I made it to my 37 and 38 week appointments. At 37 weeks he didn't even check me because I wasn't really contracting, etc. He said we'd check at 38 weeks. I wanted to kill the doctor. I was so ready to be done. Besides being really uncomfortable I developed insomnia and really bad heartburn. So I was spending a lot of nights on the couch trying to sleep. That makes for a miserable Alissa at work; having a hard time being nice to people.
That weekend after the 36 week appointment we went to a comedy show. We saw Mary Lynn Rajskub; AKA Chloe on the TV show 24. We went with Stephanie and Bart, Teri, Trudi, Scott, Dave and Jane, Jimmy and Lori, and another couple I can't remember their names. It was a lot of fun and something we don't do very often.
The following weekend I had a prenatal massage. I splurged and got the 90 minute massage. It was so worth it. I think it was this weekend that we went and watched Guardians of the Galaxy. That was pretty good but not at all what I expected. We also went to dinner (still not sure on my dates) and as we were driving to Cheddars we were driving into this Haboob.
Friday was my 38 week appointment. Dr. Alperin checked and said I was dilated to 4 cm and he stripped my membranes. He was hoping I'd go into labor that night because he was on call. He then sent me on my way. Let me tell you, having a 20-30 minute commute after having that done wasn't fun. I was cramping/contracting and very uncomfortable trying to get home in afternoon traffic. This was my proof that I was driving home (apparently with my giant swollen hands)
I've been meaning to put a picture of Dr. Alperin on here for a while. I was referred to him by a friend when I found out I was pregnant and I've really loved having him as my doctor. John and I both felt really comfortable the first time we met with him and I did throughout my pregnancy. As with any service provider I read some great and some not so great reviews but personally he was a great fit for me. He wasn't pushy about things and let me pretty much set the pace for how things were going to go. As I think is normal about 34 or 35 weeks I started to stress about having him be the one to deliver me. I'd really started to like my appointments and used them as milestones of time progressing and I'm sort of going to miss going to those appointments.
Back to Friday and after my doctor's appointment. The doctor said he wanted me to go for a walk and particularly I should try and find stairs. So we went and had some dinner and headed to the mall since it's air conditioned and we thought had stairs (note to self, there are NO stairs in the Chandler mall). So I found my own stairs in Sears. As you can tell by this point I didn't give a crap about my appearance. And now onto my long winded version of the delivery. Stop now if you don't want to read a novel......
I was contracting but not consistently or anything and after about 2 hours I was tired and wanted to go home. By about 10 pm my contractions were about 15 minutes apart consistently. I was up most of the night because it's sort of hard to sleep when you're having contractions like that and I was timing them. By 2 am they were about 5-7 minutes apart. I text Stephanie and my mom and told them I was getting John up to head to the hospital. We got to the hospital about 4 am would be my guess. I went into the triage area where they got me all set up and checked......and I was still at only 4 cm. So they sent us walking for an hour to see if we could progress at all. After an hour still nothing so.....they sent us home. It was a little depressing to have to go home and I was sure it was going to be another 2 weeks before I'd deliver. Now what confused me is they said, if your contractions are 5 min apart come in; so we did. They'd been 5 minutes apart for about an hour when we left the house. Well when they discharged us they said, come in when they are 2 minutes apart for 1-2 hours. Are you kidding me?!
Well so began my day of hell. My contractions never stopped. They slowed down to about 10-13 minutes and kept going ALL DAY LONG. I tried to sleep, tried to shower, tried anything to get them going or stopping because just having contractions every 10 minutes is not fun.
At around 3 pm John packed my stuff and took me to the pool. Hoping this would again make it stop or progress. We swam for about an hour and we were down to about 7 minutes between contractions. We went and had dinner at John's parents house and then headed home. I guess the good in all this is that my parents had headed down here that morning and they were able to make it about 6 pm Saturday night. So we came home, contractions about 7 minutes apart, going on almost 24 hours of consistent contractions. By 9 pm I was even more miserable than I knew I could be. I just wanted it to start or stop. I couldn't imagine trying to get through another full night of what the day had been. We called the triage line and their only suggestion was nipple stimulation. Seriously. Well, that wasn't happening. Even though it was hot outside we went for a walk about 9pm. I actually felt like the contractions were subsiding at that time so we headed to bed.
I never made it to sleep; the contractions started picking up and by about 11 pm they were averaging 2 minutes apart for about 45 minutes. I had one contraction so painful I jumped out of bed faster than I've moved this past 9 months. I am surprised I didn't scream bloody murder with that one. By this time John decided we were headed back to the hospital. So we got all into triage and they checked and I was dilated to 6 cm! So at 1 am Sunday morning they said they were keeping me and we were having this baby. They were really quick in getting me into labor and delivery from there so that they could give me the epidural; I don't know why the rush at this time but it seemed like they were hurrying for one reason or another.
As I'm sure most people are; I was really nervous about the epidural. However, the doctor came into to give it to me and he was very good about telling me exactly what to expect and how long it would last. Like, the lidocaine shot...burns for 5 seconds and it went exactly as he said it would. John said that you could tell almost immediately when that epidural was in and the instant relief it gave me because I started joking again. About this time all the parents showed up at the hospital. I'm not sure how long they hung out but around 3 am they checked me again and I was at a 7 I think and they kicked everyone out for 2 hours so I could try and sleep.
