the "E" true hollywood labor and delivery story

some have asked about the labor and delivery story, so if you haven't heard it, here it is. if you don't want to know, stop reading now. you have been warned...

my first regularly spaced contractions began on the morning of 12/15 at 6:50 a.m. they were moderate in intensity and spaced every 10 minutes. they gradually increased in intensity over the next few hours. by about 11:30 a.m they'd progressed to 7 minutes apart. by 4:30 p.m., they really "kicked it up a notch" by going to between 2-5 minutes apart (BAM!). i would have a cluster of 3-4 contractions that were 2 minutes apart and then a 5 minute "break". dr. gentry's instructions were to call when contractions were 3-5 minutes apart for an hour so at 5:30, jon called the dr's answering service. we waited 30 minutes for a call back. a LOOOONG 30 minutes. (apparently, dr. gentry didn't get the page right away). i finally directed jon to call them back again because "this is cuttin' into my epidural time". after laboring all day, i was tired. i knew that if i needed to push out a baby in the next 24 hours, i would need to sleep. in order to sleep, i needed an epidural. also, i knew that unfortunately, they don't have anaesthesiologists that greet you at the door and hook you up. i was going to have to go through triage and some labs and stuff before i could get the good stuff. i figured it would take about 90 minutes after we got to the hospital for a little relief. so while we waited for the call back from the 5:30 call, i told everyone to get their shoes on, get their stuff together, back the car out, "because i KNOW we're going." but 6:00 came and no call so i told jon to call back. they apologized for the mix up (b*tches!!!) and sent us on our way. sadly, in all of this, i didn't have time to eat a descent last supper. they say that laboring women don't get hungry but i'm here to tell you. that ain't. i thought about eating throughout labor and delivery. we got to the hospital around 6:10. while in triage, i was 2 cm dilated and 90% effaced. the triage nurse asked if i wanted the epidural to which i emphatically replied yes. then she asked a few more times to make sure that i really wanted one even though i was only 2 cm. i wanted to say " heifer, don't make me get up off this bed and slap you!" but instead, i said, "YES! if you want me to push out the baby , i need to sleep... (see earlier comments). coincidentally, dr. gentry called to triage room looking for me because of the errant page. she gave the order for the admission and the epidural so we were off and running. i was admitted by 7:00 or so. i got the hook up around 8:00 thanks to an angel nurse called claudette. she really, REALLY advocated for me.

after the epidural was administered, i was still 2 cm and 90%. so i decided to do some sleeping. i wasn't able to get a good sleep because i was awakened every 15 minutes by the automatic blood pressure cuff, cleverly disguised as a medieval torture device. this went on for 3 hours and then i started to feel more pressure. the magic button given to me by the epidural guy (you already get a constant flow of some medication, but the magic button gives a lil' somethin' extra as needed) was becoming increasingly less effective. the nurse checked me and said "oh, that's why... you're 8 cm dilated... you're moving right along. i'm gonna call the dr".

