Birth Story, Part IV of IV
So, after 26 hours of labor and FTP (failure to progress), I had a C-section. The doctors put up a screen in front of my face to separate me from the surgery, and Mark got to come in and sit on my side of the screen with me. Before the operation began, the doctor in charge—-the appropriately named Dr. Masters—-gave a severe lecture to the medical team that had been taking care of me, which was pretty disconcerting. I am not positive, still, exactly what he was angry about, but it sounded as though he was angry that the resident who had been taking care of me, Dr. Lantzman (whom I really liked, by the way) and the nurses in charge of me hadn’t put an internal monitor on the baby. I am not positive that this was the issue, but he kept saying something about how bad it was that the baby hadn’t been monitored. He sounded very pissed off and he repeated the rebuke about three times, while everyone looked shame-faced. He said, “I’ve seen this sort of thing before and I can’t believe I’m seeing it again now!” It was a very strange way to begin the surgery, making me feel that things were not so well under control. I remember exchanging worried glances with Mark.
But then the surgery happened, unbelievably quickly-—about fifteen minutes. I asked Mark to distract me from thinking about what they were doing by talking about other things, and he obliged me (later he told me he was so excited about being about to meet his daughter that he almost fainted). I thought I’d be entirely numb from the waist down, but while there was no pain, there were sensations of pressure, and I could feel them taking the baby out, which was strange. Then I heard her crying, but I didn’t get to see her right away. I lay still and was very patient while they called Mark over. He cut the umbilical cord, something he’d told me he didn’t want to do, but apparently they told him to do it without offering him a choice and he stepped up to the plate. I concentrated on being patient and not demanding to see her. It felt like about five minutes passed before they told Mark to bring the baby over to meet her mother (it probably was five minutes, since they must have done the one-minute and five-minute APGAR tests on her—-she got 9 out of 10 on both).
Mark brought her over to meet me as I lay on the operating table. I remember the huge beam on his face. She was fussing a little but we both spoke to her and she seemed to calm down. I am convinced she recognized our voices from all the chatting we did with her while she was in the womb. Then, after a minute or two, they told Mark to come with them and they took the baby to the nursery so they could sew me up. Mark and the baby were gone, and I was repaired and then brought back to my room. After the doctors finished the repairs on me, the shaking started-—the most unbelievable shaking you can imagine. My whole body shook, my teeth chattered, I couldn’t form non-shaking sentences. All this was normal, I was told! I also had a strong urge to vomit, and they gave me something through the IV, maybe Phenergan, to counteract that sensation. By the time I was back in my room, the nausea had begun to subside. (I had with me again the little throw-up tray I’d been clutching all the way to the OR, but I never used it). Back in my room, my cousin held my hand and reminded me that the shaking was normal, and I lay there for about an hour, it felt like, till the shaking was mostly gone. My family crowded around, telling me the baby was beautiful.
“I want a Sprite,” I said. I said it over and over again. I can’t remember if anyone got me one; actually, my memory of it is that I didn’t get one till Mark finally came back in the room with the baby and then he got me one. He got me about seven Sprites, since I kept drinking them and demanding more. Later I found out that this had been a bad idea-—I should only have been drinking water. But I can’t say I regret it. Mark brought me Sprites and orange juices on demand until a nurse finally told me I was on the "clear liquids" diet and that the bubbles in the Sprite weren't going to help with the gas pain that C-section patients get.
After about an hour, Mark was allowed to come back in the room with the baby. He had the proudest look on his face and had enjoyed the fact that he got to bond with the baby for an hour, uninterrupted. This is when one thing, finally, about my labor and delivery story went right: the baby seemed to get the hang of breastfeeding right away.
I spent three more nights in the hospital, in a different room, recovering from the C-section (not that I was entirely recovered when I was sent home—far from it). I slept for perhaps an hour and a half, total, over the course of the days I was there. At the time, I thought I was euphoric, though now, looking up some “post-partum” conditions in my little brochure, I think you could probably say I had “post-partum mania.” I had no desire to sleep; I felt like I was on top of the world; I had never been so happy in my life; I wanted the baby with me the whole time, and not to be placed in her bassinette. Although I had no need to sleep (I thought), I was ravenous and enjoyed my hospital meals more than I've ever enjoyed any food in my life.
