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TRIGGER WARNING: vacuum extraction and baby not breathing.

Background

In my first rainbow baby pregnancy, I felt as though I had done everything “right” to avoid a csection, but sometimes circumstances are just out of your control.

You can read my 1st birthing story here. I had so many high expectations of my labor and delivery with my first child.

But with my second child, the entire pregnancy I had a very open mind. Whatever happens will happen. All I want is a vaginal birth, IF possible. I am completely open to an epidural and pitocin if necessary. And if my baby goes into distress, I will be ok with a csection, but if baby and myself are ok then we will power on.

I adopted a very go with the flow attitude, and luckily enough for me. My awesome doctor was the same way. He Didn’t poke me for much info on my first labor and delivery, never asked to see those surgical notes. He always said let’s just see what happens in your labor and we agreed as long as baby and I were ok we could continue. Deal, Doc!

Wednesday Morning:

 I woke up Wednesday morning from the dead of sleep at 5am. I was 38+6 weeks pregnant. I had consistent contractions every 3-5 minutes until 9am. I texted my doctor to let him know the situation and that baby might be coming today. Then, I called my husband to let him know it might be time to go to the hospital. Hawaii traffic can be a nightmare going near Waikiki, so I wanted to leave sooner rather than later.I was not trying to have my baby in the car.

I run inside to take a quick shower and grab a few last minutes things. But, then my contractions slowed down to about 7 minutes apart. “Great” I thought! But still decided to go to the hospital and get checked out, in case things picked up. We got to the hospital around 11am and they checked me out, I was only dilated to 3cm. Bummer.

They told me to go walking around for an hour because my hospital wouldn’t admit me unless my water broke or I was dilated to 4cm. An hour passed, I got checked again and I was still only dilated to 3cm.

We were given two options: 1. go back home and wait or 2. walk around for another 2 hours.l and then get rechecked. It was a tough decision, but we decided to stay and walk some more. So, I walked around the hospital with my mom and daughter while listening to my hypnobirthing playlist.

After two hours I was finally dilated to a 4.

Wednesday evening

It was around 5 or 6pm when I was admitted. My room was big and spacious, but only a rocking chair and a lounging chair. No sofa for my family (my husband, my mother, and my five year old daughter) to sleep on.

My nurse hooks me up to my IV’s and continuous fetal monitoring and I switch from walking around the room to sitting on a birthing ball.

From 6pm-5am, I am just chilling on my birth ball, hanging out, and breathing through each contraction which were only about 5 minutes apart.

It’s now Thursday morning and I’ve been laboring for 24hrs.

Thursday Morning:

I was starting to get frustrated, who labors for this long?! My water broke around 6am and my nurse checked me to find that I was 7cm.

So she begins prepping all the delivery tools onto a table and reassures me that baby will be coming today! Because usually once the water breaks, labor typically speeds up! “Great!”, I think to myself! I am so excited at this point because 7cm is basically transitioning. I was in active labor, with no pain medication, and my contractions weren’t even painful! I could have this baby in the next 2 hours! I’ll be at a 10 in no time!!

Nurses continued to come in and out of my room stating how calm I was and that they couldn’t believe I was at a 7cm.

I remember telling them I wasn’t in pain and that I was just soooo bored and I was so sleepy! That’s it, the pain was easy at this point.

For the next few hours, I continued to complain about how bored and tired I was, while my husband and mother brought me apple juice and water to drink.–While my 4 year old wanted to have a dance party with me. Ha!

Thursday- 12 Noon

Around noon, I had a nurse check me hoping that by now I had surely made progress, BUT, I was still at 7cm!

I was so upset!

“How does someone stall out at 7cm”, I complained. My original plan was to “hopefully” go natural. But my son, apparently did not want to come out yet. So, I told my nurse that I was ok with pitocin, hoping the pitocin would speed up labor, after all I was super bored and had been listening to my hypnobirthing playlist for over 24 hours now.

They gave me the pitocin around 1pm and started me at a 1. The lowest possible setting, I believe it goes as high as 30? Not totally sure. But, 15 minutes later they bumped me up to 2. Another 15 minutes passed and I told the nurse to bump it up to a 4, because I wasn’t playing any games. I wanted this boy out, now!

The devils juice

Y’all, that  pitocin pain was like nothing I’d ever felt! I was crouched over in pain, crying. This is when I completely fell apart.  The pain from the synthetic oxytocin was unbearable how do people take this crap? Seriously, it’s the devils juice!

I was in the bathroom crying to my husband that I’d rather have a csection than deal with pitocin contractions. I cried for a good solid 20 minutes to my husband.

Actually, I was hysterical.

I told him I wanted a csection, I told him I wanted an epidural anything to get rid of this pain.

My husband really stepped up and tried to calm me down, he was so positive, sweet, and encouraging, but I had lost it, y’all!

I didn’t want any of his optimism, I had ripped my headphones off! I was done with the stupid hypnobirthing playlist and the lady’s sweet voice telling me to breathe through my contractions because my baby would be here soon. “Umm no lady, I’ve been in labor for over 30 hours!” I completely crumbled.

I didn’t know anyone who’s had a long labor like mine. It had been over 30 hours now and I was still 7cm! I was over it.

