Okay, even after going to school for 900 years, delivering a few hundred babies or so and counseling multiple mommies-to-be on what to expect during their pregnancy and labor, I can now safely say that until you've actually gone through it yourself, you have no clue what is really going on. Now that Ollie is here (in case you missed it, he showed up on 8/9/10 at 5:58 pm) and I've been on the other side of the whole ordeal, I'd like to pass on a few pearls that I will definitely be incorporating into my spiel (possibly not in this exact language) to wannabe and actual preggers if I ever go back to work again.
1. Braxton-hicks vs the real thing: Now, I've been shot down by many other women who've had babies when I've discussed my feelings on this topic, but, that's just too bad. Here goes. So I had the 'practice' contractions from about 24 weeks on, but not seriously until about 34 weeks. Right about the time I took a little holiday to Louisiana and StL in the middle of my last trimester ( I know, genius) I got a little dehydrated and overexerted myself and got to feel the tightening in the belly and the firmness that wouldn't let me push my finger into my belly to pursue my only form of exercise and favorite daily activity of annoying my baby by smooshing on him. I even would occasionally feel some pressure in the nether regions and all that jazz.
This was nothing compared to the real thing. For all you chicks out there on the show "I didn't know I was pregnant" and all those high schoolers delivering in a bathroom stall because they weren't sure if they were in labor or not, I'm calling bullshit. I had my first REAL contraction on August the 8th at 3:14 pm. It's like how everyone knows where they were when Kennedy was shot, it was so different and painful and took my breath away that, even now, I can picture exactly where I was standing at the BMX race, under the tent, in the 100 degree heat, unable to move or release my death grip on the chair I was leaning on. They continued on and got SIGNIFICANTLY worse throughout the evening until finally at 10:30pm, when labor officially started. At that point, I was like someone with an acute appendix because every 3 minutes for the three hours I stayed at home and tried to 'sleep it off' (not a move I recommend, fyi, but a doctor can't be running into the birthing unit unless she knows FOR SURE she's in labor or risk the entire nursing staff talking about what a dumbass she is in the event that she is not in labor any of the seven times she makes the journey), it felt like my entire abdomen and pelvis was being squeezed in a vice by someone trying to pull a bowling bowl through my vagina.
It was interesting, though, that in between said attempts on my life, I was perfectly fine. One second, I'm cleaning the bathroom floor, the next I can't breath/talk/stand/sit/move for a minute and then I'm right back at it with the clorox. I think that's why my hubby was somewhat reluctant when finally at 1:00am, I woke him up with the announcement that we should probably go to the hospital right-this-second-now. I was secretly sure that I was like 7cm, but there will be more on that later.
2. When you realize you're really having a baby, you kind of lose it. In my case, my hubby pulled up into the ER garage (when you go in to labor in the middle of the night, this is the only way into the hospital...who knew?), and I got out and started waddling through the ER like everything was fine and hoping no one noticed me as I snuck up to the family birthing unit. Unfortunately for me, this was not a typical Sunday night and there was no one in the ER except all the docs and nurses I get to work with all the time. Everything was fine for about 3 seconds until the first one saw me and asked the horribly intrusive and awful question, "would you like a wheelchair?" This was apparently enough to make me realize, yes, I was indeed here to have a baby...and he was coming out through my vagina...in a very short time. It was at this point that I turned into a blubbering fat puddle of goo and despite my protests that, "no, I'm not in pain, I'm fine, I just need to get upstairs"(which I'm sure didn't sound that coherent as I previously mentioned I was a blubbering fat puddle of goo), EVERYONE in the ER came over to 'help' (read stare at the poor blubbering fat puddle of goo with 'poor crazy her' eyes) so my entrance to the hospital was less than as incognito as I'd hoped.
3. Better living through medicine: I've had the talk with my patients literally thousands of times about pain medicine in labor. Do they want anything, what are the options, what would I do, yada, yada, yada. Well guess what? I just re-wrote that whole convo because there's not a chance in hell that I could have gone through with that whole labor charade without the magic of the epidural. So, I get into the triage room and it was like my uterus said "okay, it's go time" and the contractions instantly picked up the pace and the intensity to the point where I was autistic-like rocking on the bed trying to breathe through them...to no avail. The nurse checked me (remember I was sure I was 7cm and he was falling out at this point) only to inform me that I'd sat at home for hours through all this pain to change from the 2 cm I'd been in clinic to a whopping 3 whole centimeters dilated. STFU, is what I was thinking as I said, 'well, I guess we can go home if I'm not in labor (silently cursing myself at this point and simlutaneously wondering where I could find a drug dealer this time of night to take care of this pain if she did indeed agree with my horrible suggestion).' She assured me, I was indeed in labor from the frequency of my contractions and the little change I'd made and got the okay from my doc to give me a little taste of nubain while I was waiting to transfer to a delivery room and get my epidural. FYI, it's a little known fact that nubain has another name and is better known as 'sugar water.' That's right, after not taking a single pain pill or having a drink in the 9 months of pregnancy, I was sure that a narcotic would drop me to the floor. This was soooo not the case and the nubain or 'nothing' as I like to also call it, did just that for my pain. It did however curb the waves of nausea, a pleasant little side note, in an unexpected flash of serendipity. More on that later.
Anywho, I got to the delivery room and my best anesthesia buddy in the world tossed in that epidural as quick as he could have whipped up a salami and cheese sammy and I was off in dense, deluded happy drug land from then on out. That is, until I was 7 cm and because of all of the flipping back in forth in bed to keep my epidural even on both sides, the catheter came unscrewed. READ I went from complete numbness from the waist down to completely aware of every pain receptor from the waist down in about 8 minutes flat. In the 13 minutes it took us to realize what had happened, call the nurse who called the anesthesia angel, him to come hook me back up and give me a hit... I mean bolus of narcotic, I was fairly certain that I would die. I'm not joking. Apparently, those contractions I'd been having when I couldn't feel a thing had done a number on my body as they were VERY strong. Having been contracting every 1-3 minutes for 15 hours by this point was a pretty good workout, I suppose since when the epidural wore off, I was clutching the rail in a death grip, hyperventilating, tears streaming and sure I was screaming. My man tells me later that the only reason they knew I was in a lot of pain was because I was not talking through this period of time. Who knew I should have been playing poker all this time? Anywho, they hooked that bad boy back up and I was good to go within 20 minutes, like nothing had ever happened. Take home message: who cares if the epidural may or may not prolong labor (juries still out). As long as the epidural goes well (and doesn't fall out mid-showtime), I couldn't have cared how long labor was taking as long as I was comfortable. 15 hours or 20 hours doesn't make a huge difference at that point.
More to follow, but this mug is getting to be pretty long. Trust me 20 hours of labor brings about many more pearls, daniel-son.
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