Yeah, so it's been 2 months or so since the last episode, but I really wanted to get this all down so you'll have to bear with me. In case you are curious, the first two sections are here (scroll down).

Ok, so they had me hooked up to a zillion hootchie monitoring devices and were promising good things once the meconium was rinsed out. I could now officially tell that I was having contractions. They didn't hurt or anything but they made me kind of pause to think.

Somewhere in here Megan went to the car to get our crap because we knew we weren't going home.

Rather shortly after they broke my water, our doc (Dr. K) arrived. We saw her and all was glorious. We were SURE that she would tell them to back off and leave us the hell alone. We were SO wrong. She checked my dilation (maybe 4 cm?). She glanced at the contraction chart and announced that we needed to get in for a C-section "right away." We were stunned. Then she did it. Something I never thought she'd do. Something that I bet she wouldn't ever do unless she really meant it.

She played the dead baby card.

It went something like this: "Well, we can let you labor, but I'm not sure this baby can survive delivery."

NOTHING trumps the dead baby card. We asked for a few minutes alone to mentally prepare. They left to prepare the surgical stuff. We cried for a while and then called my parents to let them know that there would be a baby pronto.

They wheeled me to the surgical room for my epidural or whatever the hell they put in my back and told Megan they would send someone for her. NEVER, EVER let them separate you. Once the separate you, you can only be reunited by Them and They have other things to worry about.

The surgical room was one that none of them had ever used before. Apparently there were two other women getting sliced up at that exact time and they got the normal rooms. This room had a crazy loud fan that made them all have to yell. All of the little tubey hook-ups and stuff were in weird places too, which meant that people were having to do the Mission Impossible walk to get through the room. It was very stressful for everyone. There were also conversations like this throughout the next couple hours...

"Where are the (whatever)?"
"I think they are in that case in the corner."
(a little annoyed) "Can you get me some?"
"It's locked and nobody knows where the key is"

They had a tough time with my epidural. The guy seemed to have trouble finding the space between my bones. Here was the worst part:

(following what (I suppose) was supposed to numb me)
Me (to the woman who I'm hunched over on because my wife has been told to stay behind): "Ow"
Woman: "She felt that"
Anesthetist: "Huh?"
Woman: "She felt that"
Anesthetist: "Oh, I must be hitting bone. Sorry about that"
(repeat 2 or 3 times)

Then I'm laying down and the big curtain is up. Megan STILL isn't there. I keep asking for her and they keep saying that they've sent someone to get her. I think we're waiting (can't feel or see a thing). Apparently we weren't because when Megan DID make it to the room*, I was already either cut or being cut right then. She does the crazy walk above and below tubes to get to me and sits on the little seat by my head. She was warned several times by several people that the seat wasn't really connected and that it and she could fall if she didn't pay attention. She was annoyed why so many people felt the need to tell her this. What she didn't know was that the one on the other side had fallen right before she got there and made a bad noise. There were enough bad noises in the room with the fan going and all the shouting that nobody wanted any more bad noises.

Anyway, very shortly after this Dr. K announced, "I see an ear" and then after that "It's a skinny baby girl!" There was simultaneous baby wailing with this second announcement. Did I get to see the baby girl? No. I think maybe Megan could, but she couldn't get to her (because of all the tubes and wires everywhere). We find out that the crew of people were "working on her" and that we could see her in a minute. Then I couldn't breathe.

I don't mean that it took my breath away, I mean I COULDN'T BREATHE. I started wheezing in Megan's general direction and she quickly informs that staff that I was suffocating. They kept asking if I needed to vomit. I was immobilized and smothering and they were offering me a puke tray. Isn't "holding your throat" the international symbol of "I can't breathe?" Did they change it??? Anyway, they tell me that I COULD breathe and that I WAS breathing, but that I just couldn't feel it because my epidural had gone up too high and made my lungs numb. Basically they were asking me to have a Peter Pan moment where I just had to BELIEVE that I was breathing. I wasn't sure I trusted them. They showed my O2 level on a machine that said I was 100% oxygentated. God it was scary, but I really couldn't argue with that. They told me to just act like I was breathing and I would be. Weird, but it worked.

