Giving Birth Is Really Hard

Contrary to what I was thinking a month ago, the universe is not so unkind as to allow me to stay being pregnant forever.

That's right! Ripley Ellen Maixner was born on August 19th, 2014. She came in at 7 pounds 9 ounces and 19 inches. And of course, since my pregnancy was so hard, my labor was perfect, easy, and over-all a magical experience.

...

HAHAHAHAH. Just kidding, it was awful, and I'm gonna tell you all about it, in super-duper, graphic detail.

This post will be splattered with pictures of baby kittens in order to ease you into the story of me splattering out a human being into the world.

So, let us rewind to midnight of Monday night (or Tuesday morning, whatever is technically right in this situation). My due date was the 15th, so I was 4 days late and on high alert for any sign of baby coming. The main thing I was really hoping for was actually my water breaking. I had been having Braxton-Hicks contractions for like a month already, which are similar to real contractions, in that they hurt and suck, but unlike real contractions in that they don't do anything to bring baby out and if you go to the OB while having them, they'll just send you home and you'll just be in unproductive pain inconsistently throughout the day and be super confused as to what a real contraction should even feel like. If my water broke, then I would for sure be having a baby that day, instead of being "allowed" to go back home.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I was also having some lovely, intense pelvic pain, which upon Googling, discovered was called "lightning crotch," which is hilarious.

Like this, but in your vagina.

Anyways, I was laying in bed, playing Restaurant Rush on the iPad and kicking a ton of food ass, when I felt what I could only call a definite weird feeling. I woke Grey up, thinking that this was maybe my water breaking, then proceeded to stand out of bed to go to the bathroom to investigate.

This was evidently the right move, because if I wasn't sure about my water breaking previous to this, my amniotic fluid left no room for doubt.

What my OB had told me to look for when my water broke was a slight trickle or a light burst. This is not what happened. I essentially released what felt like three gallons of liquid in about 0.5 seconds. It was the Niagara Falls of water breakage.

Like this, but out of my vagina.

Cue new pants, and off to the hospital we went.

Well, first we dropped by a gas station and picked up an iced tea and a back of Ranch Munchies, because once you get admitted to the hospital, you can no longer eat, and I wanted to go in with the taste of Doritos and French Onion Sun Chips lingering on my tongue.

An interesting note on water breakage; it doesn't really ever stop. You just keep leaking water intermittently all the way up to baby coming out. It's pretty gross. So make sure to bring a towel to the car and try really hard not to sneeze.

Sorry for that image. Here's a cat mid-sneeze.

We arrived at the hospital around 1 in the morning, me waddling to avoid creating slipping hazards and Grey riding on a crazy adrenaline train that had him way too giddy for the time of night it was. First thing I had to do was assure the horrified nurses that I was in fact not having a stroke, and that my face was weird looking because of Bell's Palsy. (Yes, that's still totally hanging around, stupid not-working facial nerve.) Then, I got taken to another room and set up on this giant machine that monitors the baby's heartbeat and my contractions.

Once I was slightly comfortable, so began the long parade of people who would be sticking things in me. This first one was checking to see if I was actually leaking amniotic fluid, and hadn't just peed myself, which evidently is a thing. I am not a medical expert, but I know where pee comes from, and was really rather sure that's not where I had been leaking from.

It turns out that I was right, so I was whisked away to the magical labor and delivery floor, which, contrary to many movies I have seen, was not filled with the mingled cries and screams of newly-born children, women giving birth, and dads whose feelings are being hurt by previously mentioned women telling them how this is all their fault.

This is a physical embodiment of what I was expecting to hear.

Instead, I got lead to a quiet room, given giant hospital underwear (which were actually insanely comfortable), and got hooked up to an IV that, unknown to me at the time, would be my buddy for the next four days.

"I make you pee every 15 minutes, but I also deliver you sweet, sweet pain meds."

As soon as I was settled, I got asked about my birth plan. The hospital had a bunch of options; birthing tubs, aromatherapy, a whole lot of other things that were a huge, fat NOPE for me. Don't get me wrong, I think it is great that those options are available for those who want it. I just did not want any of it. My birth plan was pretty much, "please remove baby and I would like to not feel much of it, thanks a bunch." This was actually really close to what I got, so I can't complain too much. I'll just complain enough to make this blog post as close to what you're used to from me as possible.

That being said, I was actually pretty curious about how far I could go without getting the epidural. I have a pretty decent pain tolerance, and seeing as Grey and I have almost completely decided on Ripley being our one and only child, this was going to be my one opportunity to sit it out and see how much I could take.

The answer to this is around 8 hours of contractions. After that, I decided that curiosity was stupid and I wanted to never feel what a contraction feels like ever again.

Oh, and for those of you who have never had contractions, if you are a lady, I'd say think of the worst period cramps you've ever had, then make those wrap around your entire lower torso, then make them hurt about twenty times as much. For guys, think of the cramps you can get when you need to poop. Then make that poop weigh 40 pounds and also you have not pooped for nine months.

Spiderman understands what I'm trying to say here.

