Time of birth: 10:16 pm (30 hours of labor and one c-section later...)
Weight: 6 pounds, 11 ounces (she was smaller than we anticipated)
Length: 20 inches
Laura remained our nurse throughout the night, which was a great comfort to me. She was with us through the baby's first feeding and getting me through my first few rounds of pain medication. I woke up a little after 7 am the next morning and was very sad at the thought that Laura's shift had ended at 7:00. I know she can't work indefinitely, but I was really sad and smidge worried about what kind of care I might end up with next.
I had no need to worry. My next nurse was Kathy, and she knew what she was up to. My doctor came by that morning to check on me (and let me know with a wink that she'd done an excellent job with my sutures; always good to know that your scar is going to be as tidy as possible). After she left, Kathy did a wonderful job of staying on top of my needs, including contacting Anesthesiology (at the encouragement of my OBGYN) about my horrible headache. I was discovering that I wasn't able to move well, because when I did, I felt as though the top of my head was being pounded with a sledge hammer.
Brad and I spent the day getting to know our little Claire. She was just too cute for words, and I kept thinking how crazy it was that we get to keep her. Like, take her home with us and keep her forever. We just kept looking at her over and over. We were rather cheesy, but apparently, that gene kicks in as soon as the baby is born.
That afternoon, the attending anesthesiologist who had put in my epidural the day before, stopped by to talk to me about my wet tap. A very simplified explanation of a wet tap is that it's a puncture (when inserting an epidural) that causes fluid from the spine to leak. What the anesthesiologist guessed was happening as a result of my wet tap was a spinal or positional headache. My mom had had a spinal headache after I was born and had told me about it previously; she opted at the time to have a procedure called a blood patch, which instantaneously cured her headache. This was exactly the same recommendation that the anesthesiologist offered to me the day after my epidural.
The way a blood patch works makes me a little queasy to think about, but simply stated, the anesthesiologists take some of the patient's blood (like, from the arm) and use it to block or patch up the puncture/wet tap. It stops the fluid from leaking and causing the headache.
Maybe this makes me a whiny little baby, but I was extremely wary of having yet another massive needle stuck in my back (or in my arm, for that matter; basically, I was a little gun-shy of needles in general). My track marks from the day before (3 from the epidural, 3 from the spinal...6 total) were aching and reminding me of how stressful it had been to be stuck repeatedly while hearing discussions of how it wasn't working. Part of my nerves stemmed from the fact that it was fairly obvious to me that the anesthesiologists didn't know why they were having so much trouble getting my procedures done. No one was rude, difficult, or offensive, but I did lose a lot of confidence throughout the various punctures.
I told her I'd think about it, and she said just to let my nurse know when I wanted her to contact the pain center about getting a blood patch. After she left, Brad and I did talk about it, and I told him about my hesitations/reservations/general fearfulness. He told me that he wouldn't pressure me into anything I didn't want to do, but he did think I should give it some thought.
Because I get migraines and have "normal" headaches on a regular basis, my basic idea was just to wait it out (I have a really high tolerance for head pain), continue taking the pain medication (for my surgery and my headache), and deal with the fact that I was back on the mag (for an additional 24 hours). Oi. I still wasn't feeling that great, what with having been in labor for so long, having surgery, and being put back on that wretched mag. Because of the extra 24 hours of mag, I was confined to my bed (meaning I was still hooked up to the catheter and was having my blood pressure taken every half hour or so) and was hooked up to these leg devices that periodically squeezed and released my legs, apparently to keep me from getting blood clots and dying. I always like to avoid death when possible.
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