Oh, while this was going on, they made Megan leave because they blamed her for getting me riled up. I bet they just didn't want TWO people knowing they screwed up my epidural. Anywho, the good thing is that they took Megan to where Quinn was! She was perfect and scored a 9 on her first apgar. When they were working on her, I guess they must've been trying to do a lot of suctioning (remember - lots of meconium and this can cause infection). Technically you are supposed to do this before they take their first breath. I can only assume that they did.

Somewhere around here, I actually got to see her. I believe my first thought (besides LOVELOVELOVE) was, "somebody shrunk my dad."

Dr. K did a lot of stitching on me. She double-stitched everything so that I would be able to do a VBAC someday if I wanted to. Throughout my stay at the hospital, I received numerous compliments on my stitching. I guess she did a good job. I am told that my placenta was separating and that was why I was bleeding. Nobody suggests why this happened. I'm told my placenta is being sent to pathology.**

They wheeled me to a recovery room and I actually got to HOLD her. Then they brought my parents in who had driven the 2 hours up since I had called. They were smitten. Then the lactation consultant came in and got us started on nursing. I really don't remember much from the recovery room except for my mom making my (exceedingly shy and private) dad take pictures of me breastfeeding and saying phrases like "Zoom in." I also remember shaking so hard that I was afraid that I would drop her, but knowing that I really wouldn't.

I stayed in the hospital until Sunday. I was told that my room sucked and that all the other rooms were better, but I was fine. We were a bit too close to the helipad, but hey...

I hope that in waiting this long to write this out that not too many things were forgotten. I'm so relieved to finally have this down. I thank you for reading this massive tome.

* I found out later that they had left Megan alone in the room for an HOUR without telling her where I was or what was going on....
** The pathology report came back that it had separated (duh). It also said that it was in the 95th percentile for size. My baby was in the 3rd percentile. I'm sure this difference somehow is important, but there don't seem to be many placenta experts.

So , when we last left off, I was being wheeled into a real room from the triage area. It wasn't the one with the labor tub, but I was figuring we were a little beyond that at this point (and I was still believing that someone with some sense would appear and let us go home).

Once we got to the room and they got the monitors hooked back up, there was a lot more "lay on your left" "lay on your right" shenanigans to get her heart-rate to stay high. What they were concerned about was that after each contraction, her heart-rate was either not coming back up or it was actually falling more.

I was able to see the monitor better in this room and could see the contraction curves at the bottom. They asked some questions about the contractions (pain, etc.). I told them that I could only feel them with my hand when I held it to my stomach. I was told that I must have a high pain tolerance because I was having fairly strong contractions that were consistently 2 minutes apart. This made me so sad that labor was so manageable for me, but all this crap was still happening. For a little while I played the "Is this a contraction I'm feeling" game where I would think I was feeling tensing and then look to see if it was on the screen. That joy wore off in a hurry when they announced that they were going to break my water. We asked why and they told us 1) to look for meconium 2) to put in internal monitors 3) to increase my contractions. At our birth class, we discussed the monitors and they were presented as a good way to make sure that the baby really is in distress. Not that it was a great thing to have done, but if they are trying to slice you open, this can be a good compromise to calm the medical folks down and buy you some time. So, we agreed...

Creepy dr guy was called in. Apparently my cervix was still quite high and tilted to the rear (those of you who were around in the cervix photography days will recall that this same high cervix is the same reason that all started -- my fingers were too short to ever reach). None of the girl staff could reach it. *rolled eyes* Anyway, guy has to reach in, pull my cervix forward and then hold it that way while he used various tools. The problem with this was that he was forcefully using the rear wall of my vagina as a leverage point to do this. I can't even tell you how much that hurt. Big man knuckle bone on some very delicate skin.

He eventually got the water broken and there was meconium. Like a lot. Like a whole lot. Poor baby girl having to float in all of that...

