I had tried to tell the doctors that something was not quite right. I gained ten pounds in ten days after the 4th of July. The only thing I salted was the tomatoes on my sandwiches, so I was doing excellent in the salt intake department. I drank two liters of water every day in addition to milk on my cereal and juice with meals. I allowed myself one soda per day. Things just weren't adding up to that sudden weight gain. I was still three weeks from my due date.
The super brilliant Navy doctors (watch out for the dripping sarcasm...) decided I obviously was doing something wrong and hospitalized me. I was placed on a liquids-restricted diet. Although my blood pressure was steadily going up, I was constantly told "there's no protein in your urine, so you don't have pre-eclampsia." Guess what? As soon as my liquids were restricted, the protein was no longer being diluted and it showed up.
After having just chased home my husband and mother, the SAME doctor on watch decided I was an emergency and had to be induced NOW. "Now" being 1:00 AM.
To this day I believe she wanted to do a C-section and she got quite mad when I refused to get more "complicated" just for her benefit. She roughly inserted an internal monitor and I screamed in pain, the first non-calm reaction I had had. "That's not supposed to hurt," was her stupid-faced response. In the fog of sudden intense pain, I hated this woman. She had zero bed-side manners. (I hope she no longer practices medicine.) Dr. Stupid-Idiot was quite beside herself when her duty was over and I was still calm and progressing "normally".
Meanwhile, the epidural was only working on my right side, since no one told me to not sleep on my side. I had requested the oxygen mask before it was forced upon me, so I could remove it to talk whenever I wanted. I stayed highly oxygenated and remained calm. The baby did not "stress". The one-sided epidural was my only complaint besides them saying, "Now Janie, you're about to have another contraction."
"No, shit, I felt it before you opened your damned mouth," is what I would have said to the assorted nurses and doctors had I not been in the groove and busy inhaling for a controlled push. I pushed like a good little girl, even though I knew they had told me too early to start pushing. The child birth classes taught in that very same hospital had said to WAIT until the urge to push was overwhelming, otherwise you would get overly tired and end up more likely to have a C-section. At about 9:30 AM the urge finally arrived. Some where in here, another doctor said the internal monitor wasn’t working right and removed it.
By the way, never be the only woman in active labor in a teaching hospital. Only one other woman was on the floor, so they left one staff member with her and all the rest piled into my room. They stood shoulder to shoulder against the walls. Three corpsmen alone were ready to grab the baby to do the initial checkup.
Then someone walked in with the gallon of iodine.
I'm allergic to iodine. Early in the pregnancy, a brilliant corpsman had swabbed down my entire genitals in preparation for a clean-catch urine specimen. After she said, "Now I'm using iodine," I started yelling. No, she hadn't bothered to look at my chart first. The same chart that said in capital letters "NO IODINE". I itched for a week.
I refused to allow that to happen again. I had already laid down the law and Daddy-to-Be dutifully used the black Sharpie to write down my thigh and across my belly, "USE NO IODINE -- ALLERGIC!!!" The entire staff thought it was amusing. Apparently this corpsman hadn’t been invited in to read my belly and leg.
“But this is for the baby,” was the response to my shrieks to remove the iodine from the room.
“If I’m allergic, my baby MIGHT BE ALLERGIC, TOO!” I was ready to get up, grab the bottle and throw it either out the window or at the corpsman. Either way, the nasty stuff would be gone.
“Just get it out of here,” said one of the doctors. “It’s upsetting her and she’s been really calm up till now.” God forbid they should admit I might have a point about the baby’s possible allergies. I didn’t want to see my newborn covered in an itchy rash. The nasty brown bottle left the room.
About ten o'clock I knew I had a slight problem. Pulling off the oxygen mask to talk around the gagging, I looked at Mom. "Throw up," was all I could whisper.
"SOMETHING for her to throw up IN!" Mom translated for the two dozen medical staff members watching. I'm sure it was a comical sight, but I was too busy trying to keep whatever it was down while they searched the room for the kidney pan. When I finally relaxed to vomit, it was 95% air. A very small amount of stomach acid came up with the massive burps. Apparently every time I inhaled to push, I swallowed another gulp of air. It all came up and I begged for just enough water to wash the acid from my mouth. I had insisted upon an anti-acid medicine earlier in the morning. Now I insisted upon another dose. They were amazed that I willingly drank the nasty stuff. It was the same ingredients as something like Maalox, but with no extra water or flavorings like manufacturers have to put in so people can stand to drink it. It was just a special kind of nasty; but hey, it worked.
Now that the air was out of the way, I felt like I “had” to push. It was no longer optional. At about this point, I felt the urge to scream with a push. As I started to just scream, an almost Zen thought entered my mind, “It would be such a waste of energy.” That, and next I would be laughing hysterically at everyone’s reaction to my sudden outburst. I was outside myself, outside the pain. Everything was going well.
“We’re ready to do the episiotomy,” broke me out of my state of mind.
“What? WHAT? NO, NO, NO...” This was the ONE THING I had insisted I DID NOT want to happen. No how, no way. I did not need cutting.
“But it’ll help the baby come out quicker,” the young male doctor said as he came at me with the scissors. Weren’t things moving fast enough? The baby wasn’t stressing? My husband and mother tried to remind them about my birth plan and my wishes. If I could have gotten my leg free, I would have kicked the scissors from his hand. The older, female OB in charge told the young doc to wait until after the next contraction, and then do the episiotomy.
Like Hell you will! I bore down and pushed with everything I had. The head popped out. The female OB shoved the young doc out of the way and un-looped the umbilical cord from the baby’s neck. It was wrapped around twice. Once again all calm, we waited for the next contraction.
“We should have threatened you with an episiotomy a couple of hours ago,” the old female doc said.
Yep, and a couple of hours ago I would have been able to get off this table and kick your funny ass.
Our baby girl was finally out. She looked amazing like my baby pictures, but she had Daddy written all over her. “She’s so alert,” the medical team kept saying. Gee, don’t drug me up to the gills and the baby comes out awake. Imagine that. Daddy went to the nursery with Baby and we returned our attention to my body.
As the young male doctor massaged my uterus to make it contract, I started quietly whining that it hurt. I understood why, I was just letting out the stress and allowing myself to whine. My mother chose this moment to get in my face and say something about the doctor needing to do it, blah, blah, blah…
“WOULD YOU RATHER I SCREAMED ABOUT IT?!?”
“Nope,” said Mom and sat back down.
Here is where I stop my story about my oldest child’s birth. TRICARE wonders why I won’t go to their doctors. That malfunctioning internal monitor I mentioned earlier had caused a small problem. Go look up “amniotic embolism”, if you are interested. I may write about that one day.
Labels: Allergies, Hubby, Mom, Motherhood, Mystery Allergy, Oldest
