Rigi.kun
Mum to Teddy
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Theodore James was born 26th June 2012 via emergency c-section at 4:50pm after a failed induction. He weighed 3585g (7lb and 14oz) and measured 51cm (20 inches) and head circumference of 37cm.
The reason I was induced was that slowly over the last couple of weeks the doctors had seen my blood pressure slowly creep up so that I was in the 140's over 90's. I had blood tests done at 38, 39 and 40 week check ups, all blood tests came back as being on the high end of normal at whatever they were screening for and I had no protein in my urine.
Thursday 21/06/2012 (40 weeks + 2 days)
Get to see a locum Ob/Gyn cursing myself as I forgot to ask for Dr K (the female ob/gyn) Ma says the locum reminds her of Patch Adams (I don't get the movie reference, DF does tho) He checks my cervix and gives me some news that absolutely devastates me: My cervix is sealed shut, no dilation and no effacement. I spend the rest of Thursday and Friday crying because I feel like I'm already failing as a mother and that induction and thus an emergency c-section is indefinite (don't ask me why but I have it in my head the induction = emergency c-section)
He checks my blood pressure and it's 133/92 which has risen since my 39 week check up. My urine has no protein in it and my blood results from last week show something is "on the high end of normal" so he asks me to do another blood test today. He books me in for an induction for next Thursday and instructs me to rock up to maternity Monday morning for my pre-check ups for the Thursday induction.
Sunday night 24/06/2012 (40 weeks + 5 days)
I lose my first chunk of mucus plug, it's clear and gello like. I show DF and he smilles at me but doesn't understand my excitement. I'm over the moon.
Monday 25/06/21012 (40 weeks + 6 days)
I go do my usual morning pee and when I look into the toilet bowl I see something that reminds me of a raw egg with a protien spot (blood spot) but the blood spot is a lot larger. I find a stick outside and return to the toilet to poke at it. Yep, it's my bloody show, things are starting to look up for me.
So I rock up to maternity today with a spring in my step, to have my blood pressure and urine checked and for them to carry out a CTG to check Bumpy (I don't know what gender my baby is yet so I call them Bumpy)
CTG is beautiful and there is no protein in my urine which is excellent. They tell me that the bloods I had done last Thursday (21/06/2012) are still on the high end of normal but not increased dramatically so they are not worried there either. HOWEVER, compared to last Thursday my blood pressure today is a lot higher at 142/94.
The female ob/gyn Dr K comes and speaks to me and explains that they were concerned about my blood pressure and that she would like me to come back tomorrow to have it checked again. Dr K is hoping I'll natural go into labour over night, if not; then that my blood pressure has stopped rising. However if tomorrow's results are not favourable the induction may be moved up to tomorrow. She also instructs me that if I get a headache, feel unwell, get sever sudden swelling or have any dizzy spells that I need to come to the hospital (she is quiet insistent on these matters) She then continues to say that I should have my bags packed and ready just in case but my partner doesn't necessarily need to come with me as there is no guarantee when Bumpy will arrive from me being induced.
Ma and I spend the rest of Monday together and by the afternoon I'm to tired to drive myself home. Ma drives me and helps load my bags into the car I'm borrowing from my ma and she takes her car home with her. (I'm borrowing her car as my car got written off when I was 33 weeks pregnant by someone who didn't want to stop at a give way sign) I explain to DF what the plan is and unknowingly we spend our last night together as a couple.
Tuesday 26/06/2012 (41 weeks)
Rock up to the hospital late because I've thrown up my breakfast which ma specially bought for me
First off we hook me up to the CTG machine to check on Bumpy, yep they are going fine.
Dr K comes in to see me, I tell her why I'm late and she's thrilled as it means my labour is naturally starting. She then explains that depending on my blood pressure and how my cervix is going today will depend on what action we take. If my blood pressure has stabilized then she will ask me to come back tonight to have gel put on my cervix to help it to become favourable or if I'm dilated enough she will talk to me about breaking my waters. No problems, sounds like a good plan to me until they take my blood pressure.
