Miss Em was due the day after my birthday, which I thought was great - A. was born on his mother's birthday and I thought it would be so cool to share my birthday with my daughter. So part of me was hoping beyond all hope that she would be born on my birthday (although at about 37 weeks I quit caring so much, and after several false-starts just wanted her to arrive as soon as possible). Anyway, my birthday came and went with no baby... well, that's not quite true: A friend and coworker of mine had the audacity to deliver her baby on MY birthday. Oh my word was I upset. And I mean pregnancy-hormone-overload upset. My poor mother and husband must have thought I'd lost my mind. I mean, really, does it matter that much? It doesn't. Not now, anyway, but that day I thought it was absolutely unfair, as though someone was making this big ol' joke at my expense. To make matters worse this baby weighed 7lbs15oz. There was a running joke between my husband and I that 7lbs15oz was the heaviest baby I ever wanted to deliver. Nae had already beat that (8lbs6oz), and I'd been told by both the ultrasound tech and my doctor that it seemed as though I was going to have a very large baby. And of course with a history of severe tearing, each ounce gained was further confirmation that I would tear again.
I went into labour at about 0630 on my due date, February 21st. Nae, now just over two years old, was a such a sweetheart. She'd stroke my face and mimic me through contractions, shaking her head and blowing on the exercise ball I was using for comfort.
We headed to the hospital at around 1430. It's a little weird delivering your baby at the same hospital at which you work, but like I told A., from admission to discharge we had the Dream-Team. My coworkers were all excellent - as I knew they would be - and it made me proud to work there.
Let me pause for a moment and tell you all about the wonders of Entonox, also known as "laughing gas" or "gas and air" (if you've ever watched Call the Midwife). One of the nurses told me I had the "cutest" reaction to Entonox she'd ever seen. Now, having worked with laboring women, I haven't seen this particular form of pain management work particularly well. Most women don't even try it, opting for Fentanyl or the lovely epidural, and those who do try it often come to a point where they look like they are going to throw the mask across the room in frustration. I had tried it with Nae, although to be fair I put it over my face through half a contraction. It dried out my mouth and then I too, felt like throwing the thing across the room. J. had told me I had to give it at least 3 contractions before I decided if it was worth it. After the first contraction I felt funny and dizzy, again ready to give up on the stuff. The sharp edge of the pain was lessened somewhat during the second contraction, and then by the third contraction I was having an almost out-of-body experience: I could feel the pain, I knew it was there, but it was as if I was separated from it somehow. My mind was very clear, my thought process perfect, and my body almost animalistic but relaxed. At one point I heard myself scream - heard myself, because I'm pretty sure I was thinking about something completely different when I heard it- and said to my nurse "I think you should know that that scream wasn't me, that was my body." This made her laugh, which made me a little annoyed because she clearly hadn't understood me. I am going through transition, I thought, although why I didn't just say that I don't know. A few contractions later I told her "I'm pushing."
She replied "Okay, don't push yet, let me get the doctor."
To which I replied "You don't understand, I didn't say I feel like pushing, I said I am pushing."
Forty minutes later, give or take, my baby was in my arms. Beautiful and lovely and 10lbs8oz. That is not a typo. She was flipping 10lbs8oz! Another joke that didn't make me laugh, because it meant that I tore (badly) again. But I didn't just tear, I also had a mediolateral episiotomy that was meant to save my scar, but didn't for 2 reasons. Reason 1: She was flipping 10lbs8oz. Reason 2: She decided to present with her forehead. A baby is supposed to present with the back of the head, the occiput. This gives us moms the smallest diameter of the baby's head to deliver. Occasionally, a baby will present in different ways, for example with the back of the head but be lying spine-to-spine with mom, known as occiput-posterior (OP) or colloquially as sunny-side up. This means moms have a somewhat larger diameter to deliver which can be somewhat more difficult, and can even halt labor progress, leading to a necessary C-section. Nae presented this way, which might have contributed to my first tear. Miss Em was also lying this way (spine to spine) except that she also decided it would be great fun if she stretched out her neck so that, instead of presenting with the back of her head, she presented with her forehead. A forehead presentation is not supposed to be vaginally deliverable (ha-ha) unless the baby is premature, and therefore tiny, or mom has an abnormally large pelvis. Not sure if I have an abnormally large pelvis, but I know Em wasn't tiny! It was also probably made possible because she was lying spine to spine with me, meaning she didn't have to stretch her neck out quite as much. Still presenting with her forehead, but with a smaller diameter to go through my pelvis. Or maybe my physician was able to manually flex her head far enough to make delivery possible. But honestly, between my history of tearing, a hypertonic pelvic floor (I'll talk about that some other time, maybe), as well as the size and presentation of my baby, tearing was more of an inevitability than a possibility. Fortunately, I had a wonderful medical team, yet again. And this time I didn't have to go through the torture and pain of the hour-long repair. I didn't have to hear the comments made by the doctors and nurses, or listen to a list of dos and don'ts that lasted the length of my repair. This time they put me under general anesthesia in the operating room... and I slept.
