Arianna Michaela's birth and my wild ride!
Sorry this took SOOOOoooooooooooooooo long!! Finally found some time to track back to that special day. :) Tis a little long though....hope u have the time to read this!
Arianna is 12 days today. Funny how alsmot 2 weeks have passed. This is the story of her birth.
10/8/2007 - It was around midnight, about 1am [11/8] that I felt a slight 'leak' and was a little shocked. I knew at the back of my mind that my water had broke but somehow, I refused to believe it. I went to bed immediately and called DH to tell him. He was on his night shift.
11/8/2007 - Nothing happenned at all the whole day until around 5.30pm after had planned to go out for our pre-anniversary dinner since DH would be working on Sunday night. I felt 'wet' again and slapped on a pad, just in case and called the hospital to tell them and get more info. They told me to call them back at 7pm. At 7pm, the pad wasn't that wet and I was told to wait and call back to update them at 9pm. With all that monitoring, our romantic dinner was shoved. Sure enough, the pad was more wet and slightly tinged. We were told to come in. We arrived at the hospital at 10pm and was whisked away to the a monitoring room. Since nothing much was happening, DH left for home to get a good rest and wait for 'the' call. I spent the night at the hospital with no or very slight contractions happening. I managed to get some sleep, which was good.
12/8/2007 - By 6am, I was moved to the delivery suite and and the midwife on call had my hot spa running to help with the contractions - still nothing happening so I started walking around the room hoping that it would get some reaction coz I was told that otherwise, I would get the syntocin drip which I wasnt looking forward to. By 1.30pm, still no action so on the drip I went. :( Within 1 hour, the 'fun' had began. By 2.30pm, I began the contractions at 2cm dilation after getting my first (VE) and it was getting more regular. Pain stil; under control with DH massaging my back, using the swiss ball [LIFE SAVER!!] and breathing tecniques. They kept upping the syntocin and boy, it really began to hurt like hell so I jumped in the shower and got instant relief! By 6.30pm, the contractions were getting harder and more painful....I got 2nd VE done and was told that I was up to 5cm. The hot wheat packs, massaging and swiss ball wasn't helping much so I asked for the gas and was soon hooked up. I am still not sure if it was any help as I seemed to have been inhaling it at all the wrong times! Thankfully it didn't get me sick at any point, instead I felt very stoned and DH is still laughing about it! By 8pm, I had dilated to 8cm after another VE, I began to have the urged to push plus I was grunting like mad by then. But the nurse said that I had to try to not push. I told her that I was going to anyway but not with all my might, just to guide the baby down and she was fine with that. My OB came in and was updated about my condition. He told me that by 10pm, I should be able to starting pushing baby out and left. But not even half an hour later, the urge was so bad that I just HAD to push so midwife came and propped me on my knees coz that's how I wanted to birth. I started pushing before my OB came but the position didn't do me good, that was about 8.30pm. So OB suggested me being on my side and I agreed. But that wasn't comfy as well and before I knew it, I was on my back, knees up, chin in and pushing away. I had a mirror in front of me and could see bub's head. I pushed and pushed but couldn't get bub out coz I was just out of strength and the stinging was just TOO bad for me, plus my perineum was too thin that OB suggested an epi and after that, with 2 pushes, Arianna swooshed out @ 9.39pm and into my arms! :) What a relief!!!
But my placenta was 'stuck' so birthing that took time and I lost a lot of blood since OB suspected that there might be some left behind. After I got stitched up, I was wheeled into the OT under GA and had a 10 minute clean procedure done. Then spent about 1 hr in recovery trying to stabilise my BP and pulse. [BP as so low they couldn't get a figure and I had no pulse despite being able to still talk - go figure!] On top of that, I had a temperature....all in all, I lost 2 liters of blood. It was way past midnight when I was stable enough to return to my room although I was hooked up to many drips and had that BP gadget wrapped to my arm permanently until the evening of 13/8/2007 when I was cleared of all that crap.
I spent 5 days at the hospital - 4 days part of the package and an additional day since Arianna lost more than 10% of her birth weight, had some jaundice so she had to go under the light AND I had some latching issues to look at.
Glad to say that all is well EXCEPT that bloody latching problem which comes and goes! :)
