So we left off with me being pregnant, jobless, in a new city... and absolutely ecstatic!
The pregnancy went smoothly, no worries, no problems, just happily eating away, gaining undisclosed amounts of weight and growing a big healthy baby boy. Of course I scrambled to find a job before I started to show. It turned out people who didn't know me well couldn't tell I was pregnant by looking at me until about 5 months, possibly due to the undisclosed amount of weight gained.
Then the baby was almost due. The midwives had me in what seemed like every day to take measurements, check heartbeat, and poke and prod me (is my pee really that fascinating?). Of course our luck had to run out sometime, and it did, two weeks before my due date.
My belly measurements swelled one appointment, then shrunk the next. That wasn't good. We happened to have a nurse midwife we had never seen before, when my belly decided to act up. She had just come off a surgical rotation at a hospital, and had been absent during the previous 8 months of my pregnancy while she dealt with emergency births. She ordered an ultrasound suspecting loss of amniotic fluid. At the ultrasound they found two things, my son measured 11-13 pounds and I had cysts on my ovaries.
The nurse midwife was adamant that we HAD to induce ASAP. We could not wait the few days until my son's due date, we certainly couldn't wait for him to come on his own. He would be a monster by then and require emergency interventions. Much better to be safe and force him to come now, she argued. I called everyone I could in my pregnancy support circle and no one could offer me a lifeline. I was only a matter of days away from my due date and I could feel the changes happening to my body in preparation to give birth, but we couldn't wait for the natural process I had planned.
I wanted my precious boy to experience the cascade of hormones that preceded a spontaneous birth, which I had read article after article about. I had learned in the final hours before my son's birth, my body and baby would work together to prepare both for the separation. Those final moments would give my son the last developmental push before having to survive without the protection, nourishment and comfort of my womb. I wanted with a mother's heart to give my son that first advantage in life. I decided with a mother's guilty heart to show up for my Friday induction appointment.
The rollercoaster had left the station and the nurse midwife was not going to let me get off. My husband convinced me to take Friday off work. I was certain I could work the day and then go to the hospital right after work, really I could! So, that Thursday I tied up whatever loose ends I could at work, in between regailing my co-workers with stories of my giant baby, then went home to prepare for an induction the next day.
Late Friday afternoon, I walked into the hospital feeling out of place. If this were a TV drama I should be hunched over, leaning on my husband, holding my swollen belly and breathing in heavy panting breaths between exclamations of pain and distress. Instead I waddled in, excited and nervous, but not panting or in pain. I carried my hospital bag (packed months earlier), my labor music, a change of clothes for me and baby and a HUGE bag of snacks. Later a nurse snickered as she spied the bulging bag and said, "you won't be wanting those."
They got me checked in and assigned a room, then gave me a Cervadil suppository to ripen my cervix. I changed into my labor clothes before they strapped a heartbeat monitor around my belly, taped an iv to my arm, and instructed me to lay on one side so that the baby would rotate into the correct position by morning. I laid down on my adjustable hospital bed, ready for a nice restful evening's sleep. The induction wouldn't truly start until the pitocin was added to my iv in the morning. At least that was the plan!
The belly strap was incredibly uncomfortable. It felt like a vice grip around my middle. I was stuck on one side by the nurse's orders, like a beached whale, I felt my overly flexible hips and shoulders bending under the weight of the undisclosed pounds I had gained and my enormous baby boy. I had to pee every few minutes, dragging the heartbeat monitor and iv behind me like a lifeless limb. Wait, was that pee? Or was that amniotic fluid? Yes! Definitely amniotic fluid.
Wake up, wake up! Yes, it's 1 am. Get the nurse! My water just broke! Yes, really! And that vice grip around my belly isn't really coming from the heartbeat monitor strap, it's getting stronger... I'm in labor! GET THE NURSE!
This was the point that the TV drama began. I was walking around the empty halls, hunched over, leaning on whatever person or large object was close by as a contraction crept up on me, breathing heavily between exclamations of pain and fear. Nineteen hours, a relaxing soak in the labor tub (followed by an infusion of pitocin), lots of apple juice (no snacks from the bursting snack bag), a switch to a scalp heartbeat monitor, a few moments of panic when the heartbeat monitor showed a slowing heartbeat, an invasive dr's exam or two, a cold towel placed on a nurse's forehead instead of mine, two hours of pushing, a list of questions intended to prep me for an epidural and c-section, lots of yelling, groaning and bleeding later, my son decided to wake up and participate in his birth process and was born without surgery or even pain killers at 9 lbs 14 oz, mostly head.
I had accomplished my revised first goal as a mom, get him out. Try to keep both of us (mostly) in one piece and avoid pain medications that could dull the crisp experience of birth for both mom and baby. I was exhausted, of course, and promptly fell asleep during the baby bathing demonstration. My husband has been in charge of baths ever since.
Later I discovered that baby weight measurements are incredibly inaccurate so close to the baby's due date. The measurement is heavily reliant on the size of the head, but at that stage the head is engaged and too low to get a clear picture in ultrasound. Well, also my son was mostly head. No, really, people on the street noticed, really!
I also later discovered that my ovarian cysts were not shrinking like they should after the hormone changes of giving birth. I was referred to an ob-gyn, the same one who had performed the invasive exam when my son's heartbeat had dropped during labor. We knew eachother. Well, he knew me very well.
He sent me in for an MRI. It was the most relaxing few hours I had spent since my son was born. I wasn't on high alert for babies crying. I could lay down and enjoy some music of my choice without interruption, except the occasional, "don't move or breathe until we say it's okay" followed by incredibly loud, sci-fi like pounding sounds.
The doctor diagnosed dermoid cysts on both ovaries. One side was the size of a football and the other not much smaller. I'm still not sure how a 10 pound baby, an undisclosed amount of weight, and a football or two could all fit in my body at once, but they did.
In case you don't know what demoid cysts are, here's the definition from. Merriam Webster:
"Main Entry: dermoid cyst
Function: noun
Date: 1872
a cystic tumor often of the ovary that contains skin and skin derivatives (as hair or teeth);called also dermoid"
Yes, skin, hair, teeth! On my ovaries! Those needed to go! Surgery it was.
No comments:
Post a Comment