Max's Birth Story

In light of upcoming events, I decided to go back and look at Max's birth story. It's funny how you forget some of the details and then some of them you can still visualize like it was yesterday (my epidural nightmare last time is one thing I don't think I will ever forget). My birth story this time probably won't be as long as Max's. The plan now is just to show up on Monday morning at 9:30 and then wait for a c-section at 11:30. I'm really looking forward to it being a calm experience.

This is the story of Max's arrival that I typed out a few days after he was born:

On Tuesday January 4th, I had been feeling a little sick all day, but not too bad. I had diarrhea all day, but that wasn’t unusual so I didn’t think anything of it. Plus I was feeling as pregnant as ever, especially after the “not-so-promising” doctors visit on Monday. Later that evening Curt and I sat down to watch Brad Pitt’s new release, “Troy” and I heated us up some leftover pasta for dinner. The movie was three hours long and I started feeling a little weird about an hour into it. I couldn’t eat any of my dinner because I was feeling so nauseous. After the movie I started writing down the times that I was feeling the contractions, and they were only about 8-10 minutes apart. We decided to go to bed so we laid down. When I was laying down, I really felt sick and the contractions were a little painful, so I decided to call into the hospital, at least just to talk to whoever was oncall. Dr. Miller told me that I probably wasn’t in active labor but that I should come into labor and delivery to get checked anyways, just to see what was going on. So Curt and I left the house, thinking that we would probably be home sometime later that night. We didn’t really take everything, just threw the bags that I had packed in the trunk.
In labor and delivery, they hooked me up to the monitor and told me they were going to keep me on it for an hour. They checked me and I was only a centimeter. I was having regular contractions but they were small, so they told me they were probably going to send me home. About half an hour later I began vomiting and getting really sick. They tried giving me a shot in the hip for the nausea but nothing was working. I began to run a high fever and the vomiting continued. At about 3:30 a.m. they told me that I wasn’t going home and they had to induce me because of the fever and the fact that it wasn’t good for Max. I was so exhausted from being sick that I really wasn’t feeling up to having a baby at this point. I was weak and tired and still vomiting. But we were there and we began to get excited because we were going to have a baby that day!
They began the pitocin at around 5 a.m. and at 8 a.m. I asked for some Stadol, just to take the edge off of the contractions. The nurse went to ask the doctor about it and she came back and said that I couldn’t have the Stadol, because apparently Max wasn’t handling the contractions very well, and it could affect him. So she offered me the epidural, which I accepted. The doctor came in and broke my water, (which by the way, was soooo painful!) and they attached an internal monitor to Max’s head. After that the epidural guy came in and gave me the run down on what he was going to do. Then my epidural nightmare began…
He had to try four times to get the epidural in. I was having massive contractions that were coming very quickly and he was trying to put it in between contractions, but they were just coming so fast. He asked if I had a history of scoliosis, which I didn’t think that I did. I began vomiting while he was trying again, all during a very hard contraction. At one point, I almost said to just forget it, because I was in so much pain. Poor Curt had to watch while the nurse stood in front of me. He looked like he was about to cry. But the anesthesiologist was able to get it in finally and once the medicine went into effect it was great.
I got comfortable and began to try and get some rest. They checked me again and I was still only 1 cm, after all of the pitocin. After each contraction, Max’s heart rate would drop and the doctor became concerned. She told me that she didn’t think that things were looking promising for a vaginal delivery because of the fever and the effect it was having on him. So at 1 pm, after we had been there for 13 hours (on pitocin for 8 hours) she decided to that we needed to do the c-section. I was so tired and wore out that I didn’t really even have the energy to comprehend that I was about to have Max. They got us ready and within 30 minutes we were in the operating room.
At 2:03 pm Max Riley Stucky was born. They pulled him out and he was screaming! Curt went over to look at him while they were cleaning him off. He brought him over to me, but my arms were numb from the pain medicine that I couldn’t touch him, which made me so sad. But he was just absolutely beautiful. He had an APGAR score of 9, 9 and he weighed 7 lbs 7 ounces. All the nurses kept commented on his huge feet!
They took me to the recovery room while they wheeled Max to the nursery, where all of our family was waiting to meet him. Curt came back to recovery with me and we were there for two and half hours. Finally they were able to get us in a room and I went up where they brought Max in. I still hadn’t got to really look at him yet, or even touch him, and I was really excited. They put him in my arms and I just started crying. All of our family was in the room taking pictures and it was the most wonderful feeling in the world.
Afterwards, when the doctor came in and talked to us, she said that when she was checking me after the delivery, it looked like the inside of my uterine wall had an infection. This was probably the cause of the fevers and nausea, and that it was a good thing that I didn’t stay home thinking that I had caught the flu or something. I had to be put on some antibiotics and we were in the hospital for four days. We were finally released on Sunday the 9th.