I had a scheduled ob/gyn appointment a day shy of 37 weeks. My usually good blood pressure was unusually high, so the nurse took it twice. It never went down, but since I didn't have any other symptoms of high blood pressure (no headache, no protein my urine), my doctor sent me home with instructions to take it easy and rest. I also had a scheduled appointment with my maternal fetal health specialist* the following Monday, so my ob/gyn decided to let that office decide what to do next if my blood pressure still remained high.
*Twelve weeks into my pregnancy, it was discovered that I had unusually high blood sugar levels, and I quickly had a couple very frustrating appointments with three doctors over a span of four days that resulted in a discovery that I was perhaps a type 2 diabetic that was just living her best life without knowing it (so I guess not really my best life?). That resulted in my having two doctors during this pregnancy - an ob/gyn and a maternal fetal health specialist. It also resulted in a strict regimen of insulin, pricking my fingers 4x a day, and monitoring my carb intake. It was also told to us that I must be vigilant in my diabetes management because if not I would be likely to birth a very large baby (like a 10lb-er) and may develop other complications like preeclampsia. While it was extremely overwhelming in the beginning, this unexpected journey had its unexpected blessings - because this pregnancy was now considered a high risk pregnancy, we got frequent ultrasounds, I managed to gain a respectable 20lbs and not the 100lbs I thought I would gain, and I was probably in the best diet shape of my life. Hills and valleys guys, hills and valleys.
We spent the weekend attending our baby shower and going to Target to get the last remaining items we needed. It was as if my body knew our life was about to get turnt, because at my appointment at the specialist the next day, the nurse told us to go straight to the hospital for an hour of labs because my blood pressure was still high. Mackay and I looked at each other and laughed because of course this would happen. We went home to grab our hospital bag "just in case", and then made our way to the hospital.
We checked in and got a room in Labor & Delivery. The "hour of labs" turned quickly into "are you ready to stay here" because my blood pressure never went down and they wanted to get me started on a magnesium drip to prevent having any seizures. A magnesium drip also meant confinement to the hospital bed and an additional 12hrs of monitoring post delivery, so we quickly realized we were #InItToWinIt. My IV was started, a blood pressure cuff was put on my arm for continuous monitoring, and massage cuffs were placed on both my calves to encourage blood flow while I was confined to the bed. And the cherry on top - I got a catheter put in, because - did I mention was I was confined to the bed? I was also no longer able to eat anything; I could only have small amounts of water. Guys - it was 12:30pm and only an hour into baby girl's birth journey; it would be another 20 hours before we would meet our precious girl #cool.
Once the magnesium drip started, the nurse informed us about the process of inducing me. However, because I wasn't actually in labor yet, they had to 'ripen my cervix'. So thus began a series of hilariously awkward experiences between me and medical staff getting up close and personal with me and my private areas. Nurse Colette was all up in my business to determine the location of my cervix opening (wayyy up in there and to the right, lucky me), and then she placed medicine on my cervix to get it to start opening up.
It took a long time for my cervix to ripen. It took two doses of medicine, and finally at 10pm, Nurse Rachel (hello shift change) determined I was 3cm dilated and ready for pitocin. However, because pitocin speeds up the labor process and intensifies contractions, she suggested that if I was considering an epidural, now would be a great time to get it. I have never answered "yes" so quickly in my life, and an hour later, a curt but efficient Russian anesthesiologist administered three quick "pinches" of numbing medicine and then gave me an epidural. I would like to take this time to shout-out our seven-week birthing class for preparing me for the epidural and also for the things that would later be inserted into me (more of that to come). If you're considering whether or not to take a class, I 10/10 recommend it because I got to see and touch and interact with the items that would later be helping me during my delivery - i.e. I got to see the epidural needle (hello), and I got to see and touch a plastic hook that breaks your water, a internal contraction monitor and an internal fetal heartbeat monitor (which, tbh, looks pretty scary because it's basically a metal hook that goes underneath! the skin! of your baby's head! while they are still inside of you!).
