Labour Room Drama -104

Oh My Goodness!!!

Hi Stella and fellow Bv’s,
So I decided to send in my LRD today. All through my pregnancy I was not sick. I am a first time mom though. Hubby lives in the abroad and we were in the process of having me join him while I was pregnant. 

I kept praying to God and begging my son to stay put till we joined hubby. When I read the LRD of the woman who had her baby the night before she travelled to US for delivery, I got more worried. 

 The visa process showed us pepper but God is always faithful, at 35 weeks and 2 days my visa arrived. Long story short, we got to ‘the abroad’ safely and I started begging my baby to start coming because I was already tired of being pregnant.

At 37 weeks 1day, I had my first appointment with the GP and on getting home I saw the mucus plug (show), this was before my first appointment with the midwives o. At 37weeks and 3days, exactly 10 days after I joined hubby, I woke up by 6am and noticed my trousers had a wet spot. I woke hubby up and told him what I saw but I wasn’t sure though. He wanted to stay at home with me in case of an emergency but I encouraged him to go to work.

 He told me to call a cab or an ambulance and head to the hospital if I needed to. At 7:30am, I got up to grab breakfast from the kitchen and I felt hot liquid on my legs. I knew that was it o, the D-day. I called my sister-in-law who is a doctor and she told me I still had some hours before active labour and advised me to lie down at a place to avoid loosing entire fluid protecting the baby. 

Meanwhile, I was home alone. I tried to stay calm but from then on, my clothes kept soaking up, the sofa, I kept changing my pants because I didn’t have sanitary towels at home, just thin pant liners. 

Hubby came back and we left for the hospital. The midwives were not sure where to start from because they did not have my medical records and they needed to at least have some information. My medical certificate from naija was with me but I left it at home and they said they needed to double check anyway. They got me an emergency appointment for a scan and took my blood and urine samples. At the end of the scan, they hooked me to a monitor and checked baby’s heartbeat. The baby’s heartbeat was very strong. They inserted a speculum in my vjay to check if cervix was open and check if the fluid was clear. Na so these midwives say make I go home o. Hmmmm.

 I read somewhere that once the waters broke, the baby was prone to infection so I was skeptical but they insisted. They gave me till 6am (24 hours after my waters broke) to go into natural labour. We left the hospital reluctantly but on getting home, the drama started. Immediately we got home, I went to the toilet to change my pant liners and suddenly I was standing in a pool of water. I waited till the entire fluid drained and we headed back to the hospital.

On getting back to the hospital, the doctor came and asked us (hubby and myself) if we would like them to speed things up (induce labour), we agreed. They moved us to the ward, a midwife came at midnight to insert a gel up my cervix. Through all this, my cervix was still closed. They were going to start the drip exactly 6hours after the gel was inserted. I was patiently waiting for labour to start, no way. Infact, I slept like a baby that night.
At 6am, I was still not having contractions. We were moved to the delivery suite. I was told eat something because once the drip was started, no more food, in case they would need to head to the theater. In my mind I was “yimmuing” all those BV’s that were telling us labour was difficult and painful.

 The drip was started at about 8am, still no show. I was still gisting with hubby, at a point I even slept. By 12pm (mid day), the contractions started gradually. The midwife checked again and my cervix was still closed. Hmmmm. The contractions were not so painful, I was coping very well. The midwife and the doctors kept telling me not to suffer in silence, that I should request for epidural if I needed one. I was wondering why I would need pain relief for that sort of minor pain. At 4pm I was checked again and I had dilated 2cm. Hubby and I were relieved because he was already worried that they will request for a C-section. Not that it was a problem but it’s just the two of us and the baby and having a C-section meant I would need more time to recover. That was the last thing we needed.

 At 6pm, the pains started getting worse. Hmmm. By 8pm I was checked again, still 2cm. The midwife was due to hand over (her shift ended by 8pm) so she invited two of her colleagues to come and check my dilation to make sure she was right. By now I was getting weary of the “checking”. The pains intensified from then. I was told to take deep breaths. I tried that one no way. The next thing I was ordering them to call the anaesthetist for the epidural.

