A Very Unconventional Beginning to a Very Happy Ending

After the events I wrote about in my last post on Wednesday, My Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, (the day I slipped and fell on a huge puddle of yellow-orange vomit in a hospital bathroom and hurt my leg), many more crazy things happened.

Basically, the day started with my slipping in vomit and injuring my leg, transitioned to enduring over 30 hours of labor, and then ended with my holding a beautiful little 6 pound, 9 ounce girl in my arms for the first time.

After I called my mom and told her about slipping in the vomit in the hospital bathroom and hurting my leg, and about the janitor had told me that she had been paged four times about the mess before I fell, my mom told me that I should call the hospital to leave a complaint. If the janitor had responded to the first or second page, I wouldn’t have fallen in it. Anyway, I called and left a message with the patient services at the hospital (without mentioning the thing about the janitor being paged four times). I got a call back two minutes later, and they connected me to their risk management office (the lawyers). I let them know what happened, that I was 8 ½ months pregnant, so my fall was more awkward, and that my leg was hurting. They urged me to come into their ER so they could make sure that I was ok. They asked whether I wanted them to cover the costs of the visit. I said that would be nice. They again urged me to come in immediately. I agreed. I waited for Chauncey to get home and for Jackson to wake up from his nap. Then Chauncey got the the boys in the car, and they dropped me off at the hospital. My phone was dead, so I was going to trade with Chauncey before getting out of the car. I forgot to trade though, so I had no phone.

I checked into the ER at 5:45, and they knew I was coming. They didn’t make me register. I still had to wait for two hours, but that was a lot faster than most of the other people there had to wait. I figured that I would just be seeing someone about my leg and then be sent home. Instead, they sent me straight to labor and delivery to do a non-stress test to make sure the baby was ok. I had told them I had no abdominal or back pain and that I hadn’t had any contractions. But they were still worried, so that’s where they sent me, in a wheel-chair. When they started the test, they came in after 10 minutes or so and asked if I knew that I was having contractions every minute. I said no, and that I felt nothing. They said that they needed me to stay for at least six hours to be monitored. I was starving. I hadn’t eaten since 1:30 that afternoon, and now I had to stay for another six hours. Their cafeteria was closed. I wanted to call Chauncey and tell him that I had to stay, but I had no phone. I stayed, and they checked me for dilation. I was at a two, which is no big deal. I was due in 3 ½ weeks, and this is my third baby, so that was not surprising. I asked them if I could call Chauncey. They got a special code for long-distance and let me call him to give him the number to call my room. I let him know about my needing to stay the night, and that I wanted him to call me back in a while to see if I had any more info. It was so annoying that I didn’t have my phone! They checked me several hours later, and I had dilated TO A FIVE! That was worrisome. They started worrying that I was actually in labor. They told me I needed to stay for monitoring until at least noon the next day. I thought I would starve to death.

One resident came in and told me that she had gotten a copy of my ultrasound report from the hospital that I was supposed to be delivering at, Northwestern Memorial. In it was a note that I needed a follow-up ultrasound 4 -6 weeks later because I had a suspicious-looking thing on my placenta that looked like my placenta might be attached to my scar-tissue from my previous pregnancy. She explained that if that was the case that I would have to have a C-Section because I could bleed to death if I tried a vaginal delivery. She got me to sign a consent form for a C-Section, a consent-form for a V-BAC, and a consent form for a hysterectomy (if I was going to die if they didn’t have one). I told her that I REALLY wanted a V-BAC, not a C-Section and that they couldn’t do a hysterectomy unless they thought I would bleed to death otherwise.

The resident then set up an ultrasound appointment for me. It normally takes days to get an appointment, but they put me in as an urgent case and got me down there a few hours later. When I got down there, instead of just being the ultrasound tech, the attending physician was there as well. I have never had the attending physician perform the ultrasound. He said “So you’re the lady who fell.” I said yes. He said “The whole hospital's been talking about you. In fact, the whole University knows about you.” I felt awkward. I hadn’t threatened a lawsuit or anything—I’m not the suing type. It got a little more awkward when the lab tech asked if either of us were students here. Chauncey said that he was. She asked what he studied. He said he was in law school. They both said “Oh.” I was too embarrassed to tell them that I was already a lawyer. Everything looked fine with the ultrasound, so they sent me back upstairs.

