Hello all! I am finally catching a spare minute to update my blog - which, frankly...are few and far between these days.
This post may be broken up into a few posts, depending on length and when I am summoned away by one of my beautiful babes. Oh, yes...the girls have arrived and we are settling into what is our new family/life.
I know my mom updated you all while I was in labor and it appears she did a pretty good job. Labor ended up lasting a total of 27 hours before it was decided to do a c-section. Obviously I wasn't thrilled that my plan of giving birth vaginally had been hijacked but as you will soon read, at the time, I wasn't in a position to really say anything.
It all started wonderfully, we were excited to be induced and the first hours, while it was annoying to constantly have a pill inserted behind my cervix and be stuck to the monitors, we were in pretty good spirits. I was told I could have the epidural at any point, but that I would be stuck in bed and I decided that I would put it off until labor was well on it's way. I was feeling some contractions, but not all of them and felt like I was doing a pretty good job at the laboring thing.
Unfortunately, things were just not going forward. They thought about putting in this other thinning medicine, but instead decided to go straight to the pitocin which would cause stronger contractions and hopefully get my body to do the rest of the work. The pitocin was started and I was ready for my epidural.
The first time they put the epidural in, it veered off track a little and didn't work, so they had to pull it out and do it again. OUCH! I wanted to cry but decided the pain I would feel during labor, would be worse than this epidural pain, so I endured. Finally, it was placed correctly and I was a really happy camper. They gave me the little clicker so I could administer more pain medicine whenever I deemed it was needed. I loved that little button...sadly, the pain returned after only an hour and a half and the anesthesiologist was called down to redose me. I was told that sometimes (especially with multiples) it can take one or two times to get the dosage right. For me, it was 4 times and it seemed like that damn epidural wore off about every 2 hours. I was told, that just happens sometimes. Mmmm-k, thanks, I love knowing that now!
At this point, I was off food, and limited to ice chips. I pestered my nurse into letting me have a drink and she relented, only to take it away from me after just 2 sips saying that she changed her mind and didn't want me to get sick. I didn't care for the nurse at that moment and basically asked my dr. when he came in, if I could have something to drink because my nurse wouldn't let me. She looked pissed and I instantly felt like a bitch, but I was really thirsty. The doc gave the ok and left. The nurse handed me my drink. I drank it. Ten minutes later I was throwing it up and telling the nurse she could say 'I told you so". She graciously declined and we were friends again.
The throwing up should have been my first clue that things weren't going as planned. I was still progressing 1 cm every 2 hours, so at this point we were still going full speed ahead. Then I developed a fever. The dr. was called in and because it was a low grade fever, told us that sometimes that happens in labor. I was still feeling nauseous and more and more flu like, but again, still progressing every 2 hours. Then around 7:00 pm things suddenly changed.
I told Bobby and my nurse that I really didn't feel good...that I felt like I had the flu. That the contractions weren't bothering me so much as feeling sick was. My nurse was very sympathetic and appeared a bit worried about my rising temperature, but it was time to do her report for shift change and I suspected that my new nurse would be the one dealing with my discomfort.
As Bobby and I are sitting there, waiting for my new nurse, I just keep telling him how awful I felt. I must have looked pretty bad because he looked really worried. I was throwing up, had a fever, and kind of felt like I was in and out of it a little. I must have drifted off to sleep, because the next thing I remember is one of my favorite nurses barging into the room. I told her hi and was glad she stopped by to see me, she smiled and said hi and that's when I realized that while we were making small talk she was shoving huge bags of ice under my arms and in between my legs. At some point my fever had hit about 103 and was rapidly climbing. The babies heart rates had gone up and wouldn't come back down. I asked her what was happening and she told me that they really needed to get my fever down and my blood pressure and heart rate were starting to rise as well.
After this, everything happened really fast...My doctor came in and checked my cervix. I had progressed, but the progression appeared to be slowing/possibly stalling - I was just barely 6 centimeters. He said they have used all their bags of tricks to try to give me a vaginal delivery, but that we were at an impasse and needed to move forward with a c-section due to the stalled labor and what might have been an infection from my membranes being stripped, rapidly moving throughout my body. I agreed to the c-section (surprisingly I agreed to this rather quickly and felt a bit relieved to see a light at the end of the tunnel). I asked how long until we would do the c-section and he said they were getting me ready right then and the babies would arrive within a half hour. Wow...that seemed kind of fast. He left. I cried.
