I will spare the details of my 24-hour in hospital bed rest. Suffice it to say, it was replete with many trips to the bathroom (I was in my 7th month after all, and I had to pee every hour, if not every half hour, and I had to tell the nurse when I did this because I was hooked up to round the clock baby monitoring), a couple of emotional breakdowns, visits from my OBGYN and the neonatologist, almost no food (which is just cruel for a pregnant lady), lots of injections (some for the baby, some for me), a visit from "B" who brought the best slippers ever (I was recognized in the hospital for weeks as the slipper girl), an ever-present hubby who never left my side (unless I sent him to get the nurse so I could go to the bathroom), my mom, secret emails to my sister who was on a cruise in Sweden-she purposely scheduled the trip in July since I wasn't due until September, leaving plenty of wiggle room in case the baby came early-they were secret because my mom didn't want my sister to worry, phone calls to hubby's family, and, about 1-hour prior to delivery, my dad-he caught a plane from L.A. to Kennedy-we told him to come to Newark since we were in New Jersey (he didn't listen)-he was stuck in traffic, hence arriving 1-hour before the baby was born.
Something very important you should know about me-I am highly medically phobic. Anything needle or surgical related sends me somewhere on the panic attack spectrum. When I was 19 and needed wisdom tooth surgery, my father drugged me just to get into the oral surgeon's office-and I really like my oral surgeon (his name is Bart...doesn't get better than that). I have the best dentist in the whole entire world, and he knows to just let me cry it out when he says I have a cavity. I never even had blood work done until I was 27 or 28 and landed in the E.R. with a mysterious, hellish pain in my abdomen. Both the hubby and the tech had to hold me down in order to draw blood. I've since gotten better about it, but even a flu shot can raise my heartbeat, cause me to sweat and shake, or make me cry in anxiety-ridden fear. Often in public. I have no shame. At the hospital, I explained my issue to the social worker, my OBGYN and the neonatologist-I wasn't worried for the baby. Logically, I knew that the baby had a 99% chance of ultimately being fine (after a NICU stay), and that the fact that she was a girl would bode her well. I had read the book-I knew that her lungs weren't fully developed yet, I knew what type of treatments she would need-I was prepared. I wasn't prepared, however, for the surgery. I wanted to be out, completely out, general anesthesia, not alert-I wanted to go to sleep and then wake up and be told that she was born. The social worker agreed-both the doctors said "no," that it was too risky for the baby.
Here's how a c-section works. You are in your room, surrounded by all your loved ones, when a nurse checks your vitals and then walks you down a long hallway (I negotiated that if I wasn't allowed to be unconscious, the hubby had to be there every step of the way, even the ones where husbands weren't normally allowed-they granted this request). The nurse and my husband partially dragged me down the hall. Once in the operating room, your doctor explains the procedure for anesthetizing your body. They sit you up on the table and have you bend forward at the hips. Your nurse holds your arms as the anesthesiologist inserts a needle into your spine and then they quickly rotate your legs onto the table. From then on it's full steam ahead-you are a piece of meat on a table and they pretty much ignore you. Now imagine a hysterical woman screaming "No, I can't, please, wait, slow down," crying and shaking, and that's just how my c-section started.
I remember the rest of the surgery in little patches-I was having a full blown panic attack, so I don't think that I'll ever be able to remember everything. There was my doctor telling my husband to get me to stop shaking, there was me throwing up over my shoulder to my left and looking to the side for help and seeing the anesthesiologist doing nothing to help me even though he clearly saw me vomit (his shift ended mid-surgery and the moment the new anesthesiologist entered the room, he saw the vomit and cleaned up my face and arm), there was this sickening feeling in my abdomen as I felt the pressure of the doctors moving around inside of me, there was the baby's scream as she exited my body and the elated feeling that she wasn't supposed to be able to breathe on her own so this was a very good sign, there was the neonatologist bringing the baby to my face for me to see and kiss her but I couldn't and I couldn't even open my eyes to see her because I was turned to the side and still vomiting (the neonatologist had the baby give me a "kiss" on the non-vomit cheek), my hubby crying tears of joy and taking pictures, the convulsions and almost electric shock like twitches coming from inside me as the doctors put me back together, asking my OBGYN to stop for a minute because I needed a break, his response of "if we stop now you're going to bleed out," and the eventual taping up and wheeling out to the recovery room.
My husband, a multitude of doctors and nurses, the entire NICU staff, and both of my parents saw my daughter before I did. At the time, I didn't even care. None of it was real.
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