After about 4 hours of chemically induced labor (gel, not patosin) I was no closer to cervical dilation than I had been when I started. We'd started at 8am, so it was now noon and although I had decent contractions 3 minutes apart, that's not enough to manage a vaginal delivery. Your cervix has to be dialated and effaced and mine was neither. Not even a little. The midwife basically said that if we had 3 days, we could probably persuade my system to goahead and deliver, but we didn't have it, so we'd be going ahead with a C section.
Now, that's not what we wanted to hear, but it was at least going to be over and that was worth something. I wasn't exactly thrilled about having major surgery though. Anyhow, the anesthesiologist came in and they gave me an epidural. From my point of view that's as scary as things ever got. There is something about feeling them probing around in your back that is monumentally terrifying since one wrong move could leave you paralysed for life. Never mind it's routine and they do it dozens of times a day. Nothing is supposed to go into the cavity in your back that they root around in. Then the drugs kicked in and I didn't really care.
Now, the normal labor and delivery rooms have a great deal in common with a mid level hotel room. They feel pretty badly decorated, but in general comfortable. The surgery, though, is completely the hospital green light-over-the-table-in-your face space you've seen Hollywood stereotype. I had just enough mobility left when they wheeled me in there to help them put me on the table (that's by design,BTW) and then I was imobile. A complete lump.
So they put a sheet up and you-the patient-can't see what they do as they fiddle with drug levels to be sure you cant feel anything. You never know when they make the incision. They just keep asking Can you feel that? How about that? until they've really sliced you and you never know it happened. Then they bring the husband in.
Poor Reed. He was tall enough he saw what they did to me and almost fainted. Then he and I firmly decided (ok, I wasn't very firm) to talk about other things. He had recently read The Voyage of the Speedwell and passed it to me. I was reading it in the hospital. I think the nurses thought we were nuts as Reed pressed me to tell him where I was in the book (it's a true history of a British privateer ship) so I'm babbling on about whether they've rounded the Horn and then suddenly they're telling me I have a daughter.
Which somehow didnt seem so wonderous at the time. There was this baby. The end. Then they pulled the placenta out, and that HURT. And then Reed was practically about to faint and then we were done. They wheeled me out of surgery and took me up to the NICU to see her. I was still on a gurney, but at least I could touch her little head and see that she was really ok. I was too messed up to remember or process much,but there she was and they said she would be ok. And then they took me back to my room and I slept for 1000 years.
Actually, my 1000 years were really about 12 hours. Then they wanted me to get up. Think about that for a minute. Get UP?? After you've had all your abdominal cavity messed with?? Any how, the technician who told me to get up didn't do a good job of communicating to me how to use my weight and it didn't go well. We didn't get me on my feet, but they touched the floor and we let it go for another few hours. The next time we tried it, I asked for the nurse and it was fine. Enough information was provided about what NOT to do and then I got to go up to the NICU and see Elizabeth. Somewhere in there in my percocet blurred memory, I remember some wonderful person coming in and helping me get CLEAN, too, and there is no service I wanted more in my life.
Major surgery has a way of making the most other-wise embarassing personal services being provided to you by someone else seem like the most amazing kindnesses. Which of course they are. And those people are not well enough paid for what they do. I don't care how much it is.
Anyhow, that's the getting up story in brief.
Posted by karen at September 22, 2002 12:00 AM