Blood pressure is up to 150/96, Dr K decides she wants this baby out today. The new plan is that if she can't break my waters she is going to put the gel in now. While Dr K is checking she instructs the midwife to be ready to hand either the gel or the hook. I'm frightened out of my mind as I didn't know that it would hurt to have someone check and it hits home this is going to hurt A LOT. Plus Dr K is normally cool calm and collected; don't get me wrong she still was all these but she had this determination about her that I'd never seen before. She asks for the hook and while waiting for the midwife to find the hook she explains I'm 2cm dilated and that she is breaking my waters.
9am: She breaks my waters and instructs I'm going on to the hormone drip to help contraction start. I hate the sensation of the waters coming out, it feels like I'm constantly peeing myself, thankfully the hospital allows me to use their pads to help with the leaking business as throughout the course of the day I went through about 10 pads easily I think. I ask to go to the toilet before they take me up to the labour rooms. I sit on the toilet and just cry and feel the constant leak of my waters and try to place a pad onto my soak undies which doesn't work well. To add to my tears, while Dr K had been assessing me and getting ready to check my cervix the midwife had tried to leave the room to go do something for another patient. Dr K had barked at her to stay with me as the other patient didn't have a viable pregnancy, this upset me a lot to hear. The midwife in question I gave her the nickname of Claire the wonder nurse as she was so arrogant in how she talked to everyone and always tried to be one step ahead of the doctors.
I was thankful my ma was with me during this as I was shacking crying frightened mess. Once in the labour room Patch Adams son (yes the locum ob/gyn who saw me Thursday has a son that is a doctor that works for maternity) came in to put the cannula in for the hormone drip. He looked at my veins and made the same statement as most other people do when wanting to poke my veins "You don't have very prominent veins" to which I replied "Most people have trouble with my veins so don't get upset if you have to try a few times to get it in" He laughed and accepted the challenge. To help with the task both my arms were wrapped in warm towels and because I was shivering so badly they wrapped me up in a warm blanket (I don't know if I was shivering from being cold or being scared or both) So I was well and truely immobilized and unable to do anything.
Thankfully DF decided that he hadn't heard from me and called, ma was able to answer the phone and held it up to my ear. Poor DF got snapped at as I felt like he was annoyed at me for not getting in contact with him when I had had no chance to do it as everything was moving so freaking fast. I explained what had happened and that we were going to have Bumpy within the next 12 hours and that I would call again at lunch time (as that's when they said I would be checked again for dilation) and tell him if the drip was working well or taking it's time. DF decided that he'd rather be with me (which I was very thankful for) and left work to come spend the day with me. Turns out was a very good idea because the next time they checked me... well we'll get up to that part of the story soon.
Son of Patch Adams returns to try and put the cannula in, he finds two veins he thinks could be good. The first one he stabs and misses but manages to nick the vein he was aiming for so I start to bleed (I got blood on my thongs) He tries the back of my right hand and misses completely, which comes as no surpirse. He goes gets the other new doctor and she tries in my left arm again and fail. They announce that they are going to get the anethisist or Dr K to come put the canulla in, so I sit there and wait for either to rock up. In the mean time DF arrives and we debreif him on the morning I've had.
12 noon: Dr K arrives and puts the canulla into my left arm just below the bend in my elbow, which is good because I still can move my arm, bad because if I bend my arm to much the drip machine whines that it has a blocked path (which becomes a huge problem on Wednesday when they are dopping me up on pain killers and anti-biotics) Clare the wonder nurse goes on her lunch break and I get a lovely midwife looking after me. She is kind and caring but makes me stay on the bed. At least Clare suggested I move onto the ball (which I was super thankful for)
12:30: I'm crying to go to the toilet, I feel like I need to poo but everyone keeps reminding me it's the baby's head putting pressure on down below. They finally let me go to the toilet at 12:45 when I break down into histerics. They were right it was only baby's head, but at least the pain from holding my butt hole shut was gone, I could cope with the pressure as my body realised I didn't need to poop.
