On Saturday I was out helping Jonathan feed cows. I hoped out of the truck opened a gate and closed it for him. As soon as I got back in the truck, I felt what I thought was a monster contraction. It was high and in my back and I almost threw up. And the darn thing lasted for 3 minutes. By the time Jonathan got back in the truck I was bawling. Eventually it settled so I opted to go home and relax and take a shower. Which I did and I felt better and no more contractions. Jonathan made dinner. I started feeling upper abdominal pain and I couldn't eat very much and I felt like something was wrong. I informed Jonathan to eat and then we were going to go. Jonathan had second helping of dinner and by then I was like "We are going NOW!!!" I called my midwife and told her about the pain I was having and she agreed something was different. So I asked Jonathan for a quick blessing and we got in the van and left. The poor kids were so confused.
We made it to the hospital, and I was moaning in pain. Just to clarify...I have had THREE ALL NATURAL BIRTHS NO PAIN RELIEF. So I knew this pain was different. I thought maybe baby was turned wrong and it was causing the back labor.
Up in the labor ward I started crying and asking the nurse for pain relief. She thought I was having normal contraction pains and gave the "Suck it up honey, millions of women have done this" look. She left us in the room strapped in to all their monitors for half an hour, I maybe had like one contraction that registered on the screen and all the while felt like I was having transition labor. IT NEVER STOPPED. After I had Jonathan give me another blessing I made him go out in the hall and make someone come in to talk to me. I told the nurse I had done labor naturally three times and something is not okay. My midwife finally came in. I was only 4 cm. My blood pressure had sky rocketed. I begged her for something for pain. I felt like I was going to pass out. Then the high risk OB doctor came in. Someone came in and tried giving me an epidural because it was decided I needed to deliver and maybe it would help with the pain. Through all the crying and moaning I was able to tell the OB I couldn't see out of my left eye for two weeks, extreme swelling and rapid water retention. And then the epidural wasn't working. Sure I couldn't feel my butt, and it was a little tingly. But my high abdominal pain was not going away and it was getting worse!
My midwife and the OB left and two seconds later came in and said C Section. They put me on the roll away bed and started running me down the hall to the Operation Room all the while telling Jonathan and I to say good bye, he couldn't be in the room with me. For the first time I felt scared. I cried and said "I love you, I love you" It was so hard leaving him when we went through those doors. And later I found out he got pretty lost and couldn't find his way back to the waiting room, he was so distracted he couldn't remember. Then I remember lights and wishing they would put me out soon so the pain would stop.
Heidi was born at 11:22 pm. 8 lbs 9 oz and 20 inches long.
I woke up and the upper tummy pain was gone. Sigh of relief....They rolled me into my room around 2am, Jonathan came to my side and said "she looks like Autumn, she is beautiful" We waited in the room until 4 am and I woke up a little more. Finally they came in with Heidi, They sat me up and put her in my arms. I cried some more, feeling sorrow I didn't even get to see her on her birthday. But so happy she was okay. She nursed like a champ and hasn't let me go practically since.
The first 24 hours I don't remember very much, I found out my liver almost ruptured and my kidneys were failing and most of my organs were not happy. They called it HELLP syndrome which is a severe type of preclamsia. I had to be on magnesium (most miserable stuff ever, I fell asleep every 2 minutes and woke up after 30 seconds)
Both Heidi and myself were on oxygen for 24 hours, I was so sick of tubes and the blood pressure band I could have screamed lol. But my biggest relief is that Heidi is okay and very healthy, things could have gone very badly and worse than they did within hours if we hadn't gone in and insisted on help. They told us, her placenta may have ruptured or my liver or both if we hadn't taken the action we did. t never thought I would have a cesarean birth. But I know why they are lifesaving! I am grateful for those who took care of us that night and for the next few days. We were treated well, and got one of those couples dinners to celebrate our baby. I know I was prompted by the spirit that night and there was some divine intervention that saved us.
I am still coming to the reality of what happened. I am so happy things turned out okay. And on the other hand I get extremely emotional thinking about the possibility that we may not have be having this same conversation. I didn't think that when we said good bye to the kids, or when I told Jonathan I loved him, that it might be the last time.
But onto a more positive outlook we keep saying Heidi brought the storm and the snow. We were nice and comfy in the hospital while it snowed and snowed and snowed. We are grateful for those who took care of our cows at home and watched our munchkins. Thank you thank you thank you!!! We have been blessed and I would say even though this was the scariest thing that has ever happened to us, that we have been blessed a hundred fold. Our fourth child is healthy, we made it home.
