Ben's Birth Part 3

What a small world we get pregnant and have babies in! Nick and I took a four week birthing course at our hospital and always sat next to the same couple. They were expecting a girl several weeks after us. As it turned out, I was almost 2 weeks late and she had her baby a week early. What were the chances that the day after Ben was born we took a stroll around our floor and happened to recognize the name of the couple on the baby pink announcement ribbon on their door? A few hours later we wheeled our little screamer to meet at our friends door. Hospital policies on the protection and safety for babies are very strict. Each baby has to wear a little anklet that sounds the alarms if a baby enters a room that it does not belong in (like another patients room) so we just waved through the doorway at mom and their baby girl sleeping peacefully in her arms. We tried to talk about our nursing struggles, but I could barely ascertain over the cries of my baby that their biggest problem was their baby slept all day and wouldn't wake up to nurse. It's a good thing I wasn't in the same room as her because I might have been tempted to sucker punch her right there, and while she was unconscious I could switch our babies...well the plan might have worked if they weren't wearing those annoying ankle alarms, or if my Ben had been born a girl. But I tried to focus on other things like how crazy I thought it was that our babies were born less than 30 minutes apart. She told me that she had a scheduled c-section and thought the young doctor she had just met a week prior to her scheduled delivery was very rude and wouldn't answer her questions or concerns during the surgery. It was the assistant doctor that kept comforting her. Remember how my doctor had to rush through stitching me up because he had to hurry off to a scheduled Cesarean? Wouldn't you know it, my male cocky doctor that missed my delivery and left me without words of comfort and answers to my questions was the very same doctor that delivered her baby!

Not 24 hours after this doctor missed the delivery of my son's birth, I hopped up on my hospital bed and distinctly felt a snap like pop. I was already in so much pain that I couldn't be sure if a new wave of pain really hit or not. I paged the nurse and she had my OB check on me...hours later. Well he never examined me but he assured me that the stitches were internal and were intact (how he could know this without checking I didn't know but I believed him). I assumed it was natural to feel discomfort every time I had to pee, so I tried not to drink as much. This became one of the many contributing factors that led to my inability to pass a bowl movement - which is supposed to be required before a new mom can leave the hospital.

Two days after I got home from the hospital I still hadn't gone to the bathroom (aka #2 I'm doing my best to keep this blog as tasteful as possible when it comes to vocabulary choices) so I called my OB's office. The secretary who answers the phone gave one of the doctors there my concerns and I was advised to continue taking stool softeners (which I think I skipped a few because I thought they "made" you go and I was very afraid to go after pushing out a baby!) and to have my husband help me with a suppository. If that didn't work I needed to use an at home enema. I started getting really painful stomach cramps and was pretty sure that I was being internally poisoned from the toxic levels of the Alfredo chicken, pizza, steak and potatoes building up. (This is why with baby #2 I lived off water and salad the week before my birth and I encourage all moms-to-be to follow a similar diet). As odd and embarrassing as it is to admit this I had experienced these painful cramps before when my intestines became blocked. In the past, I ended up in the emergency room, so I knew I was playing with fire by not going to the bathroom.

I married the best man on earth and ended up having to have him help me with the enema and suppository (if that didn't send him running I don't think anything ever will!). A couple of hours later I found myself in labor again. I seriously should have been taken back to the hospital, but I labored alone in my powder closet. By the time I was sure nothing else could ever leave my body again I staggered toward the sink and felt like my legs might collapse they were shaking so hard. I felt a tingling trail running down my leg and saw a line of blood racing toward my ankle. I didn't make it to the sink. I dropped to the floor, curled up into the fetal position and didn't even have the energy left to cry. I just laid there wondering if I was the only one who had to go through all this. Maybe I wasn't made to have kids. I thought about how if I had been born a couple hundred years ago (before modern medicine) I probably wouldn't have made it this far...

Eventually, I pulled myself together, showered off my bleeding body, took out a mirror and looked myself over. The "internal" stitches were clearly visible and resembled a set of unravelled shoe laces. I called my doctors office and told them I had finally given birth to the weeks worth of food I had consumed. I explained again that at the hospital I thought I had popped a stitch and that during this second labor process I was pretty sure they continued to tear and unravel. She relayed my message to a doctor who I'm almost certain which one it was, because I was told that it was "highly unlikely" that I could have torn my stitches. I insisted on being seen anyway. I was correct in my assumption of which doctor had responded because my young OB was the only doctor available that day so I was forced to see him again.

I was very close to the nurse that always took my urine sample, weight, blood pressure, etc and cried in her arms. I told her that I didn't trust this new OB at the office because I felt he missed my birth on purpose (because of my snarky comment about him responding to my pages like "lickety split") and that something was very wrong with me down there and I didn't want him to hurt me more. She promised me that he was not just a good doctor but a good man and would never do such a thing. God bless her soul, she was able to walk baby Ben in the halls and put him to sleep so that I didn't have to endure this exam while listening to him scream. I must admit that while I laid on the patient bed, the OB was very compassionate and gentle. One look and he acknowledged that I had indeed torn my stitches. He told me that I might need to go back to the hospital to have surgery done. I told him I was breastfeeding and was concerned about the time I'd be under and out of it, unable to nurse, plus I hadn't really established enough of a milk supply to start pumping and dumping. He then said something I'll never forget: "You know, the vagina is a wondrous thing!" He went on to explain that some doctors don't even use stitches because the tissue heals itself over time. He told me to wait two weeks and see if the problem doesn't resolve itself.

