babyblog

Tab-Fuh's Birth Story

Tab-fuh, so named by her big brother Harry, is an absolute princess, I love her to bits!! Forget any of those silly worries I had, she's absolutely and utterly gorgeous and sweet and lovely and everything and more than I could ever have imagined she would be :o)

Now that I'm done gushing, I'll try to write up her birth story... it was overall not my best birth experience, it was quite stressful and upsetting at times, and I'm so glad that we're home now!

Thursday morning - after the predictable very little sleep due to nerves - G and I set out for the hospital at 6.40am. The boys were both up (and their Grandad) to wave us off. We arrived at 7am in style in G's truck and carried all of our bags - looking as if we were moving in permanently - into the Maternity reception area where we had to fill out some forms and then wait for our nurse to collect us.

Having been collected around 7.20am we were taken to our room. The hospital gives you a room when you check in which is then yours for the duration, should you be in labour your baby is born in the room, for a c-seciton you are prepped there and then returned, and it's the room in which you recover and then sleep. The room was very nice - G had a day bed to himself, there was a TV / DVD / VCR/ Stereo system, bathroom obviously, and pretty much about as un-hospitalish as a hospital room can be.

The nurse got me into a gown and then started my IV. It wasn't too bad. I was, although pretty nervous, feeling OK. They checked my blood work to make sure the Heparin wasn't compromising my ability to clot and they gave me antibiotics to prevent infection in the wound. The OB came in to say Hi and the hour and a half pretty much flew by.

At 9am they told us that it was time and they had us walk to the OR - me dragging my IV pole with me. They held Gareth back to go and put on his scrubs and told me to go into the OR on my left. As I approached the entrance I stopped and was confronted by a small ish room absolutely full of stuff and people. It's really hard to describe but it seemed completely manic and busy, equipment crammed in every square inch, and completely scary and disorganised. I think this is the point I started to cry, I felt very frightened and overwhelmed.

Compare this to being taken into a calm white sterile environment with my last birth experience.... this was just all so crazy and manic. Also last time there was at least one person there to talk to me, keep me calm, reassure me, tell me what was happening.... and this time there was not. It was as though I was incidental to the proceedings. They escorted me (sobbing) to the bed and had me sit on it while the mayhem around me continued. I felt really overwhelmed and alone. Gareth finally came in and sat infront of me and held me and I was still crying uncontrollably - it was so emotional and scary all at the same time, really hard to explain.

They then put the spinal tap in. I was scared of this (esp. it being done in a sitting position which the other two were not) but it actually didn't really hurt and wasn't too bad, and then they had me lie down while it took effect. There had been until this point talk around the room about bumping us for an emergency but I guess they decided not to (thankfully!). Gareth came to sit around on my left side and we waited for the spinal to take full effect. The room around us continued to be mayhem. Nobody really had much to say to me still. I continued to cry. G held me and reassured me. The spinal seemed to take *forever* to numb me. I don't know why - the other two had been really quick but this just seemed to take an extremely long time.

Finally the anaesthetist put the curtain up and I guess they started - nobody actually told me that they were starting! I was feeling them pull my tummy around for quite a while and then felt the hard tugging that was so familiar and someone said 'get ready, here she comes' and all of a sudden a whoosh feeling and this glorious scream filled the air.

Of course more tears - this time tears of intense joy!! - commenced from both of us..... and our beautiful daughter was shown to us then taken over to the warmer to get checked over.

They told us she was 7lb 8oz, I could not believe that we'd finally had a baby who didn't come out a heavy weight! G stood with them while they did all the checks and she scored a 9/9 on her APGAR (very good!), and they suctioned lots of goop from her mouth that she kept spitting up. Then they wrapped her up snuggly and warm and gave her to G who brought her over to me :o)

She stayed with us while they finished sewing me up, which took a good while. I asked G what her name was, we'd had this short list of 3 or 4 all along, and he said 'I think she's Tabitha' and I was very happy as that's the one I'd favoured and I'd worried he wouldn't go for!

While they sewed me up, I remember hearing 'irrigation please' and 'there's a small piece of placenta still attached' which didn't do wonders for my nerves. When they were finally done the DR dropped the curtain thing down and stood infront of me covered in blood and started talking to me about something....and all I could think was stop that, stop talking to me letting me see my blood everywhere!

They then took us back to our room where G presented me with a diamond ring from Tiffany :o). Also got loads of balloons and flowers! All was well until Tabitha started to make these by now familiar grunting noises. Familiar because both boys did it too. Dylan had been left with us while doing them but Harry had been taken to the NICU and I began to be concerned that they'd take her too. The nurse came in and gave her a bath, saying that as babies generally hate it they scream which will help shift the fluid from her lungs that is causing her to struggle and make that grunting noise. She did scream, bless her, but the noise didn't get any better and infact began to get worse, and she sounded like she was really struggling.... my poor little baby girl.

