Ben's Birth Part 2

After my favorite female doctor told me she still couldn't give me an epidural because I wasn't showing any progress, a new nurse (I can't decide if she's on team Heaven or Hell) decided to check my cervix for herself. I held my breath and fought against an unnatural discomfort as she searched and reached as though her life depended on how deep she could dig. Just when I couldn't bare the pain a second longer she found what she was looking for. For the first time that night I screamed. Screamed like someone was brutally murdering me. My husband said he was worried she'd done something terribly wrong as my spine arched and then my body collapsed and my eyes rolled back showing only the whites. Apparently she located my cervix, but it had gone "posterior" which means instead of facing the birth canal, it was facing my spine. After this discovery she decided to hook her finger into the opening of the cervix and pull it forward, forcing it to face the correct position. This was when I passed out from the overwhelming pain and complete exhaustion. I was furious when I woke to another contraction. I wanted this night from hell to end! My doctor explained what the nurse had found and how she fixed my cervix. It just so happened that after 7 hours of writhing in pain every 3-5 minutes I had actually dilated to almost 9 centimeters. You only have to be 2-3 centimeters to be given an epidural so the anesthesiologist was on his way. I passed out in the minutes it took for him to get there. When he did arrive I only remember a time when I was sitting up instead of laying down. I don't remember the sting of the injection or the relief from my labor pains. I was asleep before they laid me back down.

An hour later, my favorite female doctor woke me up to tell me that she examined me again and I was at 10 centimeters and it was time to push. I could barely open my eyelids as I tried to comprehend that the baby was on his way out. I could move my arms, but I struggled to even lift my head, everything below my neck was numb. I looked up and saw my best friend. Apparently, I told her to bring me my make-up bag and to help me put mascara on - for the pictures. I have absolutely zero recollection of this, but I was so out of it I probably thought I was playing Bella and the birth would be on camera. After my make-up was applied, I turned my face to the right and saw my mother at my side. "I'm going to throw up," I mumbled. She placed a small basin under my chin and I puked. I tried to explain to the doctor that I couldn't sit up, I couldn't move, but my throat was so hoarse from all the heavy breathing and screaming that my voice was barely a whisper. She turned off the epidural IV that was connected to my spine and came back 30 minutes later to rub a cold alcohol wipe across my collar bones, to see if I could feel it, which I couldn't.

At this point her shift was over and a new doctor, one that I'd never met at my office, told me he would be on call that day and would be delivering my baby. He checked on me 30 minutes later and when I could feel the sensation of the cold alcohol wipe against my belly he told me it was time to start pushing. He explained that I had to wait for a contraction and as soon as one started I needed to push while he counted to 10 and only stop pushing to take a break when he reached 10. I was SO TIRED and just wanted him to cut the baby out and be done with it. After one practice pushing session he told me he would be back to check on me. "You're leaving me??" I couldn't believe he was going to walk out when I was trying to push a baby out! "The nurse will page me when you get closer, I'll be just around the corner," he explained. "How much longer till the baby's here?" I asked. "It all depends on how well you push. It would be great if you could have the baby at..."he checked his watch, "1:00 because I have a scheduled Cesarean at 1:30." I looked at the clock behind him and took note of the time. It was barely noon, I had plenty of time. "So the second she beeps you, you'll be here lickety split?" I asked, just to be sure. I swear I saw an evil glint in his eye before he smiled and assured me, "I'm just two seconds away." Somehow, my maternal instincts told me that young cocky doctor wasn't going to be there for me.

With every push I held my breath while the nurse counted to 10 and every time she got to around 7 or 8 I began to see black. After 15 minutes of pushing a corner of my mind thought about my best friend's birth and how she only had to push for 10 minutes before her baby was born. "How many more pushes?" I asked the nurse. "You're doing great," she said without answering my question. Another 15 minutes later I asked her how much longer, again she encouraged me to keep going. 45 minutes later I told her I can't do this anymore and to tell the doctor to just cut the baby out of me. She said it was too late to do that and wheeled over a tall mirror. She sat at the foot of the bed with the mirror beside her and when my next contraction came she placed it in front of me. Disappointment washed over me and left me completely hopeless. A small oval shaped opening about the size of a ping pong ball revealed the top of my baby's head. I could see blood matted in his black hair. I began to weep, "He's never going to come out of me" and the nurse patted my leg and told me to keep on pushing, and that I was doing "great." She paged the doctor and told me the baby would be here soon.