Over the next two weeks I developed an infection. I didn't know I had an infection because of the pain, that was a constant, but I noticed an unusually bright neon stain in my underwear. The color was such a vibrant hue of green that I actually took a picture of it beside one of the bright green soothie pacifiers because the colors were nearly identical. I was given a prescription antibiotic ointment to apply to my wounded flesh to treat the infection. Two weeks later I think I had a urinary tract infection. Six weeks after Ben's birth my favorite male doctor told me I was to see nobody but him. He scheduled me to go in for surgery two days later. I don't remember all the terminology for the vaginal reconstruction. I must have blocked that out because I usually remember medical terms when they apply to me (ex: I had an aneurysmal bone cyst in my right foot 9 years ago and still remember the name of the bone in the foot that the tumor was eating through - the navicular). But I do know that there was "dead tissue" and "lacerations of the vagina" were done because though I might have had a 3rd degree tear during labor, the OB was concerned that during that "second labor" I might have had some internal 4th degree tears. This meant that if surgery was not done correctly I might have problems going #1 and #2 for the rest of my life.

I had the surgery and was able to go home shortly after and only had to pump and dump once to eliminate any of the drugs used during surgery that might have gone into my milk supply. I started pumping regularly now to store milk in our freezer so that my husband could feed the baby while I was in class on Wednesday nights - yes on top of a colicky baby, no sleep, and vagina surgery I was still a student! I remember pumping late one night and thinking the devil was inside my machine. I heard him talking through the motor, and he said, "Love it, Love it, Love it, Love it," sometimes changing it up to "Need it, Need it, Need it, Need it" during the stimulation phase. When the faster pumping phase started the machine began to tell me, "Lac-tate, Lac-tate, Lac-tate" then "Ro-tate, Ro-tate, Ro-tate." Months, maybe even a year later I confessed this to one of my "breast friends" who confided in me that her pump talked to her too. Only hers said, "It's not pain, It's not pain" to "It's Lactaid, It's Lactaid." Most recently it's been telling her, "Booty call, Booty call, Booty call"! So if your pump talks to you too, it's okay, the devil isn't speaking to you. You're just very sleep deprived and that does funny things to your brain.

Two weeks after my vagina surgery I went in for a check up and found out that the piercing little stabs I constantly felt were from the stitches that had not yet dissolved. The doctor had to cut the knot above each stitch and pull each string out. I was told to wait another two weeks before trying to have sex. I thought he was crazy if he thought I was going to let anything near my vagina again...but three weeks later when we were crazy enough to try, our attempt was not only extremely painful but clearly impossible. I returned to my doctor to learn that once the infection and swelling went down, as I healed properly, I was vaginally reduced to the size of a nine year old girl. I'm guessing he cut too much skin away and sewed too much? He told me to order these vaginal dilators and apply this prescription numbing cream and use both twice a day for 20 minutes at a time, starting with the smallest dilator first, then work my way up. First of all, if I had 20 free minutes they were spent showering, scarfing something down my throat, brushing my teeth, etc. But I didn't want to never have sex with my husband again so I tried the smallest one that was about the size of a tampon. Even with the stupid numbing cream it was painful and extremely difficult to insert. I told my husband that if we ever wanted another child (which didn't seem likely at the time) we were going to have to do artificial insemination (FYI - I forgot to mention that the very first words that left my mouth when Ben was born weren't "He's beautiful" or "Can you believe we made that?" No. My first statement after Ben entered this world was, "We're adopting the next one.")

Another two weeks later I returned to my doctor to inform him that the dilators were a waste and then I sobbed over the reality that I was never going to be able to make love to my husband again. He re-examined me and told me that he wanted to do another surgery to reopen me up, then sew me up more opened. I didn't really understand the concept but he assured me that with this last vaginal surgery I would have a normal sex life again. So a couple days later I went back into his office for an inpatient surgery and I would be completely conscious for it. I felt a dozen more "bee-stings" as he injected numbing medicine and then began to re-cut and re-sew me back up. By the time he was half-way done stitching me up the Novocaine wore off and I felt each prick and pull. I felt like the female version of Frankenstein. I took my pain relievers and waited another two weeks to have the stitches that didn't dissolve, removed, again.

I am pleased to report that my doctor did a phenomenal job repairing my poor body. By six months after Ben's birth, I was finally healed. I told my doctor I was too afraid to look at what was left of my body and he assured me that I healed beautifully and it would be difficult for even another OB to know what I'd been through without having been told my history. There was no more pain going to the bathroom, no more infections or surgeries needed. It took several more months before making love began to resemble our sex life before we had Ben, but to this day my husband and I joke that giving birth made my body a forever virgin. I don't know how common this is but I have another close friend who also tore badly and she too confided in me that having babies made her a lot smaller too, which unfortunately makes it a little difficult and sometimes painful to make love. So for those who think they want to have an elective  Cesarean (not because they are afraid of having a birth gone bad like mine) but because they don't want a "floppy vagina" (I didn't make up this term another friend of mine did) think again! Having a vaginal birth might just be equivalent to having a vaginal rejuvenation surgery only you get a baby out of the deal!

Through the pain, tearing, infections, surgeries, dilators, stitches, extreme sleep deprivation, on top of pumping blistered, cracked, bleeding nipples and lots of tears and meltdowns that I endured after my traditional "vaginal" birth (which I think gets way more hype than what it's worth) I managed to master the art of breastfeeding. I had made a commitment before he was born to nurse him for one year (as is recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics) and I ended up nursing my son for just over 11 months (if I'd had it my way I would have done it for the full year but he went on strike as you read about on that blog). I'm excited to share with you Jonathan's birth (which should only take 1 part to cover!) and my nursing experience after recovering from a very boring, non eventful C-Section.