Tuesday, August 4
I
had been having contractions on and off for a few weeks, so my doctor decided
to do a membrane sweep at my 39 week appointment to try to get things going. I
had one the week before also that didn’t work.
Wednesday, August 5
At
about 3am I started having contractions, but they were fairly mild and spaced
apart (about 10 minutes). This continued on all day, and I went for a walk with
Burke in the morning. That evening, my friend Kim brought over a warm apple pie
to try to get things going. This was an inside joke because she had brought
Kira an apple pie the day Kira’s water broke. So I ate a giant piece and went
for a walk around Oakbank. The contractions were there but still no progress
and fairly mild so I decided to go to bed around 9:30pm.
Thursday, August 6
I woke up around 1am on Thursday
morning with contractions. I thought they might be timeable so I got up to see.
They seemed a bit stronger so I woke Tommy up at 1:30 and we decided to wait
until 2:30 to make sure they were real contractions and then try to find
someone to watch Burke. By 2am, I knew we should start calling people so I
started to try to reach someone to stay with Burke. After going through my
list, no one was answering because it was the middle of the night, and things
had really suddenly gotten intense so we decided to just bring Burke to the
hospital.
When we arrived at the hospital,
the lady at admissions said “oh shit, didn’t anyone call you?” When I said no,
she told me that the maternity ward was closed due to low staffing and they
were directing people to the city. She told me I would be checked and then
transferred to the city. This whole time Burke was being very good and kept
assuring me that “I’ll find you a bandaid alright mommy?” which was pretty
cute. I went to the maternity ward and there was one labour and delivery nurse
on, and one student/or maybe a nurse from another ward. The second nurse checked me and they
had to get out a chart to compare it to because she wasn’t super experienced. I
was already 6-7cm and they knew I wouldn’t have time to be transferred to the
city. My was able to get a hold of my brother and he came to the hospital to
get Burke thank goodness (at about 4am)!
They called the on call Dr. who
happened to be an OB/GYN (my doctor was a family doctor that does deliveries
not a specialist). She showed up and I was 8-9cm. She tried to break my water,
but there was nothing there to break. I had gone in the week before thinking my
water was leaking only to be sent home and told it wasn’t. I got some Fentanyl
because things were moving so quickly and hurting extremely badly. They kept
trying to make me lay down but I physically couldn’t, I could only sit up. At
5am they had me start pushing at 9cm, because the baby wasn’t doing well. Her
heartrate was dropping really low and they had to put an oxygen mask on me to
try to help. None of that pushing worked and was extremely painful and I was
begging them to let me wait to push because I didn’t want to. They agreed, but
put me on pitocin to speed up the contractions to make things happen more
quickly. I finally felt like pushing and the contractions were unbearable.
At this point (I didn’t hear it
at the time) my doctor had made the call to do a c section. She had called the
on call anesthesiologist to come in. The scar tissue that I had from Burke’s
birth (2 tears and an episiotomy – all improperly repaired) was going to make
this birth dangerous/not possible. They were allowing me to push to keep me
calm and it was making me feel better. The baby was still really high, but her head was turned toward the side. Well
right as she said c-section to me, I could feel the baby coming really fast.
They tried to get me to stop pushing but it was impossible. They were able to turn her to sunny side up as she was coming down. They rushed around
to try to find the numbing needle and she was born. They put her on my chest
and I was super excited to see that she was here safe and actually a girl!
Lilja Berlin was born at 7:10am.
They started prepping me for
surgery immediately and Tommy got to take Lilja. They wheeled me into the OR
and I was in so much pain from the pitocin. The placenta was stuck so they
needed to get that out too. When she was born, all of the scar tissue tore
apart, and I started losing a lot of blood. Tommy said when they wheeled me out
I was grey looking. I remember laying on the OR table and the doctor asking if
I was having any more kids, and I said no. Then I was out.
While in surgery, I had a D&C
to remove the placenta and then a reconstruction from the birth. They were able
to remove much of the scar tissue and repair it but it definitely would not be
advisable to have more kids now (or they would do a c-section). She also found
a large fluid filled abscess in the scar tissue that they had to remove.
I woke up around 9:30am, and was
feeling extremely out of it. The nurses were asking what the baby’s name was
because Tommy told them it was my decision. I told them Lilja. I asked how big
she was but the nurses didn’t know. They waited a while until 10am before
wheeling me back out to my recovery room. I finally got to hold Lilja and found
out she was 7lbs, 3.5oz, and 19.25 inches long.
Once I was settled into my
recovery room, I was started on a blood transfusion. Over the next 2 days I
ended up getting 4 transfusions. I got out of the hospital Aug 9th and
am still very weak but doing ok.
Lilja is the best baby. She
nurses well, sleeps well, and is happy. I am super thankful that she is healthy
and I had a fast birth that allowed her to get out in time.
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