THE BIRTH OF ADELINE

WEDNESDAY MARCH 20th 2019

*WARNING.. I'm not holding back any of the gruesome details!

After the previous day of laying around in a labor and delivery room in the morning, the doctors had ordered labs every 3 hours and I was getting blood drawn consistently. I told my husband there were 3 things I absolutely hated about going to the doctor, blood draws (I passed out a couple times when I tried donating blood and to this day it still makes me woozy and shake seeing blood) IVs and speculum exams. After my back pain the previous day I was getting the blood draws and exams consistently, ugh. I was also on my 4th IV at the time. After a 5am blood draw a young resident came in and asked me some questions. She asked about my blood loss and I told her I had saved my chucks pads for the nurses in the bathroom for them to weigh if she wanted to see them. I had been losing a lot of blood and it had changed from a clear pink to a bright red a couple days ago so although the sight of blood made me shake, I wasn't severely alarmed by the amount or color of the blood since this had been the new norm the last couple days. When she exited the bathroom she looked worried and she asked from what time period they were from and then disappeared. I was about to start my day, order breakfast and take a shower when my favorite nurse, Laima, came in and asked me to sit down on the bed and sat down next to me. She took my hand and she wrapped her hand below and above mine and looked into my eyes. She said that the doctors and nurses were worried about me and felt that I should spend the day again in labor and delivery, that they wanted me to be closely monitored. I was kind of shocked, telling her I didn't have any pain and hadn't felt any contractions. I asked her if my blood work showed some bad results, she said the doctors would be around to talk to me about them. She said to take some time and pack up anything I wanted to bring down to labor and delivery and then she would be back to take me downstairs. I put my electronics in a bag and started brushing my teeth when she came in for me, I told her I'd be ready in 10 minutes not realizing the urgency she had to bring me downstairs. I paged her when I was done washing my face and she had me sit in a wheel chair just to be taken a few feet across my room to the elevator and down to labor and delivery. While she was wheeling me into the elevator she asked if someone was coming to be with me. I told her I could ask my husband to come, and asked her if I should call him and she said yes. She asked how long it would take for him to arrive. I told her he was about an hour away. I asked her again if there was something she knew that I didn't. I had no urge to call Joel except for her asking me to. This is the first instance in the day that made me feel like the Lord was very present with me all day as everything lined up. I thought Laima was such an interesting name, I had looked it up later to see it's origin and meaning. The origin of the name Laima is the Baltic goddess of fate and maternity, if that isn't a coincidence I don't know what is. I was wheeled down to a beautiful big labor room and handed over to a veteran Labor nurse, Tina. I asked Laima one more time if I should be worried and she told me she would let Tina tell me all about it and told me I would be well looked after. Tina told me that the resident was probably freaking out over nothing, they are inexperienced and wanted to be extra cautious. Tina asked if I had eaten anything and I said no, but I asked if I could order breakfast and she scoffed at the idea and said they should have let me before I came down, that she was sorry but now I wouldn't be allowed to eat or drink. She got me a warm blanket and pillows and told me try and get comfortable and watch some tv, that she was working on getting them to align my next blood draw and IV to maybe avoid unnecessary pokes. She then decided she didn't care if I had something to drink and asked what I wanted, I of course requested a "doctor's cocktail" but she said no orange juice, only clear liquid, so I said she was the bartender and to surprise me. She came back with a delicious mixture of ginger ale, cranberry and apple juice. After this I texted Joel and asked him to call in at work and then meet me in the labor and delivery room they had moved me to. I also talked to one of my administrators as they wanted to collect my laptop that day to give to my sub for his use. It was horrible timing as I had been having the blood loss, going up and down stairs and having all the tests, I hadn't had time to back up my laptop to hand it over. Tina warned me that they would be arriving soon to put in a new IV. The one they put in a couple days before was clogged and then the one they put in the previous day they said was too small of a gauge if I needed an emergency blood transfusion so that one would also have to come out. Two ladies arrived to inspect my arms for the new IV. One