the on call doc was dr. sandhu, a petite little female fire cracker of an ob who was running around the floor tending to a whole bunch of stuff. but apparently there was another dr. sandhu, a male proctologist or something who was also on call. they kept paging him, to no avail. (in the meantime, the right dr. sandhu kept getting pages to do colonoscopies to which she would reply, "i don't have male patients!". ) wacky! so an hour went by and they hadn't heard from a doctor. it was midnight and i was fully dilated, fully effaced. but the baby was still "quite high" according to claudette. claudette asked "are you ready to have a baby?" to which i replied "actually, i could sleep some more..." she shrugged her shoulders and walked out... probably to call the doctor again. maybe she went to call for a psych consult because i was really REALLY focused on sleep at the moment which probably seemed odd. but apparently my contractions were indicating that now was not the time for sleeping, now was the time for pushing a baby out because despite pressing that magic button over and over and over and over, it was clear to me that the epidural had worn out on my left side. that meant that while my right side was feeling fine, my left side was on FIRE!!! i love it when they say to you "ok you are going to feel a lot of pressure..." i work for CPS for crying out loud! some pressure, i can handle! this was PAIN!!! anyway, claudette and i decided that it was time to give a few pushes just to see how they would go. she figured since the baby was high, i had a lot of pushing ahead of me anyway. it would be a good way to kill time while they scare up the doctor. well, evidently, all that strength training i did during pregnancy paid off because the baby was crowning after two pushes (one contraction). that sent claudette scrambling. it was just jon, my mom, claudette and me in the room and claudette was not trying to deliver this baby by herself. she she told me that when i have contractions, i just need to pant through them. let me tell you, panting is exhausting... it really wasn't working for me. eventually we switched to the "light pushes" approach and that kept me in a bit of holding pattern for a while. in the meantime, claudette was busy trying to round up some nurses to help her out. each time i had a contraction, she would tell me what to do (push, pant, light push...) all the while, she's trying to rustle up a doc. finally a charge nurse came in and assessed the situation. her response was " we need to get ANY doctor in here to attend this birth... any at all". i started to worry that my birth would be attended by a podiatrist because they couldn't reach dr. sandhu - the right one. finally, they did get a hold of her around 1:00 a.m. and she was 10 minutes away. claudette was like "she's not going to make it!". more and more nurses started coming in. they wheeled in the baby warmer and stuff. they did all the set up and another few minutes passed with no doctor. then about 1:10 a.m. or so, dr. sandhu literally slid in the door like a character from a hanna barbera cartoon and said "whoa! ok, where's my gloves!!!!". so claudette and the other nurses started catching her up to speed and there was some discussion about how fast my labor had progressed and how this happened that she barely made it in time, etc... there was a lot of conversation in the room and i was going to have a contraction. now that the dr. was there, i was looking for guidance. so yes, i did raise up, snap my fingers over my head and said "hey! people! focus! i'm having a contraction!" that did the trick. and that's when the pushing began "in earnest". and by that, i mean, that's when i didn't do anything to hold back at all. i got the go ahead and i went. it felt like mile 24 of a marathon. i was tired. i was ready to be done. i just needed to push through the pain and get the hell off the roads to the finish. except the difference is that marathons take less time to finish and are FAR less painful. FAR FAR less painful. as a focal point, i had a sign that jon made me for the first marathon i did in 2004. it just said "Go Brittany!" but that's all it needed to say and it was like i was right there. while i was pushing, one of the people standing behind dr. sandhu, in the umpires position, said "less pushing in your face and more focussed on your bottom". to which claudette and dr. sandhu said "oh she's fine!". i'm glad they said something before i did. i suspect they were worried that if i pushed any harder or more efficiently, i shoot the baby out past them and down the hall, a la the opening scene in the movie "big fish" (if you haven't seen it, you must! it's excellent!). they told jon to look down so he could see the progress and that birth was very close. jon's response was "oh WOW. OK!" they asked me if i wanted to feel the head... "uh, no". i guess they were shocked by that. i really didn't need to feel all that to be motivated because frankly, i was already feelin' it! it really wasn't' that many more pushes before her head was 1/2 out. yes, 1/2 out... contraction stopped before i could finish getting her head totally out. that fraking hurts i tell you. THE absolute WORST pain i ever felt!!!! (incidentally, this was the only time during the labor and delivery process that i didn't think about eating.) someone had the nerve to say "ok you are going to feel a lot of pressure..." but i made a point to clarify that this was "...actually A LOT OF PAIN!!!" because frankly, i had felt a lot of pressure earlier in the evening and i felt i was able to handle this fine. this was the longest minute of my life. i was definitely not as composed as i had been earlier in the pushing and people thought i was panicking. actually, i may have been, but mostly, i just wanted the next contraction to come so i could finish the job. well, it did. and i did. and then they wanted me to stop pushing so they could suction. i frankly was not inclined to do that because her shoulders were delivering "a lot of pressure" as well, which felt remarkably similar to a lot of pain. i tried to hold back but the body overruled. i think they must have suctioned her as if she were on a moving assembly line where none of us had control of the speed like on "i love lucy". so out came the shoulders, and all the rest and the whole room went "WHOA!!!" and then they put this big hunk of throbbing baby on my belly. we looked each other in the eye and i can distinctly remember thinking, "thank GOD that's over". i'm pretty sure she was thinking the same thing.

for the first few minutes, i also thought, "what the hell am i supposed to do with this?" but then as the minutes passed, the hysteria gave way to joy in the room. my discomfort melted to fatigue. i can think better in total exhaustion than in total pain. i began to remember all the research of what i wanted to do in the first hour of the baby's life. namely, confirm the name - hana muzette, and try to nurse her and try to get some sleep. check, check, check. one thing that i didn't get for several days a decent meal. we did get some christopher's burgers one night, and some friends brought us zachary's pizza one night, both of which were like the best meals EVER! especially after that poison they pass off as food at the hospital. in fact, our 2nd night, jon had to leave and ended up in the emergency room himself because he got a wicked case of food poisoning from hospital food... so sad.

so today, hana (pronounced Ha-Na, not like the name hannah) is 11 days old and things are going pretty well. we had a good christmas, which i'll post about later. we are starting to fall into a routine. hana is a good sleeper and a good eater. and she's already growing out of some of the newborn clothes. cloth diapers are even going pretty well (lest you think i wash all those, we have a diaper service). i'm beginning to feel better but i still feel a little like i pulled a couple of shifts as a human speed bump at a monster truck rally. pharmaceuticals, cat naps and looking at hana's face, help me cope. and my mom being here has been a GODSEND! i don't know how we would have survived these first weeks without her. sadly, she leaves day after tomorrow. jon and i are trying not to panic, but suffice it to say, if the flight was canceled due to weather, we'd be OK with that.