2pm: I go for another pee break I looked down and to my horror my amniotic fluids weren't pink anymore but a greenish olive colour. I started crying, the baby had been in distress and lost it's plug. Clare informed me that it happens but that doesn't mean baby is in trouble just means Bumpy was unhappy at one stage. I went on the gas and air to try and reserve some energy for the pushing stage, I found it difficult to use as I have weak lungs (due to them squashed when I was a baby, so Clare turned the dosage up really high so that my pathetic attempts would get me some pain relief) and that made me really high... my poor ma and DF got to hear me say "I'm so high" about a thousand times during labour. Because I was so high I didn't realise how serious things were getting (looking back at what I remember I should have been panicked after that toilet trip) because once I was back on the monitor we notice we kept loosing Bumpy's heart beat on the monitor. Clare kept telling us that it was picking up my heart beat, I now know she was trying to keep us calm. In the mean time, son of patch adams comes back and tells us that Dr K forgot to write the time on one of blood viles she sent to the lab and thus we're going to need to re-do it. I finds a vein in my right arm and gets some blood thankfully, I still have a bruise from that one.
3pm: Dr K comes back to check how dilation is going and to put an internal monitor on Bumpy's head. Shift change for the midwives and I get a lovely midwife named Ainslee, she is really supportive and calm and nice (thankfully). Dr K announces I'm only 3cm and I ask for pathedine, and I get it. To my absolute horror and distress the next contraction after the pathedine goes in I look over and see Bumpy's heart rate is down to 60 again. I scream and my histerics start up again, I really really try to stay calm as I know crying won't help anything and when they tell me it's an emergency c-section I agree straight away as I don't want Bumpy to die. (Dr K does tell me her reasoning, but I already knew her reasoning and already agreed with her a lot can happen in 7cms and it wasn't worth the risk) Once I confirm that yes I want a c-section I turn to DF and the nurse helping to prep me and ask if I can cry now. They say yes and I let it go, I can't remember how badly I cried, I can't remember even if I screamed. DF says that when they turned off the drip and I was contracting on my own accord just before I was unplugged and wheeled away that Bumpy's heart rate was back up to 140 and was fine.
The wheeled me to the OR and I got to meet the lovely people who would help me save my baby. There was lovely nurse, Kaye, and the anethatist, Hamish, who spoke to my constantly. Hamish explained that if the Spinal Block didn't work that they would have to use a general. Then he read my infomation and that's when the fun began. I'm presumed to be allergic to the paralizing agent they use for generals, I spent a good 10 minutes explaing that I had never had it nor did I consent to ever having it as it had almost killed my father. Had the surgeon who had been operating on him not had another patient die on him for the same allergic reaction my father would have died (not that it would have impacted me life much had he died) Thankfully the spinal worked, it worked a little two well.
They pulled Teddy out of my womb at 4:50pm on 26th June 2012 My joy was only brief as panic set in. I felt like there was a tonn of bricks on my chest and I had trouble breathing. I asked if it was normal and Kaye did the ice test to see how far the spinal had gone. She didn't even get it between my breasts before I said I couldn't feel the cold any more. She quickly grabbed my arm and check there and I said I could feel the cold. They got me oxygen, Hamish explained that I had a high block and that a lucky last minute judgment call on his behalf had probably daved my life. When he was doing the spinal he had readied 2.4ml of spinal stuff but at the last minute decided to only put in 2.35, which saved my life.
Teddy went with his dad back to maternity to meet his grandmother and I went to recovery for two hours. They wouldn't release me until the spinal had worn off to under my diaphram. When I finally got back to maternity I can't remember how I felt, but I think it was a mixture of excitment and exhaustion. Because while I was in recovery everyone kept telling me to sleep but I didn't trust my body to keep me alive while I was asleep. Why? Simply put even with the oxygen mask on I was still having to think concentrate on breathing, if I didn't think about it I wouldn't breath.
I love my son so much, it was a scary time for me, I never want to go through something like that again. But Teddy means the world to me and I would do anything to keep him safe.
