My Labor

Everyone asks about your birth plan once you start to get close to having your baby. I knew at 21 weeks, that I probably shouldn’t get my hopes up too much to have a ‘normal’ birth and should try to keep my mind open to the fact that things would probably change. With that in mind, I still wanted to try everything as naturally as possible though. I had hoped that I wouldn’t need to be induced, especially with how many times I had already had the preterm labor contractions. I didn’t want to get an epidural. I wanted Dakota to try and play catch so he could be the very first person that touched our newborn baby. I wanted to keep the placenta attached until it stopped pulsating. I wanted to have skin to skin and try to breastfeed right after she was delivered. But as I said, I knew that things would most likely change.

I went into St. Mark’s labor and delivery on Sunday, June 28th around 10:30 am to start the induction process. I was still dilated to a 1 and was about 20% effaced. Once the nurses got me all hooked up to the machines, I was asked if I was in any pain. Assuming it was a normal question, I told the nurse that I wasn't in any pain. She giggled slightly under her breath and told me that I was in the middle of a contraction, and yet I really didn't have any clue and I had been having constistant contractions since they had first hooked me up to the machine. After they nurse talked to my doctor, they decided to start me on Cytotec, a medication that is used to try and help soften the cervix. After an hour on the first dose, my contractions started to get a bit stronger. After 2 doses, my cervix had only made it to be about 50% effaced. I was then started on Pitocin around 7 pm that night. My doctor gave me the goal to just get some sleep and hopefully by the next morning, we would have some more progress. The Pitocin helped my contractions strengthen quite a bit that night. After about 19 hours of steady contractions and a few cervix checks, I asked my nurse for some Tylenol to hopefully help just take the edge off and hopefully get me a little more sleep.

Monday morning they increased the amount of my Pitocin drip. The baby’s head had dropped quite a bit overnight. I was still only about 60% effaced and was only dilated to a 1. By 11:30, my doctor checked and I had finally progressed a bit! I was dilated to a 2 and was about 80% effaced. Since I was progressing a little but not quickly, my doctor put in a cooks catheter with the hopes that it would get my body to dilated a bit faster. I was able to get an hour-long break from being on the Pitocin and was allowed to get up and move around. After mostly bed-bound for the last 24 hours, it felt so good to get up and move. I was able to bounce on and exercise ball, which I was hoping would help trigger things.

Around 5:00 pm my doctor came back, before she left for the day, to check on me. I had started to progress more, but the cook’s catheter wasn’t totally ready to come out yet. It had been about 30+ hours of steady strong contractions when I finally caved and got an epidural. Part of me was just hoping that it would maybe help keep things going, but I was also so tired by this point. About an hour later, the cook's catheter finally came out! I was finally dilated to a 4 and was about 80% effaced still. By 8:00 pm that night, I was sitting in bed and felt something warm underneath me. I had a normal catheter in and so my first thought was that it had gotten too full and was now leaking all over my bed. When I called the nurse to help me check, she let me know that it was my water that had broken! I was so excited!! When she told me, I teared up a bit. The emotions of knowing how much closer I was to finally meeting my little girl just made me so excited I couldn’t contain it.

When the nurse had come in to help clean up, she checked to make sure everything seemed good. Unfortunately, my water hadn’t broken all the way. So the on-call doctor came in and finished breaking the amniotic sac. When he came in, he also put in an intrauterine pressure catheter, which our poor baby was not a fan of since it tried taking up even more of her little space. Around 1:00 am the next morning, the nurse woke me up to let me know that I was running a fever of 101°. They had a close on our baby. She had her heart rate spike a bit since I had started the fever. They started me on some antibiotics and hoped that it would break the fever and keep me and the baby safe. It took about 4 hours to finally break my fever. They tried giving me Tylenol but I threw it up almost immediately after.

By 5:00 am Tuesday, I was finally dilated to a 5 and was 100% effaced! They still had me on the antibiotics and I was still at a higher dose of Pitocin. My doctor came in around 9:00 am to check on me. She discussed some of my options now that my water had broken. Knowing that I had already gotten an infection, and the baby’s heart rate was still a little high, my doctor told me that I was going to be having the baby before the end of the day. She was giving me until 5:00 pm to either progress or have a c section. I was still hoping to finally get things going so I could push the baby out. She checked my cervix and I was still a good 5 maybe a 6 and was still 100% effaced.

