My motherhood journey part 1

It all started with a chemical induction on 31 May 2012 at 7.30am in the morning.  Gosh were the contractions unbelievably unbearable, and increasingly so.  By 3pm I was begging for the epidural.  All the antenatal and natural child birth classes where they teach you to breathe your baby down flew out of the window.  It was hard to see how the breathing could have eased the two contractions per minute that were coming hard and fast.  I suspect it was due to the induction and Hector did not have enough time to turn.  At 4pm approval for epidural was granted and by 5pm I was happily sedated, but boy was the process difficult!  I would describe it as an ordeal.  While they were threading the epidural down my spine, I was enduring a contraction after another and my waters broke.  I was shivering and shuddering violently and no amount of practiced breathing helped, and I began to hyperventilate.  The anaesthetist was puzzled as to my hyperventilation.  In fact, I shivered during the whole of the cesarean operation due to the epidural drugs.  I had to have an emergency c-section because Hector wasn’t turning and his heart rate was quickly falling.  My ob said my placenta was breaking down, and by the time they pulled baby out, there was little or no amniotic fluid and he had done a poo, so they had to ventilate the meconium out of his lungs when they took him out.  He didn’t cry.  My boy didn’t cry when they pulled him out.  I was surprised and rather worried.  Kept looking over my shoulder to see if he was alright while they sewed me up.  He was already holding his head up when he came out, and looking for food 🙂  Unfortunately because it was a cesarean I couldn’t feed him until an hour later when I was wheeled into the room and he immediately latched onto my breast.  Poor chap.  Hubby said he kept wanting to eat looking for my breast all the time from when he came out.  The epidural did provide a lot of relief, but what I didn’t like about it was the helplessness I felt – the catheter for instance; when I bled the nurses had to clean up after me; and I could not feel my lower half of the body and my right upper thigh.  I suspected my baby did not have time to turn due to the fast and furious contractions.  In fact, I was dilated at 10 cm but he could not come out in spite of my efforts at pushing.  Did I imagine I would have a cesarean and it came true?  The difficulty with a cesarean (especially an emergency one) is the emotional and physical toil post operation.  I kept going over in my head whether it was because of the choices we made earlier on to hold off the inevitable induction hoping that somehow my body would birth naturally at 40 weeks and 5 days.  The physical obstacle was of course breast feeding.  My milk took a really long time to come in, and when it did, I didn’t make enough.  This became a major problem in the weeks to come when I had to confront my ability to breast feed and the confinement nanny’s snide remarks about my baby not eating enough, but this is another story for another post.  We couldn’t figure out why he was always crying at the hospital.  We had to be there for 5 days.  In the end after my parents arrived, they pointed out that it was because he was cold.  The hospital air conditioning was really cold, but I couldn’t feel it because I was heated up all the time post operation.  One of the nurses saw how hungry Hector was and suggested we supplement with a bottle of formula.  It became a nightly affair until we were told by another nurse whom I really didn’t like that we had to bring our own formula, which left me almost in tears.  It was only when I explained to her my situation (the emergency c-section and my milk supply) did she appear sympathetic and said it was alright, but the negative first encounter was already established. I would never forget this moment when we first met.  She came in and took one look at my chart and said that this was the day when most women get postpartum depression – was I alright?  If I was before, I sure wasn’t anymore.  She had a very witchy look about her with a sharp nose and fake looking teeth.  She stood really close to me when she was talking to me, which was rather unnerving.  When I was changing Hector and using a nappy rash cream, she chided me – why are you using that?  When I took so long to put on the nappy, she brushed me aside and demanded, ‘here let me do it’ she said.  When he dirtied himself, she used water to wipe his already fragile skin causing him more distress.  I was pretty unhappy and traumatised by her demeanour.  i guess the overall cesarean birth left me feeling somewhat disempowered, a feeling which was compounded and magnified by the arrival of my parents with the confinement nanny in tow.  But that’s a story for another day.