The reason I was induced was that slowly over the last couple of weeks the doctors had seen my blood pressure slowly creep up so that I was in the 140's over 90's. I had blood tests done at 38, 39 and 40 week check ups, all blood tests came back as being on the high end of normal at whatever they were screening for and I had no protein in my urine.
Thursday 21/06/2012 (40 weeks + 2 days)
Get to see a locum Ob/Gyn cursing myself as I forgot to ask for Dr K (the female ob/gyn) Ma says the locum reminds her of Patch Adams (I don't get the movie reference, DF does tho) He checks my cervix and gives me some news that absolutely devastates me: My cervix is sealed shut, no dilation and no effacement. I spend the rest of Thursday and Friday crying because I feel like I'm already failing as a mother and that induction and thus an emergency c-section is indefinite (don't ask me why but I have it in my head the induction = emergency c-section)
He checks my blood pressure and it's 133/92 which has risen since my 39 week check up. My urine has no protein in it and my blood results from last week show something is "on the high end of normal" so he asks me to do another blood test today. He books me in for an induction for next Thursday and instructs me to rock up to maternity Monday morning for my pre-check ups for the Thursday induction.
Sunday night 24/06/2012 (40 weeks + 5 days)
I lose my first chunk of mucus plug, it's clear and gello like. I show DF and he smilles at me but doesn't understand my excitement. I'm over the moon.
Monday 25/06/21012 (40 weeks + 6 days)
I go do my usual morning pee and when I look into the toilet bowl I see something that reminds me of a raw egg with a protien spot (blood spot) but the blood spot is a lot larger. I find a stick outside and return to the toilet to poke at it. Yep, it's my bloody show, things are starting to look up for me.
So I rock up to maternity today with a spring in my step, to have my blood pressure and urine checked and for them to carry out a CTG to check Bumpy (I don't know what gender my baby is yet so I call them Bumpy)
CTG is beautiful and there is no protein in my urine which is excellent. They tell me that the bloods I had done last Thursday (21/06/2012) are still on the high end of normal but not increased dramatically so they are not worried there either. HOWEVER, compared to last Thursday my blood pressure today is a lot higher at 142/94.
The female ob/gyn Dr K comes and speaks to me and explains that they were concerned about my blood pressure and that she would like me to come back tomorrow to have it checked again. Dr K is hoping I'll natural go into labour over night, if not; then that my blood pressure has stopped rising. However if tomorrow's results are not favourable the induction may be moved up to tomorrow. She also instructs me that if I get a headache, feel unwell, get sever sudden swelling or have any dizzy spells that I need to come to the hospital (she is quiet insistent on these matters) She then continues to say that I should have my bags packed and ready just in case but my partner doesn't necessarily need to come with me as there is no guarantee when Bumpy will arrive from me being induced.
Ma and I spend the rest of Monday together and by the afternoon I'm to tired to drive myself home. Ma drives me and helps load my bags into the car I'm borrowing from my ma and she takes her car home with her. (I'm borrowing her car as my car got written off when I was 33 weeks pregnant by someone who didn't want to stop at a give way sign) I explain to DF what the plan is and unknowingly we spend our last night together as a couple.
Tuesday 26/06/2012 (41 weeks)
Rock up to the hospital late because I've thrown up my breakfast which ma specially bought for me
First off we hook me up to the CTG machine to check on Bumpy, yep they are going fine.Dr K comes in to see me, I tell her why I'm late and she's thrilled as it means my labour is naturally starting. She then explains that depending on my blood pressure and how my cervix is going today will depend on what action we take. If my blood pressure has stabilized then she will ask me to come back tonight to have gel put on my cervix to help it to become favourable or if I'm dilated enough she will talk to me about breaking my waters. No problems, sounds like a good plan to me until they take my blood pressure.