Around this time the Epidural had completely worn off and each contraction forced me to push regardless of whether or not I wanted to or had the energy to. It was like my body knew what to do and wasn't going to surrender to my need to give up. "Where is the doctor?" I demanded. The nurse hurried to the phone to page him again. During one of the next pushes I began to see black and couldn't hold on any longer. I want to say I had an out of body experience as I remember seeing my husband holding my hand, looking at him, looking at me. I heard him say, "Breathe hunny, BREATHE!!!" and I sucked in a breath and then I was looking through the eyes of the body in labor again. Suddenly, the pain of the contractions continued but a new pain demanded my attention. I looked down once more and saw in the reflection of the mirror that the baby's head was crowning. A burning fire erupted with that image. Instinctually my body sensed that pushing was the only way to eventually extinguish the flames that were spreading fast. Of course, the nurse told me to stop pushing at this point.

I think she told her assistant nurse to get a pediatric team in there. "What's wrong?" I asked. "There's meconium," she answered. I knew this meant that the baby had passed a bowl movement in my uterus during labor, but I didn't think it was uncommon or put the baby in any danger, so what was the hold up? Didn't she realize that a baby was hanging out in my birth canal??? My body was trembling from the internal fire that continued to build. I guess a doctor or team of pediatricians entered the room but I don't remember seeing them. An odd suction noise caught my attention and I looked for it and saw a long clear tube running along the side of the bed. They seemed to be pumping a thick brown fluid out of the baby's lungs. I couldn't endure the pain much longer, my body wouldn't hold out any more. "Please hurry!" I cried. And then the fire combusted and I opened my eyes and saw a streak of blood splatter across my nurse's chest. I wanted to die at this point. I didn't feel that beautiful miraculous moment that my baby had entered the world. There was no denying he was here, his shrilling screams filled the room, but I could only focus on my pain, on my desire for it all to be over. My mother was right. She knew me best. The long painful labor and my exhaustion had robbed me of the initial joy I was suppose to feel.

My nurse continued to blot towels against my broken body and I think I went into shock because I was shaking so badly. While the doctors cleaned up my screaming baby, my OB finally entered the room. He had missed the birth entirely, looked over at the crying baby being swaddled and then looked at me. "Nice pushing," he said. I looked at the clock and realized the baby was born shortly after 1:00, just as he had asked, and yet he was nowhere to be found, just as I knew he would be. He took the seat at the foot of the table and began to look me over. "I'm going to give your stomach a little massage," he told me. Well that's the least you can do I thought. In a quick succession of blows he began to apply pressure to my gut, as if he was attempting to pump an extra large heart back to life. As soon as he finished his compressions he reached inside me and began a sweeping search. "WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?" I demanded, catching my breath. "There's not another baby in there!" I was completely taken off guard and thought this man had absolutely no compassion for what I'd just gone through (without his aid) and the aftershock my body was left in. "I had to deliver the placenta," he explained. He started asking the nurse for things that I didn't understand. He began working on my wounds when I asked him how bad the damage was. "Did I tear?" I asked already knowing the answer. "Yes," he answered coldly. "How bad?" I was trying to remember if a first degree tear was worse than a 3rd degree tear (I'd soon learn that there is such a thing as a 4th degree tear). Whatever he was doing began to hurt. "I'll answer all your questions when I'm done. "OUCH!" I cried. "You can feel that?" he asked. Did he not remember that they turned off the Epidural? "YES! I exclaimed. He told the nurse to get him some Novocaine. "Bee-sting," he warned. "Bee-sting" he warned again as he pricked my torn broken flesh, injecting a numbing medication. After a few more ows, I continued with my questions. "Am I hemorrhaging?" "No. I'll explain everything when I'm done," he said impatiently. I let him continue his work with my baby's cries as background noise to mimic my own internal sobbing.

While the doctor was stitching me up the assistant nurse asked me if I was ready to hold my baby. Is she crazy?? I'M DYING here. "I can't hold him," I told her. I knew babies could sense what people are feeling so I didn't want this first moment in my arms to be filled with my lingering pain and anxiety. "Well dad, come over here and hold your son," she said. I gripped Nick's wrist, "don't leave me," I told him. The nurse heard me and said, "Well someone needs to hold this baby!" "Bring him here," Nick said. She walked across the room with our crying baby and handed him to his father. Instantly, baby Ben stopped crying. Nick leaned him forward so that I could look at him for the first time and I wondered if he had been through just as much as I had. I tried to focus my attention on him and not on the ridiculous amount of time the doctor was spending before answering the one-thousand-and-one questions I was waiting to offload. "That's about it," he finally said. "I've got to get to that scheduled Cesarean. Good luck raising a baby." And with that he was gone, and I was left without any of the answers to my questions, worries and fears. As much as I swore I never wanted to see that man again, I was forced to see him a week later when my stitches (that he told me over the phone were impossible to tear) had indeed torn and unravelled leaving me with infections and not one, but two vaginal reconstruction surgeries to follow.