Beyond Exist

I have a baby boy, and he’s almost a month old already. It’s crazy how quickly this month has passed, considering how slowly time crawled in the days leading up to his birth.

On the night of February 17th, 2016, Patrick and I arrived at the hospital about 8:30 pm. I filled out the admission paperwork while he parked the car. The lady who handled my admission led us up to our private labor and delivery room, where a nurse had me change into a hospital gown. I got an IV and was connected to monitors on my belly that measured my contractions and the baby’s heart rate and movement.

At 10 pm, I got my first dose of an induction drug called Cytotec. I ended up getting three doses of this drug, one every two hours, the last being at 2 am. Patrick was able to nap a little bit, but my mind was racing and I couldn’t sleep at all. I kept concentrating on every little twinge and every little bit of pressure in my belly and wondering if the contractions were really starting. It was between 2 and 3 am that the contractions really started getting stronger, but they were still tolerable.

The doctors decided that it would be a good time for me to get an epidural at 3 am. They wanted to do this thing where they put a “balloon” type thing in my cervix to help it dilate, and apparently it could be very uncomfortable and painful. So they wanted to start me on the drugs before that.

The epidural itself might have been the worst part for me, pain-wise. I didn’t look at the needle but I had heard about how big it was, and I saw the face Patrick made when he saw it. I’ve always been a baby about needles and I was afraid of how much it would hurt. I was also very nervous because the anesthesiologist kept saying how important it was that I NOT move, and I was so scared that I would jerk involuntarily from the pain and botch up the whole thing.

I wanted to hold Patrick’s hand, but they told him he had to sit down. (Apparently husbands sometimes faint from seeing an epidural administered. Lovely.) So it was the nurse who held my hands and tried to hold me still.

It did hurt – a lot – but I managed to stay still enough I guess (though I suspected that the drug was working just a little bit more on my left side than my right.) They confirmed that the epidural was working well and then everyone left the room, encouraging me to get some sleep.

The next 15 minutes were the calm before the storm. The room was empty besides me and Patrick, and it was as quiet as it could be in a hospital. I really did attempt to fall asleep, as futile as it was.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, the room was swarming with doctors and nurses. It was absolute chaos and I had no idea what was going on. I heard words like heart rate and blood pressure and C-section. My body started shaking uncontrollably, and then I felt a popping and wet sensation. A doctor had put a monitor directly on the baby’s head, and in the process had broken my water. I was also given a shot of adrenaline in my leg. Someone threw Patrick a pair of scrubs for the operating room and someone else put a surgery cap on my head and started to disconnect me from all of the wires so I could be wheeled to the operating room. This all happened in a matter of moments.

Then, as quickly as it had started, everything calmed down – the baby’s heart rate was back up to the 120s. Still a little low, but it was going back to normal. I was still shaking as a doctor explained to me what had happened. The epidural had made my blood pressure drop, while the induction drugs had made my contractions come on too strong and too close together. The combination of these things had caused the baby’s heart rate to plummet to the 30s, when normal for a baby in the womb is about 130 to 170, or something like that. The shot of adrenaline had slowed down my contractions, though, and his heart rate had climbed back up. They had also gotten my blood pressure back to normal.

It was about 3:30 or 4 in the morning when the doctor from my practice arrived in his street clothes, his coat still on as he checked the monitor and assessed the situation. They had called him to come in, in the middle of the night. He didn’t seem too worried, which calmed us down a bit. I was wondering at that point if we should just do the c-section  (even though I didn't want one) to get the baby out just in case. But the doctor said he didn’t think the baby’s heart rate would drop like that again. He wanted to continue going for a vaginal delivery, but he decided to take a short break from the induction drugs to give the baby a chance to rest. Also, they decided not to do the balloon thing after all because when they checked me after the whole debacle, I was already 4.5 centimeters dilated.

About two hours later they started me on a low dose of a different induction drug, Pitocin. But it wasn’t too long before they decided to stop that one, too, because it was making the baby’s heart rate a little wonky again. Not as bad as before, but still enough to concern them. At that point I felt like I was going to be in labor forever because they had to keep stopping the drugs.

But then the doctor checked me and I was suddenly nine centimeters dilated, somehow! He looked as surprised as I was. It was still early in the morning, and we had expected the entire labor process to go into the evening at least. He predicted now that I would be fully dilated and pushing within the hour.

Patrick started texting family members with an update on the situation, since they hadn’t planned on coming into the hospital so early. Meanwhile, only about fifteen minutes later it seemed (sooner than the doctor had predicted), I was fully dilated and being told to push.

Pushing seemed like the most impossible task I’d ever been set to in my life. It really felt like my efforts were making no difference whatsoever and that he was never going to come out of me. It turned out I didn’t have to push that long, though. The whole process was making his heart rate dip again, and they wanted him out of me, and quickly. So they ended up using a vacuum to help pull the baby out while I pushed. In addition to that, I ended up getting a FOURTH DEGREE LACERATION as the baby made his entrance into the world.

Suddenly, out of thin air it seemed, there he was, my baby, all seven pounds ten ounces of him. Jacob William Murphy, born at 8:27 am on February 18, 2016. And he was crying and he looked so normal and healthy and I don’t think I’ve ever been so relieved in my entire life. It was a moment I had been waiting so long for, after experiencing miscarriage and 41 long weeks of this pregnancy. He was here, and he was okay. We had made it.

They brought him over to me briefly so I could see him, but I honestly can’t remember if I held him then or not. The doctor explained that they were taking him to the side of the room for a bit to clean him up and stuff while the he and the residents “fixed me” (his words). I told Patrick to stay with the baby.

I spent the first 40 minutes or so of my son’s life being sewn back together. Which was a little frustrating when all I really wanted to do was hold my baby, but at some point they did come and place him on my chest (even though they weren’t done stitching me up yet).

Eventually they were ready to wheel me out of the labor and delivery room and into a recovery room. On the way there, they stopped my bed in the hallway for a moment so that our family members in the waiting room could have a quick peek at the baby, who was still on my chest.

For some reason, that was the moment I started crying: when my parents and sister and Patrick’s mom saw the baby for the first time. When they were able to see what we had accomplished. It was real, and we had created a new person. The whole concept is so entirely overwhelming.

This past month has been a blur of diaper changes and feedings and middle of the night wakeups and stressing out if my son’s breathing is normal or not. (Apparently it is.)

The healing process has been rough. Almost four weeks later and it still hurts. It feels like it’s never going to be the same, honestly.

At least my baby is okay. He’s napping in his little swinging seat right in front of me. Even after almost a month, it’s hard for me to believe this is real.

I’m still getting to know this baby who is my son. I love him and I’m terrified for his well-being, but I really don’t know that much about him yet. I know that he eats and sleeps a lot. He doesn’t really cry much unless he’s hungry or gassy or just wants to be held. He makes the cutest face when he stretches and he gets the hiccups twice a day. He likes to be sung to, and when you talk to him, he stares at you as if he’s trying really hard to figure out what it is exactly that you’re saying.

Even though he doesn’t really do much yet beyond exist, and has certainly not done anything to convey that he might love me back, I love him. Why do we love our offspring so much? Why would we sacrifice our lives for beings we’ve barely just met? I guess if it didn’t work that way, humanity and the human race would have died out a long time ago.

I’d better stop writing because Jacob’s waking up. It used to be that my number one job was writing. I guess that’s changed for the rest of my life, and his.

Rainbow Baby