Our little man Jasper Nolan-Lee Perkins was born on April 10, 2010. He was 9lb 3oz and 22 1/4". I was in labor for 36 hours before I had to have a c-section and my labor and delivery was the worst thing I have ever been through. I went in with some contractions and found out my blood pressure was 220/112. Yikes! So they gave me pitocin to make my labor faster. Then I got an epidural and my blood pressure dropped to 90/20 so they gave me a whole bunch of ephedrine to bring it back up. It went up and down like that for the entire labor but got a little better for the 2nd half.
Anyways, the epidural kept wearing off and didn't work so about half way through labor a different anesthesiologist gave me another one. Ultimately, it didn't work either. Every 1.5 hours I could feel everything again and the dr. would come back in and give me bolis injections for some relief. My labor didn't progress and only got to 6cm. Jasper was stuck in my pelvis at station -2 and couldn't drop down further. Unfortunately, I ended up with a c-section. Which is probably a good thing because by this point in my labor it was so bad that I had been having constant extreme contractions for at least 25 minutes with NO BREAK in between them. Just one long rolling contraction with the pain intensity going from a 10 to a 9 for long enough for me to shout "ice!" and before they could reach for the ice chips I was back to a 10. I was exhausted and don't think I could have pushed.
A third anesthesiologist (my favorite guy!!) came in and gave me the last shot of numbi-ness stuff in my back epidural catheter thingy and then I went into surgery. I didn't feel them cutting but I could feel EVERYTHING that happened from my cervix down (so in my vagina and such.) I was in sooo much pain.
The next day the anesthesiologist came and talked to me and told me I shouldn't have been in that much pain. He said if I ever have a baby again to not get an epidural because I'm not a good candidate for them and to either get a spinal or go under general anesthetic. Anyways, long story short, my blood pressure was an up-and-down mess and I was in extreme pain the entire time. I don't remember a lot of what happened because it was so bad. I hate not remembering everything. I can recall a few bits and pieces on my own but a lot of it is only if people talk about it and ask if I remember. My main memory of the entire labor and delivery is pain. I remember so much pain.
I was told I may have post traumatic stress because of how awful the experience was. I wonder if women who have natural births have more pain than I did, about the same, or less. On the plus side, the nurses and doctors were extremely impressed with how well I handled the pain and asked if I had taken any classes for child birth. I was proud to hear my mom tell them no. (I was delirious and couldn't answer) Ha! In your face! I say that because they kept stressing how important classes were and that they would help. They made me feel like I wouldn't know how to handle the pain if I didn't take a class. I felt confident the whole time that I didn't need a class to tell me to breathe through the pain and try to take myself somewhere else in la-la land. I did that all on my own and did it damn well. I didn't need to waste my time learning to breathe.
Jasper handled the entire scenerio much, much better than mommy and we are both doing amazing now. Just trying to relax, heal and recover.
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