And here's how it all went down.
Sunday before, 4 days overdue, I started having contractions. They're pretty consistent, 5min apart, for most of the day. We get all excited, get everything ready to go, and then the contractions stop. Dead. Great. And then that's it until Friday, 9 days overdue, when they start again in the morning. I go in to see my midwife who puts me on the monitor, baby is fine, I'm fine. But because of how overdue I am and having a previous C-section, she sends me in to the hospital to see the specialist so he can check and see how much fluid there is. Off we go to the hospital, wait, wait, and they say "We'll need to put you on the monitor so we can see how baby is doing", I explain I've already done an hour of that, but they insist, so I spend another hour on the monitor, to be then told that the specialist has been called off to an emergency birth and we'll need to wait 2 hours to see her. No thanks. I'll come back tomorrow for the scan. So we come back bright and early in the morning, go in, expecting to just do the scan, but no, the doctor wants me to be monitored. AGAIN. And this time for 2 hours. (Every time they monitor it gets harder and harder to do because baby was posterior aka lying on my back instead of at my front, so it's difficult to get a heartbeat. Plus she moves so much even if they do get a heartbeat it doesn't last long). So after they monitor me they find that whenever I have a contraction (which I've now been having for about 36hours) baby's heart rate drops more then it should, which could indicate that the cord is wrapped around her. Not good. Then they do a scan to check the fluid and find that it's merky. Also not good. So they decide to induce me the next day. We make calls, plan it all out. And then the doctor comes back and say that they've decided that the dips in baby's heartbeat are too serious to ignore. And they want her out today. Right now. Well, not exactly what I was expecting. And I start to small kine freak out, coz Vili ended up a C-section because of his heart rate dropping and I am just praying for a natural birth. We go home, get the boys all prepped (although Malachi has been prepped for 9 months), and back we go to the hospital so they can break my waters and get this party started. As they're getting me all settled etc they take blood, and find that I have an Anti D Antibody, which is odd because I haven't have the shot yet, and so it probably means that baby and my blood has mixed at some point, which could mean she's now severely anemic, along with a string of other things. My C-section fears are running rampent at this point. So then before they're willing to break my water, they want to make sure they have some blood on hand, just incase something goes wrong and I need a transfusion. Well, finding a match isn't so easy, and delays the induction by about 3 hours. Blaaaaah. So over it by now. They finally find the blood, yey, have it couriered in and they break my waters at 6pm. Things keep plodding along, and then my contractions go from in the 30's to in the 70's and 80's = OUCH! So I start on the gas (for those non-kiwis, in NZ you can choose to have the gas, which is nitros oxide (laughing gas) which doesn't actually numb the pain, but it makes you kinda high so you're distracted from the pain. It's the most common form of pain relief used for birth in NZ, and means alot less epidurals). So I'm on the gas, and to be blunt, it turns me into a crazy person. The next 3 hours area bit of blur, but at some point I asked for an epidural, which takes forever because the anethitist keeps getting called away to other areas of the hospital for emergency stuff. And the longer he takes, he more gas I'm sucking back and the crazier I get. Here's a selection of things I've been told I said while away with the fairies.
- My sister came to be there for the birth, and she had been at a 70's party, and she's dressed in costume. And so I proceed to tell everyone "This is my sister. She's a drag queen. She's actually my brother." She insists that this is just a costume, and I insist "No, she dresses like this all the time."
- The anethitist is brown and I ask him "Are you Tongan?" He tells me he's not, that he's from an Island near Madagascar "You must speak french.....you should talk to my sister, she speaks french", which she doesn't.
- More the once I pleaded "Can someone please get me a peach? A real peach. With fur on it."
-At one point Tui tried to take the gas away from me (no doubt embarassed by his nutcase wife) and I tell him "Give me that back OR I'LL SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAM!!!". He promptly returned it.
- I told many of the staff in no uncertain terms how deeply I cared for them and how amazing they were.
- I often reminded everyone "It really hurts. It's coz I'm having a baby."
Anyway. So they give me the epidural. And it doesn't work. Well, it worked to make one of my legs dead, but right around my middle area, I could still feel everything aka all the contractions. Great. Which totally sucks, coz with Malachi, they put that bad boy in and I didn't feel zip. I slept for a few hours. So I stay on the gas. Which leads to more crazy talk.
-Another anethitist comes in to check the epidural and I tell him "This epidural sucks!" He explains that it doesn't alway work the way we want it to and he would say it was a 7/10. "LIAR!! It's not even a 3/10" I tell him.
- While this is all happening I tell my midwife more then once "You should go home, coz you're a single mother." (Which I'm sure she looooooved)
So while they're all fiddling around with my useless epidural, at some point I reached a 10. Goodness knows when, I could have been sitting there fully dialated for an hour or 2. But even though I'm fully dialated, they want me to wait another hour to push because there's still a lip of the cervix that hasn't moved away and they want to give it time to resolve itself. So I wait, and continue on in my crazy talk. Then at 11pm it's time to push. Now my last pushing experience was with Malachi, lasting 4 hours and ending in me requesting that they just suck him out. So as I start to push and they all tell me
how great I'm doing, I'm thinking "Yeah right, I've heard all that before". But in 30min she's on her way out. My sister Jessie got to catch her, Tui got to cut the cord, and then she was all mine.
I am so incredibly grateful that things went well and that it didn't result in a C-section. It gives me hope for the future. And now that I think about it, if we could minus all the extra waiting around, the whole thing took less then 5 hours, which isn't bad at all. Lani is such a sweetheart, doesn't make much noise, is super alert when she's awake, looking at us with her big brown eyes. Her hair is darker then her brothers when they were born, and it's got a curl to it like Vili's. Her brothers adore her, constantly begging to hold her, or hold her hand, or kiss her, or help her. And despite all my anxiety about having a girl, I wouldn't give her up for anything.
