The alternate title of Kellan's birth story could be "opposite day," because every single thing about this birth was so very different from my previous 3 births.
Jonas and I headed in to the hospital around 6:00 p.m. on Monday night, the 23rd of April. We settled into the room and talked to the nurse who would be in charge of us for the night, then I gave her a copy of my 1 page "birth plan" of sorts. I've never created a birth plan before, because part of me really rolls my eyes at them and how much we think we can control what happens in labor, BUT this time around was different for me. Maybe it was just the kids talking for months about my death via labor, but I was more skittish this time around and for sure wanted to have thought through a sound plan for having a semi-planned and an emergency c-section. In previous labors I never thought I'd end up getting a c-section, but this time around I had been thinking about it a LOT ahead of time.
(I'm still trying to decide if all of this thinking ahead of time was what made me MORE open to a c-section later on, and I'd give it a good 35-40% chance that could be true, but what I think is more likely is this: This is kind of how God has always related to me, and been loving to my personality type. I don't experience lots of massive emotions and last minute lightning bolts with God...that's now how our relationship has worked over the years. If God wanted to lovingly prepare me for something, this is the most likely scenario for how it would play out...I'd have something on my mind for months and months ahead of time, I'd have enough time to sit down and think it through / plan things out, so that when/if something actually did happen, I'd be ready. So, I'm betting more that this was God's hand preparing me than me psyching myself up for something, BUT I'm open to being wrong about this too.)
I sat down with my sister-in-law, Andrea, who is a CRNA, and we went over all of her recommendations and "what would you do?" questions and answers for several different approaches to c-sections. After that I typed up a few things I wanted to have happen during my labor, a few things I wanted to have happen after delivery, and then a few things I wanted to happen IF I had to have a c-section. Handing that paper over made me feel every bit of my personality type, and Type A to boot, but it helped me to think it all through ahead of time and know what I wanted, so that in the midst of any eventual stress or high emotion I had already processed and knew what I wanted. It's hard to advocate for yourself if you don't know your own thoughts, right?? Right. So, I became "that girl with the birth plan" on my 4th labor and delivery...haha. :)
After getting some blood work done and confirming that my heparin levels were in a safe range for an epidural whenever I wanted one, we started the process. In the past they would have had to put something directly up against my cervix to help me dilate and efface, but this time around they told me I could also just take a pill. That sounded MUCH better to me, at the time, but I do wonder if the intensity of the labor might have been a bit more subdued if I had taken a different route. Ah, well. I went the pill route.
I took my first teeny, tiny pill at 9:30 p.m., and by 10:30 I was already in some serious pain from contractions. And I wasn't on pitocin or anything yet! This time around there was a new pain management drug available to me: nitrous oxide, the same laughing gas you might use if getting some work done at the dentist. The whole rest of the world has been using it for ages, so I was excited to finally be able to try it in one of my own labors, especially as it's out of your system in just a few breaths if you need it to be...not so with the majority of other drugs. So, this was my first line of defense for contraction pain, but I could not believe that I was already needing something after just an HOUR of labor prep! The contractions this time around were SO different, and so much more intensely painful than anything I had experienced in the previous 3 labors. So, I tried the nitrous oxide.
Man, it did nothing. I was so bummed! I wanted it to work! And, maybe for a different kind of contraction it would have been wonderful. But for me, it did absolutely nothing. Worse, I was still able to feel every ounce of pain, but because it made you kind of loopy mentally I couldn't "work my way through the pain"...it just kind of washed over me. HARD PASS. I want to be present if I have to feel the pain, and I want to feel like I am in total control of at least my brain and emotions if I can't have control of my body. So, nitrous oxide got a big NO from me.