A C-section is a grueling recovery. For the first day, you eat clear liquids. You take regular installments of painkillers (they gave me megadoses of Motrin and Vicodin), but the pain starts to creep up on you nonetheless. You have a hard time doing anything that involves your abdominal muscles: laughing, coughing or even choking a little if something goes down the wrong way, sneezing, pulling yourself up into a sitting position. You have to re-learn digestion and going to the bathroom, so they give you stool softeners and medicine to relieve the pain of gas building up. Going to pee for the first time after being de-catheterized was a big ordeal, largely because it meant I had to stand up and make my way to the bathroom. Sitting up and putting your feet on the floor for the first time is a big deal. I had to practice walking, leaning on my IV stand for support. At first you walked all hunched over, as it's too painful to get yourself up straight. There is a lot of bleeding, and so you feel weak and tired. Even if I had been inclined to sleep, I was almost never alone for very long: a steady stream of doctors and nurses came and went from my room, checking all my vital signs, renewing the antibiotics in my IV till my fever went down, checking on the baby. There was the birth certificate guy, the First Foto woman, the lactation consultants, the newborn hearing screen woman, and a pediatric nurse who told us her job was to "manhandle" the baby in front of us so as to help us get over the first-time-parent neurosis of thinking the baby is much more fragile than she is and hence not doing what needs to be done efficiently.
Before I could walk, they told me to practice wiggling my toes and moving my leg muscles around. There was some concern that blood clots or embolisms could form from all the lying down and not moving. They also strapped two little contraptions to my calves that vibrated the muscles in them for me, and it was totally heavenly--a calf massage. Wish I could've taken them home with me. There were other gadgets for my recovery that I understand less well the function of. One was a breathing tube called an "incentive respirator" or "aspirator" or something like that. You released all your breath, then sucked in until a little floating lever reached a demarcated level. I am not sure what this did, but it definitely puts a little pressure on your stomach muscles. At one point, I forgot how to use it and was blowing into it instead of sucking in; as a result, the lever did not move at all. Unfortunately, I rang the nurses' station and informed them that my breathing gadget was defective. They must have been laughing at me, because when Dr. Lantzman came to visit me and check on my recovery he said, "I hear you were blowing into the [thingie] instead of sucking in. That happened to me, and I thought I was the only one!" He was a nice man, to make me feel better.
Another fun stage of the C-section recovery is the removal of your staples. They will tell you it doesn't hurt, but don't listen to them. Even if it doesn't hurt too much in the moment, it will, shortly.
At one point the baby was taken away for a significant amount of time to have blood tests done, related to the fact that I had an infection. They wanted to see if she had the infection, too, so as to determine if she needed antibiotics. The test results were inconclusive; they ran the tests again, and again they were inconclusive. They ended up not giving her the antibiotics because she seemed so healthy in every exam they gave her.
They told me not to kiss her on her face because I had somehow developed an incredibly swollen lip that they thought was probably a cold sore (though I think I may have bitten it during labor, hence the swelling). So I am only now getting to do what I wanted to do all along, which is to kiss her all over her face, because she does not object!
An entire additional chapter could be written about recovery from a C-section, but I will stop here. Thanks for reading my grueling tale :-)
But then the surgery happened, unbelievably quickly-—about fifteen minutes. I asked Mark to distract me from thinking about what they were doing by talking about other things, and he obliged me (later he told me he was so excited about being about to meet his daughter that he almost fainted). I thought I’d be entirely numb from the waist down, but while there was no pain, there were sensations of pressure, and I could feel them taking the baby out, which was strange. Then I heard her crying, but I didn’t get to see her right away. I lay still and was very patient while they called Mark over. He cut the umbilical cord, something he’d told me he didn’t want to do, but apparently they told him to do it without offering him a choice and he stepped up to the plate. I concentrated on being patient and not demanding to see her. It felt like about five minutes passed before they told Mark to bring the baby over to meet her mother (it probably was five minutes, since they must have done the one-minute and five-minute APGAR tests on her—-she got 9 out of 10 on both).