I might have slept a little but thanks to the amazing epidural I wasn't feeling the contractions anymore so I didn't care. The epidural is a funny thing because I felt like my feet were cold but really they were burning hot. My right leg was 100% dead but my left wasn't. Every 2 hours they would come in and roll me (which helps keep the epidural numbness even...we found this out when I started to feel labor pains on my left side) and do a catheter, etc. It seemed that I was going about 1 cm every 2 hours. They said the epidural didn't slow the labor down because I continued to progress but it sure seemed that it slowed it down some. They also kept telling me Dr. Alperin was coming in to deliver me and then he wasn't and then he was and then he wasn't. I didn't really care anymore because I had an epidural that took all the pain away. My honest thought is if I'd been ready to push around 8-10am he would have come in because it seems he is there about that time everyday anyways, but we weren't ready at that time so it was Dr. Damore who eventually delivered the baby.
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| The labor and delivery room. Notice the clock on the wall... more to come on that. |
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| Every 2 hours when they would check me everyone would take a walk and apparently get themselves locked out of the hospital. |
The actual delivery was very surreal to me. Remember in the picture above of the delivery room... well that clock was on the wall that I stared at through the whole delivery. Everyone else was facing the OTHER wall. So they had no idea of what time or how long things were taking while I had a front row seat to every stinking minute of the 2 1/2 hours of pushing. I don't know what constitutes 'the time of a person's labor' but from when my contractions started consistently to when JJ was born was 40 hours. It was a long damn time.
But back to the pushing. I don't know that I agree with them when they say that it gets too crazy with more than 2-3 people in the room because it never 'got crazy'. It was exactly perfect though I think because everyone served a purpose. It was very unlike the movies. I would stare at the clock (Tammy had said she figured the pushing would be 2 hours so I was using that as a measure of time a lot) and everyone else would stare at the monitor waiting for the next contraction so I could push. In between we would sometimes talk and sometimes not. Sometimes it was only 1-2 minutes in between and sometimes it was a little longer. For some reason I spiked a fever during all this. So I was laying there shaking so bad Stephanie was holding me down to make sure I wasn't bouncing off the bed. It's those little things that have stuck with me on the delivery. It was her holding me down and telling me to breath that helped me calm my breathing. It was Tammy's counting during the pushing that kept me focused. It was John ripping the blood pressure cuff off my arm when it was turning purple, and my mom's encouraging words that I was doing a good job that kept me grounded. I'll spare any gory details but eventually the doctor showed up and shortly after John James Risch was born; at 1:58 pm on September 14, 2014.
The hospital does an hour of bonding time after the birth for skin to skin with mom and baby. Well... I feel a little gypped on that. I barely held him and they took him away. He wasn't pinking up the way they wanted. I will give credit that apparently the cord was partially around his neck and I never knew it because they never let it show if there was any concern, etc. on the part of the staff. They took him over and did what they needed to do and I was pretty oblivious to the whole thing. Although, if I'd been thinking I would have remembered in the hospital tour that they said they call the 'nursery' if it's something that needs to be looked at and requires more than they have in the room and I knew they had called the nursery. When they finally gave him back to me, we'd kicked my mom and Stephanie out so we could have our quiet time; just John and I. Honestly I wanted that skin to skin time but I had been sitting there watching it all and John hadn't even had a chance to hold the baby and I really wanted him to make that connection as well. So by the time it was said and done John and I probably got only 20 minutes of alone time.
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| John James Risch 5 lbs 11 oz. |
Then we just had to be moved to recovery. We actually ran into Dr. Alperin on our way up to recovery and he stopped to talk to us and see how things were going. From Sunday evening to Wednesday is really a blur. There is so much going on all the time from people checking you to checking the baby. They're taking him for a bath, they're checking his hearing, they're checking vitals, they're cleaning the room, they're restocking all my supplies, they're having me fill out paperwork, they're doing circumcision, they're lactation specialists to see how feeding is going, etc. Sometimes it was like an endless parade of people which got a little annoying when you're trying to rest.
Dr. Alperin would have let us go Monday but he highly recommended staying another day to get the benefit of the lactation specialists, etc. So we did and it was probably a good thing because they had so many of those people mentioned above constantly coming and going I don't know how they would have gotten them all in and still discharged us.
Then came the bad news. The last test they had to complete the pediatrician didn't like the results and they were going to keep him and discharge me. The hospital was very nice about moving us to a 'nesting' room. Basically we got to stay there and they would bring him to us every 3 hours but otherwise he was in the nursery under the UV lights. I knew he was going to be okay and everything but the last thing a mom wants to hear after having gone through all of that is that you can't take your baby home. So John and I prepared to spend another night at the hospital.
The next morning we went up to the nursery and the nurse said the new test results had come back a lot better and she thought the doctor would let us take him. So we were very happy when the doctor called us shortly after that and said exactly that; we were going home. We did have to follow up with the pediatrician the next day on the jaundice and there was concern on his weight. When we left the hospital he'd dropped to 5 lbs 4 oz.
So there we are. We're now trying to settle into our new normal. It's been really nice having my mom here to help and I'm not sure what I'm going to do when she leaves; both because she helps with the night feedings and also to keep me sane being home 'alone'. There's also been a lot of help from John's mom with dinners, and Shar, and some people from the ward which is much appreciated. We'll see how I'm faring in 4-6 weeks.
