Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Welcome Luca Sciara! My VBAC experience (warning, long and has a few gross details) :)

Little Luca Giani Scaira came into this world on Saturday, April 9th at 9:14am.  She was 7lbs, 19.5 inches, with dark brown hair.  I had the best birth experience, and I wrote it down so I could not only remember it but also share it with others who might be considering a VBAC (vaginal birth after Cesarean). 

Friday April 8th started out fairly normal. I had the day off of work. I went to the gym and had an awesome workout. I felt normal (‘normal’ for being almost 40 weeks pregnant). I put Lola down for a nap around 1pm and I tried to nap too. No success, which isn’t unusual for me, but I felt relaxed when I got up. Lola was up too around 3pm, and I started vacuuming and doing some cleaning with her help. Looking back, I must have been last minute nesting. I cleaned for an hour and then when I went to the bathroom I noticed a tinge of blood when I wiped. I was having a few minor contractions but I was so busy that I really didn’t notice. I went to the bathroom a few more times and saw some more blood tinged mucus. It was almost pink in color. And once I stopped to eat dinner I realized I was having some contractions. My friend Elizabeth told me to time them but that is difficult to do with a 2-year old running around when your husband is at work. She kept bugging me about it so finally around 6pm I sat down and timed them. They were 6-7 minutes apart, not painful at all, and there were some longer and shorter periods between contractions so I just figured that meant they weren’t ‘regular’. I seriously thought that they had to be exactly so many minutes apart, no varying, otherwise they weren’t ‘real’. Honestly though I was also in denial. I didn’t want to deliver over the weekend because my doctor wasn’t on call and I really wanted her to deliver me. Ryan and I also had dinner plans for Saturday night (this was Friday) and I really wanted to go! Plus, Ryan’s assistant manager was out on Saturday so that would be a bad day for him to be gone. In a perfect world, I was going to go into labor on Sunday afternoon or evening so Dr. Carter could deliver me on Monday. Elizabeth told me to call the doctor and I lied and said I did, and that they told me my contractions needed to be closer. But deep down even though I was in denial, I still texted Ryan around 7pm and told him he might want to think about finding someone to work for him on Saturday.

My contractions continued that evening, and we timed them until 10pm. They were 5-6 minutes apart at that point, but still not exactly regular like I thought they should be because there were some random 4 or 8 minute apart contractions thrown in there. But I did finally realize I was probably in pre-labor. The contractions still didn’t hurt. We decided to go to bed, but I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be sleeping. While the contractions weren’t all that painful, they were uncomfortable and frequent enough that I figured if they continued I would not be able to fall asleep. I tossed and turned until 1am and then decided to go downstairs. I watched a few Tivo’ed shows and timed contractions. They were 4-5 minutes apart and starting to get a bit more intense. At 4am I wondered if I should go ahead and call my parents. But I didn’t want to wake them, and I figured I had plenty more time. Around 5:30am I went upstairs to shower. The contractions were starting to get a little painful, but the actual ‘pain’ part of them literally lasted 5 seconds so they were very tolerable. And still on a scale of 1-10, they were maybe a 3 but only for a few seconds at the beginning of each one. I wondered again if I should call my parents but I had the time of 6am (at the earliest) in the back of my mind because that seemed like a reasonable time to call someone, but before that seemed rude. As I got upstairs and started showering, the contractions seemed to get more intense. I got out of the shower and I was standing there putting lotion on my body and I had a pretty intense contraction. About halfway through it my water broke all over the bathroom rug! That makes me 2 for 2 on my water breaking at home. But unlike my first pregnancy where I didn’t have any contractions after my water broke, all of the sudden my contractions seemed to get way more powerful and closer together after my water broke. I yelled at Ryan and told him my water broke and he should call my parents. It was now just before 6am. In between contractions, I put some clothes on, we changed the sheets on the bed (my parents were going to sleep on our bed and Ryan was going to sleep on the couch), I put a few more things in my hospital bag, and we tried to deal with Lola who was grumpy and had just gotten up. My contractions were getting very intense and they were now 2-3 minutes apart. And with each contraction I was bleeding…I told Ryan we didn’t have time to wait for my parents and that we needed to get to the hospital. I was getting scared and wanted to get to the hospital, even though for some reason I didn’t think I was more than 3cm dilated. We got downstairs and I called the doctor’s number, and the Nurse Midwife (who was on call) called me back. She was asking me questions but it was during a contraction so I had a difficult time answering her. She told me to come right in, but we were already on our way out the door!