Mark brought her over to meet me as I lay on the operating table. I remember the huge beam on his face. She was fussing a little but we both spoke to her and she seemed to calm down. I am convinced she recognized our voices from all the chatting we did with her while she was in the womb. Then, after a minute or two, they told Mark to come with them and they took the baby to the nursery so they could sew me up. Mark and the baby were gone, and I was repaired and then brought back to my room. After the doctors finished the repairs on me, the shaking started-—the most unbelievable shaking you can imagine. My whole body shook, my teeth chattered, I couldn’t form non-shaking sentences. All this was normal, I was told! I also had a strong urge to vomit, and they gave me something through the IV, maybe Phenergan, to counteract that sensation. By the time I was back in my room, the nausea had begun to subside. (I had with me again the little throw-up tray I’d been clutching all the way to the OR, but I never used it). Back in my room, my cousin held my hand and reminded me that the shaking was normal, and I lay there for about an hour, it felt like, till the shaking was mostly gone. My family crowded around, telling me the baby was beautiful.
“I want a Sprite,” I said. I said it over and over again. I can’t remember if anyone got me one; actually, my memory of it is that I didn’t get one till Mark finally came back in the room with the baby and then he got me one. He got me about seven Sprites, since I kept drinking them and demanding more. Later I found out that this had been a bad idea-—I should only have been drinking water. But I can’t say I regret it. Mark brought me Sprites and orange juices on demand until a nurse finally told me I was on the "clear liquids" diet and that the bubbles in the Sprite weren't going to help with the gas pain that C-section patients get.
After about an hour, Mark was allowed to come back in the room with the baby. He had the proudest look on his face and had enjoyed the fact that he got to bond with the baby for an hour, uninterrupted. This is when one thing, finally, about my labor and delivery story went right: the baby seemed to get the hang of breastfeeding right away.
I spent three more nights in the hospital, in a different room, recovering from the C-section (not that I was entirely recovered when I was sent home—far from it). I slept for perhaps an hour and a half, total, over the course of the days I was there. At the time, I thought I was euphoric, though now, looking up some “post-partum” conditions in my little brochure, I think you could probably say I had “post-partum mania.” I had no desire to sleep; I felt like I was on top of the world; I had never been so happy in my life; I wanted the baby with me the whole time, and not to be placed in her bassinette. Although I had no need to sleep (I thought), I was ravenous and enjoyed my hospital meals more than I've ever enjoyed any food in my life.
A C-section is a grueling recovery. For the first day, you eat clear liquids. You take regular installments of painkillers (they gave me megadoses of Motrin and Vicodin), but the pain starts to creep up on you nonetheless. You have a hard time doing anything that involves your abdominal muscles: laughing, coughing or even choking a little if something goes down the wrong way, sneezing, pulling yourself up into a sitting position. You have to re-learn digestion and going to the bathroom, so they give you stool softeners and medicine to relieve the pain of gas building up. Going to pee for the first time after being de-catheterized was a big ordeal, largely because it meant I had to stand up and make my way to the bathroom. Sitting up and putting your feet on the floor for the first time is a big deal. I had to practice walking, leaning on my IV stand for support. At first you walked all hunched over, as it's too painful to get yourself up straight. There is a lot of bleeding, and so you feel weak and tired. Even if I had been inclined to sleep, I was almost never alone for very long: a steady stream of doctors and nurses came and went from my room, checking all my vital signs, renewing the antibiotics in my IV till my fever went down, checking on the baby. There was the birth certificate guy, the First Foto woman, the lactation consultants, the newborn hearing screen woman, and a pediatric nurse who told us her job was to "manhandle" the baby in front of us so as to help us get over the first-time-parent neurosis of thinking the baby is much more fragile than she is and hence not doing what needs to be done efficiently.
Before I could walk, they told me to practice wiggling my toes and moving my leg muscles around. There was some concern that blood clots or embolisms could form from all the lying down and not moving. They also strapped two little contraptions to my calves that vibrated the muscles in them for me, and it was totally heavenly--a calf massage. Wish I could've taken them home with me. There were other gadgets for my recovery that I understand less well the function of. One was a breathing tube called an "incentive respirator" or "aspirator" or something like that. You released all your breath, then sucked in until a little floating lever reached a demarcated level. I am not sure what this did, but it definitely puts a little pressure on your stomach muscles. At one point, I forgot how to use it and was blowing into it instead of sucking in; as a result, the lever did not move at all. Unfortunately, I rang the nurses' station and informed them that my breathing gadget was defective. They must have been laughing at me, because when Dr. Lantzman came to visit me and check on my recovery he said, "I hear you were blowing into the [thingie] instead of sucking in. That happened to me, and I thought I was the only one!" He was a nice man, to make me feel better.
Another fun stage of the C-section recovery is the removal of your staples. They will tell you it doesn't hurt, but don't listen to them. Even if it doesn't hurt too much in the moment, it will, shortly.