Getting the epidural was not a super fun experience either, though. It is, to be clear, a giant needle inserting a catheter directly into your spinal fluid. And, you do not have an epidural prior to getting an epidural, so you do feel the epidural, even though you get a general anesthetic beforehand.

Luckily, my anesthesiologist had excellent bed-side manner and was hilarious, and Grey let me crush his hands while I crouched ass-up on the bed getting a tube shoved into my back. After the initial pain of the injection (which really isn't that bad, especially compared to the super fun time I was having prior), the nurse flipped a switch, and I was nearly instantly the happiest person ever. No more pain!

Negative side to this: you cannot feel anything below the waist anymore, which means you cannot feel the need to pee, and even if you did, would not be able to walk to the bathroom.

This equals catheter in the urethra.

So, between that, the epidural, the IV line, and the frequent cervix checks, let's just say that, when it comes to the birthing process, the penetration only just begins at conception.

I am so, so sorry for that joke.

Another good thing about the epidural is that Grey and I were finally able to fall asleep after being awake for the past 36 hours. We turned on an ocean documentary and just passed out. Between whale calls and a continuous line of high level pain meds, I had some of the best sleep I had had since getting pregnant. It was awesome.

Speaking of watching things on the TV, we were instructed to watch the newborn videos provided by the hospital, and they were unintentionally the most hilarious things. The shining star of these was the Shaken Baby Syndrome video. Now, shaking babies is a bad thing. Going to go out on a limb and say that it is really terrible to shake a baby and you should never do it, and you really shouldn't make a joke of actually hurting a child.

That being said, this video featured grown men with serious faces shaking very obviously fake baby dolls, and for some reason, it made us laugh really, really hard.

Like, seriously, how could you not at least laugh a little at this?  Like an itty, bitty bit?

But, really, don't shake a baby. That's not cool.

Anyhow, let's get back to me trying to have my own baby.

Despite the hours of labor and contractions, I just could not get to the point where my cervix was really dilating. The doctor even put me on pitocin, which is a medication designed specifically to speed up labor and get the cervix a-going. I got to 4 cm, and stayed there. It needs to go up to 10 cm to actually get the baby out, so I only really had enough room for one nurse to get on up there and tell us, "Oh, I can feel that your baby has a lot of hair!"

Grey and I's response to this statement.

I was being checked every half hour or so, and nothing was happening. As time went on, my blood pressure, which was already not so hot when I arrived at the hospital, steadily rose.

This is where the story gets a bit scary, but it turned out well in the end, so no need for anxiety, gentle readers.

About twenty hours after my water broke, I began projectile vomiting. I felt incredibly light-headed, and when the nurses checked, my blood pressure had risen to 165/110. For those who don't know blood pressures, this is super bad. Like heart attack bad. My temperature had also gotten to 104, which put not only me in danger, but Ripley too. All this, and my cervix was still only 4 cm. This meant immediate C-Section.

This calls for a whole bucket of kittens.

This brought in, and I'm not even kidding, about fifteen people into my room, all talking to me, and generally freaking me out. I got wheeled to an operating room, with Grey left in the room I had been in till I would be fully prepped and ready to go.

Except he never got to come in, because I actually had to get put under completely because the anesthesia ended up not working for me at all. I did not really become fully aware of this fact until the first slice.

Aaaaaaaaand now we'll be needing multiple buckets of kittens, thank you.

I do not remember anything else here, besides saying, "Owwww, I can feel that." I wish I could have had somewhat of a delivery story to share with you guys, but that option just wasn't available for me. I went from a low-risk pregnancy to a high so quickly, I didn't even realize what was happening until I was awake one hour later. For this reason, I was really happy that we chose to come to the hospital we did. It was an hour drive (maybe less, because we may or may not have sped the entire way), but it was much more prepared for what I eventually needed than the smaller hospital in the place we currently live. I had become heavily pre-enclampsic and had managed to get an infection due to my water breaking earlier that day. This really could've been bad news for me or the kid, but instead, I just have a wicked scar and a healthy baby.

Basically, hospitals are awesome, and I feel really lucky. I could've died, and instead I'm here, getting to horrify you with the tale of how my baby got ripped out of my abdomen.

Kinda what I get for naming her after the leading character from this movie.

So, I woke up, and the first person I saw was Grey. Just to prep you guys, I'll be devoting an entire post to how great this guy was through this experience and the following days of my recovery. Dads don't necessarily get the credit they deserve, and he deserves a lot. Being able to open my eyes and see him standing with me made me feel stronger.

Alright, done with that mushy stuff, feel free to barf now.

"Gross, Sylvia. I came here for snarky baby talk, not for you talking about love and shit."

About two minutes after I opened my eyes, I got to meet my baby, and that was pretty rad. It's not a feeling you can really describe, and I was also still pretty drugged up, so I just cried and held my baby.

The horrible pain from invasive abdominal surgery came about an hour later, but I think I'll make yet another blog post about C-Section recovery, and instead leave you with the first picture of what I worked so hard to make.

7 pound, 9 ounces and 19 inches of the greatest baby I've ever had cut out of me.

So yeah. Totally worth it all.



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