The labor that wasn't

This is the gory details birth story post. If you're not interested, you should skip it. But there are a lot less gory details with this one than the last one.

Sunday night almost two weeks ago, C and I are doing our normal Sunday night thing, which is us watching something on TV (Season 2 of Buffy, for the curious) while I fall asleep on the couch. Then C plays video games until he wakes me up to go to bed.

We'd also wrapped up a bunch of pre-baby tasks and were enjoying the calm: Getting the tree. Getting the tree decorated. Getting a new (Scotchguarded) slipcover on the couch, because I'd been doing a second shift of sleep on the couch practically every night and I didn't want to ruin the couch by having my water break on it.

So at 10:30PM, my water broke and I woke up, staggered to the bathroom, swearing. (The couch was fine.) I'd tested GBS-positive, which meant that I needed to be in active labor within 24 hours of my water breaking or risk serious damage to the baby. My doctor had said on my last visit that if my water broke, they'd want me to head to the hospital immediately. And since I had a C-section last time, they won't want to induce me, so I'd just be sitting in a hospital waiting for contractions to start.

I call my monitrice: water broke, no contractions, 10:30PM at night. Should I call my doctor or can I wait until morning, unless hard and fast labor comes on? She says, go to bed. Check your temperature and worry if it spikes.

The odds of a woman's water breaking before she goes into labor is about 1 in 10. The odds of labor not starting within a reasonable amount of time after her water breaks are even smaller than that. I know you all know how exceptional I am, and that's carrying through to this labor.

C and I fuss about doing things: finding new blankets for the couch, making sure the reservoir for the tree is attached and full, starting that last load of laundry that needs to get done before I go to the hospital. We go to bed. I wake up halfway, not with contractions, just with my usual midnight pregnancy insomnia, and fall asleep on the couch watching more Buffy.

We get a full night's sleep. My monitrice calls: how's the labor? No contractions. Nothing. GBS means one way or another, there will be a baby coming today or early tomorrow, so let's get A off to school and cared for. C makes some phone calls and our fabulous friends pitch in to take A on a playdate afterschool.

My monitrice comes over and checks the baby with a Doppler (doing great). We call the doctor. Doctor says, well, I have to tell you to come in to the hospital, but I obviously can't force you. (I believe there would be winking in person.) We come to a consensus that we'll all check in again four hours later but I'll stay at home for now (unless crazy things happen).

My monitrice tries some belly massage to get contractions going, and leaves once C is back from dropping off A at school, leaving us with the instructions to go to bed and fool around.

C and I have lunch. We watch TV. We make sure A's been picked up and is being taken care of. We go to bed. We fool around. We take a nap. She calls and wakes us: any contractions? Nope. Some erratic tightenings, but nothing to knock me on my butt. She's coming back over with castor oil and an enema (sounds like a party, right?), since it's 2pm-ish now and we're getting into the do-or-die stage of kicking off labor.

I ask C, "I would know what a contraction is, right? I didn't have such horrible back labor with A that a regular contraction would feel like a walk in the park?"

C says, "Well, if I've learned anything from Bill Cosby, it's that when you have a contraction, you'll make a sound like WHHOOOOOOOOOOO." The fact that I find this funny is why we're still married after all this time.

My monitrice comes back. The enema sounds much better than the castor oil (oh I so hated that castor oil, if you can't tell) but she wants to get the doctor's blessing before we proceed. The doctor's office doesn't call us back for hours, making the whole discussion moot. There's just not enough time left before the 10:30PM deadline to allow either method to work.

It's 4pm. I'm eating apples and string cheese. We're at a confluence. Previous C-section = no Pitocin induction, GBS-positive = 24 hour deadline from water breaking to active labor kicking in. This is all leading up to a repeat C-section.

"How many hours will they not want me to have eaten before a C-section?" I ask, and my monitrice says six.

"Well, it's 4pm, so let's cut it off here and we'll have the kid at ten," I say.

And that's pretty much what we did. At that point, I was resigned, but I couldn't see any way around it. Then it became a question of logistics: when should we get to the hospital (8 and not 7 due to shift change), what's A going to do, when should we call the locals, when should we call the far-off people who wanted to be notified, is my bag packed, where's the extra battery for the camera, who can we trust to get a present for A from the baby, and so on.

We stop by our friends' house where A is staying the night to drop off a backpack of stuff, only to be told that he's already been given a toothbrush, put into PJs, and put to sleep. He's doing well, we're told, although he's had no nap.

By the way, it is the "worst storm ever seen" by our kindly elderly neighbor and San Diego native: pouring rain all day, blowing wind. In the night a tree will be blown over and bash in one of our neighbor's roofs. Our children chose diametrically opposite days to be born.