At one point the baby was taken away for a significant amount of time to have blood tests done, related to the fact that I had an infection. They wanted to see if she had the infection, too, so as to determine if she needed antibiotics. The test results were inconclusive; they ran the tests again, and again they were inconclusive. They ended up not giving her the antibiotics because she seemed so healthy in every exam they gave her.
They told me not to kiss her on her face because I had somehow developed an incredibly swollen lip that they thought was probably a cold sore (though I think I may have bitten it during labor, hence the swelling). So I am only now getting to do what I wanted to do all along, which is to kiss her all over her face, because she does not object!
An entire additional chapter could be written about recovery from a C-section, but I will stop here. Thanks for reading my grueling tale :-)
posted by Sarah Goss at 5:49 PM
18 Comments:
When I was born, my mom's doctor was Dr. Fallic. She swears this is true.
Your tale was riveting. I feel almost as though I experienced it right there with you.
I'm so happy you can kiss Daisy's little face now--give her lots of kisses from me, too, please.
It's a good thing you're such a good writer. Just the right balance of facts and feelings. Well done on both the writing and going through all that hard stuff from day 1. Such an ordeal. Hope your recovery continues unabated.
I would like to sing you a song. It's called "Daisy, Daisy".
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do,
I'm half crazy all for the love of you.
It won't be a stylish marriage
I can't afford a carraige
But you'll look sweet upon the seat
Of a bicycle built for two.
http://audio.textfiles.com/sounds/daisy.mp3
Hey, my mom used to sing that song when we were kids! Do you remember that, Sarah? And remember Daisy's response? She kinda shot him down, which was snobby, I suppose, but we always laughed at that part. I'm sure your Daisy would be more sensitive to the guy's feelings...
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wow sarita... i felt like waiting for each installment of your story was like waiting for the next episode of 'Twin Peaks'. so exciting... strangely enough, the having to continuously walk around the halls part was what really got to me. i would have wanted to scream at someone and maybe kick them as well for good measure. but i know you are not supposed to behave that way....
whew. you (and i guess a whole hell of a lot of other women out there) are so incredibly brave... can't wait to watch daisy grow and grow.... :) and perhaps in your weakened state, someone may have a chance of getting at least half your score in boggle! ;)
Oh, I love that song, Albert! Mom sang it once for the baby, but I thought she was just inserting the name "Daisy" into the song (it's in the original?). I think I DO remember your mom singing it, Jenny. Fun.
Dr. Fallic? Oh god that's good.
Oh my gosh, Albert, we're playing it for her... I am getting teary-eyed. Is that a computer singing? :-)
Heh. You could kick my ASS in Boggle right now, Arweena! I doubt I could spell "burp." (Wait, just did.)
Yeah, being told to walk up and down the same hallway for 2 hours, in the wee hours of the AM, having had no sleep, and having a painful contraction every 3-5 minutes--that was a feeling close to despair. Even worse: getting checked again at the end of 2 hours, told you are more or less at the same place, and then being told to walk for 2 more hours. That was a despairing time. Thank you for reading my tale!
Albert,
I thought the lyric (and I'm sure I'm wrong) was..
Give me your answer due
"due" being an adjective modifying "answer" in a kind of old-fashioned syntactical inversion -- like, her answer is due and should me coming soon or meaning "sufficient" or according to convention (i. e., an appropriate or right answer)
Dr. Fallic? Was his fist name Peter or Richard? Sorry, that was stupid...but it's up to me to bring down the general level of discourse...
OK,
I looked up the lyrics on the web, and every version (naturally) reads "do," but Albert,
Where is your comma?
Give me your answer, do!
Mark, you're not alone. I, too, have always interpreted it as "due!" How funny to discover that I've been hearing it "wrong" for the last 32 years!
No lie: I knew a guy in college named Peter Dangler.
My grandfather used to sing me that! I think of it sometimes because I actually own a two-seater bicycle, on the seat of which I look about as un-stylish as the song's author could imagine.
I don't remember shaking with either one, but I can sure see how it might happen. Lordy, I cannot imagine.
With Baby 2, I had no epidural, and the local down in my vulva for sewing didn't work. So both Baby and Mommy squalled at each other for a while. I think it was good for you and Daisy to calm down a bit before you got to spend time with her. And I love it that she responded to you right away. Babies are clever creatures.
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