 The epidural worked like magic. In fact, I stopped noticing the contractions, I only saw the reading go up on the monitor. They strapped me to monitors to monitor the baby’s heartbeat and the contractions. Before I knew it, I slept off. The midwife encouraged me to sleep that she will top up my epidural every 6minutes. By 12 midnight I woke up in pains. She checked and said 2 to 3 cm still. By now I was screaming in pain. The epidural couldn’t control the pain anymore and I kept crying and screaming. I couldn’t get up or move around because I was hooked up to monitors and the IV. 

The doctor explained it was because my waters had broken for more than 24hours and so they needed to keep a close eye on the baby. As if the drama was not enough I became feverish. My temperature kept going up and I was literally shivering. The said it meant the baby and I had developed an infection.
In all this I didn’t tell my mum or any of our family members that I was in labour o. in fact while we were at the hospital on Saturday morning my family called and we told them we taking a walk and all was well. In the afternoon when the pains were yet to come I even called my mum and we gisted as usual, I still did not tell her anything. 

The anaesthetist was called to check why the epidural was no longer working and he suggested giving me a booster dose. I readily accepted but I wasn’t prepared for what came next. It was as if my legs were set on fire. I screamed and screamed for about 5 minutes and the next thing I knew, I could no longer feel my legs, the booster shot numbed me from my waist down. Hmmmmm. I was scared but relieved that I could go back to sleep. By now, on the monitor, my contractions were getting to ninety something and even a hundred and twenty but I couldn’t feel the contractions which was good. Hubby decided to catch some sleep and I slept off too. 

By 2pm, the doctor came in and asked to check me again. Hubby and the midwife had to hold my legs open because they were totally numb. The doctor checked and said “guess what? You are fully dilated”. Jus like that! We were all so relieved. They gave me one hour to rest before I can start pushing. Na so my prayer point change ooo. I didn’t know how I was supposed to push when I couldn’t feel anything down there. I stopped topping up the shot every 6 minutes and started praying to regain at least a little feeling on my legs.

 I slept off again. By 3:20am, the midwife woke me up and said it was time to push. She said she was going to monitor my contractions on the monitor and tell me when to push because I still couldn’t feel the contractions. My right leg had regained a little feeling but the left one was still like a stone. They helped me lift my legs to the stirrups and I started to push. Because of my fever and the fact that my pulse went up to 130, they had to put a clip on the baby’s head to monitor his heartbeat more effectively as my pulse was almost clashing with his heart rate. I pushed from 3:20 till 4:45am, the baby’s head was visible but could not get through and I noticed they were avoiding giving me a tear (episiotomy).

 By now I was getting tired and the baby’s heartbeat went down from 130-140bpm to 70bpm. Before I knew it, the midwife called for help and my deliver suite suddenly got crowded. In less than 2minutes and I was given an episiotomy (with my permission though and local anaesthesia) and in one push my son was born. I cried like a baby. I cried and cried till the tears stopped coming.

The baby was given to me and taken back in less than 30 seconds because they needed to attend to him. They placed him on oxygen to clear his airways as he was breathing very fast. From there they took him to the special care unit. When he was brought back to me, they began treating us both for infection. Baby had little jaundice too and had to go under the blue lights. He weighed 2.5kg despite the fact that while I was pregnant, I ate for Africa!!!! 

We spent 6 nights in the hospital but thank God we are both fine now. The midwife that handled my delivery is the best, I wish I can recommend her for an award or something. She was simply God sent. My mum nearly had a panic attack when we called them to inform them that the baby had arrived. At first she thought it was a prank.

 My baby will be 3 weeks on Sunday and he’s the most handsome baby boy I have ever seen. God is so faithful. My Omugwo chronicles will come in hopefully by March next year.
Thanks Stella and amazing BV’s. SDK blog is home.

*My mouth was open all thru reading this!!!....Where Abroad did all this happen?My God this cannot happen in Germany...With all the recent Technology abroad,you cannot be allowed to labour for so long oh and even have infection during labour...so pardon me if i ask which Abroad this is oh.

Your water broke and you went to the hospital and was asked to go back home?

You kept using the word midwife........ARE YOU FOR REAL?