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12 May 2011
Last month I began a series about Speedy's birth that really took on a life of it's own. I thought I would save these last few posts in honor of Mother's Day. It's been a fun, emotional series of posts.
The time in the cold, emotionally empty, emergency room lobby seemed to both fly by and take forever. I was closer to being convinced I was really in labor, but I still feared being sent home as a "false alarm."
When I was wheeled upstairs to the maternity ward, a smiling nurse greeted me. "Oh honey, you can't be ready to have this baby," she said.
"Why is that?" I asked, momentarily relieved.
"Honey, you can't be more than six months pregnant," the nurse politely answered as she helped me out of the wheelchair and onto an examination table.
"I'm sure I don't look that small," I said through my breath as more pain came my way. "I definitely feel every bit of 36 weeks pregnant."
After getting dressed in the ever so trendy hospital gown, a really tall, young doctor walked in. He introduced himself and helped the nurse hook me up to the machine that measured contractions. At this point I was living my life from pain to pain, still not persuaded enough to call them contractions.
The doctor did a pelvic exam to check for dilation. When he finished, I commented on how gentle he was.
"That's not a comment I get often," he said through a smile.
Then he told me he was finishing up his residency, which meant he's still learning a lot about the best way to do an exam.
"Obviously I've been examined a lot," I said as I grabbed my stomach. "This is the first time in 36 weeks and the eight years or so of yearly check-ups before getting pregnant that an exam hasn't hurt."
He sat down on the chair next to me and said, "You're already in pain, and there isn't much I can do to stop that right now. The least I can do is try to not cause you more pain when I examine you. I'm still learning the best way to do that, so it means a lot hearing this from you."
He stayed in the room for a few minutes and told me that he was the doctor on duty tonight and promised to take good care of me.
"You're four centimeters dilated, so you have a while to go. We'll get into a real room in a few minutes," he said as he got ready to leave the room. "If something happens and your doctor doesn't get here, would you be against me delivering the baby?"
I took deep breath as another pain came on and closed my eyes. The realization hit me like a thunderbolt. I was officially in labor. There was no turning back now.
"I'm okay with that," I told him after the contraction passed. "Any doctor who takes enough concern to not hurt me during an exam is fine with me."
The next few hours seemed to fly by. It was a like a calm series of sprints. I continued to live in the moments between contractions, but the overall mood was very quiet. It was a stillness I was not used to since my first bout with labor at 24 weeks.
After noticing how exhausted I was, the nurse brought in a temporary pain blocking shot. She injected the shot into my leg and said, "We're just in the waiting game now, but you have a while to go. Why don't you try to get a little sleep?"
I welcomed the pain blocker and the promise of sleep. I now I had been awake for more than two days.
As I closed my eyes, a team of 10 people, led by a man in scrubs, rushed through the door.
It was just after 6 a.m.
"We got a problem," he said, skipping the whole "I'm Dr. So-and So" part. "I've been watching your contractions on the monitor at the front desk for the last half hour. Your baby's heart rate is dropping to almost nothing."
Related Posts:
- Part 4: False Alarm Foreshadowing
Comments
Good job, Ivy!
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