Blood pressure is up to 150/96, Dr K decides she wants this baby out today. The new plan is that if she can't break my waters she is going to put the gel in now. While Dr K is checking she instructs the midwife to be ready to hand either the gel or the hook. I'm frightened out of my mind as I didn't know that it would hurt to have someone check and it hits home this is going to hurt A LOT. Plus Dr K is normally cool calm and collected; don't get me wrong she still was all these but she had this determination about her that I'd never seen before. She asks for the hook and while waiting for the midwife to find the hook she explains I'm 2cm dilated and that she is breaking my waters.
9am: She breaks my waters and instructs I'm going on to the hormone drip to help contraction start. I hate the sensation of the waters coming out, it feels like I'm constantly peeing myself, thankfully the hospital allows me to use their pads to help with the leaking business as throughout the course of the day I went through about 10 pads easily I think. I ask to go to the toilet before they take me up to the labour rooms. I sit on the toilet and just cry and feel the constant leak of my waters and try to place a pad onto my soak undies which doesn't work well. To add to my tears, while Dr K had been assessing me and getting ready to check my cervix the midwife had tried to leave the room to go do something for another patient. Dr K had barked at her to stay with me as the other patient didn't have a viable pregnancy, this upset me a lot to hear. The midwife in question I gave her the nickname of Claire the wonder nurse as she was so arrogant in how she talked to everyone and always tried to be one step ahead of the doctors.
I was thankful my ma was with me during this as I was shacking crying frightened mess. Once in the labour room Patch Adams son (yes the locum ob/gyn who saw me Thursday has a son that is a doctor that works for maternity) came in to put the cannula in for the hormone drip. He looked at my veins and made the same statement as most other people do when wanting to poke my veins "You don't have very prominent veins" to which I replied "Most people have trouble with my veins so don't get upset if you have to try a few times to get it in" He laughed and accepted the challenge. To help with the task both my arms were wrapped in warm towels and because I was shivering so badly they wrapped me up in a warm blanket (I don't know if I was shivering from being cold or being scared or both) So I was well and truely immobilized and unable to do anything.
Thankfully DF decided that he hadn't heard from me and called, ma was able to answer the phone and held it up to my ear. Poor DF got snapped at as I felt like he was annoyed at me for not getting in contact with him when I had had no chance to do it as everything was moving so freaking fast. I explained what had happened and that we were going to have Bumpy within the next 12 hours and that I would call again at lunch time (as that's when they said I would be checked again for dilation) and tell him if the drip was working well or taking it's time. DF decided that he'd rather be with me (which I was very thankful for) and left work to come spend the day with me. Turns out was a very good idea because the next time they checked me... well we'll get up to that part of the story soon.
Son of Patch Adams returns to try and put the cannula in, he finds two veins he thinks could be good. The first one he stabs and misses but manages to nick the vein he was aiming for so I start to bleed (I got blood on my thongs) He tries the back of my right hand and misses completely, which comes as no surpirse. He goes gets the other new doctor and she tries in my left arm again and fail. They announce that they are going to get the anethisist or Dr K to come put the canulla in, so I sit there and wait for either to rock up. In the mean time DF arrives and we debreif him on the morning I've had.
12 noon: Dr K arrives and puts the canulla into my left arm just below the bend in my elbow, which is good because I still can move my arm, bad because if I bend my arm to much the drip machine whines that it has a blocked path (which becomes a huge problem on Wednesday when they are dopping me up on pain killers and anti-biotics) Clare the wonder nurse goes on her lunch break and I get a lovely midwife looking after me. She is kind and caring but makes me stay on the bed. At least Clare suggested I move onto the ball (which I was super thankful for)
12:30: I'm crying to go to the toilet, I feel like I need to poo but everyone keeps reminding me it's the baby's head putting pressure on down below. They finally let me go to the toilet at 12:45 when I break down into histerics. They were right it was only baby's head, but at least the pain from holding my butt hole shut was gone, I could cope with the pressure as my body realised I didn't need to poop.
