Isaac's Story, Part 2 of 4

This post contains material which may be objectionable to some readers.

The night of the 25^th we got our suitcase all packed up. In the morning we put it in the trunk and drove to my appointment. Sure enough, after a brief exam, the doctor decided to induce me. It was about this time that they finally mentioned the diagnosis of preeclampsia/toxemia, my blood pressure was sky high, and I had gained a total of about 120 pounds. Because they were inducing me, there would be no nice natural birth out at Silverton Hospital. I was going to give birth there at Salem Hospital, in their brand new maternity ward. It had literally just opened up, and they sent me over. It was right next door so we walked, and used Dan’s cell phone to call our families and let them know that I was being admitted.

We checked in and were put up into the room I would give birth in. As I said, the maternity ward was so very new, and I was the very first person to use that room. The nurse had to locate and unwrap all the new equipment pieces to use on me. It’s a strange thought to think of how many babies have been born in that room since then, where I had been the first. I couldn’t eat or drink, except I think they did allow small sips of water. I don’t recall the name of the medication that was used to induce me, and if they even ever told me the name it was quickly in passing just before they gave it to me. I do know it was a pill form and was inserted into the birth canal. Hours passed and nothing was happening, so they had to give me a second dose of the medicine the same way.

Eventually I began to feel some contractions, but mostly I saw them on the monitor they had me strapped to. I remember thinking that if the rest of the contractions were like this, this was going to be a snap.

Evening came, and I began to have back labor. The birthing room I had was equipped with a Jacuzzi tub, the wonderful kind only God could have inspired. It was roomy and warm and glorious. It was also short lived, and the nurse was beginning to get frustrated with me when I wanted to stay in the tub longer than I was supposed to. It relieved a lot of my pains just to be in that warm water.

The night progressed. I had to make painful trips to the bathroom. I remember getting mad at Daniel, that how dare he fall asleep on the sofa while I was in so much pain bringing his child into the world? On one trip to the bathroom I felt something wet coming down my leg, and I thought that on top of everything else I had just managed to pee on myself and the floor. But when the nurse came in to check on me, they found that my water had broken. “When did your water break?” she asks. I shrugged because I honestly didn’t know, but I told her I thought I had peed on their floor.

When I had thought I would give birth in Silverton, I had planned on it being a drug-free birth and I had even been using hypnobirthing tapes and relaxation techniques for months to prepare for the birth of our son. But with all that had happened, with the pain I was in and the fear I had, I told my Salem Hospital nurses I wanted an epidural.

The guy came in and had me sit on the side of the bed while I leaned over, during contractions, while he tried to stick me with a needle. It didn’t work. He tried it again, called it good, and ran off because he was running late to a c-section. That second epidural didn’t work either. Actually, it numbed one of my legs. My leg! They had also inserted an IV into one of my hands, and it was obviously done wrong because it was so painful. I was able to get them to eventually move the IV to my other hand, and it was much better.

But labor progressed, and the pain in my back and then the cramp I developed in my other leg was so horrible that it surpassed the pain the contractions were giving me. I was exhausted, and in between contractions I would pass out in sleep, only to wake up to another wave of pain. There really are no words in the English language to describe the pain of giving birth. Excruciating comes close. For me, even though I had practiced the hypnobirthing techniques and I had something as a focal point there in the birthing room, my mind did this weird thing that I can only describe as a sort of detachment… The year before I had been to a circus with a friend, and the thing my mind focused on now during labor was the shape of the ears of the elephants they had there at the circus. I don’t have an explanation for why I focused on that or why elephant ears came to mind, except my mind just did it on its own. Also in my case, the pain was so severe that I was past the point of tears or crying or screaming. All I could do was moan and try to endure the best I could.

The time came that our son was ready to be born. Two midwives that I’d never seen before in my life came in to assist me. They dropped the bottom part of the bed, and there was a thick foam pad on top of the bed that they cut through and ripped off the bottom part. I had remembered one of my old coworkers talking about what it felt like to give birth, that it felt like you were about to have the biggest poop in the entire world, and that’s when you needed to push. As soon as I felt that sensation, I told the midwives I was pushing and they said okay. At one point I remember saying I couldn’t do it anymore, everything my body was going through, but the midwives encouraged me to keep going. They also began to call for emergency crews to arrive.

