Labor or Life

Labor or Life

The first or last day

Fiona Fowden        

Is this the first day or last?

It started on July 15th, 2014 at 8am. I woke up to no pain in my stomach but I thought I peed on myself, so I walked as fast I could across the hallway to my mom’s room and told her I think I peed on myself , she said “come back if it happens again”. So I closed the door and turned around to walk to the bath room just in case I had to really use the bathroom. All of a sudden I felt warm and thick fluid flowing down my legs. I turned around slowly, and went back into my mother’s room and said “you need to get up; I think my water bag just broke and we need to go now.” She didn’t really have a response but to get my bag and meet her downstairs in 10 minutes.

        When we arrived to the hospital the nurse had me stand and wait downstairs for almost 20 minutes before they took me upstairs to the labor unit of the hospital. As they had me walk to the elevator, I was leaking all over the floor. When I walked out of the elevator and looked back and thought a mop bucket got kicked over but no just my water bag leaking slowly. From when we left the house till now I didn’t feel any contractions. I got the room where there was relaxing music and low lighting to make feel at home. The nurse had me change into a hospital gown right away. It took her and the doctor 15 minutes to come back into the room with a lot of interns, and checked my cervix.

        Sitting in a room in labor but not feeling anything got really boring. I put on another gown to cover my back end so I could take a walk around the hospital to see if it would help me dilate faster. I walked for almost an hour and there was still no change in dilation. Someone ordered me some food so I could eat, since we all figured it was going to be a long day/night.

So the clock hit 7pm on July 15th and still there was no change in dilation so they induced me with Pitocin. An hour went by and then the contractions started every 7 minutes. I felt a sharp stabbing pain in my lower stomach and was moving around to my back and didn’t stop for about 5 minutes. The unbearable pain I thought would never stop paused for almost a minute. But that wasn’t even the start of the pain that had yet to come. I asked for the epidural, but who knew that could be the wrong thing to do. As soon as I got the epidural my whole body started to shake and the nurse said “its ok this is just your hormones reacting to the medication, it will only last a minute or two.” Then she started getting a worried look on her face and a whole bunch of nurses and doctors and their interns came running into the room. I started to panic even more because I didn’t know what was happening, all the machines were peeping rapidly. One of the doctors asked me to sign a piece of paper that was a consent form, so they can give me C-section. I responded with “NO, I WANT A NATURAL BIRTH!” My nurse walked over towards me slowly. She explained nicely and polity to why I needed to have a C-section. She said calmly; “Fiona my dear, you need to have a C-section because your heart rate has gone up and your sons has dropped. If you don’t sign the consent form, you and your son are going die. You are having a seizer and you can’t have any medications until you have had your child because the medication with harm your child.”