had to keep pushing Little Fletch down the birth canal as much as I could, he never engaged, so I had some work to do. Then the stirrups were pulled out and I was told to keep pushing. OB put some ice on my tummy and it felt cold, then on my inner thighs and I couldn’t feel it, I could still move my legs though. He inserted the vacuum and pushed Little Fletch back up into my pelvis were his heart rate returned to normal. He then performed an episiotomy and told me to push. After 3 massive pushes, Little Fletch’s head was out. The rest of him slide out like a bar of soap.
Zane Scott Fletcher was born at 7.09pm, nine minutes after my OB predicted!!! He was put straight onto my chest and cried. We were both covered in blankets and had half an hour of skin to skin contact. I had the shakes and my body temp was not high enough to keep him warm. His OBs were done, he weighed 7lbs 8oz (3.4kgs), 51.5cm long and head was 35cm and got his Vitamin K injection. He got 9’s for both his Apgar’s. He was taken to the nursery and put under the heat lights for half an hour. He came back to me for a nice long breastfeed, as I wasn’t going anywhere until the epidural wore off; unfortunately, it had only really kicked in when Zane was out.
Zane’s arrival was amazing and I’m really pleased with all the decisions I made during labour, even though there was lots of intervention, I’m happy we are both healthy and finally have each other.
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