It's been an eventful few days over here, my dear friends. It all started at around 2am Friday morning with me waking up to change out my ice pack and go pee. I had been sleeping with an ice pack on due to some dullish rib pain. I awoke again at 5:30am in excruciating pain. Now I know pain scales are pretty subjective based on the person experiencing the pain and up for negotiation as to what actually is "unbearable" or "excruciating". For the first time in my life, when I was asked to rate my pain on a scale from 1-10, 1 being the lowest and 10 being the worst pain I've ever felt, I actually answered 10. I could barely breathe and was uncontrollably sobbing.
Thankfully, I have an amazingly supportive and wonderful husband who immediately sprung into action. If you thought you loved a man fully before experiencing him rubbing your back while simultaneously calling your midwife to talk about hospitalization and pain management options for his sobbing mess of a wife, think again. My heart grew 3x that day.
We then headed straight to the birthing center at our local hospital to meet our midwife and to get me checked out. This is when my sobbing got really bad. I was just seeing all of my natural vaginal child birthing plans fly out the window and having a hard time with it. I knew they weren't taking me to the hospital to take the baby, but depending on what was wrong with me, I was irrationally afraid they would have to take him out early. Something I wasn't ready for and really didn't want. I had to check my fears and compose myself because when you're having severe rib/chest pain, crying really doe exacerbate the situation.
We got to the hospital and found the right floor and met with our midwife at the nurses station. They admitted me and put me into a triage room on the labor & delivery floor. They asked me loads of questions while I was still writhing in pain like some poor sap dying of a gunshot wound in a western. I always thought those scenes were over acted. I sit corrected.
So after several hours of them monitoring the baby and trying to figure out what exactly was wrong with me, the head nurse on call and resident on staff were leaning toward kidney stones. Then my Dr came in and I swear I heard angels singing. Now to give you some context, my midwifery is a collective. This means there are 3 midwives and 2 doctors that you see during your pregnancy and depending on who is on call, could be present at your birth. Now Kristen was my OBGYN before we even started trying. She birthed both of my sisters kids and is just absolutely wonderful. Since the beginning of my pregnancy, Kristen has been and remains my favorite midwife and Amy was my favorite MD with Jennie coming up third. Jennie was the one who sat through our uneventful first 20 week ultrasound and was able to tell us "there's penis everywhere" for our second, more successful, 20 week ultrasound.
So I'm in the hospital for the first time ever in my life, in the worst pain of my life and in walks Jennie and I felt this huge wave of relief wash over me. She came in, took a look at me, took a look at my charts and tells the nurse and resident she doesn't think it's kidney stones and starts gently palpitating me to prove to them its likely ribs and not stones. She stands by me and we talk about my pain management options. She knows I want a natural birth and haven't taken any OTC meds since November so she knows this is a really important discussion for me. She tells me what they want to give me and how much and what it will do to both me and the baby. We order in an egg sandwich (it was delightful btw) so I have something in my system before taking pain meds.
We decide on a pain reliever and muscle relaxer and in 15 minutes I'm down from a 10 on the pain scale to a 5. After another hour of observation (a total of 5+ hours round trip) and I'm out the door with instructions from Jennie to take the pills based on the instructions as much as I need them but as little as I have to and to call her on Monday to make a follow up appointment to check me out and discuss alternative pain management techniques like acupuncture.
One of the bonuses to being in the birthing center for the better part of a day was that we got to hear a baby being born in the room next to us. Only a few quiet(ish) grunts heard from the room next door and the faint mewling noise of a newborn. As E wheels me past the room we hear Jennie say "woah, placenta!". That's when I knew I loved her and that I want her to be at my birth. She's now been the source of 2 great quotes in my pregnancy. She's a keeper.
I attempted to start this post several times but was too medicated to stay awake or string together words and make sentences. Since Friday I've been slowly improving but having a hard time being on bed rest. I have the utmost respect for women who are stuck on bed rest for weeks or months during their pregnancy. For me it's been 2 days and I'm going bananas. Here's hoping I'm able to get through a day of work tomorrow and that Jennie clears me for physical activity so I can regain my sanity for the remainder of my pregnancy.
As much as I would prefer not to have had this situation arise, a lot was learned from my experiences:
1. The staff at the birthing center at Fletcher Allen Hospital is great.
2. I love my midwifery and am so confident in my ability to have a great birthing experience with them.
3. We should not trust our GPS instructions for getting to the hospital on labor day.
4. My husband is amazing and capable of being supportive of me when I'm in agony.
5. I'm surrounded by loving people who care for me and will sneak into my house to leave me flowers and ice cream.
6. I now need to be more open minded.
When I was at the peak of my pain on Friday I was terrified that I would have to have a cesarean. Now that I'm healing but not fully healed, I am concerned should I go into labor before I'm fully healed I would need medication. Having felt so horrible and so afraid my baby would be in pain (he was a total rock star during the entire ordeal, by the way) I realized that the way he makes it out is less important than his overall health and his ability to get out safely.
I still hope I will be able to have a natural vaginal birth, but I'm more open minded now than even a few days ago to my options should they be deemed necessary. I've been humbled by my experience and more than a little bit scared. I continue to be impressed by what my body can handle and how clearly it speaks to me when it cannot handle something without help.
Now that I've been on bed rest since Friday I've been stress eating ice cream and a bit worried about my next meeting with the scale. Let's hope this one also doesn't leave me in excruciating pain...
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