The attending physician came in and let me know that she strongly recommended that I be induced that day because of the possibility of an abruption, my contractions during the night, and my getting dilated to a five—and that all of this had happened after I fell. I was nervous about it and worried that they may be pushing induction to cover themselves and avoid liability. I told the physician that I was worried that if I were induced, that my chances of needing a C-Section would be higher, and that I wanted to have a V-BAC. She said that they would try to make that happen for me. I told her that with my first when I was induced, that it ended in a C-Section.

They induced me at 3:00 on Thursday. I was still at a five, and I had been for about 12 hours. I was in labor for hours, and off and on I felt very strong contractions. I got my epidural when the contractions got bad. Somewhere down the line, the contractions became very mild, and I stopped progressing. I got dilated to a seven after many hours, but I stopped there. That really freaked me out because seven is where I got stuck with Maxwell and had to get a C-Section. They had the pitocin up to 28 million units per hour (they are only allowed to go up to 30 million units per hour). I was still not progressing. They came in and told me after I had labored for about 13 hours that if I didn’t start progressing more once they kicked it up to 30, that I would have to be taken off of pitocin, be given an hour without it, and then start again from 0 and work back up to 30 to induce my labor. She mentioned again that if that didn’t work, that I would have to have a C-Section. I asked Chauncey to give me a blessing and I prayed for contractions to start. They came in and pushed the machine up to 30, the maximum amount, and my contractions started. I was able to dilate from a seven to a nine in the next several hours.

About 20 hours after I had been induced (30 hours total of labor including some of the time from the evening before when I progressed to a 5), the baby's heartbeat started dropping with each contraction. This is exactly what happened with Maxwell. I was worried sick again about having to get a C-Section and that all those hours of labor would be wasted. Luckily, the attending physicians came in and said that although they were uncomfortable with the heartbeat, that it was ok as long as we closely monitored it. They said that they would let me try continuing my labor if they could pump me full of fluid again (they had broken my water earlier). They thought that it was possible that the baby was being smashed up against the umbilical cord during contractions, which could cause the heartbeat to go down. They said that putting fluids back into my uterus could cushion the cord. They put internal monitors in me to replace the external ones (for the heartbeat and contractions) which were more accurate, and they pumped me full of fluid. The fluid of course had no way of staying in, so it kept coming out as they pumped it in. The nurses had to constantly change my pads beneath me. It felt like I was constantly wetting my pants for several hours.

The baby’s heartbeat became more even, so I kept going for a while. Then it got bad again, so they hooked me up to oxygen, they turned off all pitocin, and they hoped that my weak natural contractions would be enough to get the baby to come down and get me to a ten. The resident told me that they had to turn off the pitocin because “things were just getting way too dramatic for everyone.” Unfortunately, even without the pitocin, with the fluid being pumped in, and with the oxygen, her heartbeat was going down even with the small contractions. The attending physicians both came in and checked my dilation which was about a nine, and the baby’s position, which was about -1 (meaning not ready to be pushed out because she was too high), and they said that I could give pushing a try even though she hadn’t come all the way down yet. I could not even feel when I was having contractions without the pitocin because they were so weak. This would mean that I would have to do all the work myself instead of having the help from the contractions. Normally, when you get to the pushing phase, you have a natural urge to push when it is time, but because my contractions were so weak and the baby was not down where she needed to be, I had no feeling that I should push. Also, my epidural was very weak by now, so I could feel everything. They had previously made the dose even lower once her heartbeat started acting up.

I wanted to go ahead and give it a try. They had to stand in front of the monitor to tell me when I was having contractions because the contractions were too weak for me to feel them. I began pushing, and it did not feel like anything but pain was coming of it. I couldn’t feel the baby coming down at all, and I knew that I would be going at that for a long time. The baby’s heartbeat stayed normal, so the attending physicians said I could keep going with that and that they would come back in to check on me. I kept pushing, and then after about an hour, they told the nurse to put the pitocin back on to make my contractions stronger. The baby’s heartbeat was still doing fine, so they were able to keep the pitocin on for a while.

I pushed for about 3 hours, and by the time I could finally feel the baby moving down, I felt like I was going to either throw up or pass out. When I had Jackson, I was excited to finally have him and was able to get him out quickly. But this time, I had been awake for over 56 hours, I had eaten almost nothing in about the last 50 hours, and I had been in labor for around 30 hours (or 23 hours if you start counting from the induction). I pushed as much as I could, but that was not much because of how weak I was. She was finally born, and I laid there and tried to catch my breath as they stitched me up. It took me 45 minutes before I could ask the nurse if I could look at her and hold her—I was too out of it before then to ask. I was weak and pale.

Then I finally got to see her, and she was beautiful. 6 pounds, 9 ounces, and she definitely looks like a girl.