of them I had met before and she had put the one in that never worked so I was worried. They both looked up and down my arms. The one I had met before tried putting one in lower on my arm, injected some lidocaine to numb it and then inserted the IV, she tried to flush it but it didn't work. She said it was a small gauge again anyways. In my head I was like why the heck would you even try again when you just took out the other one because it was small gauge? They announced I would need a midline and left to prepare. Tina told me that this would look intense, that it would look like they were preparing for surgery and would have to sterilize everything and bring in an ultrasound to look at my veins in my upper arm and get a cart with special supplies for the procedure. She told me the midline catheter would be in my upper arm and they might be able to give me IV fluid and draw blood from the same line as long as it would let them, sometimes they just stopped letting you draw blood at no particular time. I was nervous about all this but grateful for the opportunity to maybe forego more blood work in my arms as they started to look like a patchwork of bruises on top of one another and it was becoming harder and harder for them to find a vein to draw from. They returned with the carts and ultrasound machine and started sterilizing the things around me and draping me with blue cloths. They put on smocks, masks, head covers and gloves and then she saturated my whole right arm with lubricant before applying the ultrasound wand and finding the vein she wanted to use. It took them awhile to lay out all the equipment. They even told me setting up took way longer than the actual process. They injected way more lidocaine into the entire vein and then she inserted the long midline catheter, a long skinny line of silicone that went up the larger vein (yuck). She was able to flush it and also take my next blood draw from the same line. They cleaned up and I tried to settle down after the whole ordeal. Tina came back in and told me that because I didn't have any symptoms or contractions that I could return upstairs to my room. They were wheeling me upstairs when Joel arrived and I texted him saying I was no longer in labor and delivery that they moved me back upstairs. I told him that he missed the big show but that since I wasn't having contractions they sent me back up. I ordered a meal that we shared, I tried to relax and we talked awhile. Poor Joel had major back pain the day before sparking from his military injury and it flared up the day before, he still looked in bad shape. He had gone and got an ice pack and brace to wear to try and relieve some pain after seeing the Chiro the previous day. After talking a couple hours he went down to the Cafe to get me a chai latte, something I hadn't had for a month and himself an iced tea. As we were sitting, sipping and talking, my afternoon Nurse Espy, came in and put me on the monitor to see the baby's heart rate and ask me about my pain. I told her that it was weird cause I felt the baby's movements more intensely the last couple days but felt no contractions. As Joel and I were calmly sipping our drinks I told Joel that I started to feel a bit crampy but that it was a weird sensation. He told me to call the nurse but I told him I wanted to see if I felt it again. I then realized it was in fact squeezing. I decided to look at the clock to see how far apart the squeezing was. I waited a half an hour and noted that they were coming every 2 minutes and becoming more intense. I then texted my sister because I knew this was the beginning of labor. Our code word was PINEAPPLE if I knew I was starting to labor. I pressed the nurses button and the receptionist asked what I needed, I asked her to send the nurse, she asked if I needed something and I told her I needed to talk to the nurse. I was pacing the room and holding my pelvis when the tech came to check on what I needed. She was so upbeat and asked what she could do for me. She saw me pacing and I told her I was in labor, she said "okkkkkkk" and turned around and went to get the nurse. Espy came back and laid me down, put me on the heart rate monitor and also the contraction monitor. She also gave me a button to press anytime I felt a contraction. The baby's heart rate looked good, she felt my lower pelvis where my uterus was when I told her I was having a contraction, she confirmed she could feel it harden but that because my uterus was smaller and low the contractions weren't being picked up on the monitor. She told me she would page the doctor. The resident from that morning came in flustered and they told me they would have to do a speculum exam. My cervix was closed but she also confirmed I was having contractions. Two techs came back in with a gurney and I had to crab walk from one bed to the other, so stupid how you can't get up and down yourself. They rolled me across the hall down the elevator and instead of bringing me into a labor