The nurses wanted to make sure little lady would respond well to the epidural before starting the pitocin, so they monitored her heart rate to make sure everything was good to go, and then started pitocin shortly thereafter. At around 2:30am however, the nurse and the on-call doctor came in to tell me that they were going to break my water, stop pitocin, and were going to insert a vaginal heart monitor and contraction monitor because little lady was not responding well to the pitocin and was experiencing a decrease in heart rate before a contraction. A stressful situation but the on-call doctor was just the sweetest old man who spoke in a soft, almost Mr. Roger's like tone and explained everything to me and was cool calm and collected so I was too. Praise Jesus for doctors with great bedside manner!
I don't remember much between the hours of 3am and 7am because not much happened. I remember getting checked at 3am and was only 4cm dilated. I continued to dilate without pitocin due to the medicine they used back when they were ripening my cervix. At 7am, little lady's heart rate finally leveled out and the nurse decided to start me on a low level of pitocin again. At this point, I was 8cm dilated and was told that if I "felt to the urge to push" to let the nurse know, but that they thought I still had a ways to go.
7am was also the time I had the wonderful experience of having a BSN nurse intern decide that this would be the perfect time for her to get her nursing school hours in and do important things like get my vitals and ask me a bunch of questions while my body was preparing to birth my first born child. Her name was Princess y'all. And at one point she just stood there and stared at my four IV bags as if she had never seen anything like them before. She also asked me a bunch of questions like "when was your last menstrual cycle" and asked me to drape my leg (which was numb, because #epidural) over the bed so she could test for my reflexes. Bless you and your nursing school ministry, Princess.
Of course, this was also when my body decided all systems were a go. I started feeling consistent and increasingly intense contractions. Up until this point, I had no concept of what a contraction would feel like. People described it to me as "pressure" and "cramping", but since I got an epidural, I literally felt nothing until about 7am. I would describe contractions as an ever increasing feeling that I was about to push out the biggest poop of my life. In fact, as the contractions increased in intensity, it started to feel more like I was trying to hold in the biggest bout of diarrhea I have ever had. If you recall, the nurse checked me at 7am and I was only 8cm dilated; at 7:30am I remember thinking to myself - "I am stopping myself from pushing" so I finally spoke up and asked for another check at 7:50am. At first the nurse was like "I literally just checked but ok" and then immediately upon checking she looked me bright-eyed and said "are you ready to have a baby?!" because I was 10cm dilated.
Before I knew it, my bed transformer-ed itself and the bottom half disappeared, stirrups unfolded from who-knows-where, a billion people I had never met nor seen before showed up out of nowhere and the brightest lights I have ever seen were suddenly turned on and pointed right at my lady parts from the ceiling. The best part? I progressed so quickly that my doctor wasn't at the hospital yet. In fact, I progressed so quickly that there wasn't a doctor from my practice currently available. Well, one was - but not really - he was in the parking lot. If memory serves me correctly, I was told to 'hold on' because they were trying to buy time to give the doctor time to show up. (This is probably also a good time to tell y'all that I gave birth on a full moon day - the entire labor & delivery floor was full and I found out later that our pediatrician's office had 9 - NINE - births that day). At this point, so many strangers/random people had seen my private parts that I was totally ok with literally anyone helping me deliver this baby - Intern Nurse Princess included. After giving birth, I realized Intern Nurse Princess was still just standing there in the room staring at me so I tried to make small talk and asked her "how many births have you seen?" and she answered "this is my first one" and I said "oh yeah me too join the club"!!!?!?!?!?!?
As if written like a Hallmark Drama movie, my ob/gyn made it at 8:15am, just as the stranger/not-my-doctor was putting on a gown. I remember pushing through three contractions and on Tuesday, October 23rd at 8:31am, little lady entered into the world - at 4lbs 13oz and 19 inches long. I also remember 'birthing' the placenta which, y'all was so weird. But then, it was as if time slowed wayyyyy down and suddenly it was just me and my husband and our precious teeny tiny baby who turned out to be a lot smaller than we thought she would be. No one told me that ultrasounds are over/under by at least 1lb when they give you your baby's weight. This whole time, we were worried we would have a giant baby and I gave birth to a baby that was 3oz heavier than a required NICU stay. Thank you Jesus for the extra 3 ounces!