Little ones need to eat. I'll continue the story at my next post :-)
This post may be broken up into a few posts, depending on length and when I am summoned away by one of my beautiful babes. Oh, yes...the girls have arrived and we are settling into what is our new family/life.
I know my mom updated you all while I was in labor and it appears she did a pretty good job. Labor ended up lasting a total of 27 hours before it was decided to do a c-section. Obviously I wasn't thrilled that my plan of giving birth vaginally had been hijacked but as you will soon read, at the time, I wasn't in a position to really say anything.
It all started wonderfully, we were excited to be induced and the first hours, while it was annoying to constantly have a pill inserted behind my cervix and be stuck to the monitors, we were in pretty good spirits. I was told I could have the epidural at any point, but that I would be stuck in bed and I decided that I would put it off until labor was well on it's way. I was feeling some contractions, but not all of them and felt like I was doing a pretty good job at the laboring thing.
Unfortunately, things were just not going forward. They thought about putting in this other thinning medicine, but instead decided to go straight to the pitocin which would cause stronger contractions and hopefully get my body to do the rest of the work. The pitocin was started and I was ready for my epidural.
The first time they put the epidural in, it veered off track a little and didn't work, so they had to pull it out and do it again. OUCH! I wanted to cry but decided the pain I would feel during labor, would be worse than this epidural pain, so I endured. Finally, it was placed correctly and I was a really happy camper. They gave me the little clicker so I could administer more pain medicine whenever I deemed it was needed. I loved that little button...sadly, the pain returned after only an hour and a half and the anesthesiologist was called down to redose me. I was told that sometimes (especially with multiples) it can take one or two times to get the dosage right. For me, it was 4 times and it seemed like that damn epidural wore off about every 2 hours. I was told, that just happens sometimes. Mmmm-k, thanks, I love knowing that now!
At this point, I was off food, and limited to ice chips. I pestered my nurse into letting me have a drink and she relented, only to take it away from me after just 2 sips saying that she changed her mind and didn't want me to get sick. I didn't care for the nurse at that moment and basically asked my dr. when he came in, if I could have something to drink because my nurse wouldn't let me. She looked pissed and I instantly felt like a bitch, but I was really thirsty. The doc gave the ok and left. The nurse handed me my drink. I drank it. Ten minutes later I was throwing it up and telling the nurse she could say 'I told you so". She graciously declined and we were friends again.
The throwing up should have been my first clue that things weren't going as planned. I was still progressing 1 cm every 2 hours, so at this point we were still going full speed ahead. Then I developed a fever. The dr. was called in and because it was a low grade fever, told us that sometimes that happens in labor. I was still feeling nauseous and more and more flu like, but again, still progressing every 2 hours. Then around 7:00 pm things suddenly changed.
I told Bobby and my nurse that I really didn't feel good...that I felt like I had the flu. That the contractions weren't bothering me so much as feeling sick was. My nurse was very sympathetic and appeared a bit worried about my rising temperature, but it was time to do her report for shift change and I suspected that my new nurse would be the one dealing with my discomfort.
As Bobby and I are sitting there, waiting for my new nurse, I just keep telling him how awful I felt. I must have looked pretty bad because he looked really worried. I was throwing up, had a fever, and kind of felt like I was in and out of it a little. I must have drifted off to sleep, because the next thing I remember is one of my favorite nurses barging into the room. I told her hi and was glad she stopped by to see me, she smiled and said hi and that's when I realized that while we were making small talk she was shoving huge bags of ice under my arms and in between my legs. At some point my fever had hit about 103 and was rapidly climbing. The babies heart rates had gone up and wouldn't come back down. I asked her what was happening and she told me that they really needed to get my fever down and my blood pressure and heart rate were starting to rise as well.
After this, everything happened really fast...My doctor came in and checked my cervix. I had progressed, but the progression appeared to be slowing/possibly stalling - I was just barely 6 centimeters. He said they have used all their bags of tricks to try to give me a vaginal delivery, but that we were at an impasse and needed to move forward with a c-section due to the stalled labor and what might have been an infection from my membranes being stripped, rapidly moving throughout my body. I agreed to the c-section (surprisingly I agreed to this rather quickly and felt a bit relieved to see a light at the end of the tunnel). I asked how long until we would do the c-section and he said they were getting me ready right then and the babies would arrive within a half hour. Wow...that seemed kind of fast. He left. I cried.
Little ones need to eat. I'll continue the story at my next post :-)
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