When my doctor came back around 11:00 am, I was still a 5 or 6 but my cervix had thickened a bit on my left side and was now 100% effaced on my right and back to about 80% on my left. What I didn’t know at the time, was that my baby was starting into fetal distress. So I went from slightly high risk to now being high risk and having an emergency c section. When my doctor told me she was going to get me in for an emergency c section, Dakota had left to shower and grab some new clothes and things for himself. Knowing how much I wanted his support and for him to be there, she waited for him to get back before they actually cut me open. My doctor explained everything that would happen in the OR. She told me it usually took only about 10 to 15 minutes for them to deliver the baby but it was about another 45 minutes before I would be done and wheeled out of the OR.

I was already in the OR while everyone was getting everything ready when Dakota finally got back. He got to get all gowned up while they were running towards the OR. Almost immediately after he got there, I was cut open.

This was my very first surgery. I knew that I didn’t want to watch so they had the drape up. Dakota on the other hand was very interested in watching. He stood next to me holding my hand while they cut into me and pulled our beautiful baby girl out of me. I had told Dakota that once she was born I wanted him to go with the baby to make sure she was okay and had her daddy close.

Adalei Rae Paulick was born at 1:12 pm, Tuesday, June 30th, 2020. She was 7 lbs. 13 oz. and was 20 ¾ inches long.

I think the c section was a lot more terrifying than I expected it to be. I knew what to kind of expect since my mom had talked to me about the 2 she had. My doctor also explained everything that was going to happen. But I really don’t think anything could have totally prepared me for what happened in that room. I did have the epidural, but that doesn’t change that you can feel the pressure and everything being pulled and pushed around. The first few minutes weren’t that bad though. My doctor had explained that I knew that she was going to have to push on my chest by my sternum to help get the baby out and that it would probably be the worst part of the whole thing. But that wasn’t totally true. When she pushed down, it made me super sick and every tug seemed to be a ton worse. Once Adalei was out of me, things seemed to take a turn. I remember just laying there throwing up over and over again. The anesthesiologist kept trying to calm me down. She gave me 2 or 3 different doses of a nausea medication as well as a stronger dose of the epidural. After what seemed like forever just laying there throwing up and crying, I was finally able to ask how much longer they thought I would be in surgery. I remember being told that I still had about 20 minutes left. But that was the last thing in the OR that I remember. I am pretty sure that they gave me morphine to knock me out since I was not doing well at all.

The next thing I remember is waking up back in my room. I was laying back in the bed. Dakota was sitting in the rocking chair in the corner of the room holding Adalei, skin to skin. I honestly was still so out of it that I couldn’t even tell you when I held Adalei for the first time. From what I have kind of pieced together, it wasn’t until about 3:30 pm. So almost 2 hours after she was born.

Once we were moved up to the postpartum floor, I was able to kind of ask Dakota about what had happened. It was then that I found out that just about everything that I had hoped for in the delivery of my baby girl, didn’t happen. Dakota wasn’t able to cut the cord and they cut it almost immediately after she was born. They then took Adalei and cleaned her up a little bit and did all of the normal things. It wasn’t until after they checked on her that they wrapped her up in a blanket and handed her to Dakota. I knew that I didn’t get to hold her until I woke up. But all of this just came crashing down and hurt. still really wanted to breastfeed. I sat and tried for about 5 minutes to get Adalei to latch. I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t just stay latched and keep sucking. It was like she would latch for 2 sucks and then would just start screaming. Things got super emotional and I finally broke and Dakota fed her a bottle. She had to eat. I couldn’t just starve my new little baby.

I think that was the first time I had really acknowledged just how badly I was hurting. Everything I had wanted was gone within a few short moments. Things that I thought I would have some control over. Yet there I was, lying in the hospital bed, realizing that wasn’t the case at all. The time I was wanting to be happy and in love with my new little baby, my new family. All I felt was hurt and pain. I wanted so badly to feel anything but the pain, so I started trying to fake it.