Birth story, part 2

Tuesday morning. Okay, i was a bit sick again, but i thought whatever, i can still go home. Silly me. Also turns out different doctors have completely different ideas about getting baby out/keeping baby in. Dr Tuesday arrived, said i looked a bit poorly, to which i replied that i wanted to go home. He said there was very little evidence to suggest baby is better off in belly until 37 weeks, and that there's not that much difference between 35 and 37. The risk of infection is far worse and in his opinion it's better to get baby out. He wanted yet more blood from me to check for any infections and said he would return the same afternoon. I was a lot better that day, no sick, no major pain, the only thing was that i couldn't go to the toilet. Yuk! About 5 pm, dr Tuesday's understudy came along and said no infection, everything looks okay, so let's monitor things over night and make a decision in the morning. We were very surprised when, around 7 pm, midwife came along and said Jenny, you're going to the labour ward. Turns out dr took another look at my notes and decided that this baby had to come out. And thank you very much indeed, because it turned out i wasn't very well at all... At the labour ward, baby's heartbeat was checked again and instead of being between 110 and 160 as it should be, it was between 175 and 180. Turns out i was dehydated and had a temperature. I was put straight on a drip, with added paracetamol and antibiotics. As soon as i got enough liquid baby's heartbeat went down to normal. Time for the induction hormone... They asked me about pain relief and i was like naaah, i'll try without. I'd been in so much pain for so many days i thought at least this would be productive, and it would lead to something. The thing with artificial oxytocin is that it is instant and when you're induced you're not allowed to move. No one tells you this! So within five minutes i was in loads of pain, and i was like right i'm ready to walk around and find all these good contraction positions. Wrong! Don't move your legs, don't sit up, no you can't roll over. Who can have contractions laying down flat and not moving? Not me! I was definitely not allowed to go to the toilet but i went on about it so much, the poor midwife unstrapped my wires and let me go. Once in the toilet i laid on the floor crying, and finally decided that yes i did indeed need an epidural. I will add that at this point i am hooked up to a drip, blood pressure cuff, contraction monitor, baby heart beat monitor plus a catheter after my recent toilet issue. Add to this the epidural in my back - that's why i wasn't allowed to move, i was simply hooked up to too many machines. After the epidural things go a bit blurry. I remember things being a bit floaty, at one point i said to bill that it felt like i was on an airplane. I even slept a bit, but woke up every ten minutes to top up the epidural, eventhough i was only allowed a top-up every half an hour. This goes on from about 10pm until 6am. During this time the baby's heartrate drops to around 70-80 every time i have a contraction. I wasn't aware of this at all, but bill is basically super scared at this point. Doctors believe to cord got compressed with every contraction, but weren't worried as it went straight back up afterwards. It meant that instead of turning the drip up though, they kept having to turn it down. After around seven hours of this i was three cm dilated, and "my team" (i had a lot of people in and out of that room) decided (well, they asked us to decide) that it was time for the knife. Baby not happy, induction not working, so an emergency c-section was the best thing for baby. A very dramatic saga indeed. I don't remember a lot of this night. When bill tells the story i realise how stressful and worrying it was. Had i been aware of our little baby's heartrate dropping like that i would have certainly anicked. In the end, our little baby girl was born very happy and healthy, and i am very grateful to all the doctors for making the right decisions on those last few days... Might return at some point and write about the actual birth, and the c-section, but for now, this is my story...