A little less fat and a lot more happy...
Whoa. OK. It's been a loooong time since my last post and this one's gonna be a doozy....so grab a cuppa joe, tea, ice water, jack....whatever your poison is, and settle in for the ride. Or move on to the next blog. Your choice. But don't bitch about it being too long. I warned ya!
As you may have noticed if you've ever read my blog, I was pregnant. And hated every nanosecond of it. Now I'm not! YAYAY! I can't tell you how VERY happy, thrilled and ecstatic I am that I am currently no longer pregnant, nor will I ever again be in the future. But I digress....
It all started one dark and stormy night. Haha, just kidding. That's actually when he was conceived, which is an entirely different post. So, seriously, here we go....
I started having contractions at 29 weeks, as you may remember from my "I'd be irritable, too" post. The contractions continued on and off throughout the pregnancy, and got worse around 36 weeks. No one, and I mean NO ONE expected this kid to cook for the entire 40 weeks, much less OVER 40 weeks! No way, no how. We were allll wrong. So very, very wrong. When I was 39 weeks, 6 days pregnant, I had super-duper contractions for FIFTEEN hours, but as luck would have it, not a single, itty-bitty change in my cervix. No dilation, no effacement. They tried telling me that I was having "Braxton Hicks" contractions. Well, this ain't my first rodeo, cowboy, and those weren't BH contractions. Something was W.R.O.N.G., wrong. My OB examined me on Monday, August 8th, a day AFTER my due date, and told me that the baby's head simply wouldn't descend into the pelvis, hence the lack of progress despite the hours of horrendous pain.
So, we decided we'd better do a c-section before I killed myself. I'm kidding. Sort of.
On Wednesday, August 10, 2005, at 40 weeks, 3 days pregnant, I arrived at the hospital, scared shitless but wanting to get it over with already. Because of my retarded phobia, I was petrified that I would throw up at some point before, during or after the surgery. So, to all my emet friends that read my blog, I have a MUCH longer, intricately detailed version of this story that I will post just for you so you'll know exactly which meds I was given in which order and when to keep me from getting sick.
Now, for the normal people, I'll get on with the story.
I was to arrive at the hospital at 8:45am and my surgery was to take place at 10:45am. Has anything in this pregnancy went as planned?! Noooooo. So, although I arrived at 8:45am, my surgery wasn't until later than scheduled. MUCH later. But I've jumped ahead, let's rewind. I get to the hospital, get checked in and sent up to the obstetrical pre-op area. I took one look at all the hospital "gear"- IV's, beds, heart monitors, catheters, urine bags, emesis basins, etc, and I started bawling. I grabbed ahold of Doug, sobbing, and told him I couldn't do it. HAHAHA! As if I had a choice! You should've thought of this before-hand, genius. I really, honestly thought "I'm just NOT going to do this. Nuh-uh." Well, guess what? I had to do it. The first thing the nurses had me do was strip down to nothing and put on one of those large, printed handkerchiefs that they call "hospital gowns". And it wasn't like they had a changing room. They had me waddle over to a tiny community bathroom with not so much as a stool to sit on to change. Picture this: a large-- no, make that a VERY large, hairy pregnant woman trying to maintain her balance while changing out of her "street" clothes and into that horrid gown, all the while trying not to touch anything because it *might* have germs on it. Ewwww.
So, I get changed, put into bed, have all sorts of bodily fluids removed: blood for tests, pee for whatever. They put an IV in, shoot me up with some drugs and then tell me to just wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. Oh, and did I mention we had to wait? Then they were just downright cruel-- around an hour after my operation was originally scheduled for, the nurses came in and said that my OB was there and that I would be going into surgery. I thought, FINALLY! But, no sooner had the words passed their lips, they were apologizing and saying that he had to leave to go back to another hospital for an EMERGENCY. Um, HELLO! Ten-months-plus pregnant woman who hasn't eaten in twelve hours sitting right here! Here's your emergency!
Anywho, another few hours pass and he finally, really does come back to deliver me from my own personal hell. I get wheeled into the surgical suite, which is FREEZING. I mean, you can nearly see your breath. I get all hooked up with the epidural, which was REALLY funky-- it was like being paralyzed from the boobs down. Then they started carving me up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Then one of the doctors climbed up on the operating table and started jumping up and down on my abdomen. Well, ok, not literally, but that's pretty much what it felt like. It only took a few minutes and Voila! my baby was born. I had labored long and hard (pun intended), but was I even shown my little bundle of joy? Noooo! They whisked him away because, as I found out later, his Apgar was only 3 and my little munchkin needed some assistance to adjust to this cold, cruel world. Meanwhile, back at the operating table......remember my "irritable" uterus? Well, she turned out to be a real bitch. She'd been working so hard during my pregnancy, that when delivery time came, she crossed her proverbial arms and shook her head "no" and said "This chick ain't working no more, no sir!" and she refused to contract to stop my bleeding, so I started hemorrhaging, which was really fun. The magical doctor finally got it stopped, THEN he did the MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER-- he gave me a tubal ligation. YAY!!! NO MORE PREGNANCY! I was thrilled, to say the very least. Then I was stitched up and wheeled back to Recovery, where they gave me some lovely stuff called MORPHINE. You really should try it if you get the chance. I hadn't been in recovery for more than a minute when I started having this major seizure. Or, at least that's what it felt like. I was shaking so violently from head to toe, I was sure I was gonna shake myself right off the bed! The nursese came in and I asked them what was going on and they said "Oh, that's normal. But let us know if you need anything." Um, yea, I "need" to stop shaking! It was REALLY weird, but it did stop after about an hour.