and delivery room they directed the techs to a room that simply said "exam". The gurney didn't fit through the door and a labor nurse told them it wouldn't fit. At this time I saw the inside of the room and exclaimed that they were putting me in a utility closet, which put both the techs into a fit of giggles. The room was small and narrow and a sad gray, it was stuffy and hot inside the room. They weren't supposed to let me get out of the bed and they were looking at each other confused about what to do. I simply stood up and went into the room. A nurse came in and laid me down on the small exam table and hooked me up to the contraction monitor and heart rate monitor. She asked me a lot of questions and I told her I was surprised because I was expecting the same contractions I had with my first child, which were higher up and felt like small squeezes on the side of my belly. This was more intense pain, lower down and in a more concentrated area. She looked at the monitor and said no contractions were being picked up, probably because the baby was so small but again gave me a button to push every time I had a contraction. A couple more people came in to look at the monitor because they said although the paper was recording the heart rate nothing was being shown in the main desk outside in the nurses station. It was really comical because the room was so small they could barely get around it to try and unplug and replug in the wires. Several more nurses and people kept coming into look at it and try and fix it. I started breathing through the contractions as the pain continued to mount and the contractions became closer together. My sister arrived and sat down and asked what was happening. She said she had driven like a bat out of hell and was afraid she had missed it and here we were just waiting for what was going to happen next. She was upset because she had been driving around with her camera for weeks and the previous night her son, Max brought it inside the house. I told them we had been in the room for over an hour and a doctor hadn't come around to check on me and no one told me what was going to happen. A funny nurse, Megan, I had met a month before the day I arrived, the one took care of me when I was losing all that blood, came in and also started to play around with the monitor. She joked that it was a Super Worm Moon and the first day of Spring, that the floor was jammed full of women in labor. She said she was done with her shift and she was going on vacation so I wasn't allowed to deliver. She tried to adjust the contraction monitor and stuff a metal wrapper under it to get it to pick up the contractions I told her I was having. She said that people went through the entire process of delivering a baby and contractions might just not show up for some, especially when they were preterm. She hooked me up to an IV and explained that the IV might hydrate me enough to stop the contractions. I was sad to see her go, a young nurse came in to tell me she was taking over. That no rooms were available but that we could be moved to the recovery part of the floor, which wasn't a room but a curtained in area that wasn't so warm. I asked if it was bigger or had chairs for Heather or Joel and she said no, so I said I would continue to wait for a labor room. At this time I started to joke around with Heather and we started to giggle. I made a joke that my laughter was probably going to show up on the monitors and appear as if I'm seizing. We burst out laughing and I started swearing at the same time because it was really painful but I just couldn't stop laughing at the thought of it. At that time the high risk doctor I had met several times finally came in and said he would be doing an exam. Heather and Joel stepped out of the room, the room was so small and so was the exam table I didn't even know how to arrange myself for the exam but he managed and he exclaimed I was less than 1 cm so I was not laboring. He talked while he was thinking, saying that they wanted me to stay pregnant, that ideally the contractions would stop once I was hydrated and then there was also a shot he could give me which would make the uterus stop contracting, but that if my body wanted to go into labor then the shot would be ineffective and the contractions would continue and I would go into labor. I asked him if this was going to go on forever, he said most likely they would stop. He left and my nurse came into hook up another IV but she didn't start it. It was hours more of me having contractions a minute apart and me bearing down, breathing through it and starting to swear louder and louder. I kept waiting for the doctor to come back and for them to give me the shot to stop the contractions. At one time I felt my whole face and head go numb and tingle. The nurse came in and told me I needed to breath through my nose, that I was hyperventilating. Heather started to try and time the time between contractions and how long they were. Several times she left