Setting the record straight

When I was about to be discharged from the hospital, the doctor on duty came by to go over my discharge information and see if I needed anything. While she was there, I asked if I could have a copy of all the medical records from my stay in the hospital. She thought for a moment and said, "well we normally only give those to other doctors, but it's totally within your rights to have. We just don't get anyone asking for them." I told her that I know it was a bit of a weird request and she just smiled and said, "yeah, but you're a little weird." I took it as a compliment. So I went back to the hospital today to sign for my medical records and drop off a few much-deserved thank you cards. My OB Dr. D had unfortunately gone home early after pulling an all nighter the night before so I missed her, but was able to chat with a few of the nurses and promised to bring the boy back for another visit next week. My fetal diagnostic nurse was there and super excited to see our beautiful son. And I was able to get to the front desk of the maternity ward to deliver thank you cards to my delivering doctor and nurse which they hopefully will receive this evening when they get to work (more soon on all they did to deserve those as I chronicle this birth).

After getting fussed at by the woman at "Patient Information Services" (that's what they call the medical records department now) for bringing the boy with me to the hospital while she has a cold, she did print out a copy of all my records from my stay. For being such a thick packet of paper it is surprisingly sparse on the details of my birth experience. I did find out I was officially on an epidural from 23:35 Wednesday night to 06:44 Thursday morning, but nothing says what the dosages were during that time and I know for a fact they turned it off around 3am. I had to Google what it meant for me to have macrosomia since it sounded serious - apparently that's medicalese for "big baby". Other notes include:

"Patient requests natural TOL (trial of labor?) despite Bishop score of 2 and fetal macrosomia. Patient preference is no Pitocin, saline lock on the IV, doula in the room, and not to remain in bed during trial of labor. Patient has been offered a C/S (c-section?) in the past and today, but requests TOL prior to C/S."

I also learned that I had "bilateral 2nd degree sulcal tears repaired with 2.0 vicryl" which translates to "shredded crotch", but it doesn't detail all the lengths and care the doctor went to putting me back together.

The records told me that Ian's Apgar score was 5 at one minute and 7 at five minutes, something no one told me while we were there.

What's odd is that nothing says what time I was given Pitocin and what the increments were changed to over the evening. I'm not sure if this is because they didn't give me all the records or if they literally don't log all that. I lean towards the latter since it says I only had 30mL of mineral oil and I know for a fact they must have dumped at least a gallon on me to keep me from tearing more than I did.

All of this goes to show that if you want to know what happens to you when you're at the hospital, it's up to you to log it yourself. I look forward to reading the notes our doula took for us as she wrote down the name of every doctor and nurse we spoke to as well as all the medications I was given and when. It was still very worthwhile to get all the records, but they certainly only tell part of the story. I'll be curious to see if there are more details somewhere else that my OB will have when I see her in a few weeks.

Calling the city on this baby

I'm typing this between contractions while sitting on a giant rubber ball. Forgive any typos. I wanted to give a little background on how my OB appointment went yesterday. We knew it was going to be a bit of an ultimatum (I'm so impressed I just spelled that right just now) appointment but figured we would just see what everyone had to say.

When Dr. D checked me, my cervix had softened/thinned a bit more and moved anterior/forward but I still hadn't dilated past that one centimeter. She also was concerned that baby boy's head had not fully engaged in my pelvis in that she could touch him but could still push him away.

So I was given two options:

1) wait another week and if he didn't come on his own go in for a c-section. I pretty much knew this is not what I wanted since I would always wonder if I could have done it and the stress would have made me a giant ball of snot and tears walking into the hospital.

2) Schedule an induction date for this week and see if he would come out on his own either before then or with a little prodding.

We decided to go with option 2. They looked on the calendar and scheduled me for Wednesday morning at 7:30am. When the physician's assistant (more words I'm stunned I just spelled/typed correctly) told me that date, I asked if she had something a little later. "We normally do all our inductions first thing in the morning." "Well, I meant do you have something later in the week?" I smiled sheepishly.

Nope, Wednesday was the best day because of which doctors would be on call and who would be most agreeable to let me try to birth this baby on my own and not skip straight to surgery. In the end that seemed like the best idea. We all agreed on that and left the office.

And as Rich drove us home, I cried the whole way.

I just needed to mourn a scenario that I really wanted to happen that was having its door closed. I knew I could still stand a good chance of having this boy vaginally and without medication but it was not my ideal situation. I would literally have to pick my last meal that morning, drive in to the hospital and be given Cytotec to encourage dilation and hope that contractions started up on their own before folks got impatient. I really dislike hospitals so the idea of spending at least 24 hours there with no food and no baby and possibly no progress was not very appealing.

Over the course of the evening I started feeling kind of crappy. At one point I had convinced myself that I had contracted swine/bird/moose flu and would have to suffer through contractions in that condition. We called it a night around 11pm.

Around 5am I woke up to pee and felt a little rumbly-tummied (don't even ask me if that's spelled right). Once my body decided to reboot its digestive system, I felt worlds better and curled back up in bed. That's when I noticed those tell-tale signs we talked about in birth class. My back would tighten up, then that tightness would wrap around to the front. I could feel my whole uterus pull forward for about a minute and then it would slacken up. This kept up the entire time I was lying in bed and I must say I was napping with a huge smile on my face.

Throughout the day my contractions have been picking up speed and intensity. At the moment they're about 3-4 minutes apart. I'm obviously still able to type, but that may not last much longer. And as Rich says I'm not finishing my sentences in a timely manner anymore so it's a bit like charades in our house.

My family has always had some sort of crisis that kicks our collective asses into gear to do something. The yard will be a wreck until someone reports it to the city and then my father moves mountains to clean it up. The roof will be in disrepair until it leaks and risks ruining the rafters underneath and then suddenly we can empty the attic in a weekend and replace the roof in two days.

So when things started picking up this morning, I told Rich that this baby was just like all the other Powells and wasn't going to do anything until someone gave him a hard deadline. As Rich said, we called the city on him.

Are we there yet?

It's been a bit of radio silence over here the last few days, mostly because there's not much to report other than I'm still pregnant. When my mother was pregnant with me, I was born right on time, but when she was pregnant with my older brother Perry he came late. Very late. "Oh my God I may stay pregnant forever will no one believe me this has to be a world record for pregnancy he's going to come out eating solid foods" kind of late. It's still hard for me to wrap my head around, but my brother was supposedly due in late November and was born January 12. When my father lamented recently that Perry was "born under a bad star" because of all his poor luck, I pointed out that he was supposed to be Scorpio and ended up a Capricorn.

My mother says that she went to the doctor every week and they would continue to pat her on the head and tell her she must have counted wrong. And every week she would go home in tears, still pregnant. I find it ironic that recently that I've been going home from my doctor visits in tears because I am trying desperately to remain pregnant.

To add insult to injury, for the two months from November to January, my mother's mother would call every day to ask if the baby was coming that day so she could go get her hair done and not look like a "booger bear" when she came to visit Mom at the hospital. Every. Day.

My mother told me that little tidbit in an email earlier this week. She has also called me every day this week with some random question or another just to see how things are going. When the phone rang today, Rich looked at the caller ID and said it was my mother asking if she should get her hair done.

So no baby quite yet. But I promise to let you all know when we get close, so you can call your local salons.