LABOR

Over the past few months, I've occasionally gotten nervous messages from nice people who follow this blog: "hey, you disappeared, assume you had the baby, how is everything?", "How are you? I've missed your posts lately. Did you deliver yet?" I'm very sorry if I alarmed anyone, or caused them to conclude that I was scarred by giving birth to a breech hedgehog and experiencing intense surrogacy remorse. The truth is I've just had better things to do with my new freedom :D

The short of it is: on August 16th, my uterus tried to kill the baby. The doctors stepped in with a last minute c-section and saved the day! Winchester and Wolfram now have a lovely little girl (if I do say so myself!) no worse for wear, and I recovered quite swiftly.

The long version goes something like this:


I went into labor on the evening of my due date. By the time Winchester (father-to-be), Hotshot (my girlfriend), Mitsy (my doula) and I got to the hospital, a couple hours after leaving the house, I was just starting to really be in pain and I was 6cm dilated! For those of you in the know, you can imagine how pleased I was to hear that I was so far progressed after so little pain! I was on the way! I was dilated enough for an epidural even! And so I promptly requested one.

I can't say how much time passed between the onset of intense pain and the epidural. It was a couple hours at least, but not terribly long. I can say that I have never been so thankful for the presence of a single human being in a particular instance as I was for Mitsy then. She did this awesome ninja hip squeeze thing during the contractions that reduced my pain by HALF. And she did it every three minutes. For several hours. She is a BEAST.

I finally got my epidural and all was well in the world. We all had just settled down to get some rest when suddenly the room was swarming with staff - nurses, OBGYNs, and one of my favorites: Hottie Midwife, surging around me medical-drama style. Baby's heart rate was dropping and they were having trouble keeping it up. I was devastated, but when Hottie Midwife looked at me and said that I had to have a c-section, I was totally confident that they had done everything they could to avoid it. The medical name for what happened is tachysystole, with possible placental abruption.

They gave me a few minutes to collect myself before prepping me for surgery. I sobbed. Mitsy consoled me, and I cried heavily on Hotshot. I also almost gave her a heart attack when I grabbed her, needles sticking out of my arms and oxygen tubes flying, and pulled her onto my bed for a full hug. I pulled myself together and Winchester came with me into surgery.

For a little bit we had a lot of fun. Crackin jokes with the anesthesiologist, chit chatting with Winchester, generally marveling at the new sensations in my body. Or rather, lack of sensations. Getting cut up just felt like a lot of pulling and tugging. Ugh, except for the shaking. So much shaking. My arms and jaw were shaking like Wile E Coyote getting electrocuted by power lines. My anesthesiologist kept saying "just shake, just shake, let it all out, it's normal" and I was like, "yyyoooouuu tthhhiiinnkk III hhavveee aa chhhooiicceeeeeee??????"

After what seemed like a very long while, I felt something suction-y and saw a baby being rushed to heat lamps. Now, granted that this was the first brand new new born I'd ever seen, I was sure that this baby was not in great shape. She was limp, and silent. Winchester and I kept up the banter that had been going on throughout the whole surgery. Our mouths kept moving and sound kept coming out but I'm sure neither of us knew what we were saying. It took two minutes - two full minutes - before we heard a tiny pterodactyl-like sound that confirmed that we had, indeed, made a baby.