I stayed an extra day in the hospital because my hemoglobin dropped significantly and had to receive 2 units of blood. And as A. and I were getting ready to go home we learned that my mother had come down with a stomach bug. Our town was a cesspool for one of the worst gastroenteritis outbreaks I have personally witnessed. It affected almost every house in the town and flattened its victims for several days to weeks... And my mom got it. So there I was, torn, in pain, with low hemoglobin, unable to lift my toddler, without much help from either my mother or my husband. A. actually had to return to Red Deer for work the day after I got home from the hospital. He had called multiple times to make sure he was needed, but they never responded. He went grudgingly only to find out that they didn't need him. That's right: did not need him! Not funny. I bawled the day he left: I was in so much pain, I couldn't manage Nae at all, and my poor mother was so sick. I bawled when he got back, too, because I was so exhausted. A dear and wonderful friend stepped in and took Nae twice that week to help me cope and heal. But they were such difficult first few days. I was terrified Miss Em or myself would get the dreaded bug and I couldn't imagine either. I couldn't imagine my 3 day old infant struggling to stay hydrated. I couldn't imagine going through the force of vomiting and the fear of tearing my stitches. I didn't use the upstairs bathroom. In spite of the pain, I climbed down to use the one downstairs. My mother disinfected everything she touched constantly, but I still feared doorknobs, towels, taps, anything she might have touched. She didn't hold Miss Em for the first 4 days we were home.
Neither Miss Em nor I got that gastro-bug, but just when I thought things might start getting better my pain increased significantly. I couldn't even get out of bed. Then I started to feel faint when I did try to move from room to room. I filled a prescription for Tramacet, which helped with the pain, but made an appointment with the doctor anyway. I had a double infection- yeast and bacterial. I developed a fever that afternoon, but the antibiotics started kicking in pretty quick so I only had to suffer through the fever for five or six hours. But then, like I said, the antibiotics kicked in. I had been prescribed Clavulin twice daily for 7 days. I took 2 doses before complete misery began. I won't go into graphic detail, but a possible side effect of Clavulin is severe diarrhea. Don't think for a minute that this is a minor side effect - For three days I ate nothing. I drank very little. Everything that I put into my mouth caused an almost immediate and frantic race to the bathroom. I was completely depleted. My milk supply all but vanished. People, there were adult-sized diapers involved (and yes, I know that's not what a nurse is supposed to call them). My thought process also started to deteriorate. There was a moment before we knew for sure it was a reaction to the Clavulin that I thought I had contracted that dreaded stomach flu, and in that moment I got just a taste of what J. goes through every day. I saw the transmission of germs everywhere - from my hands to my hair, my face, back to my hands after I'd already washed them, my hands to Em. My feet to the bed, the bed to Em. My hands to the doorknob, the doorknob to A. or my mom, or Nae, and them to Em. Everything ended at Em. My poor, darling, barely two week-old, Em. I refused to touch her, I washed and washed. And I heard my mother say "You need to trust me. If I tell you you're clean enough, you're clean enough. You have to nurse Em. She won't get sick." It was what she had said to J. over and over. It was some kind of strange episode of the Twilight Zone, where I got to experience what my sister goes through all the time. Because I immediately saw the parallel, I knew what I had to do. I had to not let the fear get the better of me. I had to nurse Em, or I never would again. I had to make sure I didn't wash my hands for the fourth time, or I might never stop. I never thought I had the personality for OCD. In fact most people would probably agree that my personality is more or less anti-OCD (You should see my sock drawer... or any drawer... You should see the inside of my brain- obsessive-compulsive is just not in my nature). In those moments though, the fears J. experiences daily became very real to me. J, you are amazing and strong. You battle thoughts like those everyday, multiple times a day and still face them, even conquer them. It is absolutely amazing. If I didn't think you were rather heroic before, I certainly do now.
That is more or less the story of the first weeks of Little Miss Em's life. Things did start to improve from there, although healing was slow, and pain as well as the narcotic-induced haziness and sleepiness were prominent parts of my life for the first several weeks after her birth. There's much more to it, to be sure. Nae's reaction to her new baby sister was priceless. My mental state, as fragile as it was, seemed more optimistic than with Nae. And there were beautiful late night cuddles and the difficult adjustments to life as a family of 4. But I'll save those stories for later, for now, I'll go make my late night rounds to my girls' rooms and give them both one more kiss goodnight.
