| Juliet |
...here is our birth story.
Sabrina Juliet Fxxxxxkowski
Born February 10th, 12:08 PM
Weight: 7 lbs, 9 ozs
Length: 20.5 inches
Oh boy what a story! Before Sabrina wakes up, I will give you as much as I can.
I will start by saying that I was trying for a drug free natural birth and tell you that I learned a little something about being flexible and accepting when it is okay to go with plan B.
Wednesday night I tossed at turned and couldn't seem to fall asleep. I was so restless I couldn't slow my thoughts. Around 3AM, when I was almost dozing off, I felt a wetness come over my bottom and for a brief moment I thought I had wet my pants. I jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom where I discovered my whole butt of my pajamas were wet and it didn't look or smell like urine. While sniffing my pants (weird one, I know) Another gush came out and I knew it had to be my water. I sat in the bathroom for a few minutes panicking as DH was snorning away in the bed. I didn't know if I should go back to bed and pretend it didn't happen or call my midwife group. After a few minutes I realized that being GBS positive meant I really needed to call and find out what to do. No avoiding this one.
I called the paging service and the midwife on call got back to me and told me that based on my description, it was my water and I needed to go to Stonybrook to start antiobiotics. She told me to take a shower and gather my belongings as it might be a while and then we headed to the hospital.
When we got there, the midwife examined me and said she couldn't find positive proof that I did break my water. So we had to wait for a sono tech to check my fluid levels. He told me that my fluids weren't the highest but not the lowest either (great, now what?).
The next shift midwife came in and by 10AM or so they decided to admit me and start me on antiobiotics. Since I hadn't contractions that point, they wanted to start me on cervadil to get my cervix softened and ready for pitocin. Well, after spending half of the day making sure I didn't have a reaction to the antiobiotic (I am allergic to amoxicillin and the drug I was given had a slim chance of reaction in those allergic to penicillin), they inserted a cervadil and told me I had to wait 12 hours to see what happened. And of course, what happened was that it fell out after 7 hours and I had to start all over again. By this time it was Friday morning and I hadn't eaten since Thursday morning. I was exhausted and desperately wanting to either go home or have this baby.
After the second dose of Cervadil, the next midwife who was handling me (I saw 4 or 5 of the seven during my stay)said I had not really progressed but since my water had been broken for so long and I was GBS positive, we needed to move things along. So she started me on Pitocin and at first I was okay. But then they started turning it up and my exhausted body could not handle the back labor and being on IV made me really uncomfortable. I was in so much pain that I couldn't even cry. My mom and DH were there with me and my mom said she felt the pain with me because it was similar to her labor with my brother. I was almost at the point of delirium and kept trying so hard to relax and remember everything I learned in Bradley class. I wanted so badly to do this without drugs. I wanted to be strong, so to speak.
Luckily, prior to this, a few of the midwives I had seen had told me to be flexible and understand that sometimes there is a real necessity for an epidural and not just as a means of pain relief. Sometimes the body doesn't progress on its own when it is too tired and stresed.
So after two days of antibiotics, cervadil and pitocin, I asked the midwife who was with me, realistically how long I might labor. She told me it could be 8-10 hours before I was fully dilated and then who knows how much more pushing. She told me that the best thing for my body would be to get the epidural so I could sleep and then begin pushing when I was ready.
Thank God I am not as stubborn as I was planning on being. After gettng the epi on Friday night, I slept and woke up ready to push on Saturday morning. I pushed for a few hours and finally at 12:08 Sabrina joined us. We had jokingly made bets with each midwife we saw as to what the gender was and as the pushing got closer, I got nervous and excited and when her head was crowning, the midwife told me to reach down and feel it. At first I was squeamish and didn't want to. I pushed a few more times and she told me again to feel it. And I did and it was slimy but for some reason I was more motivated when I realized I could feel it right there!! I knew the end was in sight.
After I delivered her, they cleaned me up and we began our bonding process. What a sweet little baby.
We have been trying to breast feed the past few days and today seemed to be the best latch. I think the more comfortable we are, the better it will work.
So far I feel okay and actually feel fairly good about my stomach. But my FEET are like Fred Flintstone
That's a about all I remember for now.
Thanks for letting me share my story.
Posted 2/12/07 11:15 PM
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