I'll finish with part 2 when I get a few extra minutes in the next few days (hopefully!).
As you may have noticed if you've ever read my blog, I was pregnant. And hated every nanosecond of it. Now I'm not! YAYAY! I can't tell you how VERY happy, thrilled and ecstatic I am that I am currently no longer pregnant, nor will I ever again be in the future. But I digress....
It all started one dark and stormy night. Haha, just kidding. That's actually when he was conceived, which is an entirely different post. So, seriously, here we go....
I started having contractions at 29 weeks, as you may remember from my "I'd be irritable, too" post. The contractions continued on and off throughout the pregnancy, and got worse around 36 weeks. No one, and I mean NO ONE expected this kid to cook for the entire 40 weeks, much less OVER 40 weeks! No way, no how. We were allll wrong. So very, very wrong. When I was 39 weeks, 6 days pregnant, I had super-duper contractions for FIFTEEN hours, but as luck would have it, not a single, itty-bitty change in my cervix. No dilation, no effacement. They tried telling me that I was having "Braxton Hicks" contractions. Well, this ain't my first rodeo, cowboy, and those weren't BH contractions. Something was W.R.O.N.G., wrong. My OB examined me on Monday, August 8th, a day AFTER my due date, and told me that the baby's head simply wouldn't descend into the pelvis, hence the lack of progress despite the hours of horrendous pain.
So, we decided we'd better do a c-section before I killed myself. I'm kidding. Sort of.
On Wednesday, August 10, 2005, at 40 weeks, 3 days pregnant, I arrived at the hospital, scared shitless but wanting to get it over with already. Because of my retarded phobia, I was petrified that I would throw up at some point before, during or after the surgery. So, to all my emet friends that read my blog, I have a MUCH longer, intricately detailed version of this story that I will post just for you so you'll know exactly which meds I was given in which order and when to keep me from getting sick.
Now, for the normal people, I'll get on with the story.
I was to arrive at the hospital at 8:45am and my surgery was to take place at 10:45am. Has anything in this pregnancy went as planned?! Noooooo. So, although I arrived at 8:45am, my surgery wasn't until later than scheduled. MUCH later. But I've jumped ahead, let's rewind. I get to the hospital, get checked in and sent up to the obstetrical pre-op area. I took one look at all the hospital "gear"- IV's, beds, heart monitors, catheters, urine bags, emesis basins, etc, and I started bawling. I grabbed ahold of Doug, sobbing, and told him I couldn't do it. HAHAHA! As if I had a choice! You should've thought of this before-hand, genius. I really, honestly thought "I'm just NOT going to do this. Nuh-uh." Well, guess what? I had to do it. The first thing the nurses had me do was strip down to nothing and put on one of those large, printed handkerchiefs that they call "hospital gowns". And it wasn't like they had a changing room. They had me waddle over to a tiny community bathroom with not so much as a stool to sit on to change. Picture this: a large-- no, make that a VERY large, hairy pregnant woman trying to maintain her balance while changing out of her "street" clothes and into that horrid gown, all the while trying not to touch anything because it *might* have germs on it. Ewwww.
So, I get changed, put into bed, have all sorts of bodily fluids removed: blood for tests, pee for whatever. They put an IV in, shoot me up with some drugs and then tell me to just wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. Oh, and did I mention we had to wait? Then they were just downright cruel-- around an hour after my operation was originally scheduled for, the nurses came in and said that my OB was there and that I would be going into surgery. I thought, FINALLY! But, no sooner had the words passed their lips, they were apologizing and saying that he had to leave to go back to another hospital for an EMERGENCY. Um, HELLO! Ten-months-plus pregnant woman who hasn't eaten in twelve hours sitting right here! Here's your emergency!
Anywho, another few hours pass and he finally, really does come back to deliver me from my own personal hell. I get wheeled into the surgical suite, which is FREEZING. I mean, you can nearly see your breath. I get all hooked up with the epidural, which was REALLY funky-- it was like being paralyzed from the boobs down. Then they started carving me up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Then one of the doctors climbed up on the operating table and started jumping up and down on my abdomen. Well, ok, not literally, but that's pretty much what it felt like. It only took a few minutes and Voila! my baby was born. I had labored long and hard (pun intended), but was I even shown my little bundle of joy? Noooo! They whisked him away because, as I found out later, his Apgar was only 3 and my little munchkin needed some assistance to adjust to this cold, cruel world. Meanwhile, back at the operating table......remember my "irritable" uterus? Well, she turned out to be a real bitch. She'd been working so hard during my pregnancy, that when delivery time came, she crossed her proverbial arms and shook her head "no" and said "This chick ain't working no more, no sir!" and she refused to contract to stop my bleeding, so I started hemorrhaging, which was really fun. The magical doctor finally got it stopped, THEN he did the MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER-- he gave me a tubal ligation. YAY!!! NO MORE PREGNANCY! I was thrilled, to say the very least. Then I was stitched up and wheeled back to Recovery, where they gave me some lovely stuff called MORPHINE. You really should try it if you get the chance. I hadn't been in recovery for more than a minute when I started having this major seizure. Or, at least that's what it felt like. I was shaking so violently from head to toe, I was sure I was gonna shake myself right off the bed! The nursese came in and I asked them what was going on and they said "Oh, that's normal. But let us know if you need anything." Um, yea, I "need" to stop shaking! It was REALLY weird, but it did stop after about an hour.
I'll finish with part 2 when I get a few extra minutes in the next few days (hopefully!).
posted by Carey @ 9:58 PM
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