the room to try and find someone to check on me and ask why the IV wasn't turned on (no one started it back up btw). A couple times she helped me into the bathroom because I had this urge to pee and push. I told her I was completely covered in mucus, was this my mucus plug? The blood loss started becoming more like clotted mucus after that. After another hour I sat up and started screaming, I said I couldn't lay down anymore. A resident came in with my nurse and told me I needed to calm down. The nurse asked me to describe my pain. I thought it was a stupid question. I said I was in labor, and that I needed pain medication, that I wanted to be examined. She told me I wasn't in labor and she told me I needed to lay down. That if I calmed down and laid down she would give me the shot. Heather was agitated because it had been at least 3 hours since they talked about the shot. I asked her how long it would take to be effective and she said instantly. I laid down and shut up. She gave me the shot and I waited for results. I had now been having contractions for over 8 hours. It had been 6 hours since I had been examined by the doctor. I kept asking over and over again to be examined by the doctor. The resident kept coming in and rudely telling me to calm down and telling me I wasn't in labor. They finally brought me to a labor and delivery room. After I settled in, I again asked to be examined. She said at 1 am she would finally do the examine but wanted to see if the shot would make the contractions stop altogether. After a half an hour the mostly absent nurse came in to tell me that according to me pushing the contraction button that my contractions had gone from every 45 seconds to every 5 minutes but no contractions were evident on the monitor coming from the censor still, it was just from the data of me pushing the button. Heather turned on the TV and Friends was on. Joel sat in a distant chair, put his hat over his face and looked like he was dozing off. Heather and I continued to talk about how crazy this situation was. She started googling how many centimeters was full dilation- 10 cm. Heather continued to try and advocate for me, tried to console me, comfort me but her eyes started to show how exhausted she was. I was completely baffled and angry about being in labor for so long and everyone ignoring us. At 1am the resident came back and I was exhausted and irritated. I asked if she was going to do an exam and she rudely said "I am not putting my hand in your va-jay-jay". I was absolutely stunned that a supposed doctor would talk to me with that vocabulary and tone. She told me I should try and sleep, and I asked her how I could sleep when I was in so much pain. She asked if I wanted medicine. I asked if it would stop the pain, she laughed and said she could offer me some Benedryl to help me sleep. I told her Benedryl wasn't strong enough to put me to sleep with the amount of pain I was in. She said she would be back at 2 am to check on me again and finally do an exam. After this I told Heather to help me to the bathroom. I told her I really felt like I needed to poop. As I sat on the toilet I told her I really wanted to push. She told me I'd better get back into bed. I laid back down and looked at Joel who had his eyes closed and Heather pulled out her phone to play me a song she had heard on the radio that day. "Surrounded (Fight my Battles)", the lyrics went "This is how I fight my battles, It may look like I'm surrounded, but Im surrounded by you". The nurse came in to adjust my monitors and it was the first time she seemed to try and relate information to me, telling me that they didn't want to do an exam because it could start labor. She left and for another 20 minutes Heather watched TV and I breathed through more contractions that started to feel more intense again. Heather asked if I had any contractions lately and I was like "did you not see me breath through the last two?" She was probably so tired and occupied by the TV I really don't think she noticed. I asked her if she wanted to go home, that I felt bad I was making them sit around while nothing happened. I breathed through a couple more contractions and at the end of the last one it felt as if my whole back cracked open, it reminded me of the scene from the Twilight films where Bella was having the vampire baby and it was killing her from the inside- I screamed out in pain which must have matched the intensity of what I was feeling. Joel was awake and on his feet, Heather was too and she asked what was wrong. The resident, the nurse and another staff member came running in right then at 2am. The rude resident asked "What was going on?" I told them I had to push, I was in intense pain, that the baby was coming, that I wanted to poop or puke. She told me to calm down again and she would do an exam. The nurse and staff member held my legs down as I was having another contraction. She told me I needed to calm down if she was going to be able to do the exam. I