Soon after we moved along to a dose of IV fentanyl. For Cora's birth, this had been the miracle drug. Her labor was 24 hours, and I made it 22.5 of those hours on just a 30 minute dose of this drug every 3 hours. In the end I still got an epidural for Cora's labor, but it was only for the last 1.5 hours or so. This time around? Fentanyl did nothing for me! Again! When THIS drug failed me I started to get a tiny bit panicked inside, because it had been SO effective for me with Cora's pain, and for this pain it touched none of it. Not a good sign for the highly sensitive, highly pain intolerant me. :(
We were only 3-4 hours into labor here, and already I had Jonas call Renee to come in. My contractions were coming so fast, and I was in so much pain, I felt sure that this was just going to be a crazy intense, fast labor...and she better get in here or she would miss it all. I also said I wanted an epidural at this point, but I forgot that you have to have an entire bag of IV saline drip into you before they'll do one! So they STARTED that process, but man those drips take forever. Meanwhile, I'm dying. The contractions were SO centered on my lower pelvis, and nowhere else in my entire uterus. It was the strangest thing, and like nothing I had felt before in labor. It was strange, and incredibly painful, and incredibly impervious to any pain help, it seemed.
Now, my memory gets a little hazy at this point...I might have to check in with Renee and Jonas to get my facts straight later on. At some point Renee arrived, I think before I got my first epidural, because that whole process took FOR.EV.ER to happen. Then the guy showed up to do my epidural, and wasn't he a Chatty Mc. Chatterson. Sigh. That's good enough for some people in an office visit Dr., I'm guessing, but for an anesthesiologist? I would have preferred less talk and more quick action...haha. He did a fine job placing the epidural, though, so good enough. I could feel the majority of my lower body slooooooooooooowly going numb from the epidural, but...(panic slowly starting to rise)...it wasn't really touching my particular pelvic contraction pain at all. It helped some, a little...but not at ALL the level of relief I was used to getting from an epidural. It took at least 2 hours for it to produce much help at all, and even then I was pushing the "extra relief" button every 15 minutes around the clock. So, I wasn't in agony at this point, but I for sure wasn't feeling very relaxed and like my pain was being managed.
That lasted for a while. During this time, AGAINST MY EXPRESSED WISHES on my birth plan (which I had specifically addressed ahead of time with the Dr.) my nurse came in and regularly upped my pitocin levels. I am NOT a fan of this. I don't care if it's protocol. My body needs time to acclimate, and my labors have all been long, so rushing this process does nothing good for anyone.
Except, right around midnight or 1:00 my water had broken. I felt Kellan give a particularly hard kick and he actually broke my water right then and there. Sigh. So, when your water breaks, that starts another clock in the hospital for how long they'd like you to go before they start worrying about infection. AND, while it was a relief at first to have that much fluid out of me (I had been carrying an extra amount for months), it also made my contractions that much more intense without the cushion of fluid. So that was kind of a bummer, and I was a little annoyed with Kellan for that unhelpful addition to the labor process...haha.
So, the epidural starts to wear off and not be helpful at all. And honestly, I lose all track of time at this point. I know that my labor was start to finish around 24 hours this time around, but that entire day of the 24th? No real memory of it, other than closed eyes, horrible pain, no relief, and Renee trying to talk me through how to have a natural birth when I DID NOT WANT TO BE HAVING A NATURAL BIRTH...haha! Oh, man. Guys. It was just awful. I don't know what I would have done without Renee talking me through all of that, though, because my two options were 1) give in to panic and emotions, or 2) do everything she told me to do. That was about it. So, I tried to just do what she told me to do and live my life in 30 second intervals.
(Women who want natural labors: what the HELL, man??? Haha! What is wrong with you? No, I know...I truly do know...my own experience of pain seems to be far more dramatic and pathetic than most people, so I know this is on ME mostly, but I can't help wondering why people would go through that on purpose...haha.)
So, sometime in there they realized that I had a fever...it was actually fairly early on. The fever persisted, and eventually got a little higher, so they did some blood work and realized I had an infection. Now my water has broken, and I've got an infection and fever...not looking great for me.
