Musings on the Birth of Zoë
I woke up on the morning of the 28th of August thinking “Wow, I’ve got a lot of discharge today.” It was about 7:30. Scott and I had gone to bed around 2:00 in the morning. I’d been looking on the web for ways to induce labor naturally and came across this site that said if you’re frantic about trying to get labor started you can actually back things up with anxiety and stress. So, Scott and I went to dinner at Denny’s and had a waitress named Zoë! We came home and I had a glass of red wine. We wanted to watch the TLC special on the face with John Cleese but had missed the first airing. We decided to stay up and watch the repeat at midnight. Therefore, we went to bed around 2 a.m.
I went into the bathroom to make sure I hadn’t just lost control of my bladder. No, I’ve got control of my bladder and water running down my legs. Hmmm… Let’s see what happens if I walk around. More water. Okay. I woke Scott up and told him to get in the shower. I called the maternity center to tell them what was going on and I was told to come in. I got all of our stuff together and called my parents. We left around 8:30 and arrived at Evergreen just before nine.
When we got to the hospital I was admitted. The birthing/recovery room is very nice. Looks like a hotel room only with a hospital bed. We had a stereo and television with VCR. A nice wide windowseat that would double as a bed for Scott to sleep in and a table and chairs completed the furnishings.
I got undressed and putzed around the room dribbling amniotic fluid and then got into bed. Our doctor Bonnie Gong came in just before ten. She checked my cervix, said she felt my bag bulging some more and broke the rest of my waters. I was dialated to 1-1/2.
We really wanted to deliver with Bonnie and said so. She suggested that we move things along with a Pitocin drip. I was on Pitocin for the next 20 hours.
I labored along just fine for several hours. My uncle came by to see how I was doing and stayed for about an hour while we watched the late morning news. Our friend Alisa came at about noon. I was hooked up to an external monitor for the baby’s heartbeat and an internal monitor to accurately measure the strength of my contractions. I was able to breathe through my contractions but not talk through them. Scott and Alisa kept me informed of how strong they were. I found out later that the monitor shows a number, the higher the number, the stronger the contraction. I was able to breathe through contractions registering at 80-90. I felt good and in control. I kept trying to visualize my cervix opening up. After ten hours I was dialated to 3. Dr. Gong wasn’t on call that night and her shift ended at seven so I would be continuing with Dr. Robertson. After she came on and a new set of nurses it was discovered that my internal monitor wasn’t placed properly anymore. They tried to reset it and I tensed up so much they had to take it out. Dr. Robertson came in to check my cervix. After I was checked and I made a great fuss about it hurting she asked me “Do you have an epidural?” I said no, we had been told I had to be dialated to four in order to have an epidural. She said “That’s ridiculous. You’ve been laboring long enough. I’ll call the anesthesiologist.” I got my epidural about half an hour later.
At this point I had gotten very discouraged and was crying on and off about the fact I wasn’t progressing. Dr. Zimmerman came in to give the epidural and I lost it when he gave me the initial numbing injection. I started sobbing. The nurses all got very concerned and gave me tissues and cool cloths for my face.
The epidural kicked in and I relaxed some more. My parents arrived about nine o’clock and Alisa went home to help put her daughter Hailey to bed. The medication in the epidural made me nauseated and I threw up a few times. After a couple hours I was dilated to 4. I wouldn’t progress anymore that night. Alisa came back about midnight and took on the night shift. My folks had gotten a room at the Clarion Inn within walking distance and left to get some sleep. Scott dozed on the windowseat and I tried to sleep. Alisa read a book and questioned the nurses about everything going on.
At close to 2 a.m. Dr. Robertson asked one of the nurses to try manual stretching my cervix to get it to dilate. My mom came in right around then. It didn’t work. The doctor came in around four o’clock, checked me again and said “This isn’t working. We’re going to take you c-sec. The complications of surgery are…”
Dr. Zimmerman was called along with a surgeon from the ER to assist. I was given a medication to settle my stomach that I promptly threw back up. My mom called my dad and I was put on a gurney to be taken to the operating room. Scott and Alisa came with me. Scott because he was the father and Alisa to run the video camera. Both of them got to put on scrubs and masks. I was strapped to the table and prepped for surgery. Dr. Zimmerman cranked up my epidural and pinch tests were done. I felt something prick me and said “Ow!” Dr. Zimmerman said “Hang on. What ow? There’s no ow! What did you feel?” Apparently the medication in and epidural can run from one side of the body to the other and I was uneven, not as numb on my right side. They tilted the table. I went numb from the collarbones down. After that I was really out of it. I remember people in the room talking and Scott rubbing my forehead. I know they held the baby up over the blue curtain and I could hear her crying. I didn’t want to hold her because my arms were numb and I was afraid I’d drop her. I slept for the next couple hours and asked to hold her when I woke up.
Zoë was born at 5:17 in the morning on August 29th, exactly on her due date.
I was in labor for a total of 22 hours and finally delivered C-section. We stayed in the hospital for 2 days trying to get to know each other. Because she was a c-section baby Zoë had a lot of fluid in her lungs and at one point had to be taken down to the nursery to be suctioned. On our first night in the hospital she had a ton of air in her and one of the nurses took her out to try and work it out of her body. After she was brought back we all slept for close to 6 hours. We stayed one more night that went fairly uneventfully and went home on the 31st.
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