My Preemie

I promised to tell you all about my ridiculous labor story, so here goes.

Monday March 19
I haven't been feeling good for a couple of days. I have sudden swelling in my legs and feet, I'm experiencing strange headaches, dizziness, and an overall "just not right" feeling. I have a prenatal appointment with my doctor scheduled for this afternoon, so I just wait it out and will speak with her about it. At the appointment, my doctor takes my blood pressure. It's high. Really high. She's worried. She monitors me for 15 minutes, checking my blood pressure every 3. It doesn't go down. With all of the other strange symptoms I'm experiencing, she's concerned. She calls an OB at St. Boniface, telling me that I may have to have my baby TODAY. (Whoa). The OB says to admit me to Bethesda, since I'm there anyway, and monitor my blood pressure overnight and do some blood work to see if it goes down.
...It doesn't.

Tuesday March 20
Still in Steinbach Bethesda Hospital, my doctor comes to see me in the morning. My symptoms still haven't gone away, and the tests they ran came back with extremely high protein and extremely low platelets. Oh - and I had hypertension. Crazy. So...she called St. Boniface again, this time speaking to a different OB, who said, "What are we waiting for? The next thing that will happen is her liver is going to fail. She needs to be induced NOW." Off I go to St. Boniface.
I get to St. Boniface at around 11:00, and try to register into emergency triage - which is where I was told to go. The nurse there looked at me as if I was on crack as I told her that I was sent there to be induced. I was told I had to wait. And wait. And wait. Oh - and did I mention that Bethesda Hospital had started a 24 hour urine test that I had to finish up at St. Boniface, so I was walking around with a jug of pee in a bag?! Good grief!!
Finally they bring me into a makeshift room, and start monitoring the baby. They do more blood work. More repeat things that I had already done in Steinbach. I was annoyed. FINALLY they say they are going to admit me. To the 4th floor. Labor and Delivery is the 3rd floor. So off I go. I still have no answers, still no idea what's going on. They keep giving me high blood pressure pills and checking on me every once in a while. Finally at about 10:00 PM, I've had enough. The nurse that is tending to me is a complete lunatic, and hasn't been nice to me at all, and hasn't been giving me ANY answers. She comes in with more medication and I tell her I'm not taking it until I see the OB. She freaks out. Apparently it's bad if you have really high blood pressure and refuse to take medication. Haha. Then she finally proceeds to tell me that I am, in fact, on the induction list. WOW. Thanks! That's all I needed to know! Could you not have told me that 7 hours ago? ...I took the medication. And tried to sleep.

Wednesday March 21
Still feeling like I'm getting the run-around with doctors, nothing is happening. I continually have doctor's coming into the room saying, "Mrs. Friesen, we are very worried about your health. We need to get this baby out."...Yeah. I know! So what are we waiting for?! Turns out, we were waiting for a bed. There were 18 women trying to have a baby that night. Yes. 18. Or at least that's what they told me. Also, since I was high risk, we had to wait for a 'special' bed. AND - they had to make sure a bed was open in the NICU for the baby. Sigh. All I could do was cry. I thought I would have had my baby already.
Then they decided that they couldn't wait any longer. It was already 11:00PM at this point. They decided that if they didn't have a bed shortly, they would send me to yet another hospital to be induced there. They set Rob up with a makeshift bed in the patient lounge, and we were told to wait. Again.
Then, at around midnight, Rob came into the room and said it was time to go. They found a bed, and I was being induced immediately. I was totally confused as to why Rob was telling me this and not a nurse, but I wasn't surprised. I already had such a strange experience here, nothing was going to surprise me anymore.

Thursday March 22
We are about to start the induction!! I'm back in emergency triage. It's like a bad dream. I thought we were going to high risk?? Nope. Still had to wait for a bed. WOW.
They put the little monitors on my tummy to monitor the baby, and start me off with cervadil. It's a gel that they put...well, you can guess where. It started working almost immediately I thought. But...it also starting putting baby into distress. So they removed it! AH!!! I thought this was never ever going to end. They decide to try cervical balloons instead, to try and soften my cervix and release some petocin, blah blah blah. But guess what - to do that, they had to send me to high risk. And wouldn't you know it - a bed just opened up. Figures. So off I go to high risk. The balloons were either supposed to fall out after I was 3-4 cm dilated, or they were to be removed after 12 hours. Once the balloons were inserted, it didn't take long before I started having contractions. They slowly got worse, and I made full use of the morphine, laughing gas, and fentanyl that I was offered. Keep in mind, I wasn't checked the entire time. They couldn't, because the balloons were there. Every time they tugged on them, they didn't come out. So, I must not be dilating, they thought. 12 hours later, the doctor comes in to remove the balloons. I'm having such severe contractions, I'm wondering how I'm going to manage this much longer if I'm not even 3-4cm yet.
She checks. And then she says, "Oh. This doesn't make any sense. You are already 9.5cm, and the membranes are protruding. We need to break your water, and you'll be ready to push right away." I think I actually laughed.
After they broke my water, I wondered what it was supposed to feel like when I was ready to push. With Isaiah, they had to tell me when to push.
OH. THAT'S WHAT IT FEELS LIKE.
I yell that I need to push. "NO, Mrs. Friesen! Don't push!"...as they are telling me to not push, they are putting my feet in the stirrups. Whyyyyyy are you doing that! Then I started yelling. I was about to push NOW. The doctor comes in, all calm. Slowly putting her gloves on. I'm about to explode. She comes over to me and freaks out a little. "I can see the head. She is actually going to push right now."
2 big pushes and a few "push, okay stop" ordeals, and the baby was out.
Conner Allen Friesen came into the world at 2:49 PM
He was blue. The umbilical cord was wrapped twice around his neck. They intubated him and removed the meconium from his mouth. Then I finally heard him cry.
They wrapped him in a blanket, put him on my chest for 5 seconds, said "Here's your baby!" and then whisked him off to the NICU.
I didn't get to see him until much much later.