I couldn’t breathe through my pain any longer because I had been crying so much, my nose was so stuffed up. And because I couldn’t breathe out the contractions properly, the pain was unbearable and I felt like I would be meeting death soon.

I told my husband the ONLY way I could continue was with an epidural.

Thursday 3-4pm

So, I got my epidural and they gave me a nice button to press anytime I felt that pain was too much, this magical button would give me a higher dosage. It was heavenly and it worked so well! But now, all I could eat was ice chips.

It was around 3 or 4pm when I got the epidural, sometime in the afternoon they also filled my water back up so my son wouldn’t get distressed due to lack of water (not sure the medical terminology for that).

Thursday- 10pm

Many more boring hours passed and around 10pm my sons heart-rate plummeted and about 10 nurses rushed into my room turning me on my side to get his heart rate up and giving me oxygen. It was terrifying, but his heart rate returned to normal after a minute or two. My nurse called my doctor to come, she then warned me that if it happened again they might have to do an emergency csection

::gasp::

But, at this point I didn’t care, I wanted whatever was safer for my son. And although my goal was the have a vbac, I was just proud that I made it this far, since I didn’t with my daughter.

My doctor came in and checked me and said I was 9cm and what happened with my son’s heart-rate was because I was transitioning and he just lowered himself into position.  My doctor said it will probably happen again when I hit 10cm. Then he left again.

Sure enough, it happened again around midnight and my nurses freaked out and I told them my doctor said it would happen again and baby is just coming down.

Because I was only eating ice chips, I was extremely nauseated, I asked my nurse if I could get some anti-nausea medicine (because I wasn’t trying to puke during the pushing portion of my delivery). She got the ok from my doctor and I felt much better once it was administered.

Friday- 12am

Around midnight my doctor came back in to check on me and I was at 10cm, finally!

At 1am my doctor had me push for an hour.

But it was so darn difficult, because I couldn’t feel any contractions and my body wasn’t involuntarily pushing for me.

After an hour of pushing and not much happening, my doctor said he’d be back in 1.5hrs and that I should get some rest because the next time he came in we’d have a baby.

During that wait time, my nurse checked my temperature and I was starting to develop a fever. Mostly likely an infection from my water breaking and all the cervical checks. Now the clock was really ticking. I was on antibiotics for GBS, nausea meds, and now another antibiotic because of the infection in placenta.

My doctor came back with the pediatrician, and 3 nurses at my side along with my husband. Because my son was sunny side up and had his head tucked in my pelvis my doctor stuck his hands inside to physically turn my son and I also gave him the ok for a vacuum extraction.

I pushed for another 45 minutes, in between contractions I was breathing in oxygen.

Now it was time, my doctor told me to stop pushing and he talked about what was going to happen next… on my next contraction he was going to use the vacuum to extract my son.

My son was out!

I was expecting joyous sounds and loud cries from my son and me shouting, “I did it!” Crying with joy with my husband.

But none of that happened.

My doctor laid him on my chest and to me ahe looked lifeless and was not crying and not breathing.

My husband was supposed to catch our baby, but because my doctor used the vacuum to pull our son out that didn’t happen. My husband hurried and cut the cord and my son was passed back to the warming table where the timer was set.

As soon as they laid him down, I heard them say, “resuscitate!” My heart sank to the pit of my stomach. 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 5 minutes,  no cries that I could hear, nothing.

I was so terrified I couldn’t mutter a single word.

This can’t be happening to me, I thought.

Please God save my baby, this vbac was a big mistake I kept thinking while they began working on my son.

They set an alarm outside my door that was blinking red and alerted every nurse on the floor what was happening. Soon our room was flooded with what looked like 20 people.

I looked at my doctor with terrified eyes. In his calming voice, he reassured me that my son was going to be ok.

But how do you know doctor?! I thought to myself.

What seemed like an eternity I finally heard his first cry around 8 minutes. My husband reassured me that he was breathing way before then.

They got my son all hooked up, and let me look at him one last time before they put him in his little NICU box and rolled him out the door. My husband followed them while I was being stitched up.

My mom took my daughter to get breakfast and my husband followed our son to the NICU.

I was alone now.

–No cute little family pictures of my son with his dad, and sister like I had planned.

–I had no idea the condition my son was in and what was going on.

— No one explained anything to me.

I felt like I was in a nightmare.

For the first hour of my sons life his future was very uncertain, they needed to see if the swelling in his head would go down and a bunch of other factors.

I was terrified! But my husband was a wreck. He had watched everything happen with much more intensity than myself.

They let us know that afternoon that everything would be ok and there will be no lasting issues.

He stayed in the NICU for 3 days while I stayed in my recovery room alone, with the exception of my husband who was mostly spending time in the NICU with our son.

My son is now 4 months old and thriving!

I thought that having a VBAC would make me feel like I was redeemed from the unexpected first birth I had.

I THOUGHT, I would feel empowered, ‘I am woman, hear me roar’ kinda thing.

But I feel very traumatized about it. Much more than my c-section.

But, I am genuinely grateful for my doctor and the nursing staff. They rook very good care of us. I am forever grateful.

My labor was 48 hours long, with the first 30 hours being unmedicated. Labor and delivery was much more traumatizing this go around and the recovery was much worse than I imagined. But, that’s a blog post for another time, ha!

My son, is the sweetest and easiest baby ever and that is the most redemptive part of all of this.

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