tried to breath through my nose as I felt tingling return to my face. As she put her hand in for the exam, I felt and saw her whole hand go in and the expression on her face turned to absolute shock. All she could say was "10" to the nurse and other staff member. The nurse and other staff member scattered, Heather was holding my hand and the resident said, "I don't mean to alarm you but you are fully dilated and you are about to deliver this baby". I started to sob, feeling warm tears go down my face. All this time I was waiting for more prevention, more care to stop the contractions and keep me pregnant, any attention at all about what was happening or going to happen. Heather petted my head and gave me a pep talk. Telling me that I stayed pregnant all this time, which was so important and that it was time for Adeline to be born now, that I couldn't have done anything differently. A few more people came in and started laying out the equipment. I heard the resident say, "I didn't feel any contractions". My nurse said "We didn't see any on the monitors". They kept asking if the doctor was on his way, they kept saying he was paged. They told me to keep my legs closed and not to push. I asked the nurse if I was going to get any drugs, she said no drugs. I asked Heather how I was supposed to have a baby with no drugs. Within what felt like hours, which was really only a couple minutes, they had prepared the room and a man said if I really had to push I could start but that they were still waiting for the NICU team. Then the NICU doctors and special bed for the baby arrived. The man sat down to catch the baby, Heather held my hand and the nurse asked if she wanted me to hold my hand or if Joel wanted to hold my hand, and for whatever reason I angrily said, "No, I don't want Joel to hold my hand." The man sitting down asked who was going to cut the cord, I said Joel, the Dad would. They told me I could start to push. I pushed so, so hard and again it felt like my whole back was ripping apart. I told them it felt like I was pooping, the man told me that's what it was supposed to feel like. They said the baby's head was almost out, Heather asked if she had black hair and they said yes. I pushed again and I felt her starting to exit and then continued to keep pushing even after the big push of effort and felt her completely leave my body, the doctor grabbing her up quickly as she popped out really fast, everyone looked shocked because she came so fast and quickly. He held her in front of me for a couple seconds. When I delivered Sonja she seemed so distance from me when she came out behind a curtain. Adeline was right there, the baby I had been so focused on all these months, what I could only feel from the inside, materialized in front of me. Joel did not cut the cord, someone else did, and the NICU squad took her over to the bed and my sister followed to watch them. Heather asked if I could hear her cry, and I did, I wasn't expecting it, but then she stopped breathing and they put a breathing tube in her and were pumping air in by hand, they wrapped her in a plastic bag. I couldn't really tell what else was going on with Adeline. I was busy delivering the placenta when the high risk doctor arrived. He looked sad, he walked up to me and shook my hand and congratulated me. He asked me what her name was. He told me that me staying pregnant all that time was really going to make all the difference in Adeline's health. He told me I had no physical tears from the delivery so there was no need for stitches. (Thank the Lord for that much) I exclaimed I still couldn't believe I had a baby without drugs but maybe it wasn't as bad because she was smaller. The nurse told me not to discount what I just did, that I did an amazing job. She said it was kind of like the song my sister played for me, that I was indeed surrounded during my labor. I started to feel sad about the fact that I wasn't able to hold Adeline right away. I started to compare it to what happened when I had Sonja, how just an hour later we were snuggling together in a warm comfy bed and we started to bond and I started to feed her right away. The NICU squad said they would be bringing Adeline upstairs and Joel could follow. A NICU fellow, named Dr. Kim, asked if we had picked a middle name yet and she told us her first name if we hadn't picked one yet but Heather was quick to fill her in that she had been named for over a month now. The Dr. joked she'd try again with the next delivery. After my nurse cleaned me up I would be able to see Adeline in her isolette after they assessed her needs. The nurse was reaching behind me and I sat up, she looked surprised and she said she forgot that I had not gotten an epidural and wasn't used to patients being able to move so quickly and easily after a delivery. She left to get something and I stood up to go to the bathroom again. I told my sister I still felt like I still needed to poop, Heather told me I probably shouldn't have gotten out