Plus, every time they checked me to see if I was making any progress I basically made NO progress. So, the first 4 hours of labor got me from 0 to 4 cm dilated. Then the next 20 hours got me from 4 to 5...and the 5 was a maybe. *insert tears and screams and all the bad words*
I was simply NOT progressing. And I was in the worst pain of my life. And I couldn't keep cool...Jonas was fanning me with papers, and Renee was feeding me ice chips, and I still couldn't keep cool enough. I think I even threw off the lower sheet that was covering me and was laying there bare ass to the wind because I was SO hot. Stupid fevers and infections. Who cares about modesty in labor, right? Clearly not I.
At some point Mr. Chatty came back and re-did my epidural to see if he could place it even more precisely and maybe get me more pain relief. I had no faith this would do anything, because the other epidural had clearly been effective in numbing almost all the rest of my body...just not the one part where I was experiencing pain. So it wasn't like it was a bad epidural...something was off in MY body that wasn't allowing me to get pain relief from it. But, he did it again. And he took FOREVER, again. At some point I think I even said out loud "Oh my GOD, just do it already!" and the nurses said something to me that he just liked to talk while he worked. Stop covering for him, nurses! I bet that nurse would have been way faster than he was! :) . So, again, I got an epidural...and it did nothing for my pain. Worse yet, because the first one had taken hours to work up to any sort of pain relief, now that I was in an even harder place for pain it seemed like we had taken a big step back, not forward at all. (I was also very leery of re-doing a seemingly fine epidural because I was SO scared about getting an epidural/spinal headache. I feared that thing more than anything else in labor.)
So, great. At this point Renee starts talking for me and asking at what point we start considering a c-section. YES. That was exactly what I wanted to know too. Funny enough, the Dr. was reeeeeeally wanting me to just up my pitocin even more and see if we could make REALLY strong contractions make some progress. That was a 100% no from me. No more of the evil drug. It hadn't done anything in the many hours it had to work, it's time was up. If I hadn't been numb from the epidural I may have been able to get up and move around, maybe try to do something to progress labor like that, but alas I was was 1) too numb-ish still, and 2) in too much pain to actually move at all. In fact, I had to stay on my left side almost the entire labor because every time I rolled to my right side Kellan's heart rate dropped significantly. So, left side it was. Blah.
My Dr., which I appreciated, really didn't want me to go to c-section right away. There was lots of talk like "You have had 3 vaginal births. I really think you can do this, I just think we need to make the contractions stronger and closer together." While I truly appreciated her faith in me, and her desire to NOT rush to surgery, I knew. I knew fairly confidently that making my contractions stronger was not going to fix this. Something was "off," and the likelyhood of a vaginal birth seemed very far fetched to me at that point. So, I said no. I said I wanted a c-section, the end. They were certainly open to that, they just seemed a little sad to not be allowed free access to the pitocin, haha.
AGAIN, no idea how much time actually passed, but it felt like at least 2 full hours from the time I said I wanted the c-section until I got down to the OR. Boy, no one seemed in a hurry other than me! Kellan's heart rate was fine the whole time, so that was good...but I certainly wasn't doing great.
Getting the spinal in the OR was the first happy moment of the previous 24 hours for me. I was finally PAIN FREE. Good Lord, what a relief. Renee and Jonas came in, and the process began. I was very glad to have talked through things with Andrea at that point, even when it came to some things like breathing, etc. There were no surprises, and I am a big fan of that.
Frankly, I couldn't believe how relaxed everyone in the OR was about having both Jonas and Renee there, and allowing Renee to take pictures and video on BOTH sides of the screen. There's stuff I still haven't seen because I'm just not prepared for that yet...haha.
