A Baby Story, Part 5: I'm Sorry...That Does Not Compute

*Something weird happened with blogger today where it re-published Part 1 of my story today...as in March 7 (although it was originally posted days ago). Not sure why. Sorry, y'all.*

Just a reminder of my disclaimer: I have NO intention of delving into the realm of the gory, gross, or oversharing aspects about the birth of our daughter. Some elements of the story will have into go into a taddy bit more detail than I'd usually share, just because the story necessitates it. If there's going to be a bit more "ew" than usual, I'll definitely provide a warning.

If you're not caught up on the traumatic story ground rules, the unexpected change of plans, the Mag from Hades, and the time a doctor gave me track marks, you should definitely do that now.

I'll wait.

Ready? Yesterday's post ended with the anesthesiologists (finally) getting my epidural inserted and started (after 3 attempts/3 separate spinal punctures). Brad was allowed to come back in, and I caught him up on what he had missed, including the distressing dialogue overheard. He was appropriately sympathetic for the back pain and frustrated at the frightening words. And, blissfully, after about 15 minutes, The meds kicked in, and I stopped feeling the contractions and was only dealing with the mag, which didn't even seem so bad anymore, now that the minute-apart contractions were under control. I was almost feeling good and definitely understood why women rave about epidurals.

It was lovely.

Ew coming up...here's your chance to skip...you've been warned.
After about an hour after getting my drugs, my doctor came in to check things. She found that I had progressed to a...3. Wait, that's not progression. That's exactly where I'd been 14 hours earlier. I hadn't progressed at all. I'd been in active labor the whole time but gotten nowhere. She decided to break my water with that SCA-HARY gigantor knitting needle-looking thing. Thank goodness I was all numbed up (although she said it wouldn't have felt any different than an exam anyway. Whatever; that sucker was ridiculous.) It completely freaked me out when she broke my water. It. Would. Not. Stop. The nurses changed the bed pad twice within minutes. My OBGYN said, "Wow, Erin...that's a lot of water. There's got to be a gallon already, and it's not even close to done." This from a woman who does this for a living.

I looked at Brad with my freaked-out eyes, and he said, "Hey, you're that much closer to your pre-pregnancy weight."

Good man. Too bad he's mine and off the market, ladies. ;)

I probably didn't mention this about the mag earlier, but I wasn't allowed out of bed while hooked up to it; meaning they made me use a bedpan. which meant I worked hard to mind-over-matter it, as bedpans are NOT my thing. When she broke my water, she had a nurse put in a catheter. Thankfully, I couldn't feel her put it in. Unfortunately, I did find it really uncomfortable for the rest of the night. After that, my doctor left me for a couple of hours to keep working toward readiness. I was actually able to fall asleep for a while, which was awesome.

Awesome until I started dreaming about contractions. I woke up and thought maybe I was feeling one. But, that couldn't be right; I had an epidural. I asked the nurse to check the contraction chart thing, and we looked at it for a few minutes. Sure enough, I was feeling every single one. I gave myself a few hits of the extra epidural medication, hoping to calm it down (they hook you up to this little pump and trigger so that you can get more, if you need it. Which I did.)

After about 20 minutes, I was feeling everything, and they sent for the resident anesthesiologist from earlier (who was a very very nice doctor. Truly.) He checked me all over to see what I could and could not feel (poking me with small, sharp objects and checking my reflexes). There was about a 3inch radius on my stomach where I couldn't feel anything. I definitely felt everything else. He ended up administering two boluses of medicine, which everyone promised would do the trick.

They did. For about 20 minutes. At this point, I started panicking. If they couldn't get the drugs to work, was I going to have to deliver naturally with no preparation for the process?

My doctor came in again around 6:00pm (26 hours into labor, for those keeping track). She checked me again, and I felt all the discomfort of both the exam and the catheter. I also had a ton more fluid. I started crying a bit, because 1) I was exhausted and 2) I was still thinking about how my pain management option was dissolving before my eyes, and I was still expected to give birth, despite my lack of a pain management plan that I approved of.

Guess what she found during her exam. I had gotten *almost* to 4 cm. HOW had I gotten basically nowhere? I simultaneously started full-out sobbing in fear and uncontrollably shaking. Shaking like someone suffering from hypothermia, but I wasn't remotely cold.

My doctor asked me to try to explain what exactly was causing the panic. I sobbed and stuttered through trying to explain my fear about the failure of the epidural. I guess no one had caught her up, because her reaction was an "Oh, we can fix that. We'll get them to bring in a couple boluses." My nurse explained that we already tried. My doctor's confused "Oh..." did nothing to help my state of being.

I was still shaking and crying and fretting, so she patted my leg and said that she wanted to stop the Pitocin and labor monitoring for an hour. She wanted me to take a nap and give myself an hour break from the stress and discomfort. She wanted the nurses to leave me alone and just wanted me to rest, even though it meant my contractions would slow down.

I was immediately calmer. Still shaking but so much more tranquil. I could have hugged her (if I hadn't been bed-bound by the mag).

So I rested. I didn't sleep, but I listened to worship music, prayed, and calmed down. Brad took a gurney nap, and I thought about Claire Bear. I kept trying to imagine what she'd look like- specifically if she'd look like a lot of newborns who are all red and wrinkly and covered in slimy stuff that makes me frightened. I rather hoped she wouldn't, but I was determined to love her anyway. :)

I particularly listened to the song, "Jesus I Am Resting, Resting." On repeat on my iPod. Very appropriate, no?

I have an album of Jesus music done by Grace Community Church. I absolutely love it and turn to it especially in times of stress and difficulty. Theirs is an "updated" version of this hymn, and it was extremely comforting to me. I listened and rested and played a few songs on repeat.

 Until 7:00 pm and step 2 of "Operation: Let's Try This Again" rolled around.