The hospital is only 5 minutes from our house, but I had 3 contractions on the drive there…you do the math. We got inside and the nurse asked me if I could pee in a cup, and I remember wondering if she was kidding…all I got was blood in the cup during a contraction. I got to the triage room and the nurse checked me, and she told me I was 8cm! Holy crap, I was not expecting that. She asked what I wanted to do for pain and I said I wanted an epidural so she called anesthesia right away. She told me that there would be a new nurse taking me to my room (it was just before 7am shift change). I didn’t realize that the nurse who would start her shift was the best thing that could have happened to me, her name was Sherri. I got to my delivery room, and Sherri helped me breathe through the contractions which I swear were less than 2 minutes apart and the pain portion of them seemed to last a lot longer! I also need to mention that Lola was still at the hospital with us because my parents were not there yet. Poor Lola; Ryan was taking care of her; she was concerned that I was in pain and wanted to come hug me. I didn’t realize this until later because I was in pain and so focused on getting through the contractions that I blocked everything else out, except for nurse Sherri. Although I know in theory I should have wanted to hug my husband and have him help me breathe through the contractions, I am not sure he could have helped me like a nurse who had been a L&D nurse for over 30 years. So instead Ryan was sitting with Lola on the couch, and I was hugging nurse Sherri and she was coaching me through the contractions. I kept telling her thank you.
The timeline between getting from the triage room to the delivery room was only a few minutes, and anesthesia pretty much got there right away. I was sitting on the side of the bed while they prepped my back, hugging Sherri during contractions. I remember feeling the intense pressure during the contraction, and after a few of them while sitting on the side of the bed, I could feel major pressure down there. I could also feel the ‘ring of fire’ which freaked me out because I knew that meant I was complete or almost completely dilated and that the baby was coming. I swear that if I hadn’t been sitting, that the baby would have started crowning, but couldn’t because I was blocking her from coming out! The anesthesiologist was having trouble getting the epidural threaded and the contractions were probably only a minute-and-a-half apart by this point. I kept asking Sherri if they would be done before the next contraction hit because I didn’t think there was any way I could hold still, and she said I should only have to go through one more and that I had to hold completely still. I was thinking there was no freaking way I was going to be able to hold still, no way…she coached me through the breathing, very fast paced, loud breathing (I’m sure I sounded ridiculous but I didn’t care in the least), and I ended up having 5 or 6 total contractions while they worked on my epidural. The anesthesiologist also told me that it takes at least 15 minutes but usually more for the epidural to take effect, and it was starting to look like I might not have enough time. The thought of delivering without pain meds terrified me so much, that I remember thinking right then that I should have just scheduled a C-Section. That was the only time I thought a c-section might be better. I think it was around this time that Ryan left to take Lola outside – Elizabeth found out that my parents weren’t there yet and she came to get Lola. I am so thankful she did this. Ryan took her out and I really don’t remember it, which makes me feel bad because I didn’t tell her bye. I know she was scared and she had been staring at my back watching them do the epidural and she just wanted to give me a hug. Ryan came back in about the time they had me lay on my side. Dr. Matile came in. He was the doctor on call, I had never met him and wasn’t too excited about someone I didn’t know delivering me, but he seemed nice enough. Nurse Sherri did warn me before he came in that he really didn’t like epidurals and if I had trouble pushing he would turn it off. She told me that she would tell me exactly what to do, how to push, and I told her I would listen to her and do exactly what she said. He checked me and said I was 10cm, complete, could feel baby’s head, and I was ready to push. He asked if I wanted to push right then, or if I wanted him to come back in 10 or 15 minutes after the epidural took effect. I told him to come back. I am so glad I did because it gave me 15 minutes to actually relax. Almost instantly the contractions felt better, manageable, and got further apart. But I could still feel the pressure. My parents arrived around this time. Even though it was only 15 minutes, it seemed like the longest and best 15 minutes I can remember for a while. I was relaxed, not in pain, lying comfortably on my side, and knew the baby was almost here. I chatted with Ryan, my parents, and nurse Sherri.

Dr. Matile came in and said it was time to push. My parents left. Dr. Matile reminded me (with a smile) that if I hadn’t have had the epidural, I would have pushed the baby out over an hour ago. Yes, I know! Sherri told me exactly what I needed to do. I did a couple of test pushes, and they said that I shouldn’t have to push too much and that the baby should come out fairly quickly based on what they could see. They left me laying with my legs wide open while they put on their gowns in prep for delivery. What I didn’t realize about the experience until later was that there were only 4 people in the room this time, versus my last delivery where there were 8 or 9, but I can’t even remember because I couldn’t see anything. The atmosphere seemed so much more serene and relaxed. Nurse Sherri told me again how to push, and as I had a contraction I pushed. They told me I was pushing great, and I did another push on the next contraction. I pushed a total of 7 times (essentially 4 sets of 2 pushes each, 2 per contraction, but only one push on the last contraction). The last contraction I pushed, and almost immediately they told me “stop, stop”! The head was out. They then glided her out…Ryan said that his eyes went immediately to her crotch where he could see she was a girl! It was so cool to get to hold her right away, although a bit weird since my legs were still up in the air. I had a 2nd degree tear but the doctor said it wasn’t bad at all and was easy to stitch up. Although I know that Ryan was maybe a bit disappointed she wasn’t a boy, he didn’t show it at all. We were surprised to see that she didn’t look at all like her sister, she had hair, which was darker, and a short forehead with a widow’s peak hairline. In the days since the birth, Ryan and his sisters think she looks like their Grandma Vita and Grandpa Dominick, very Italian gangster-like!
A couple of hours after the birth, I got to get up and go to the bathroom. Nurse Sherri helped me, my legs were a big wobbly from the epidural. Once I got wheeled to the recovery room, I was so shocked at how good I felt. It was like night and day from the last time where I didn’t even get to sit up in bed until the next day at noon, and even that was excruciatingly painful. I got to change Luca’s first poopy diaper, and I realized I didn’t get to change Lola’s first poopy diaper because I was still stuck in bed. It’s now been a couple of days, and while I have aches and pains, I have only taken a handful of motrin and that is it. I seriously feel amazing. I am so glad I tried for a VBAC. I am so happy to know that my body was actually able to labor and birth a baby, because I was really having my doubts.



right after delivery.  I got to hold her right away!





Sisters!






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