Isaac's first picture

When Isaac was born, Daniel was able to get a quick picture before the midwives quickly cut the cord and whisked him to the other side of the room to where a male emergency doctor waited. The plan that we had for Daniel to cut the cord wasn’t to be. I tried to ask what was going on but the midwives and nurses just shook their heads and didn’t say anything. They were busy watching what was going on with my son. The male emergency doctor was doing something on the other side of the room with his back to me, and I couldn’t see what was going on. He suddenly called for a nurse and told her to go get one of their emergency response teams (I don’t recall what he called it). The nurse stood dumbly in the doorway and stared. Why wasn’t she moving? After he had to say it a third time and I was near to screaming out the order myself, the nurse turned and disappeared down the hall. Soon that order was dismissed before the team even arrived because whatever had happened the male doctor didn’t need that team anymore (it would be a couple years later while preparing for our CDRC appointment, I received a copy of Isaac's hospital records to take down with us and for the first time saw that it had taken 10 minutes for Isaac's APGAR scores to become normal. I cried so hard when I read that because no one had told me his APGAR score and it was another reminder of how close I came to losing my son). Isaac was named after his 2^nd great-grandfather, was born at 6:33am on June 27^th, 2003 and weighed 6 lbs 12 oz and was 19.5 inches long. In spite of the pain, there is something breathtaking about seeing your child for the first time and realizing that you created that little person. In the months to come, I would be in complete awe of Isaac.

Male emergency doctor working on Isaac

I knew a doctor was on the way to stitch me up, but I was so exhausted I didn’t think to ask for details. I hadn’t been given an episiotomy, so some part of me knew that I had torn. When the doctor finally arrived, she raked my two midwives over the coals up one side and down the other. She was pissed. “This isn’t even a tear,” the doctor said. In my exhausted state I said, “What is it?” She responded, “Oh, it’s a tear all right,” and didn’t elaborate beyond that. Then she began stitching me up. Except remember I said my epidural didn’t work? I began to scream as the needle went into my flesh. The doctor looked up and said, “I thought she had an epidural”. “She did,” they said. The doctor ordered some medicine to be administered to me through my IV, and began to stitch me up again. I screamed again because she hadn’t given the medicine any time to enter my bloodstream. Mercifully the medicine kicked in quickly, because the doctor never slowed down her stitching. It took her about 30 minutes to sew me up. At one point I felt something warm between my legs and asked what it was. I had peed on the doctor. And I didn’t care. Being spread eagle on the table and having countless doctors and nurses and crew coming in and out of the room, there was nothing that could have happened that would have embarrassed me at that point.

When I asked how long I’d been in labor for, the midwives shrugged. We figure it may have been 3 hours, but we don’t know. We were eventually told by someone that the emergency we had was because Isaac came out with his arm wrapped around his neck, causing breathing difficulties for him and causing me to tear.

I was finally moved to my recovery room, the room I would be in until Isaac and I were released from the hospital. The nurses there made me these genius ice pads that were small diapers with the filling separated and then filled with crushed ice. They felt wonderful.

Four generations: My grandpa "Groucho", my dad, Daniel, and Isaac, the first grandson

Family began showing up. I also tried nursing Isaac. The lactation consultant was impressed I had gone up three cup sizes, so I figured between that and the knowledge I had learned about nursing that it would be fairly easy. It wasn’t. Isaac had a poor suck reflex, and he had to be supplemented with formula. He also developed jaundice, and his little foot heel was pricked many times for blood samples. By the end of the day Isaac wasn’t eating well and the jaundice had worsened, so he was admitted to the NICU, also brand new in the new maternity ward. I’ve wondered if there were other problems that led to his being admitted to the NICU, especially about his breathing, but if there were any other problems no one told me about them. I had to be taken by wheelchair to the NICU to see him, which was on a separate floor. I cried. The NICU was comfortably done up, even more so than the NICU at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital. They had a sofa and a rocker, and even a private room where moms could pump in privacy. But it was so hard seeing my newborn little son hooked up to machines.

