Here Comes The Seamonkey Part 3 - I folded like a tent...

In case you missed it, be sure to check out Part 1 and Part 2 before you continue reading...

I had never been so happy to see that tiny, old Swedish woman.  She came waltzing in wearing cowboy boots, black skinny jeans, and a very Dolly Parton-esque top.  She seemed super excited about me being in labor and I asked if she had been at the rodeo and her response was, "yes - it was a honky-tonk good time!" hahahaha  Seriously...I had never been that happy to see a little old lady in my life.

Then she informed me there was a slight problem - I was having contractions every 3 minutes but I was barely dilated (I was just under 2 cm at this point).  Apparently that's a problem.  My contractions were regular, but they weren't strong enough, and since my water had already broken on it's own she wanted to start me on pitocin.  And given how much pain I was already in because of my bladder infection she really didn't think I should try and go through with a natural birth.  If I was going to have a baby the next day I needed to sleep that night and she thought the only way that would happen would be if I had an epidural.

I folded like a tent, threw away all my hopes of a natural childbirth, and she called for the anesthesiologist.

When he got there I almost laughed.  Dude looked exactly like Beaker from The Muppets.  I wish I had a picture to show you.  He was so tall we had to jack the bed up all the way for him to be able to to put in the epidural.  And honestly, I was so exhausted at this point that I barely even noticed him putting it in.  But that man was an anesthesia sorcerer!  The pain stopped right away but I still had complete control over my lower body.  I could adjust myself in bed without an issue, but for the first time in what felt like eons, I wasn't in pain.

Then they put in the catheter.  When getting a catheter actually feels good you know there was something wrong with your bladder.  Because of the bladder infection I hadn't been able to properly empty my bladder in God knows how long, so as soon as that catheter was in it all came out.  And, let me tell you, I almost filled that bag right away.  Even the nurses were taken aback.

And, by 11:30 pm they had started pitocin and a ton of IV meds to fight off my bladder infection.  Since there was no reason to believe we would actually be having a baby until the next afternoon, I insisted The Sailor go home to get a decent night sleep (rather than sleeping in a chair) and to spend time with the dogs.  Soon after he left they gave me some benadryl since the epidural had made me super itchy and I drifted off to sleep.



Sunday, April 1st - although my glorious epidural meant I had no pain, that night was far from smooth sailing.  First of all, my blood pressure was consistently high.  Like, 150s/100s.  And it kept setting off the alarms.  That meant that I had to keep the blood pressure cuff on all night so they could continue to take my blood pressure every 10 minutes to make sure I wasn't a stroke risk.  Then, my fever was getting worse.  It started at about 99.4 and steadily increased from there.  When I hit 100 they started informing me that if we couldn't get it under control they would have to do a c-section since it isn't safe for the baby.  When it got to 101 douche bag Dr. V tried to force my midwife to turn me over for a c-section but she held her ground since they knew I was sick before actually going into labor, so the fever was probably because of the bladder infection not because of labor itself.  It ended up hitting 101.8 before it finally started going down.  I was a sweaty mess.  Then The Seamonkey's heartrate started dropping so I had to wear an oxygen mask.  It really wasn't a fun night, but it definitely could have been much worse.

By the time The Sailor got back at about 6 am my fever had already started to drop, but I was still using the oxygen to keep The Seamonkey's heartrate up.  At the rate my body was going, I was hoping to actually give birth around noon.  And I'm gonna be completely honest with you, the next few hours were pretty much a blur of sleeping a bit and then being woken up by the alarm that would go off because my blood pressure was too high.  Occasionally The Seamonkey would try to push out my catheter and I would push that magical epidural button and the pain would stop.  But, it did get to the point where they actually had to tape the catheter to my leg since he was trying so hard to get it out.