After some sweet skin-to-skin time, little lady was taken to the nursery to get checked out and all I remember is passing out for an hour because my body just spent 37 weeks making a human then spent 20 hours bringing said human into the world. I was still attached to the magnesium drip, so we had to stay in labor and delivery for another 12 hours, which meant 12 more hours of not eating and being confined to the bed. When little lady returned from the nursery, she was in a temperature controlled isolet because her body was having a hard time regulating her body temperature. I was not allowed to be left alone with our baby because I was still confined to the bed, so Mackay had to be super dad pretty quickly by forgoing his own needs and being the go-to feeder, changer and calmer-downer when little lady was in her isolet.
The nurses continued to monitor my blood pressure and were optimistic that we would be transferred up to the postpartum floor in the evening. By 11pm, we were finally upstairs in a postpartum room and getting settled in. Mackay and I made the decision to put little lady in the nursery because neither of us had slept well/at all and we could not muster up the energy to be 100% responsible for little lady. This was also the first time I was able to get out of bed and move around and EAT, so I was very much like "I love you baby girl but I gotta take care of me" and this was met with some light 'mommy shaming' from the nurses. The hospital is "family friendly", which means that they make you encourage you to room-in with your newborn, which is fine........except that I was not fine and was not physically, emotionally or mentally ready to be "on". Thankfully I stood my ground and the nursery nurse was accommodating and honestly pretty nice about it after realizing our delivery journey and the following seven hours of uninterrupted sleep was like I had slept for 1000 years. One of the best decisions I have made as a parent so far. Lesson learned: people have all sorts of thoughts and opinions on what is best for you and/or your baby, but you are you and a human and you need to do what is best for you because you are your best advocate. I have had to learn this lesson many times since becoming pregnant and as an enneagram 2 with a 1 wing, I promise you it gets easier to advocate for your own self; you just gotta start doing it and do it with confidence!
Putting little lady in the nursery also gave us the peace of mind that someone medically trained and knowledgeable would be monitoring her as she learned to regulate her body temperature. When she returned to us on Wednesday morning, she had graduated out of the isolet and was in a regular infant container-thingy (what are they called?!) and, as long as she was swaddled and had a hat on, we could hold her and snuggle her and love on her without restriction.
Wednesday morning was also when I had a glorious experience with another BSN intern nurse. This nurse also did vitals, but had an extra 'vitals' check: hemorrhoids. This stranger learner of nursing asked me where I felt the most comfortable for her to examine my butt. At this point in my life journey, I told her "anywhere" and I think my answer surprised her because she said quite quickly "umm well perhaps we should go to the bathroom for privacy" and was like "el oh el what is privacy". Thankfully for the both of us, no hemorrhoids were present and she left me alone with my own body and my mesh underwear and my giant pads.
The high blood pressure thing continued to be an issue post delivery, so we stayed an extra night and day at the hospital for my health's sake. By Thursday morning, little lady got the green light to be discharged and I was finally discharged Thursday afternoon after being prescribed medicine to lower my blood pressure to get it to a manageable state. I remember sitting in the car on our way home and being simultaneously out of it and also acutely aware of how crazy life was now that we had a physical baby out of the womb. I still get bouts of that now, where I am sleep deprived but also dancing with baby to Christmas music because she is here and she is alive and I am just overwhelmingly grateful.
We are now exactly five weeks out from little lady's birth day, and man - what a journey. This journey has also helped me appreciate all the hills and valleys women go through to bring life into the world. The journey to motherhood is deep and wide and some are colorful while others are drab. I am grateful for the journey we have had, I have a deep admiration for women who have had harder, and I have great compassion for women whose wombs go bare but their hearts and homes remain open to how motherhood can and does enter their lives in different, unique and beautiful ways.
Last two things I will say about all of this because baby girl is stirring for the nth time and duty calls:
1. She was and continues to be so worth it
and also
2. ...people do this more than once?!
