When I first found out I was going to be a mom I was devastated. Not because I didn't want to have kids, I just didn't want to have kids yet. I was in the midst of planning my wedding when I found out I was pregnant. After we had put $1,000 in deposits down. I had also already ordered my wedding dress and it was non returnable. I wanted to postpone the wedding but my husband refused. Obviously he didn't understand how important my wedding was to me. Needless to say, there I was in Vegas, 8 months pregnant with a very altered and ill-fitting dress. It was 115 degrees people. Not fun. Clearly I got used to the idea of having a kid eventually and felt ok with the surprise pregnancy. I read all the books about breastfeeding, and attended the classes. I was sure that I would breastfeed until my son was a year old.......at least. I didn't want to be induced, and I most definitely did not want a c-section. Apparently God and my son had different plans though. At 9 days post due my ob-gyn was no longer comfortable continuing on. We went in at 6am to get induced. I guess I should say I went in to get induced, my husband didn't do any of the hard stuff. They started Pitocin and it took about an hour or two to start having contractions. My doctor came in about 3.5 hours into it and put a blown up catheter balloon in my cervix to dilate it. Very uncomfortable. She encouraged me to get my epidural and I resisted at first. Everytime I had a contraction I felt like I had to pee and I would get up dragging a catheter and IV pole with me. By the time I got to the bathroom it would subside and I would drag myself back to bed. I finally agreed to get an epidural. It took about an hour for the anesthesiologist to come, but I got my epidural. Then my blood pressure dropped. My original nurse was at lunch so when the alarms started going off nobody came. A nurse has got to eat right? I made my husband call and instead of someone coming into our room, a secretary asked what we needed over a speaker. He said we needed a nurse and I was going to puke. She said she would call her but no one came. We called a second time and still no response. Then the fetal monitor started alarming. About 3 minutes after that a nurse ran in and threw oxygen on me which wasn't scary at all. Then our nurse finally came in. No big deal, my low blood pressure was causing his heart rate to drop. Then a resident came in and broke my water...........and it was green. "Ugh, does it look ok?" I asked, even though I knew the answer. "Sure it looks great!" she replied as I stared at her in disbelief. "Well, okay there's some meconium(baby poop) in it," she finally explained. Don't these people realize i'm a nurse? Due to the meconium in the water I was told NICU nurses would be present at the delivery to suction my son out. Just suction, that is all. Everything after this point continued on as before. I didn't dilate much, but I also didn't feel anything. At about 5pm I felt some pain so I let the nurse know and got a bolus of medication and presto! No more pain. About 7pm I started having more severe pain(also known as contractions). I let the new night nurse know and I don't really think she cared. After about 2 hours she reluctantly had them give me more medication. It really didn't do anything. At this point I was really leaning towards a c-section. I was told that if I didn't dilate to 10cm by 11pm then we would go to surgery. At that point I hoped I wouldn't dilate. Of course I did though. Even though my son hadn't dropped they insisted I should push. Exhausted, and with no energy I tried to push.......for 3 HOURS!!!! Apparently he was sunny side up, and the resident kept sticking her arm up to her elbow inside of me to turn him. After the third time I politely(haha) told her that was enough. He just kept flipping around. Finally I convinced the resident to call my doctor. This was after they turned my epidural off and I was having contractions about 20 seconds apart. My doctor came in and decided it was time for surgery. The c-section went fine even though it wasn't my dream delivery. I didn't even get to hold him for 2 hours after he was born. When we got to the postpartum floor I was told my son had a rough morning, he was intubated and had a rough delivery. "What was he intubated for, is that standard for meconium in the water?!?" I asked. "I don't know, maybe he had trouble breathing or something," is the answer I got. Same answer from the following three nurses as well. My pediatrician finally told me it was standard for meconium in the water. This was the beginning of my journey into postpartum hell. I've suffered with anxiety and depression since then, although things do seem to be on the up and up. I'm going to end here since I've been up all night at work. There's many more layers to this story however, breastfeeding was the next nightmare. Regardless of all of this, my son is my world and even though this was a horrible experience, I would do it all over again if that's what I had to do to get to him.
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