They called a nurse from the NICU to come down and check her and they put a Pulse/Ox thing on her and determined that it was too low -- it's meant to be in the 90's and hers was in the 80's. They gave her some oxygen which helped and decided that she needed to go upstairs to the NICU to be more closely monitored :o( It's an horrific thing when this happens, you want so badly to be with your baby but at the same time you want them to be well..... just awful to have her and then have her taken away though.

They took her away and G went with her. Dad Sally Steve & the boys arrived just as they were leaving so they got a quick glimpse of her and then came into me. It's a bit blurry because of all the pain relief medication they had me on but I think G got her established up there, then came back and took some of them up to see her. Sally and Steve ended up taking Harry off for the day and Dylan wanted to stay and look after me (bless) so he and my dad stuck around meaning G could stay with Tabitha.

He came and reported progress regularly, her pulse/ox had dropped into the 70's and her blood sugar had dropped so they'd started her on more oxygen and put an IV in - her poor little veins and been prodded and poked non stop since she was born but she was beginning to improve. I was glad to have Dad and Dylan with me keeping me company. I had started to feel pretty crap myself.. the spinal wore off extremely quickly (within 3 or 4 hours) and the IV pain relief just wasn't helping, the whole incision area HURT. ALOT. Also the after-pains as my uterus contracted were horrendous. Combine pain with emotional turmoil following any birth combining also with the worry because your baby is not with you..... I was terrified I'd not bond with her ..... I was pretty wrecked.

The nurses continued to pump pain relief into me but it wasn't working ... plus I had to ask for it rather than it being given automatically which meant I wasn't getting it regularly ......then finally the shift change happened and I got a new nurse who decided that my pain level was completely unacceptable and that she would do something about it. She switched me from the IV to Percocet tablets and got me some Dilaudid to give me every hour or so in between. She came in religiously on the hour to give me the medication and finally I began to feel that we'd begun to get on top of the pain. By 9pm I was able to get into a wheelchair and go and visit my little girl!

G and the nurse wheeled me up to the NICU and there was my beautiful little baby girl all taped up to wires and IV's and all sorts.... poor lamb.

They let me hold her and feed her, and thankfully she latched on and started feeding like a champ. What a blissful sensation of having her there where she should be, everything finally felt 'right'!

We arranged that I would go back at 12 to nurse, that G would go up at 3 with some expressed milk, and that I would go back at 6am. We told them to call us if she needed us for feeds before that. All went according to plan until G went up around 3am and found that they'd given her sodding formula and a pacifier. I was furious - no hospital should ever do that esp after we'd given them instructions not to! My nurse went and read the twatty NICU nurse the riot act thankfully and when I went back up at 6am they allowed me to take Tabitha back downstairs with me at last - hurrah!

It was so good to have her back with us.... and she was able to finally meet her family for the first time.

Most of Friday we spent resting and sleeping on and off between visits from the nurse. Taibtha continued to nurse very well and spent alot of time sleeping on her daddy's chest.

I had some continued discomfort - this time due to trapped wind (lovely) which is common after surgery where they rearrange your intestines and gas gets trapped and can't get out. The only 'cure' for this is to move around so it's a
struggle between moving in pain or lying down in pain .... I moved as much as I could anyway, and suffered as it didn't want to shift until Saturday!

On Saturday we were discharged. We spent the day at the hospital and left around 6pm, having mostly rested again. The difference of a 3rd baby - you know when to take the opportunity to rest and get as much sleep as possible - we ended up coming back feeling really refreshed!

Sunday - spent the day at home chilling out.... had a couple of visitors..... pretty good.

Monday (today) I had to go and get my staples taken out and get Tabby checked over at the hospital. She's doing great, she's down to 6lb 14 oz but it's within acceptable limits of weight loss. My incision is not great as apparently it's coming apart in places????? But they've put a ton of steri-strips on so hopefully my insides wont' fall out of the wound (!)

It also helps that Tabitha is so far (touch wood) a really really good baby. She feeds and sleeps for 3-4 hours in between and is not fussy or screamy. She has a good pair of lungs on her when she wants to (usually if having her bum changed or clothes changed) but she's pretty content and sweet natured. It's lovely to have her home. Her brothers are pretty cool with her. Harry keeps saying 'you got a baby?' when he sees us with her, but he's very cuddly and kissy with her and seems to accept her presence in the house. Dylan is a little nervous of her in the sense that he wonders how he should feel......but very interested and has spent quite some time holding her and cuddling her and 'bonding' with her (in his words).

No doubt I've written far too much and also missed out a ton of important stuff.... but ones head doesn't work too well when taking large amounts of Percocet :) All in all, the birth itself was a bit overwhelming but the end result is obviously well worth it!

Posted by katie at July 2, 2007 05:29 PM