In the morning I was no closer to birth. Still only 2 centimeters, and only slightly more effaced. We started the drip. Two hours later I was ready for an epidural. Okay, now we were in familiar territory. I'd had an epidural before and knew just what to expect.
The anesthesiologist began. But it hurt. I don't remember it hurting last time. "Ow, that really hurts." And he sprays my back again. I can feel pain and I start to cry. "We can just not do this," he says. I tell myself to stop being a baby, that surely this pain is better than having to feel the pain of labor. "No, it's okay, please go on." I start to shiver, I am crying, with snot coming out of my nose, and all of a sudden I begin to urinate. The anesthesiologist is asking me to stop shivering, my husband and my nurse are each holding onto me so that I don't fall off of the bed, and I am peeing down my leg and all over the floor and their shoes. I am miserable. I am humiliated.
The anesthesiologist tells me he's done, and then asks me how I feel. "Do you feel the medicine working? We are doing a test dose right now." Less than a minute later I cannot feel my legs at all. They have to roll me back on the bed, and change my sheets with me on the bed, little by little. I can not help them at all. I cannot feel anything in my lower body. He informs me that the epidural has been placed in the wrong place. There was a name for it, but I can't remember what. I remember someone saying that I got what women who get C-sections get.
Soon after receiving the injection my blood pressure dropped. I could not stay on a continuous flow of pain medication and was told to "let them know" when I needed more medication.
Fifteen minutes later the effects of the medicine began to wear off. "I can feel my legs again." I said it like it was a good thing. Over the course of the next few hours I was in the most pain I have ever been in for 45 minutes of every hour. For 15 minutes of every hour I was numb from the waist down. I had a love/hate relationship with my anesthesiologist. I hated him for putting the epidural in wrong. I loved him whenever he walked into the room to give me more medicine. I hated waiting for more drugs (he was the only anesthesiologist on duty). I loved the numbness that enveloped me after he gave me the injection.
I was on oxygen most of the time because my blood pressure would keep dropping, but that was for the baby more than for me. I needed oxygen in my blood.
On my nurse's lunch break another nurse walked in and started checking my vitals and looking at the baby monitor. After a couple of minutes she started moving the "baby monitor belt" around my belly. And panicking. "We've lost his heartbeat. Roll over, I need to get this monitor on your back." I am numb from the waist down. She is frantically trying to roll me over and begging my husband to help her. Robert is staring at her like she has completely lost her mind, I am crying and he's looking in my eyes telling me that everything is fine, the baby is fine. Meanwhile the nurse is screaming for other nurses to help her. The nurse finally finds the heartbeat, and the other calm nurses take over.
At 2 in the afternoon I start to feel the need to push. "I think it will be soon," I tell my husband. But the nurse says I still have a long way to go. I second guess myself. I have heard horror stories of women pushing when their bodies were not ready. "You'll be ready to start at about 4:00," she tells me. For the next hour I ignore my body's need to push. I writhe on the bed and scream in agony. "Please, I beg. Please." The nurse allows me a chance to push and then tells me to stop. "You're a great pusher. We need to wait on your doctor to get here." At about 3:40 I receive another dose of pain medicine and soon after my midwife walks in. "I hear you just got some pain medicine. Well, that means we've got about 15 minutes to get this baby out, what do you say?" I laugh and cry at the same time.
I have my nurse on my left side and my husband on my right. They are holding my legs up, and every time I accidentally bump into my own leg, I think that I am touching my nurse. Eventually I realize that it is my own skin I am touching, and while I am pushing out my son I keep thinking that I should have shaved the night before.
At 4:01 my son is born and they lay him, a bloody mess, on my chest. He is beautiful. The midwife tells my husband to cut the cord. "No thanks." "But you have to do it, I'm not strong enough," she says. So he cuts it. I think to myself, now I can finally get some sleep.
Yeah right!
