hi i'm soft

Saturday June 20th (the day after my second born’s first birthday), I was feeling extremely ill. Headache, vomiting, high home BP readings. I brushed it off because I had gone to OB triage for the same thing earlier that week and they sent me home. But Bill could tell something was wrong, so he told me I was going in, no exceptions.

We get to triage and my blood pressure is in the 160s/100s. Nurse looks at me and says “I hope you have your bags packed, you’re not going home without a baby”. A few more readings and no change to BP. I get admitted upstairs to L&D for an emergency induction. I wasn’t super concerned because I was a few hours away from being 39 weeks pregnant- completely full term.

Once I get a room, Bill unfortunately has to leave to go home with our two young girls. He was planning on coming back in the morning once active labor kicked in. He leaves, I get on the magnesium drip (which in all honesty wasn’t as bad as the horror stories I’ve heard. It sucks but it’s not the worst thing), and get a cook balloon inserted to start manual dilation and get on pitocin.

Important note: this is an induced vbac. My first baby was a c section, my second was a successfully induced vbac, so both my doctor and I were very confident that I would do well.

I declined an epidural because I’m a big pussy that hates needles. Instead I labored on the nitrous. It honestly works great and I would recommend that as a tool for any women out there considering laboring without an epidural. The rest of the night was uneventful. Contractions were slowly picking up but the nitrous helped me cope. Mag made me hot, dizzy, nauseous and prevented me from getting good sleep, but overall things were doing well.

Morning rolls around. Doctor comes in to check my progress. Cook balloon slips out, I’m 3-4 cm dilated, cervix quite thin and soft. She asks if I’m ready to break my water and get the party started. She said that since this is my second baby, it’s probably going to go really fast, so be prepared. I was like let’s gooooo

My nurse was so awesome too. Being on the mag drip means you’re not allowed to leave the bed. Labor can notoriously stall when forced to be on your back. My nurse though was so excited when she heard I was going without an epidural. In fact, she told me she created her own circuit to help natural moms stuck in bed on mag! She said she could get me from a 3 to an 8 in 2 hours. Alright let’s fucking go!!

Vibes are immaculate. Doctor assures me someone will call my husband, but we’re going to get the party started now.

She goes to check my cervix and my water spontaneously bursts. Like, explodes.

And then I feel pain. The worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life. Arching my back, shrieking at the top of my lungs pain. I didn’t know what was going on, I couldn’t even process anything but the pain.

When my water broke, the cord slid out into the doctors hand. Cord prolapse- one of the most dangerous obstetric emergencies. The cord comes out before the baby, and without the amniotic fluid, the baby will slide down and compress the cord- their source of oxygen. 30 seconds of cord compression can lead to permanent brain injury and death.

So the doctor did what she had to do, she shoved her hand all the way into my uterus to physically hold the baby up, preserving her source of oxygen. I truly cannot even begin to describe the level of pain of having a hand shoved through a 4 cm dilated cervix, with no anesthesia, manipulating your baby inside of you, up to her elbows. I was so afraid, in so much pain.

The doctor calmly but hurriedly tried to explain what was going on. I couldn’t process. And then she said, “Arden, I need you to not scream. When you scream, you contract and push on the cord”

I truly had to draw on the strength of God to hold my screams in. I just thought about my baby, about her surviving, about us going home, and prayed the very best I could.

A code cord was called on the L&D floor. What seemed like 20 or so doctors and nurses came flooding in. The nurse had to switch out with the doctor holding the cord- she was smaller and could ride on the bed with me easier. Doctor slipped her hand out, nurse slipped her hand in and jumped on the bed.

I remember literally being sprinted down the hallway in my bed. Like, the kind of sprint you see on a medical drama. We made it to the OR in under 2 minutes from the time the cord prolapsed.

I remember the OR was in a frenzy. People quickly running around, assigning roles, getting ready to put me under general anesthesia. All I could do was cry and ask if she was ok, but I got no answers. I was so terrified that she was going to die, that I was going to die, and never see my children again. The last thing I remember is the anesthesiologist yelling “Fuck, I just gave her EPI”, which is never a reassuring thing when you’re about to be put under for a crash c section.

Time from cord prolapse to my daughter being born was roughly 5 minutes. Her apgars were low at first from the anesthesia, but she perked right up after 10 minutes and aggressive resuscitation.

She was brought to the NICU for CPAP and observation- but was fine on room air after about an hour, just chilling up there with the nurses.

It took me a few hours to wake up. I remember the confusion, pain, but most importantly the fear. Before I could even open my eyes I begged my nurses to tell me if she was ok. They grabbed my hands and reassured me that she was more than ok. She was up in the NICU, and bill was up there with her.

Bill was at home with my two other girls during this whole ordeal. They called him about 20 minutes after the c section, told him that me and baby were ok, but an emergency happened and he needed to come now. The hospital is about 20 minutes away give or take, and he made it there in 9 minutes and probably 9 felonies.

The nurse then told me that, during my c section, my doctors saw that I had something called a uterine window. My uterus had stretched so thin at my c section scar that they could see my baby floating around in me. I was probably a few contractions away from my uterus rupturing all together. It is a bit ironic to think that the cord prolapse saved my daughter and I’s lives.

Bill came down with our girl. I cried so hard, so happy that she was ok. And she was BIG! 8 lb 6 oz- my biggest baby by 2 whole pounds, with bright red hair.

Recovery took a while. I was in agonizing pain, as you would probably imagine. But we were through the worst of it- we were alive, healthy and well.

Oh and the epi thing? Anesthesiologists always carry epinephrine in case of sudden cardiovascular collapse during an operation. It makes your heart beat really really fast and keeps your blood pressure up. She accidentally, in the chaos of the moment, slammed that into my IV instead of the sedative. Apparently she realized her mistake immediately and ripped the IV out before the meds could even get into my system.

Anyways, we are mostly out of the thick of it. I’m still in a lot of pain recovering from a stat c section, and am at a high risk for developing post partum pre-eclampsia. I also got a pretty bad post partum infection, which got me re-admitted to the hospital. I’m about to be discharged now and am so eager to go home and be with my family.