Birth, Part II

Another good day today...Luke hit 1800 grams! Woohoo!!! It should be any day now until he moves into the crib...maybe Wednesday?

Yesterday I posted the first part of Wendy's delivery story...here's Part II:

Cheers,
Colin
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....Magnesium Sulfate is very effective drug, used for a variety of reasons (it's a smooth muscle relaxer). In pregnancy, it is used to stop labor, as well as lower blood pressure in women with preeclampsia. The side effects, however, are AWFUL! The initial dose is strong! As it goes through the I.V., it creates a burning sensation in your veins. It felt like my entire arm was on fire. Then, as it spreads throughout your body, you start to feel completely weak, achy, and dizzy. Luckily, I didn't experience any nausea, which is also a major side effect. My entire backside felt like I was leaning against a furnace, and I was unable to focus my eyes on anything. It definitely lives up to it's nickname...it felt like a horrible flu. The initial side effects ease up after 24 hours or so...then it's just the weakness, dizziness, blurry vision, and hot flashes that you have to deal with.

In addition to the Mag, I was given an anti-inflammatory pill called indocin which is an added kick to help stop contractions. It worked. The contractions stopped, and all I experienced was what they call "irritability contractions" -- which are mini-contractions that are random, and shorter than 30 seconds. So...as long as I could deal with the Mag side effects, I was good... until I stopped the indocin. Apparently, indocin can only be taken for 48 hours, once a week (before the 32nd week of pregnancy), because it can adversely affect the baby. So, once I stopped the indocin, on Saturday the 25th, you can guess what happened.

First, my mom tried to give me a shower in the afternoon. I passed out from a combination of the hot water and magnesium in my body. After my mom and nurses brought me back around and got me into bed, I passed out one more time. My nurse drew some blood and the results showed I had too high of a mag level . After two more blood draws, my mag level finally stabilized and I felt better by early evening. Then the contractions began. Sporadic and painless at first, until about 2am on the 26th when I could no longer sleep due to the frequency and pain.

I finally called Colin around 2:30am to let him know what was going on. I had the worst nurse ever that night! I had to call her in twice to let her know that I was contracting and that the frequency and pain were increasing. She was more concerned that the monitors weren't picking up the contractions than the fact that I was going into labor! She even left to take her lunch break while I was in the middle of it all! When she returned from her break, I asked her to call my doctor -- which she refused to do because he wasn't on call. I told her that he wanted to be contacted regardless of whether or not he was on call...it was written in my charts. Apparently she didn't believe me, because she never called him...Colin did! Colin tried to call our doctor's exchange, but it automatically sent him to the doctor on call. The nurse was then contacted by the doctor on call, and she was ticked off because the doctor called her, and he was angry that she hadn't contacted him first! She even came and told me that my husband "Shouldn't of called the Dr. -- that was [her] job." Whatever!

At some point, the nurse contacted our Parenatologist, who decided that the best course of action was to give me a bolus (super dose) of the magnesium sulfate to try and stop the contractions. So...I was back to being on fire again. After insisting that the nurse dope me up with benadryl and zofran to take off the edge and nausea, Colin showed up. I was somewhat out of it because of the drugs, in pain, on fire, and really ticked off...so Colin probably has a better idea of what happened in my room before I was taken up to surgery...

To be continued...