of bed. The nurse was in shock when she returned. She said she couldn't believe I was able to walk already. I couldn't poop so I returned to bed. When I laid down I started to feel my whole back spasm. The nurse brought back in some Tylenol for me but I still couldn't lay down and relax. She had another resident come in and she prescribed me a better pain medication. It started to kick in and my body started to calm down but my mind was racing and I still felt adrenaline running through me. The nurse helped clean me up and she moved me to a wheel chair and covered my legs with a warm blanket. I told my sister to go home and try and get some rest. The nurse brought me upstairs to the ISCU (Infant Special Care Unit, other hospitals call it the NICU, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit- Evanston's unit will take care of all babies who had special circumstances, not just premies so that's why it has a different name). When we entered the receptionist told me I needed to wash my hands with a special surgical scrub brush up to my elbows, the nurse said I had just delivered and didn't want me to stand up so they let me get away with just putting hand sanitizer all over my hands and arms. They brought me to the room where she was. She was in an isolette now, there were 5 other isolettes in the room. Dr. Kim tried to deliver the news of what had been done with Adeline to intervene and support her needs. She tried to do it with some ease, adding in humor when she could. She had started to give me the run down when she stopped and asked if the NICU team had been down earlier in the day to talk about what was going to happen when I was in labor. I told her we had talked to a NICU doctor about a month previously when I was first admitted. She asked, "but not today?" I looked directly at my nurse, smiled and said, "they told me I wasn't in labor". All the doctors and NICU nurses laughed at the idea for a good amount of time. My nurse exclaimed, "she clearly knew her own body though." Dr. Kim told me a lot and I tried to saturate as much as possible in my mind. She asked if I had questions. My only thoughts were, "who would tell me about Adeline?" How would I know if something was wrong or different with her condition. She said they would call us, but no news was good news, she said she wasn't worried so I shouldn't be worried. The nurse said it was time to wheel me upstairs. I asked if I could touch her. I put my hand in and gently pressed on the bottom of her foot. I was worried before she was born that all the wires and tubes would make me upset but all I could see was her underneath it all, it was what needed to be done to keep her alive. The nurse brought me up to my old room, and gave me a big hug and congratulated me. It seemed so bizarre to me that she was trying to be nice and make up for the fact that I was ignored all night, I realized I didn't even know her name after she left. I told Joel to go home and sleep and bring me back a list of things the next day. Shortly after, my nurse for the night came in. I was happy because she was a really sweet, upbeat and capable nurse, one I had several times before. She brought in a ton of stuff! She brought in breast pumping supplies and walked me through how to put it all together, use it and went through all this paperwork about recording when and how long I pumped. She handed me Motrin and Stool softener and more paperwork to record when I took the medication. She brought in a ton more stuff and scanned it all in and then scanned my bracelet. It was mesh panties, chucks, pads, tucks pads, Dermoplast spray, cleansing bottle and ice pads. She helped me into the bathroom and taught me how to put it altogether to make a soothing concoction to relieve some of the pain after the birth. She laid me back in bed and went over even more paperwork. I looked at the clock and it was after 5 am. She told me I should try and pump before I went to bed and then every 3 hours to bring in my milk supply. She left me for the "night" and I sighed looking at the pump, knowing that this was just the beginning of a long road. As I pumped I thought about how different this would be from feeding Sonja. I didn't even use a pump until I went back to work. As I pumped I heard a baby cry from another room. I started to cry thinking about how that Mom was able to hold and feed her baby that night, that she'd be bringing the baby home in just a couple of days. When I finished up I laid down and turned off the lights and still felt all that adrenaline surge through my body. I was mentally and physically exhausted but all I could think about was Adeline. I started thinking of the worst possible situations- what would happen if the power went out in the hospital, did they have back up generators to bring oxygen to her breathing tube? What if there was a tornado? How would they evacuate her and still give her all that she needed? My mind continued to race until I finally fell asleep for a couple of hours.