Brennan’s birth story, part 2

To read part one, click here: Brennan’s birth story, part 1

At some point, I heard the word ‘meconium’.  I knew fear in that one word. Babies that swallow meconium can have serious consequences. I shook it off, and kept going. THAT was the green stuff I had seen earlier. Broken water full of baby poop.

By 8 am, they decided to call in my doctor. They said they were afraid I was bleeding too much to continue pushing. So far, I’d pushed on one side and of course my back, the side was to try and convince her to turn her head (why, oh why do my kids like to face the wrong way?). Anyway. I guess she had finally gotten her head turned, so I was back to regular pushing. My doctor came in and had me try. The look on her face wasn’t good. She figured I was at 100%, fully ready to go, but baby was still at 0 or +1, again, the pushing had made little difference so far. My body was already wrecked. When I pushed, blood spurted a long ways. She got out surgical thread, and … sewed me up inside.

If I can be honest, I figured right there, my chances for a natural birth were blown. Tearing is not good, tearing inside is bad. She had me try again. I did my damnedest, even asking if they could see the head yet, and they couldn’t. By 9 a.m. they figured I’d lost too much blood, but gave me the option of the vacuum. So we tried that. It didn’t work. The baby was just not low enough in the pelvis. I was too small, or the baby was too big, etc. Either way, I had torn open again, along with an ‘outside’ tear as well.

They prepped me for C – section, and the next thing I know, it’s around noon and I can see Matt’s face. He looked teary. I didn’t think that boded well. I asked what was wrong and he shook his head. At some point (maybe earlier) he told me Keeley was right, and I said, when, early or late? Because early on she thought we were having a boy, and later, a girl. He said, it’s a girl. I asked where she was, and he said he didn’t know, they took her away.

I’ll be the first to admit to panic at that point. Was she okay? Why hadn’t he seen her? More importantly, why in the hell was I STILL in operation almost 2 hours later? My doctor came around and told me that my bladder had been nicked and that they were working on it. My husband was allowed to go see our girl. I told him to skin to skin her if he could, I don’t think they actually let him do that, though. I watched the clock tick impossibly slow for a half an hour, and he came back with good news, she was on room air, off of oxygen, even though she had indeed inhaled a lot of meconium water, she had pinked up and was doing well.

She was born at 10:31 a.m. She was born butt first. Apparently, the doctor pulled her out of my pelvis and she whipped around and tried to grab my ribs as she was coming out, exposing her hind end. Classy. When I was brought to recovery, my parents and daughter were there, all of them got to see her hours before I did. They wouldn’t let me see her until I was out of recovery, between 5 and 6 pm that night. The neonatologist also wouldn’t let me feed her, citing ‘too much stress’. I wonder if they gave her formula instead? No one ever said. They also wouldn’t let us use cloth diapers, citing the need to make sure she was having enough output, so they were weighing disposables. Yes, I was pissed, and no I didn’t feel like there was anything I could do about it.

My husband decided to go home for the night, to make sure our daughter was okay. Because of that, we didn’t even name her for a while. It’s starting to stick, her name. It seems to me, before the hospital, it was name #3 on our list. Really, I wasn’t even considering it at that point, figuring my husband liked other names better, but he was convinced as soon as he saw her as to her name. It took both of us seeing her together to really solidify it. Now it floats off the tongue, and pretty soon it will be normal. Keeley’s name was like that, too. Hers was more immediate, but it took a while to wrap my tongue around it. Do we call Brennan Keeley? of course we do. It’s natural I think to do so, we’re so used to Keeley this and Keeley that… but time will come when we don’t mix it up anymore. When Brennan has her own personality that probably will outfox us all. For now, she is here, and that is what counts.

I’ll pick up on the hospital story later.