A few minute in the Dr. held up Kellan over the sheet for us to see, then he was whisked away to get cleaned up. (It was at this point that my request for a c-section was validated, as Kellan's head was stuck on my pelvic bone somehow. I didn't hear this, but the Dr. explained it/showed it to Renee. He was also turned sideways, and his head was bent up rather than tucking his chin to his chest, as most babies who are born vaginally would have done. So he was trying to come out in a way that took up the most space, AND he was making no progress because his head was stuck...no matter how hard my contractions tried to push him off. Let me tell you, a head on a pelvic bone is AWFUL pain. I don't recommend that.) . Jonas returned with him a bit later, but as much as I thought ahead of time I would *want* to have him on my chest right away, the reality that I was still undergoing surgery, and I didn't have the mental or physical reserves to be doing skin-to-skin at that moment...nor the chest space, it seemed! Jonas and Renee left with Kellan for a bit, and while I was there the Dr. said over the curtain, "So, I'm looking at your tubes here...want me to tie them??" Um, YES please! Haha. I had been under the impression that most drs wouldn't do that unless it was a planned c-section where you got to talk about all that stuff ahead of time, and maybe run it by your insurance as well, but I was delighted it was offered to me as an option. This was the one teeny, tiny cherry on top of a crap-tastic day. The Dr. asked if we needed to go and get Jonas to discuss this with him, but I said "Oh, no, just go ahead. He'll be DELIGHTED because he was on deck to do his part soon for birth control in our family." Still, we both had to sign something, so he did find out about it before she did it of course...but his exact words were "Oh, hey! THANKS guys! That's awesome." Haha. :) . So, that was nice. EDITING TO ADD: We did have one funny moment here, when the Dr. asked if we had any questions, and Jonas asked if this would impact my emotions at all. What he meant was would this impact my hormones, etc, but the Dr. thought he was asking if I would be sad about tying my tubes later on. She says "Well, yes, that's very common...many women will grieve the loss of their ability to have children..." and right there Renee, Jonas and I all start laughing. Oh, no. No, no no. Nope. We all waved that away and were like, "Nah, Lisa's fine...#deadinside and all" but it was still funny for all 3 of us to laugh at the same time like that and completely dismiss the emotions the Dr. was talking about at the moment.
I know they say tying your tubes is basically 100% permanent, and can't be undone, but I think I'll still be nervous about it not working when it comes down to that. I am just SO done with being pregnant. Having more kids isn't a bad thought, but it's not a strong desire either. But mercy my body is just OVER pregnancy. This whole pregnancy seemed a long, drawn-out example of why I need to stop procreating at this point. :)
The tubal ligation process only added 5 minutes to my surgery, then I was whisked off to my recovery room while Kellan went to "special care" for IV antibiotics. I was hooked up to antibiotics as well, due to my uterine infection, and I was on those around the clock for 24 hours...3 different kinds!! Sheesh. I didn't really get down to see Kellan until around 5 hours after his birth, but I was so inwardly focused on my body at that point that this wasn't a hugely emotional thing for me, so for that I'm thankful. I got to hold him, and try nursing, and right away he latched on and nursed for about 15 minutes, so that was great. He had already been given a bottle due to low blood sugar, something I would NEVER have wanted for my other kids, but this birth was already so different I didn't even really care. Bottles? Fine. Pacifiers? Sure. These things don't seem like such a big deal after you've already traded a vaginal birth for a c-section...and as long as he was latching on fine, that's all I cared about. If he had been having trouble nursing I might have been a lot more stressed.
I went down to feed Kellan every few hours during that day, but at night I let the nurses take the 2:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m. feeding so I could try to get some sleep...after 2 full nights of no sleep, it seemed. They used donor breast milk, which I loved, as I'm not a fan of formula at all, and I'm trying to keep Kellan dairy-free based on our family history, so 99% of formula can't do that. Anyway, I appreciated the donor breast milk.