Miss Julie meets us at the hospital, yay, as does our monitrice. The super-friendly doctor's on-call and will be doing the surgery, yay. He does an exam and says, to nobody's surprise, that I'm only 1.5-2 cm dilated. "Yeah, C-section," I say. And I'm bummed because it's not what I wanted, I know the recovery will suck, but we're going to have a baby and so let's get the darn surgery over with and get to the baby part.

Surgery is, well, surgery. It's not fun. I get a spinal instead of the epidural. C's not allowed in the room until I'm flat on the table and prepped, and not having any of my peeps present while I'm getting the spinal makes me more panicky than anything else (although, truth be told, seeing big needles plunged between my vertebrae is not C's strong point--which is okay, since he's not my anesthesiologist). Dr. Wonderful says, "I'll hold your hand, okay?" and he does; in fact, he hugs me and talks me through the procedure--which is someone sticking needles between all the spaces of your lower spine) to help me relax and cope.

While I was waiting for the spinal to kick in, I read a whiteboard in the OR that has my information: R C-S, the doctor's name, and then my last name, which is spelled wrong. I tell the anesthesiologist, who says that the whiteboard is not part of his domain. I tell Dr. Wonderful, who says, "Oh, come on, guys, can we spell her name right?" which made me feel so much better because you all know how batty it would make me to lie there and read it over and over again.

C comes in and says, "T's here too," which was so amazing and sweet and I was so touched, even though I was shivering and nervous about surgery and all that. (T brought a book, remembering the last labor, and debated whether or not he needed two books.)

This surgery went faster, and they were kind enough to hold the baby over the big drape so that C could tell me the gender, "A boy!" It's 9:58pm. Apgars are 8 and 9. Eight pounds, eleven ounces--this is a big baby. C counts fingers and toes and tells me the right number this time. And when the pediatric nurse is done, C sits near me and holds the baby and we discuss names, since we hadn't really gotten around to picking one. I stare and stare since this one does not, as I anticipated with either gender, look like A. There are similarities, but the differences are what strike me: this one has C's tiny cute ears instead of the huge ones A inherited from me. I check to make sure the nurses didn't just hide them under the cap.

Anyway, the discovery during surgery: L as a true knot in his umbilical cord. This happens in .6-1% of births. This means that if we'd actually had labor and/or a vaginal delivery, the odds of L dying in the process would have increased by about 400%. When I think about that, it gives me goosebumps: all the things that I resented for leading us to a C-section are suddenly all the things that kept L alive.

C left the room with L while they tied me up with lots of adhesive tape (which I would have a nasty-ass allergic reaction to, leaving me welted and red all across my very delicate regions until three or four days of Benedryl took it down). We were reunited in the same room we'd been in before the surgery, which was nice. I was surprised by how much I wanted to just hold this one all to myself after surgery. J & T came in to see him while C made phone calls. I ended up sleeping with L all night.

Anyway, after that, we were transferred to the postpartum rooms. I had three roommates in as many days. Most of them were short-term, but it was still incredibly stressful for me. All I wanted was quiet and privacy and sleep, and listening to other people's small dramas is incredibly tiring. (Especially when your new roommate shows up at 3AM after you've just gotten you and your baby to sleep.)

But they moved me to the window side of the room where I could watch hummingbirds in the tree outside the window, and the nurses (for the most part, with one glaring exception) were fine. They all agree with me that L looks like a full-term baby and not a baby with a week or so left to go. Since I thought my due date was the 9th and the ultrasound dating put it at the 16th, I feel vindicated.

Still, I was texting C at 4AM on Thursday morning: They will discharge me today or I will sign myself out AMA.

Happily, my doctor must have recognized that, because he said sure, go home, just come to the office tomorrow to get your staples out.

Now L is ten days old, and he's snuggly. As long as he gets snuggled, he's happy. He's been a good sleeper so far; nursing is going well. He has a half-smile that makes him look exactly like Indiana Jones. I'm besotted and engrossed (which is why there's no blog updates or quick responses to emails).

A's back into the swing of life with his mean mommy and daddy instead of the party life with everyone else who dotes on him, and he seems to be coming around to life as normal, which is what we're striving for. Today he gave L a kiss and a hug on the way out the door to preschool, so he's coming around to L as well.

I'm moving, still easily tired, still on painkillers, still taking it slow. We did an IKEA stop today, but slowly. C is a fantastic father and husband and is the glue holding our house together and the one who keeps us all laughing. I'm so glad I have him. I'm so glad have all of them.