Next was time for installing all of the hoochie appliances. There was the contraction monitor, which slid into my uterus beside her head, there was the heart-rate monitor WHICH SCREWS INTO HER HEAD (she still has a mark) and they added a third thing which amount to a uterine power-washer. They hooked up a hose-type-thing that sent clean water up in so that more of the bad stuff got rinsed out. We were told that this could help stabilize her heart-rate. Needless to say, I was strapped down to the bed. We had gone in about an hour from "let's go have the parts checked" to strapped down with THREE appliances coming out of my crotch and an IV in my arm. We knew now (since the water was broken) that we weren't going home, but somehow we still thought that things were going to get better now that they had the crotch wash installed.

Time to give Quinn a bath, so more later...

This is going to contain a lot more detail that even YOU want (and I know how you are about details b/c I'm the same way), but I wanted to get everything down so that I could stop having to remember it.

As of the afternoon of Tuesday, April 11th, I hadn't really had any more contraction action than I'd been having for a couple of weeks. Basically I could feel contractions with my hands, but didn't notice them if I wan't actually feeling my belly. I chalked them up to Braxton-Hicks. We'd gone for a walk that morning to encourage the little one into the world. In retrospect, I did have some back pain earlier that day that made me go stretch over my birth ball for a while, but I attributed that to "muscle pain" or something similar.

Megan was teaching until around 7:30 and I was picking her up. When I was leaving to get her, I stopped to pee and noticed some red blood. Just a little. I was pretty excited because I took this as my cervix dilating and the little capillaries breaking. Megan and I went out for dinner to get some spicy Chinese food. There was definite cervical twinging, but nothing to make me do the "honey, it's time" thing. I was figuring that maybe Wednesday was going to be the real thing.

We got home and watched the American Idol that we had DVRed and I sat on my birth ball and did some good circling and such to help bring her head down. When the show was over, I went to the bathroom again and there was more blood. Still not what I would consider a lot, but like a decent amount for a period. We still weren't worried, but decided that calling the doc was a good idea. We called the service and she called back right away. This was around 10:00, I think. She said that we should go to the hospital and get checked out by the staff doctor just to see what was going on. She figured that they would just tell me that labor was starting. I asked if they would let me go home if I was "diagnosed" to be in labor. She suggested we take our stuff, but that we would likely be able to go home.

Since we weren't *really* packed yet (stuff was in several piles around the house), Megan worked on packing and I took a shower. A shower just seemed like a good idea. We got to the hospital around 11ish. Dr. K had called and they were expecting us. We were taken to a triage room and hooked up to the belly strap monitor thing. The nurse asked a zillion questions. They made me lay on my left side because of some issues with the baby's heart rate. This means that I couldn't see the monitor because it was behind me.

*** Allow me to interject here how much we hate and don't trust those monitor things. They switch all the time from the baby's heart rate to your heart rate, thereby making it look like the baby's heart rate is greatly fluctuating.

A staff doctor guy (Dr. C) came in and looked at the computer output. I started explaining how I was having a little bit of bleeding and I just wanted to be checked so that I could go home. The nurse (who had left) came back and declared that they were starting an IV on me. We pulled out our most incredulous faces and asked why. They pulled out THEIR most incredulous faces and asked what we meant by "why." I asked again about the whole "check me and send me home thing." Then Dr. C asked if we had a birth plan. I thought, "finally, they understand where we are coming from." He asked if we wanted them to call Dr. K to examine me. I was like, sure. I mean, the option between strange man who looks at the computer and not me and my doc who knows what I want, no choice there, really. So he left the room.

In a couple of minutes, they come in with a phone with Dr. K on it. She says, "They tell me you are refusing care." Some sort of crazy drama happened when Dr. C went out to call Dr. K that involved a third doctor who apparently is really into stirring things up. I tried to explain that we weren't refusing care and that we were given a choice (etc. etc.). Dr. K says that she is at another hospital catching another baby and that "I need to let them check me." I tried to convey that I was more than happy to have someone check me. She also said that according to what they told her about the monitor strip, I did need to get an IV. There may have been something mentioned about the IV stabilizing the heart rate and then we'd be able to go home. This sounded like a good compromise. The nurse checks me and I'm only 2 cms dilated.

They move me to a real room...

Since this is taking longer than I hoped and I'm afraid that I will lose it or something. I'm going to call this Part 1 and send it.