I am finally getting around to writing up Baby N's birth story, which is going to be a two-parter. She is only 4 weeks old now, so I figure I'm doing pretty well considering I have edited my dissertation and finished my PhD, published a paper, and learned how to be a mom, including exclusively breastfeeding, in that time.
My birth story starts shortly after my last post was published. After I found out that the baby was breech, I was fully prepared to do everything I could to turn baby so that I could have a vaginal delivery. I tried handstands in the water, breech tilts, chiropractic care, moxibustion, and even had a consult with an OB about external cephalic version (ECV) to manually turn the baby. None of the 'non-invasive' techniques did a thing, and the OB didn't think I was a good candidate for the ECV because my baby was relatively large (as per ultrasound) and my uterus is apparently very muscular. (Seriously, every medical person that touched my stomach commented on my strong uterus!) The OB was still willing to try an ECV, but by the time we got that figured out, I was showing signs of pregnancy induced hypertension. My blood pressure got progressively worse over the course of my 36th week of pregnancy, and I ended up in the hospital for monitoring for my hypertension the day I hit 37 weeks.
My general practitioner was the one that finally sent me to the hospital since I was going to her office almost every day at that point to monitor my blood pressure. She was such a great doctor over the course of my pregnancy, and she recommended that I stick with the on-call OB-GYN at the hospital for the rest of my pregnancy if possible. I later found out that that OB-GYN is actually my general practitioner's doctor, and she ended up being a fantastic doctor also.
Anyway, by the time I was admitted to the hospital, I had decided against even trying the ECV because of the position of my placenta and the high blood pressure. It was just too risky considering the fact that it probably wasn't going to work anyway. While there are a few doctors here who will attempt a vaginal breech delivery, I wasn't really comfortable with that for a number of reasons. So, by the time I saw the OB, a scheduled c-section was pretty much the only viable option for me. Since I had already reached 37 weeks, the OB actually offered to do the CS that day. I asked if we could wait 2 weeks so that I could finish my defense and so that my mom could re-arrange her travel plans to be here for the surgery and my first week of recovery. The OB was fantastic and accommodating and scheduled my CS after my defense. Ideally, it would have been the next day, but since my defense was on a Friday before a holiday weekend, we had to schedule for the same afternoon as my defense to avoid having to wait until the following Tuesday. As it was, they scheduled the surgery for a Friday afternoon, which, under normal circumstances, would not be done.
Obviously, the baby was still doing fine even though my blood pressure wasn't so hot. Otherwise, we would have been headed for a CS right away. The OB discharged me from the hospital with a prescription for anti-hypertensive medication and orders to monitor my own blood pressure regularly. I wish I could say that the next two weeks went well, but the truth of the matter is that we were basically managing a deteriorating situation in hopes that I could make it through my defense before the CS was an absolute necessity. My blood pressure didn't respond well to the medication, and we had to keep increasing the dosage to keep me in a mild hypertensive state. I had multiple appointments and an additional ultrasound to make sure that baby was still healthy. I also got admitted to the hospital a second time for hypertension after my pre-op assessment for the CS. All in all, E and I spent many, many hours at appointments and in the hospital, but it was all necessary to make sure that baby and were healthy. Thankfully, my hypertension never developed into anything worse (i.e. pre-eclampsia), the baby showed no signs of stress from my hypertension, and I never showed any signs of going into labor spontaneously, which would have meant an emergency CS.
E and I picked my mom up from the airport the day before my defense and CS. When she made it here, I finally let myself believe that things really were going to work out. I went to bed that night confident that I wasn't going to go into labor, I would finish my defense, and then we would head to the hospital for a low-stress, uncomplicated, scheduled CS. Funny story about the night before surgery, though. They gave me these anti-bacterial surgical wipes that I had to scrub my whole body down with to kill any germies that were living on my skin. The nurse did not mention that it wasn't a good idea to shave your legs before you used those things. Oh. My. Goodness. The burning. The itching. It's not like I was going to sleep well no matter what, but the surgery wipes didn't help matters at all!
My defense went as well as those type of things can. I passed, but I guess it's pretty much a given that you are going to pass once your committee okays your dissertation for defense. It was probably better for me than most people, since all of my committee knew I was going in for a medically-indicated CS that afternoon, and I don't think any of them wanted to be responsible for me stroking out if my blood pressure went too high. The defense actually finished relatively early, and left me with over an hour and half until I had to be at the hospital, which is about 12 seconds away from the Tox Centre. That would have been nice if I'd had anything to do, but I couldn't eat or drink since I was going in for surgery! So, we basically all hung around at Tox until just before 1PM, at which point E, my mom, and I headed for the hospital to check in.
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