"Short" Story #3...L & D with Sissy

With Mother's Day this Sunday, I decided to go ahead and give you my 3rd "short" story. The day that I became part of an elite club. The day I became a Mother!

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I'm going to try and write this to the best of my recollection. Even though it was my first child, it was over 2 1/2 years ago, and I have been thru another labor and delivery since then! So here goes.

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Having high blood pressure while being pregnant, Doc wanted to keep his eyes on me pretty well. Especially towards the end of my pregnancy. He had told me to watch for really bad swelling or headaches. One evening I had went to bed early because I had a really bad headache. I thought it would go away as most of them do when after I sleep for a few hours. When I woke up though, it was worse. Hubby was already in bed, so I told him that I was going to just run up to the L&D at the hospital and have them check my blood pressure.

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When I got there, I told them what was going on, and they took me back hooked me up to the monitors and checked my blood pressure. It was high...too high. They called Doc and told him what was going on. He told them to have me stay on the monitors for about an hour and have machine check my blood pressure every 15 minutes.

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It went down in the end, but not a lot. Doc came up there and checked me for dilation and I was at a 2. He told me that with I was beginning to get pre-eclampsia. And that the best thing to do, since I was so close to my due date (Oct 17), was to wait until I reached at least a 2 1/2 or a 3 and then induce me. He said that at my next appointment, which was in less than a week, he would check me again and we would go from there. But that he didn't want me going too much longer because it could get much worse.

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At my appointment, that next Monday (Oct 16), he checked me and sure enough, I was a 2 1/2! He called the hospital to check for a room in the next few days, and they confirmed and prepared to have me the next day at 6am.

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Hubby was working over-nights at that time, so after the appointment he took me to meet my sister-in-law he was going to take me down to my parents house to stay the night. He had planned on going ahead and going into work for a few hours, then go home and get things ready to be at the hospital the next morning.

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That night was horrible. I was nervous, anxious, scared, excited, and having contractions all.night.long. My parents and my little sister got up early that next morning to take me to hospital. Hubby, who ended up not working but stayed at home to sleep and get the house cleaned and prepared, met us there.

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They hooked me up to an IV and the blood pressure machine right off the bat. Of course, my BP was high ,so they were trying to help me calm down so that it would go down a little. Doc doesn't want his patients to get an epidural until they are at least a 5, so we were I was impatiently waiting on that. It wouldn't have been that bad, but I was stuck on a 4 for 5-6 hours!!! The only thing I could have was Nubain to help ease the pain. The first dose was pretty good. I was able to sleep thru most, if not all, of my contractions until it wore off. They checked me once it did wear off, and I was at a 4 1/2. So Doc told them to only give me half a dose. It didn't help. At all!

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Once I was dilated to a 5, they called for an anesthetist to come give me an epi. Both of the anesthetists were busy, so I had to wait another 45 minutes until one of them were free. Once he got there he told me all about what was going to happen, and the side effects. At that point, you I didn't care what the side effects were. I wanted pain relief!

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It took him 30 minutes and 4 different sticks to get the catheter in my back. Apparently I have a lip on my spine that makes it hard to get a catheter in. Imagine that! Finally after all of that, relief...for the most part. There was a small part that was not numb yet. Which would have been okay, if it wasn't the part that hurt the most numb. Yep, the, ahem, lower region, had complete feeling!

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They gave me more medicine which finally helped. Problem was, that as soon as I got the first dose, within an hour, I was at an 8. Ten minutes after the second dose, I was fully dilated and ready to push. Total numbness! I could not feel anything to push. I couldn't even tell if I was pushing. At one point they had told me that when I would push, they would lose the baby's heart rate on the monitor. So they had to go in and screw a little antenna into her head so that the monitor could pick up her heart rate. At another point they told me that every time I pushed, her heart rate would drop because she wasn't getting enough oxygen. So they had to put the mask on me...yeah, hated that thing!

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After an hour of pushing, the doctor came in and told me that he was going to use the vacuum. If I wasn't able to deliver her with the help of the vacuum system, then we would have to resort to another method. Thankfully, it helped and less than 15 minutes later, my beautiful baby girl was born!

(Sissy was born Oct 17, 2006 @ 4:16pm. She weighed 7lbs and was 18.5 inches long)

(This was taken at Sissy's 1st Birthday)

(This is the most recent picture of her. She is now 2 1/2 years old.)

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I know it was a long "short" story, but I told you with the first one that they all were going to be just that. I do hope you enjoyed though, and hope you will read "Short" Story #4....Second Pregnancy coming in a few days or so.