Ada's arrival: Part III

The L&D suite was just around the corner from my room and I was there in about 5 seconds. I slowly made my way out of the wheelchair and onto the bed in between contractions. This is where things start to get a little fuzzy. My blood pressure had been steadily rising. The last readout I remember seeing had the top number at 210 but I don't remember what the bottom number was.

I remember asking about Melbourne because he still wasn't in the room with me.

The nurse proceeded to tell me that I wasn't in active labour yet.

"If this isn't active labour, what is?" I asked. She didn't respond but proceeded to hook me back up to the monitors. Only this time they had faulty equipment - one of the monitors didn't have a way to hook it onto the belt so they were trying to tie an elastic belt around my waist to hold the monitor on.

Melbourne finally arrived and began timing my contractions. They were lasting about 45 seconds and were coming every minute and a half. Best part? I had back labour. The nurse told me that Ada's spine was pressing against mine. Every time I had a contraction the pain in my low back was nearly unbearable.

I was miserable. And dehydrated. I remember telling Melbourne that I was dying and he and Mom told me later that I apparently said that I didn't want to "do this anymore." I don't remember that at all.

I laboured for another couple of hours (I think) - my nurses changed shifts and I got a new midwife. This one pissed me off in the beginning. Melbourne and Mom had been counting through the contractions for me so that I knew how much longer the one I was currently having was going to last. She actually told them to stop doing it because it was making me "wound up". I basically told her to shut up, that it did help, and that they'd been doing it for hours before she got there. Melbourne added "So we're going to keep doing it."

(It turns out she was freaking out because she was the baby's heartbeat was slowing down a bit every time I had a contraction and apparently the counting was distracting her. Of course I didn't know any of this at the time - they had turned the sound down on the monitor so I couldn't hear the heartbeat at all.)

I remember the nurses asking if I had a preference for anesthesiologist and I was able to recall the name of the one that my earlier roommate had mentioned. She said he was really good and had been checking in on her repeatedly afterward. Sounded good to me and I was ready for an epidural at that point. I wanted a break. I had Mom rubbing my low back through contractions and I was already on the third breathing pattern (the hee-hee-hoos) and neither one was helping at all. He arrived around 6:00am just as they were doing another internal exam and I was at 5 centimeters that that point. My contractions were coming every minute and they were lasting about a minute. Fun! He told me to tell him when I was having a contraction so he could try to get the line in when I wasn't in pain. Ha! There wasn't enough time, the contractions were getting closer and closer together as he stood there talking to me. So Melbourne stood in front of me and braced me while the anesthesiologist placed the epidural. He asked me what I was feeling and where and then told me to expect something cold down my spine. It didn't take very long before I was feeling blessed relief. It was amazing. I could feel my uterus contracting but I was no longer in pain! My back was no longer in agony! I thanked the anesthesiologist profusely and repeatedly and he told me I would have a couple of hours of pain relief and then he would top me off again.

I was on top of the world - for about 45 minutes. Then the contractions came back worse than before. Breathing at that point was a joke. I would try to breath through the majority of the contraction but at some point I would start moaning/growling/screaming and then I would apologize. My Mom kept telling me that I didn't have to be sorry, to just do whatever felt right. I kept begging the midwife to tell me when I could have more of the epidural meds. And then I felt another gush of amniotic fluid. I remember trying to tell someone that it had happened so they could change the pads under me but wasn't sure if anyone had heard me.

But soon the midwife and a nurse were hovering over me and I heard the nurse say "Is that meconium?"

This is when the real hustle and bustle started. They did another internal exam - this was around 8:00am (still no more epidural top off at this point) - and discovered that I was 10 centimeters. Just then my doctor walked in.

"The baby's breech," the midwife said.

"She turned again? Don't scare me like that," my doctor replied.

At that point I knew that a c-section was going to be inevitable.