This is a warning that 1) It’s gonna be a looong entry, and 2) I’m not sure I’d want to read this if I was pregnant… At least now you were warned.

So, as I blogged about before, we got an appointment at the hospital for inducing labour on Dec 29th. My blood pressure was very high so the doctors were worried, but I didn’t have any subjective symptoms. So we met up at 9 AM and I got pills (I guess they were prostaglandins) in my you-know-what at 9:30 AM, 1:30 PM and 4:30 PM to induce labour. As nothing really happened, we decided to just sleep through the night and see how I was in the morning as I needed the sleep. At 10 PM I was starting to have contractions, and I was getting a last checkup before the night when I told the midwife that if the contractions didn’t slow down or got less painful I’d need something to help me sleep through the night. She told me I’d need a new checkup if she was going to give me anything, and it turned out that I now had a dilated cervix of 4 cm, plus a sky high blood pressure, so she needed to break my water. She told me to take a shower and get ready to go to the delivery room.

Husband was timing my contractions, and I remember thinking that if they hurt this much now, then I wasn’t sure if I could do without any pain medication. So I went to the bathroom to pee, and while sitting there, my water broke. This was at 11:30 PM. I managed to take a shower, which is supposed to give some pain relief, but I didn’t feel any difference, really. And then the contractions was lasting about one minute with intervals of 25 seconds. If you were wondering: NOT GOOD. I hardly had any time to breathe between two contractions and all I could do was squeeze Husband’s hand. I was almost crawling to the delivery room, and I’m not sure how long we were there, breathing through the contractions like I’d learned at preggie yoga, when the midwife, who had been asking me several times if I wanted an epidural (and I had told her no every time), grabbed my hand and told me that she was now calling the anaesthetist to get me one, cause I couldn’t go on with the high blood pressure and the close contractions too long. I just nodded my head as I didn’t feel like talking at all, and all I could do was whisper: “Oh, here comes another one…” to Husband who probably was pretty numb from me squeezing him.

The anaesthetist had to give me the epidural during contractions as they came so close, and I was terrified that it would hurt or that she’d do it wrong if I flinched, but I could hardly feel it. I remember wondering why she was yelling at me asking if I was a hemophiliac or had any allergies, but I was only whispering through the contractions so she probably thought I was in my own world. Which I almost was. But still. Anyway, the epidural worked wonders, and soon I was feeling normal again. The downside was, of course, that it slowed down eeeverything. So we were awake during the entire night, chatting, trying to sleep, eating an apple, drinking lots and lots of fluids, vomiting it all up again. I had checkups at least every hour, and my cervix slowly dilated up to 8-9 cm, until about 10 AM when they decided the baby had to get out because my blood pressure continued to rise.

So the midwife called on a doctor to check the position of the baby, and of course she was a stargazer, meaning that if I lie on my back, she’d be looking up, which means that her head will be harder to push out. Great. They tried to get an ultrasound to confirm it, but it was hard since her head was in my pelvic area So they decided to try to push her out if my blood pressure could handle it. So I tried. I first tried standing up as I remembered a colleague saying she’d refuse to do it any other way with her next child, but then the baby’s heart rate dropped, so I had to try lying down. Better for the baby, worse for me, cause we weren’t going anywhere. So after 35 minutes of pushing (and because of the epidural, I didn’t have any urges to push, I could only slightly feel a change in the contractions even though they gave me less epidural and more i.v. fluids to get contractions) the doctor came in to use a ventouse. Oh lord. The ventouse cup was too large (too much information, you say?) for me so they had to do an episiotomy to get it on the head. I looked at Husband, terrified, as I realized what they were doing, and said: “They’re cutting me!” and he looked pale and answered: “I know.” It didn’t hurt though, because of the epidural, plus they gave me local anaesthetics too, but I was horrified.

At least with the ventouse I felt where I was supposed to push, because before all I had to work with was the midwife who told me to push almost like when you poop. Well, okay, what’s almost? And when I did she’d go: “Yes, just like that!” Anyway, I think I pushed about 12 times until they got the little wonder out. The doctor was almost in a horizontal position pulling the baby out. At this time I was exhausted, and I fell half asleep every second. I got little Emeline, covered in blood, on my chest for about 5 seconds until the midwife told us that she was a little bit weak and she needed to take her. I noticed that she didn’t scream, but was told earlier by others who had had a baby that it takes some time before they scream, and I shouldn’t be afraid if my baby didn’t scream the second she got out.

Well, it turned out that she didn’t breathe on her own. She had a heartbeat, but was given oxygen for several minutes to help her breathe. I remember either going in and out of consciousness or sleep, still don’t know which, when they came in with her again and gave her to Husband. By that time I had lost more than a liter blood, my fingertips were turning blue and my blood pressure was dropping from 180/90-ish to 70/50, which is kind of, ehm, bad. I remember that I was shaking, but had also been told by a co-worker that she was shaking after she had had the baby, but a woman was trying to insert a venous catheter in my other arm and was telling me to keep still. And there were about 10 people in the room, running around, asking me questions like: “Can you feel this?”, “How do you feel?” (the answer being: “Cold.”) and “Hanna, can you hear me?”, and I remember Husband crying, and I thought it was tears of joy, but he later told me he was afraid I would die.

I was sent to post-op observation for an hour or so, while Husband was with Emeline. And each time someone asked me how I was feeling I answered: “Thirsty.” And I must have asked that poor nurse a hundred times after something to drink, cause when I was awake and she came in and I was trying to wet my tongue in my non-existing saliva, she just said: “I’m sorry, but you can’t have anything to drink, yet.”

At least this story ends well, I got a visit from the proud dad and my daughter until he had to go home to take Aurora for a walk, and I had to rest for another two hours until I could see them again, but Emeline is well, and I had given birth without pain, so it was Husband who had the worst experience. He now doesn’t want me to give birth the normal way, but I’m opposed to cesarean sections if it’s not medically indicated, but we’ll have a while to figure that out What I do know is that I want more children

You normally spend 3 days at the hospital here before you go home, but since it was New Years Eve the day after, I tried to convince the midwife to let me go earlier, but they wanted to take blood samples and monitor my blood pressure. New Years Eve was quiet. We were looking at the fireworks from our room, which had huuuge windows, while I was breastfeeding Emeline. Quite special for us

I hugged Husband for a long time today. You kinda forget to take time for your man when you have a one-week-old demanding all your time. He didn’t hug me right back, just held his arms around me, and whispered: “I’m afraid you’ll break.” It broke my heart. He must have been through hell that morning.