birth WITH fear my labor and delivery story

 ATHENA MARIE DEGEL 04-05-2012

 nearly 4 months later looking back on the  days of April 4th and 5th its not as much of a blur as it used to be on the 3rd the doc had me do a 24 hour urine culture or what ever its called to see if i was getting pre-eclampsia which after the snotty nurse at the hospital said well you have a little high blood pressure but your doctor isn't on call this weekend so we are going to send you home  to do this urine thing bring it back in 24 hours and we will see if you actually do have it so i did that and i took it back and not even 24 hours later i was cleaning up around the house when i got a call from my ob/gyn and said you do in fact have the on start of pre-eclampsia so we are going to induce you before it becomes full blown  so get to the l/d asap so i called tony and told him we needed to get to the hospital so he left work and we got things together no i didn't have everything ready i had Athena's bag packed but not mine  so i in a rush got my things together and waited for tony . By the time we got to the hospital it was around 7ish i had called my dad my mom and everyone else who wanted to be called ,they checked me in and got me hooked up to a million iv tubes i had to be put on magnesium,and pitosin  which i knew would make me labor harder then it would have been naturally they told me i could get the epidural if i needed it when the contractions became unbearable the contractions weren't so bad at first but then they started getting worse much worse when they checked me i was 3 or 4 at this point all i wanted to do was sleep because i had seen enough shows and done enough reading to know if i didn't enough rest i wouldn't have enough strength to push so i told tony i needed it he said is it that bad and any woman who is at the point of exhaustion just want to slap their husband when they ask them that but i didn't  i told him yes the nurse came in and checked me and said that i was the same and i should try and wait till i couldn't handle it any more really i wouldnt have asked for it if i could handle it because i had always said i would as long as i could with out pain meds because i know that there is a chance they can slow down labor but i told the nurse that i couldnt handle it anymore so she got the epidural guy in and believe it or not it didnt hurt  all that bad i guess being a gestational diabetic who had to give herself insulin shots twice a day  and having so many tattoos built up my tolerance for needles but i digress after that i tried to get some sleep i got some and then everyone showed up and we all visited and it didnt look like athena was going to be making an appearence any time soon so i sent a couple people home except those who refused to go home mom,dad,grammy and in what seemed like minutes it was time to push lol so i had to call back the people who insisted they had to be there for the birth even though it would only be tony in the room with me so even though i was at a 10 i had to wait for my doc because she wanted to be there through all the pushing not just the delivery  and thankfully she was there im not sure if the outcome would have been the same otherwise about that time i started to feel alot of pain and i couldnt understand why and the docs said i couldnt get any more epidural and the pain was mostly in one spot so almost an hour later my doctor shows up and at this point i was feeling pretty much every thing it took what seemed like hours to push and i think it was about an hour then i got to the point every mother fears i had lost hope that i could push my baby out tony was there the whole time holding my hand and telling me i could do it i kept crying telling him i couldn't do it i was sorry but i couldn't but no madder what tony kept telling me i could then i was told  her head was out they told me to push and i kept trying by this time i know i was screaming im sure i was scarring the hell out of the other women in labor ,then all of a sudden i was told to stop pushing and any woman who has watched birthing shows knows that that's not a good thing  i later found out Athena's shoulders had gotten stuck and because her head was already out they couldn't push her back in and do an emergency c-section and that i had to have an epeasiodomy which is a cut to allow the baby more room to come out well from that i tore 2 more times so basically i tore from hole to hole ,the next thing i knew i had 2 nurses on top of my stomach pushing down on it to try and get athena out which is the worst pain i had ever felt,they finally got Athena out and started to stitch me up  which i felt as well tony went to check on Athena who i hadn't even seen yet all i had seen was out of the corner of me eye a really big baby being worked on and while at that point things became a little blurry i didn't hear crying at first and to this day i don't know if she cried right away but i was told later that she had fluid in her lungs and needed a little help breathing and they told me that when i did see her not to be alarmed which when someone tells you that you are automatically alarmed they said she was a little bruised from being so big and being pushed out a small birth canal but that the swelling would go down and it did within a few days she looked like a normal 8lb baby .when they brought her out and were pushing her to the nicu my family saw her for a brief second but didn't think that the big baby who was swollen and bruised was indeed Athena and since she was in the nicu they could only see her through the glass at a far ,and for the first 24 hours only tony had gotten up close and personal with our little angel i got to see her the next day and thankfully she started to eat enough that she was allowed to go home with me after 3 days in the hospital and we left the hospital on Easter Sunday .and while i wish my labor and delivery would have been easier im glad i did get to deliver my daughter vaginally and even against my own choice naturally oh and in case you were wondering what i mean and why i felt everything its because when the nurses moved me around on the bed my epidural came out of my back and we didn't find out till the next day when they went to take it out anyway and the nurse said "oh look its already out " but any way i got to experience every aspect of labor and delivery except c-section which i was told is what i will have to have the next time i have a baby unless the baby is premature and known to be less then 7 lbs . i later had to have another surgery to fix the stitches that had been put in after her birth because they had got infected and broken down ,and nearly 4 months later i still have to use stool softeners every so often so that i don't tear something or cause bleeding  internally from trying to push a bowl movement out i know tmi but its a reality i will have to deal with for a long time but it was all worth it and i would do it again as long as i got my daughter in the end ,being a mother has changed me in a big way Athena is the light of my life and she makes everyone smile shes the piece of the puzzle that had been missing from mine and tony life ,even if she is my only child i know that i did and will continue to do everything i can for her .