Poppy's arrival

Oh it was along bloody day. Bearing in mind I cannot remember much of it. Thank God for Robert, Nessa and my parents that's all I can say they have some how managed to keep me sane through all of this. So let's see.....
Day shift nurse was very sweet - that was the problem - a tad too sweet and a tad to deferential. No offense to all our wonderful MD friends but this nurse really needed to shout at the OB residents....So I already had that one tube in to dilate things - it worked somewhat got me (we thought) to 6cm. YAY excitement abounding in room B1468.Then crash...5cm dilated and contractions slowing down again. At this point I had declared myself Rachel from friends - y'all remember the episode where she had Emma and loads of other women come in and deliver before herand her abor lasted 47 hours? Well that was me.....
So after the first dilator is removed something is put in to actually measure the contractions and see if they are adequate - "Well duh" my magnesium addled brain is thinking "If they were adequate I would not still be sitting here". So in it goes, and up goes the rate of pitocin....oh joy.By this point because of the anti-diuretic effect of the pitocin my cankles have now spread and I am a solid block of edema from my toes to my belly. I have a pounding headache and am just getting meaner and grumpier and insane - once again due to the magnesium. I take a nap - and although I wake up I keep my eyes closed while I listen Nessa basically tell the nurse that we moved into ridiculous at hour 44 of NOT progreesing. Now I know what to say to the attending. I wake up (funny how that happens.....)just as the attending comes in and I tell her that I am done - that I just cannot keep doing this, that I cannot keep hearing all the platitudes of "But look on the bright side Mrs. Kennedy your baby is very happy" and that if it wasn't for the epidural I would go home. I was sobbing by this time. I felt so ill and so miserable.

Then whoosh.....

Anesthesia are there giving me more meds in to the epidural and that was utterlt terrifying - like I couldn't breath, and also throwing up but I could't totally feel it.....
People are handing Robert and Nessa sets of scrubs
Off we go to the mythical "end of the hall" at 5.15pm. I don't even know that they have started anything surgical by the time at 6pm exactly Miss Poppy Elizabeth Marie makes her very very welcomed arrival into this world. I am laying there enjoying the function returning to my arms while everyone else is sayig how perfect she is....BAH! I can't see her! Then I get a peek and I thought my heart was going to explode. I don't even have enough words to explain how it felt to see this little face peeking at me. I hear everyone going back and forth about heights and weights - in cm and kg - means nothing to me at all! Finally someone says 8.8 pounds, head c ircumference 15 inches and around 20.75 inches long. All that is heard in the OR is "Holy shit!" Oh - that was me....

Oh but now after a couple of days to recover we have this gorgeous tiny creature and she is all ours and I cannot believe it. She is so alert - wants to look at every thing, loves to be held, seems to have finally taken to breastfeeding. She just had her hearing test that she passed with flying colors. She did have a positive Coombs so we are watching for jaunduice - but none so far - we put her in the window all the time when the sun is shining. Who needs a bili light? She is also incredibly mellow - I cannot even explain how calm this tiny thing is. She fusses for maybe 2 or 3 minutes and then she is done.

I am working on making photos visible to everyone - we have nothing but time since I do not get discharged until Wednesday and I have it on very good authority that today is Monday - things have gotten blurry.....

So to all of you who have followed our wee adventure thank you so much for your love and support

The long haul to Poppy

Arrived at 8.30pm at Blake 14.....

Alex is here - YAY. And Nessa now comprehends the utter hotness of the boy.

Met "interesting' nurse at 9.00pm and I use the adjective interesting very loosely.....expressionless and sadly somewhat devoid of a personality - kind, efficient, but not exactly chatty which is tough when your patient has a gob like mine and is accompanied by Nessa and Robert and we're all a bit giddy and treating this like a school field trip of some sort. We really were not taking this very seriously at this point.

The examinations begin but at least right now they are being done by Alex - thank God and not for the reasons y'all are currently entertaining but because the resident is a little FLK and looks about 13 and the med student is about 10.

We start the misoprostol well...that made things change...Oh my lord......this is painful. Apparently my baseline was around 12 - and now I am hitting 65..this is all apparently measurements of the intensity of my contractions.....
A mini ultrasound by med student then one by resident to check Poppy is still head down - while I keep cracking that I know exactly where her feet are so I can assure them without the scan of her position!

First serious bout of swearing occurs at around 1.30am (Friday)
Awaiting Alex....awaiting pitocin...awaiting epidural.....anxiously awaiting Poppy
Oh and excuse the profanity but this effin well hurts.

(This next part was dictated to Robert hence the "new sentence" bits
04:30 - Epidural in. Thats a weird sensation, but Fentanyl is my new best friend. Ummm...where do I go next...Ummm... Pitocin started. The epidural is a PCA one so I get to hit it when the contractins really hurt so it is duly christned the "contraction contraption."

New Sentence.

Damn should of had more to eat.

07:00 - Boo hiss. Alex's shift finished. Still only 3 centimeters dialated. But yay, Nurse Qualude has gone home, and my new nurse Connie is fab. Even if she won't feed me. A very long day of increasing Pitocin and trying to make this stubborn child of ours to finally make an appearance.

15:30 - More inducment hardware added, which is impossible to explain, but it involves balloons. Thanks to one of the new attendings the procedure turned out to be quiet amusing.

19:00 - New team of docs seems nice, if not insanely young. New nurse Diane is also fab. Still no baby. Possible this is all just a bad case of gas. Pitocin now maxed out.

00:30 - OMFG! I seem to have actually progressed. Starting to get queasy. Will likely have water broke around 03:30.

Watch this space for details.

PS - Would be demented were it not for my fab hubby and our 'Nessa (who is also fab). Hubby dicatated this, so ignore anything that says we changed our minds and her new name will be Clymenstra Arbitron Kennedy.