I should be going to bed, but my blog is sorely neglected.
My baby girl turned 4 on Friday!!! How quickly time flies! I love thinking about what I was going through on the day that they were born at what time. Well, with Mackinley anyways. She was born in the afternoon where as Macey was born early in the morning, so I can't really think about it. I didn't know exactly what I was going to blog about, but now I know. I will let you in on my awesome experience of giving birth for the first time.
Jar and I met in Lethbridge at the end of January. He conned me into going on a date with him the beginning of February. We were engaged the beginning of March, married at the end of June, and pregnant the middle of August. Mackinley was born 4 weeks to the day of our one year anniversary. Talk about quick!
I had a great pregnancy. I got queasy around smells (especially Jar's breath), but never threw up. I didn't gain weight until about 5 months along which was nice. It all came at the end in the form of water retention. I was pretty swollen. I felt great. I loved being pregnant. I loved feeling the baby move inside of me. It was such an emotional, spiritual time of my life.
Mackinley was due the 27th of May 2006. I tried the castor oil trick 2 weeks before her due date because the doctor told me I was dilated more than what I should be. It didn't work. Well, it worked as far as cleaning out my insides, but no baby. A couple days later I tried it again....and again. For those of you who have never tried it. Don't. It doesn't taste bad, but the texture is DISGUSTING. It's like drinking oil, and for some reason it is gross. For those of you who will still try it, don't leave your house to go for a brisk walk until after it has left your system! I am speaking from personal experience. You're better off at home!
Anyways, after some castor oil and some walking my water broke. I was so excited! We lived a block down from the hospital, so we got there and sure enough it was broke and I was going into labor! I was giggly and excited, so I wasn't too happy when they told me I should try and sleep. They gave me some morphine and I did sleep. I stopped having contractions all together. The next morning we waited for something to start, but it didn't. It had to be soon because my water had already broken, but they tried breaking it some more to see if that would help. They called in the nurse to give me an IV so I could get an epidural and some oxytocin. The next 3 hours were the worst 3 hrs of my entire pregnancy/labor.
I always get poked and prodded when getting an IV, but this was the worst I've ever had. The nurse came in and tried getting the IV to work, she missed, so she dug around for awhile. She tried again and didn't get it again. The next nurse came in and tried and poked around for a little while. She proceeded to poke me again with the SAME needle. She dug around for awhile. She got a new needle and poked me again. She used the SAME needle and dug around again. They finally brought in another nurse and she poked and prodded and FINALLY got it. I got poked 7 times and it took over an hour. One full hour of being tortured by psycho-never-give-up-nurse. I had tears streaming down my face. I wasn't crying, but they were coming down like when you get hit in the nose and the tears just automatically come. It was awful.
Once the IV was up and running they gave me the oxytocin to help speed up the contractions. It was working. They upped the drip a little to get going even faster and that's when everything started to go wrong. I didn't have an epidural yet, so I was feeling the pain. It wasn't too bad until I had a contraction and it wouldn't stop. It just got stronger and stronger and wouldn't let up. 5 minutes then 10 minutes. That's when all sorts of nurses and doctors where in there. Someone kept shoving nitroglycerin under my tongue. The doctors where checking me and thought that she was breech. Mackinley started to go into stress and they had to take me down for an emergency C-section. There is something unsettling when you can sense that something is really wrong by the way the doctors and nurses are calmly freaking out. Does that make sense? You could feel the tension. It was scary.
They had told Jar that he needed to get dressed so he could come down, but by the time they were rolling me out they told him he couldn't come. They wheeled me down to the elevator. I am still having this one long contraction. It's been 30 minutes. I was laying on my side death-gripping the railings on the bed. No, I was not screaming. I prefer to suffer in silence. :) While in the elevator, we go to the wrong floor. So we have to wait and go to the right floor. We once again go to a wrong floor. We finally got to the right floor and they kept bumping the bed into the doorway of the elevator. They couldn't get the bed out. It was excruciatingly painful.
They finally got me into the operating room and they put me on another bed. They mad me lie flat on my back and tied my hands down. I know this is standard, but when you have been having the strongest contraction for 40 minutes you wouldn't like it either. They finally put me out. But not before I told the doctor to tell Jaron that I didn't want anybody holding her until I got up there. I didn't think it was fair that I had to go through all of that and everybody else gets to enjoy her before I even get to see her. Selfish? Maybe. Do I regret it? No.
When I woke up the first thing I asked was "What did I have?" A girl.
"Is she okay?" Yes.
So after 19 hrs of labor, an hour of torture with needles, a 45 minute long contraction, and an emergency C-section I finally got to see my baby girl! They took me up to my room and an hour after she was born I got to see her perfect little face! She was beautiful. She had a major cone head though. It was the back of her head that stuck out really far. I wasn't too impressed that I had a C-section baby with a massive cone head. It went away though, so it wasn't too bad.
I instantly fell in love with her. It was amazing. She was the best baby. She was a great nursing baby. I didn't know that I would love nursing as much as I did. She was also instantly a momma's girl. I didn't know they preferred someone when they were that little, but she did, and I loved it.
I healed up good after it all and was excited to do it again as soon as we could. We were pregnant with Macey when Mackinley was 18 months old. But that's a different story. Maybe I'll share that horror of a story in a few months when my baby girl turns 2.