Isaac in the NICU

I was still determined to nurse, so throughout the night Dan would wheel me to the NICU. Because of Isaac’s poor suck reflexes these nursing trips were extremely frustrating, and trying to get him to latch on even with the use of nursing gadgets I’d never heard of or seen before wasn’t much help. I always ended up pumping and having him bottle fed. The nurses were still supplementing his feedings with formula, which I didn’t love but the important thing was making sure Isaac was getting enough nutrition in.

The next day I was in my room resting when another midwife from the clinic came to check on me. I had never met her before, but I had heard of her and that she was a sweet lady. As she walked into my room she asked, “So, did they send the baby to Doernbecher’s?” What was she talking about? In true form to the tight-lipped attitude of my entire prenatal and maternity care, apparently the doctors had discussed sending Isaac up to Doernbecher’s, but they never once talked to me or Daniel about it. Because of the brand new resources made available at the Salem Hospital, meaning the existence of their new NICU, the doctors decided to keep Isaac there. But we also knew that due to the circumstances, the injuries I received and now Isaac’s health, it was going to be a long hospital stay.

That second day my in-laws showed up, so of course they were brought down to the NICU to meet Isaac. I was still wheelchair bound and had devices hooked to my body to try to get Isaac to nurse (I was modestly covered when they entered, of course). My newborn son was hooked with wires and tubes. My mother-in-law said, “Just think. If you had been a pioneer, you and your son would have died”. Unfortunately, this was not the first or last inappropriate thing she has ever said, but at that time she couldn’t have chosen anything worse to say. Who the hell says something like that to anyone, family or not?! It’s one thing to think it, because the thought had come to me also, but it’s entirely another to say it out loud.

Our days continued like this, with visitors coming and Dan and I taking frequent trips to the NICU, about every 2 hours. On about day three I tried to walk back to my room from the NICU, and began having terrible cramps and bleeding profusely. I had to sit down on one of the admitting chairs while my husband found a wheelchair for me. I ended up ruining that chair. After Dan wheeled me back to my room I had nurses constantly hovering over my crotch. Again, they never said anything, but I suspect they were concerned with hemorrhaging.

A funny thing did happen in the NICU one day. I hate fart humor and anything along those lines is really not funny. But this one day Daniel and I were down visiting with Isaac when Daddy had particularly foul smelling gas. A nurse walked into our area and made a comment about how it was time to change Isaac’s diaper. I began giggling and the nurse looked at me and made a comment to the effect that it wasn’t funny. I said, “Yes it was, because that was Dad”. I didn’t want the nurse poking around in Isaac’s diaper when there was absolutely no need for it!

About this time I was also able to take my first shower. That was when I first realized how therapeutic a shower could really be. Gradually wires and devices were removed from Isaac. Isaac and I were both still patients, with me in the maternity ward and Isaac still in the NICU.

Getting ready to head home

On July 3^rd, Isaac’s original due date and one week after entering the hospital, we were allowed to go home. The hospital provided free baby pictures, so we dressed Isaac up in his special going home outfit. It was a little baseball outfit, including a tiny hat, and it was so big on him that I told Daniel he looked like a little hoodlum. We tucked the excess material under him and laid him on the blanket I had spent so many months making and gave myself tendonitis over. We couldn’t get Isaac to wake up, but we still got a cute picture. As we left the hospital a nurse also took our picture, our new little family. I was still swollen with edema and could barely walk because of delivery pain, but I was well enough to go home and so was Isaac.

We arrived home. Daniel carried Isaac up the stairs to our second floor apartment. I followed very, very slowly behind. Climbing those stairs was excruciating. When we were all settled in and things unloaded from the car, I took a picture of Daniel next to Isaac, who was still in his car seat. For some strange reason Daniel likes to point in pictures, but it was a good picture of Isaac’s homecoming. What a picture doesn’t show is that total and complete sense of anxiety of “Now what?” now that we were home and about to start life as a new family.