Allie's birth story

I'm shamelessly stealing this blog idea from other websites today, but since Allie just had a birthday last week, it's timely. Warning: Long

When I was pregnant with Allie, Y2K was still a real fear. I hoped that I wouldn't go into labor early, because everyone was saying that hospitals would be full of equipment that wouldn't work as of January 1, 2000. That date came and went because I wasn't actually due until early February (the 12th, I think? I can't believe that I can't remember). The last four weeks of my pregnancy, I had some pretty severe leg swelling. My legs were huge, red and tight and they hurt all the time, no matter if I had them up or down or sideways or if I soaked them or anything. My doctor had no advice at all. I asked if I could take Tylenol and they said they'd never heard of anyone with legs that looked like mine being helped by Tylenol, but if I wanted to try it, go ahead. It didn't help at all. Nice to know your doctor knows what they're talking about, right. Huh.

Because my legs were so bad, my doctor said when I got to 38 weeks, we could schedule an induction. Greg and I were fine with that, and the day that made sense was Super Bowl Sunday. My doctor was on call, so I'd get her to deliver my baby instead of one of her partners. We were supposed to call about 5:30 a.m. on Sunday, January 30 to see if they had a birthing suite available and if so, we were supposed to head into town. The drive takes about 25 minutes.

I was awake early and so was Greg. Knowing your going to become a family that day will do that to you. It was snowing pretty heavily (and it snowed all day), so when we found out a birthing suite was open, we started out driving pretty cautiously into Madison. We had done this drive lots of times before, for the Confident Homecoming series of childbirth/childcare classes we'd taken at the hospital. Despite that, Greg was so nervous that he missed our exit.

We got to the hospital and walked in from the parking garage. We got a great parking space, right by the door. Greg wanted to get me a wheelchair because of my legs but I said I'd walk. After all, I wasn't in labor. People smiled at us on the way in.

We got checked into our suite and I changed into the infamous hospital gown, which actually had a back. My room was really nice, but I knew I wasn't going to be laboring in the tub or walking in the halls because of my legs, so all I really needed was the bed. After some preliminaries, the nurses started me on Pitocin. It was about 8:00. My doctor stopped by at some point, and eventually the nurses discovered that the Pitocin needle had fallen from the IV attached to my arm when I braced on that arm, so I wasn't getting any medication for probably an hour. That was annoying.

I had some contractions, but nothing that made me catch my breath. Greg and I read the paper, tried to watch the DVDs of "Chef" that he'd brought along, watched other TV, and were pretty bored. Nonetheless, things did progress. I'd been dilated to about 3 cm for two weeks already, so I got to 4-5 cm pretty rapidly. At noon, my doctor returned and asked if I wanted my water broken to speed things up. I said sure! That felt weird, but it did succeed in making things move along and it didn't hurt.

By 2 p.m., I was having some pretty dramatic contractions. I am not a very tough person, so I asked for Numorphin, a drug that was supposed to take the edge off the contractions. Instead, it made me sleepy between contractions and didn't do crap for the contractions. That injection lasted about an hour and when it wore off, I asked for and got an epidural.

I loved that epidural. It was amazing. Greg actually got pretty upset when I was first getting it, because the hospital let a resident anethesiologist try to do it first and they poked, according to Greg, in five different places trying to get the needle placed. I didn't care a whole lot. Needles don't bother me and I was busy trying to breathe through contractions at the time. And when it kicked in--heaven. Being a wimp, I always wonder when I hear stories of moms who give birth without drugs. You know, the prize is the same for them as it was for me at the end, and I got to enjoy the process a whole lot more.

The nurses recommended that I try to get some sleep and I think Greg and I both dozed a little. Things continued to move along and by 6 p.m., they said I could try to push. This is when things started to go bad. Pushing made my blood pressure drop, which meant that after every episode of pushing, I got nauseous and threw up. Pushing also made Allie's heart rate go up, which was a little worrisome. I pushed and threw up, pushed and threw up, pushed and retched helplessly. It was pretty awful. This went on for three hours.

Yep, you read that correctly, three hours. I got desperately thirsty but I wasn't allowed to drink anything because of my retching. Eventually, my doctor checked me and determined that Allie's head was turned a little bit and therefore stuck. She stuck her entire hand inside me, pushed Allie's head back up a little, and rotated it to the correct position. Then they told me to push some more. All righty.

So I pushed some more and retched some more, for about another half hour. Nothing was happening. My doctor came back and said that I hadn't been able to push Allie's head down even as far as it had been before, so it was time to give me some help. She and the resident got out the suction cup thingy, and they both proceeded to spend about half an hour trying to get the suction cup affixed, having me push, and then flying backwards when the cup wouldn't stay on Allie's head. They'd told us before they started that it could be a pretty funny process and it was kind of, but not really, because Allie's heart rate was still elevated enough that they brought in the special care nursery people with an incubator, ready to whisk her away if I actually succeeded in getting her out.

I did not succeed in getting her out, so about 10 p.m., my doctor said they wanted to do a c-section. I had been very calm through the whole process. Greg said later that he completely expected me to scream at him throughout and that just never happened. By the time the c-section was proposed, I was ready to just have this baby, so I calmly said OK, when are we doing this.

Allie was born at 10:27 p.m. on Sunday, January 30, 2000. She was pink and fine, unlike her mother who threw up again on the operating table. I saw her and then I don't remember a whole lot until I was being cooked like a french fry under two heat lamps but still shivering in recovery. And I remember the nurses pushing me to try to nurse, when I still couldn't move my arms or legs. Greg was sitting in a rocking chair next to me, holding Allie. I think he held her for the first hour or more of her life. He said later that no one told him he could put her down.

We got back to my room (the discount floor now, since I was just a recovering c-section surgery patient now instead of a birthing suite mom) by maybe 1 a.m.ish? I remember that they wouldn't let us get any sleep that first night. The nurses continually checked if I was having pain (that was nice), how much I was bleeding, what my vitals were, how the baby was, and on and on. By morning, we were exhausted.

And ecstatic. I couldn't wait for family to arrive to meet our beautiful Alexandra Grace. She's still beautiful, still our Alexandra, but now she's 7. Now you know how it was when you were born. Happy birthday again, sweetie!