Birth - Part 2

When I left off I was up to having started the Syntocinon. The next two hours were the most painful of my life. I've had major surgery a couple of times, I've had me some pain and I thought that I might be able to cope with it, but nothing is like labor. With surgery it generally only hurts really bad if you move. With labor, there is nothing you can do about it, there is only so much that positioning and heat sacks can do. You can't postpone it or get around it, it just comes and rips your guts out until there's nothing you can do but scream. This of course is posterior labor with Syntocinon, the double pain whammy. I tried the nitrous for a while but I hated it. I couldn't breath as fast or deeply as I wanted to and to keep the tube in my mouth meant I couldn't yell.
After about 2 hours of this I finally said the magic words "I want an epidural". I had dilated out to 5 cm by this point and I could take no more. Another friend of mine had had to wait more than an hour for an epidural when she wanted one, this I was kind of afraid of. Mind you she wanted it at 2am and had to be transfered from a birth centre to the hospital. Blessings be the anesthesiologist turned up only 15 minutes later and I had the epidural in about 10 minutes after that. Epidurals are wonderful, mine wasn't even to begin with, my right leg went completely numb and immovable while my left was only lightly numbed and I still had a window the size of my palm on my hip, but I didn't need to scream anymore. It was about 2pm when I had the epidural. Something funny, when I was sitting over the bed for the epidural to be put in, Mr b^3 was sitting in a chair at my feet, when I had a contraction I managed to squirt amniotic fluid onto him. Not much and it was the only mess he got in the whole thing.
After the epidural was put it, I could just lie back on the bed and rest for a bit. The anesthesiologist came back at about 5pm to even up the epidural. I was really thankful for this, he didn't really need to, the pain relief was enough, but he said that he was a perfectionist and even though it looked like I was going to be fine from there on in, it wouldn't be good enough if I needed intervention.
I had dilated out to 10cm by 5pm but this is when we found out that she was posterior. Because it's much harder work to push out a posterior baby I was to lie on my left side for a while to try and get her to turn around. I was also told at about then to stop using the clicker for the epidural at about 6 pm to let it wear off enough that I could feel to push.
I started to feel like pushing about 7 ish I think. She was still posterior, but I didn't mind. Pushing contractions felt so different to the dilation contractions. In as much as it is possible, I was having fun. I wasn't afraid of having to work harder, just so as it didn't hurt as much as before.
I was pushing really well and everything looked like it was set. The midwife started to lay everything out for the birth and we were ready. Our OB turned up and wanted to do one last internal exam to check everything out.
We deliberatly had not written a birth plan. We had gone into the birth with no expectations as to what was going to happen. Instead, we had learned all we could about everything and we would see what would happen. The only firm conviction I had was that I didn't want any narcotics, I didn't want to go silly. This I got. However, we were down to the last half hour or so, just a little pushing and we would have our baby. The birth suite was nice and quiet with just the OB and the midwife with Mr b^3 and I. Everything was ready and it really looked like we could have some expectations as to what was going to happen.
Then the OB did the exam and felt her nose. He told us that she was what was called deflexed. At that point I had another 'oh shit' moment. I had read about this only the previous week. Mr b^3 hadn't read about it and I don't think I had mentioned it to him so he had to wait for the rest of the explanation. Penny was presenting brow first. Babies are supposed to be born with their chins tucked into their chests, coming with the crowns of their heads coming first, all tucked up nice and small. Instead Penelope had put her head back and was coming brow first. This adds about 4 cm to the diameter of baby that needs to come out. Theoretically if the baby is really small and the mother has really big hips and a pretty decent epistiotomy, it is possible to give birth vaginally to a brow presentation baby. Penelope was not a tiny baby, there was no way she was going to be born vaginally, she was stuck on my pelvis and we needed a c-section.
Suddenly there seemed to be about 2o people in the room getting me ready to go down to theatre. It all went into a confusing mess. Mr b^3 got overwhelmed by everything and sillily I was more worried about him than about me. He ended up sitting outside of the theatre were he could hear everything, but he wasn't feeling well enough to be in the theatre with me. In the theatre the epidural was turned right up and a bunch of other drugs were added. The OB did see if she could be born with forceps, but that was really a no go. There was a screen put up so I couldn't see what was going on so I didn't know that they had started until a couple of minutes in. When she was out they didn't lift her up high enough for me to see if it was she or he and I had to ask them to do it again. She was passed to me after a couple of minutes, that's us in the photo. I couldn't hold her for as long as I wanted to because I started to puke, so I had to send her out to Mr b^3. And thats it for the birth. The girl is one month old tomorrow, so I'll post about that next.