2pm: I go for another pee break I looked down and to my horror my amniotic fluids weren't pink anymore but a greenish olive colour. I started crying, the baby had been in distress and lost it's plug. Clare informed me that it happens but that doesn't mean baby is in trouble just means Bumpy was unhappy at one stage. I went on the gas and air to try and reserve some energy for the pushing stage, I found it difficult to use as I have weak lungs (due to them squashed when I was a baby, so Clare turned the dosage up really high so that my pathetic attempts would get me some pain relief) and that made me really high... my poor ma and DF got to hear me say "I'm so high" about a thousand times during labour. Because I was so high I didn't realise how serious things were getting (looking back at what I remember I should have been panicked after that toilet trip) because once I was back on the monitor we notice we kept loosing Bumpy's heart beat on the monitor. Clare kept telling us that it was picking up my heart beat, I now know she was trying to keep us calm. In the mean time, son of patch adams comes back and tells us that Dr K forgot to write the time on one of blood viles she sent to the lab and thus we're going to need to re-do it. I finds a vein in my right arm and gets some blood thankfully, I still have a bruise from that one.
3pm: Dr K comes back to check how dilation is going and to put an internal monitor on Bumpy's head. Shift change for the midwives and I get a lovely midwife named Ainslee, she is really supportive and calm and nice (thankfully). Dr K announces I'm only 3cm and I ask for pathedine, and I get it. To my absolute horror and distress the next contraction after the pathedine goes in I look over and see Bumpy's heart rate is down to 60 again. I scream and my histerics start up again, I really really try to stay calm as I know crying won't help anything and when they tell me it's an emergency c-section I agree straight away as I don't want Bumpy to die. (Dr K does tell me her reasoning, but I already knew her reasoning and already agreed with her a lot can happen in 7cms and it wasn't worth the risk) Once I confirm that yes I want a c-section I turn to DF and the nurse helping to prep me and ask if I can cry now. They say yes and I let it go, I can't remember how badly I cried, I can't remember even if I screamed. DF says that when they turned off the drip and I was contracting on my own accord just before I was unplugged and wheeled away that Bumpy's heart rate was back up to 140 and was fine.
The wheeled me to the OR and I got to meet the lovely people who would help me save my baby. There was lovely nurse, Kaye, and the anethatist, Hamish, who spoke to my constantly. Hamish explained that if the Spinal Block didn't work that they would have to use a general. Then he read my infomation and that's when the fun began. I'm presumed to be allergic to the paralizing agent they use for generals, I spent a good 10 minutes explaing that I had never had it nor did I consent to ever having it as it had almost killed my father. Had the surgeon who had been operating on him not had another patient die on him for the same allergic reaction my father would have died (not that it would have impacted me life much had he died) Thankfully the spinal worked, it worked a little two well.
They pulled Teddy out of my womb at 4:50pm on 26th June 2012 My joy was only brief as panic set in. I felt like there was a tonn of bricks on my chest and I had trouble breathing. I asked if it was normal and Kaye did the ice test to see how far the spinal had gone. She didn't even get it between my breasts before I said I couldn't feel the cold any more. She quickly grabbed my arm and check there and I said I could feel the cold. They got me oxygen, Hamish explained that I had a high block and that a lucky last minute judgment call on his behalf had probably daved my life. When he was doing the spinal he had readied 2.4ml of spinal stuff but at the last minute decided to only put in 2.35, which saved my life.
Teddy went with his dad back to maternity to meet his grandmother and I went to recovery for two hours. They wouldn't release me until the spinal had worn off to under my diaphram. When I finally got back to maternity I can't remember how I felt, but I think it was a mixture of excitment and exhaustion. Because while I was in recovery everyone kept telling me to sleep but I didn't trust my body to keep me alive while I was asleep. Why? Simply put even with the oxygen mask on I was still having to think concentrate on breathing, if I didn't think about it I wouldn't breath.
I love my son so much, it was a scary time for me, I never want to go through something like that again. But Teddy means the world to me and I would do anything to keep him safe.
I'm sorry you had such a traumatic birth, but so happy that you and Teddy made it through safely! He's such a cute baby, you should be very proud!!!
hehe (not that you're not busy enough, obviously 
hehe )