We delayed having the kids come meet Kellan for a day because both he and I were still hooked up to lots of tubes and wires, and that would have freaked Layla out forever. So, the kids came with my Mom on Thursday, and it was a super sweet "meeting" to witness. Finn and Cora loved him, of course, but they also were having loads of fun with Grandma at the house and didn't seem to miss me at all...which was great. Layla, on the other hand? She cam sobbing to me, so relieved to see that I was alive, and then she cried the entire time she held Kellan. You could feel the last 9 months of worry and concern (ever since my blood clot, when she saw me being taken away in the ambulance) melt off of her as she held him and just cried. *sniff* She has the most tender heart of anyone I know. The kids came back again on Friday to see us as well.
We were in the hospital a total of 5 days...or over a span of 5 days, I should say: Monday evening to Friday evening. After the first two nights Kellan was able to be in our room with us from that point on. We could have stayed until Saturday, but by that time Jonas was ITCHING to get out and I was fine with leaving too. We went home a day "early" and surprised the kids, which was fun. My mom stayed one more night because I needed Jonas all to myself that night...frankly, I wasn't sure if I ever got horizontal in bed that I would ever be able to get back up, so I needed to see how we could make this work with feeding at night and me needing to sit up and then lay back down over and over. After the first night we figured it out, though, and things have been getting steadily better since then. I'm SO thankful for my Mom, and her spending basically and entire week at our house for this birth. How do people do it, who don't live close to family? Man, I wouldn't choose that for the life of me. :) So, thank you Mom, for making that time so much fun for the older 3 kids, and taking a big stress off of our plates for sure.
Guys, recovery from a c-section is no joke. And I have been careful to treat it VERY seriously, and do all the right things, and take as much rest as I can, and take all my meds, etc. The only nice thing about it is that you can sit down right away, as your vagina isn't all torn to shreds, but other than that? I'd choose the recovery of a vaginal birth ANY day over this kind of recovery. Knowing what I do now, would I still make the same choice in the hospital? Absolutely. 100%. I didn't doubt it at that point, and I don't doubt it was the right choice now. So that almost has a very *full circle* feeling to me, because I spent so much time worrying about having a c-section this pregnancy, and then in the end I CHOSE to have a c-section, despite the encouragement of my Dr. to keep trying for a vaginal birth a while longer. I think the fact that I chose this path makes a big difference in how I feel about it, vs. the women who are forced into it, or feel manipulated into it. And I do appreciate that very much.
Kellan is nursing and sleeping exactly as a newborn should, so I'm thankful for that as well. He's a CHILL little baby, rarely crying, although I'm sure that can change as the *sleepy stage* of infancy moves away. I am sloooowly healing, although my home visit nurse did say that my scar looked "amazing!" on day 5, so kudos to my Dr. I guess. One thing I miss is taking baths...I rarely want them, but recovering from labor is my #1 time in life to want a bath, so I'm bummed you basically can't bathe for 2 months after a c-section! Blah. :( . Also, it's clear that new underwear styles are for sure in my future...things have changed, haha.
There are only 2 things that concern me at this point:
1. From day 7 on I have been getting bad headaches every night. They start around 8:00 p.m. and can last until the morning. This stinks. But, as it goes away in the day, I get some relief from it, and it sounds like Google things it's a tension headache caused by hormones (the cause of all bad things) and sleep deprivation. So hopefully they will go away soon.
2. From day 1 in the recovery room, my right leg/foot has been worse than my left . Both my feet were swollen for a long time, but now that is gone, and my right foot is still numb in places, and my right ankle and hip can't seem to hold much weight at all. It makes me walk funny, and it makes me nervous walking around with Kellan too much. I'm still VERY careful on stairs, etc. Hopefully this will go away too, but it's concerning to me, I do have to admit. My brain immediately goes to some sort of spinal injury from the epidurals, etc.
That's all for now, folks. I'll update more later as I think of random little things I'm sure, but for now, we're so thankful that Kellan is HERE, and he is safe, and I am safe, and life can settle down for a small time while we all rest, recover, and get used to being a family of 6. :)
