congrats vicki, and welcome maxim.

you were darn unlucky to have so many other high needs women in the hospital
at the same time?

anyway, love a good result! well done!@

c


"Vicky Bilaniuk" wrote in message
. ..
Maxim came into the world today! Yep, today! 12:13 am on a full moon. He
weight in at 9 pounds 12 ounces, and I forget his length (but it's pretty
long). He's a big boy!

The birth story, plus gory details... ;-)
I was supposed to go in on Monday to see an OB and possibly get started on
an induction. This OB is supposed to be a low interventionist type, but
he was afraid that the baby was too large for me to deliver vaginally, so
he told me to go straight to the hospital and they would get started. The
plan was to place something beside the cervix and get it going that way,
if possible, and then switch to oxytocin the next day if necessary.

Well... I got to the hospital, went to the washroom, and my water broke
right there while I was sitting on the toilet. Heh heh, oops. ;-) The
OB hadn't even arrived, yet (he wasn't going to get there until noon and
we were there at around 10:30ish am). My water broke at 11:40am. That
started the clock ticking. Maybe a half an hour after that, I started
having contractions. They went on for a good couple of hours, and then
the OB *finally* showed up ;-) and said that they would start oxytocin
anyway, just to get things moving a little faster. I agreed to a low
dose, not knowing what this would do. (turns out that it didn't really do
anything but make the contractions come a little faster and last a little
longer - intensity wasn't really affected, that I could tell).

So they hooked me up, and away everyone went. I sent DH home for more
stuff (we had brought stuff, just in case, but not everything), which was
a mistake. I should have told him to call the midwife first, and then go,
because being alone was a bad idea. Since DH had to rely on public
transportation, it took him FOR EVER to finally come back, and by then I
was really starting to have noticeable (i.e. couldn't talk through)
contractions. Also, they had just finished doing an emergency c-section
on some poor woman who had a 2 hour, yes a 2 hour labour - she went from
start to 10 cm in two hours, and had a breech baby. That woman screamed
more than her kid did. Each and every scream was full of nothing but
begging and pleading for them to just knock her out. Also, some girl
showed up and was crying because she thought she was losing her baby. Oh,
and then there were the premature twins who had to be airlifted away...
Yes, I was *really* upset that no one was there with me! I had no idea
that I would progress so quickly.

They had me hooked up to monitors, and it was only supposed to be
temporary. However, when that poor 2 hour labour woman showed up, they
called *all* of the nurses in the area away, including mine, who never
came back. I was sitting there, wondering what the hell to do. I
desperately wanted to get up and phone DH (the phone was in the middle of
the room, and this was a big room). Eventually, I just unhooked myself,
found someone to help me unplug my stupid IV machine (it was plugged into
the wall because the battery was dead, and I couldn't reach the cord
without tugging on stuff), and phoned DH. Turns out that he was right at
the hospital entrance, which was a relief. It also turned out that my
nurse was glad that I simply unhooked myself. She was worried about me,
but she couldn't leave the other woman, who was definitely not doing very
well at that time.

Well anyway, once DH was there, he *never* left again. ;-) I wouldn't
let him. We also called the midwife, who showed up and was great.

I told them that I had decided to go for the epidural (as I'm sure people
here guessed I would do). This was one weird thing... They wouldn't set
it up in advance. The anesthesiologists prefer to be notified in advance,
but I guess the people on call that day (i.e. my nurse, in particular, and
to some extent my midwife) wouldn't notify them. My contractions started
getting pretty bad, and I started becoming more insistent about getting
the epidural. The nurse told me that they *always* do nubain first, so I
said "Fine, do it and get it over with." They did it, it had zero effect,
but it did at least make me groggy between contractions (not that that
helped, mind you).

I started to become pretty bitchy about that epidural. My contractions
were requiring very much of my attention, I was tired, and I was simply
uninterested in experiencing this pain. I wasn't ready. They kept
getting bitchy back towards me, though, sometimes even including DH (I
wasn't sure why, since he had promised to be my advocate - I'll have to
have a talk with him when we're both a little less tired). Well luckily
for me, a shift change eventually occurred, and the new nurse set
everything up right away. In fact, she was ticked that the other nurse
hadn't set things up, and she promised to investigate. I got bitchy
towards this new nurse, too, and she was *really* bitchy right back. ;-) I
didn't really mind, though, because I wasn't behaving normally and no one
deserved to have me speaking to them so viciously.

Anyway, the anesthesiologist showed up, did his thing, and life suddenly
changed completely for me. My contractions were previously of the type
where I was making very high pitched noises and was breathing very heavily
and rapidly through them, squeezing DH's hand the whole while and
squinting my eyes shut (so that I could focus on absolutely nothing), but
once that epidural kicked in, I no longer felt the pain of the
contractions. The epidural actually didn't work 100%, but I actually
found that to be a good thing. I could still feel pain on the right
labia, so I knew everything that was going on. I lost all urge to push,
though there was no guarantee that I would have had it in the first place.
I pushed voluntarily, and after 12 hours of labour (maybe 40ish minutes of
pushing), Max came flying out. I had a lot of tearing and an episiotomy.
I had not wanted an episiotomy, but the OB was certain that I would tear
very badly otherwise, so I figured that I would get the episiotomy on the
dead side. ;-) Now, of course, it's the episiotomy that bugs me the
most. My midwife told me afterwards that she would have gone for the
episiotomy, too, which kind of surprised me. I started tearing in a
really bad, *sensitive* spot, ahem... That might be why they suggested
the episiotomy. I ended up with one stitch in that sensitive spot. :-(

I had no problems with my pubic bone! However, the symptoms from before
are ongoing, but they are less of a problem now that there isn't a zillion
pounds of baby there. ;-) Max is a big boy, and the placenta apparently
wasn't far behind him in size and weight.

So Max is doing really well. He's a generally very quiet and content baby
who is happy to look at the world (with the odd look of disgust, which is
funny as heck). He only cries when he has a dirty diaper, when someone is
disturbing him (like by giving him a bath or trying to dress him), or when
he is cold. He doesn't cry when hungry (maybe it's just because I
recognize the signals, so I always catch him before he cries). He *loves*
to look out windows, but he hates bright lights. He is a real sweetie.
We love him like crazy. I will have some pics of him he
http://individual.utoronto.ca/taz

I was going to put pics up right away, but I'm too tired. It will have to
wait until tomorrow, likely. There will be stuff there, though. I
promise. :-) He's too cute to keep to ourselves, so we have to share
some pics.