Ivy Tied Up |

After reading Colleen’s post about CSections and all the comments posted on her blog I’ve decided to come share my experiences with the world..

I had my oldest at 19. It was the hottest year that I can remember..(1999). I was due with her at the end of May and it was already hitting 105 to 110. I was huge! Big, Fat, Miserable and huge! My bloodpressure was sky rocketing and high enough to harm me.. My little brother passed away when I was due. He was 3 years old and it added stress and caused my bloodpressure to soar. I was begging the doctor to take her. I knew things were not right but he would not listen to me. He regarded me as some teenage girl who didnt know much about her body. When I was 3 weeks overdue I finally went into labor. Just so happened it was the very day that I was to go into the doctors office to talk to the doctor about being induced.

I awoke that morning feeling crappy. Called my mom freaking out because things were not right.. She told me I was going to go into labor soon.. she was sure of it. With in 30 minutes the contractions started. I went into my scheduled doctors appt because after all it was right there next to the hospital. He checked me and concluded that yes she would be born that day. He sent me to go walk and told me to head to the hospital later that day. We left to walk and When we arrived at the hospital we were told they couldnt reach my doctor. By this point the contractions were on top of each other. I was in real pain and just wanted her out! I didnt really care how they got her out just please get her out.. They called and called and paged my doctor and they were told that he had gone out to eat and he had left his pager at home. The good news for the staff was that I wasnt dilating but I was in huge amounts of pain. Suddenly the pain shifted and i felt a new sensation. It was akward weird and stabbing pain. The nurse checked me and I had gone from a 3 to a 8 in just a matter of minutes. She tried my doctor again and he was no where to be found so they had another doctor wash up and as he started to come in my doctor arrived wearing a leather vest and what looked like a leather golf hat. It was the oddest scene but I was far from amused.

He cleaned up and changed and decided he would grace me with his presence. After hours of pushing things were not progressing. Her heart rate kept dropping and every time I would push she would go down and then right back up. Labor gives pain new meaning. My doctor started to get pissy and said,”If you cant push for any longer than this, I could go play a round of golf and smoke a cigar”. Any woman who has been in labor can just imagine my feelings at this point. I was beyond hurt and upset. I saw rage! Not only did he use my brand new socks as his personal hand towel but then he insulted me while I was laying on a hospital bed spread eagle for the world to see with a kid trying to come out of me who had no plans of actually coming out on her own. I kept telling him something was wrong. Something wasnt right. I knew my body and I knew the feelings that I kept having were not the same. no I had never been in labor before but I damn sure am capable of telling the difference in the way my body is acting. Something was not right. After this is where things start to get blury. I remember a monitor going crazy, the doctor yelling and screaming. he was cussing nurses using F*ck like it was going out of style. Saying that they had to get out of his F*cking way NOW! He then put me up on my hands and knees and wheeled me out of my room down the hall into a stainless steel room (that image now gives me the creeps). He then rolled me over onto an operating bed and strapped me down. I dont know if any of you have ever had this experience. But when you take someone who is scared of being confined or held down and you strap her legs and arms to a table. She tends to flip out.. It was the worst feeling for me. Or what I thought was the worst.. The worst was yet to come. He was so calm in all of this. Like it was something he did every day. There was another doctor in there with him and they were talking among themselves. As he walked by me I managed to grab his sleeve and ask if he aws going to give me something ..something for hte pain.. He said yes and started cutting me open. I never received anything for the pain. I felt the entire c section. I was gutted like a hog (for anyone who hunts and kills their own food.. You know this picture well)I was tied to a table and cut open. It was the most extreme pain I’ve ever been in. In my entire lil life this was the worst pain I’ve ever endured. It hurt so bad It couldnt have been real. I remember laying there begging to die. I kept thinking this is it, its over. Here I go. It seemed to last forever. I didnt think they would ever stop cutting me and pulling at me. The pain was so extreme I wanted to die. This whole time I was screaming. What else can you do when you are in that kind fo pain? A nurse walked in and froze. She stood there in what i’m g uessing was shock. She just kept saying ,”Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god” Finally the guy who gives the anesthesia came in. He walked up to me and started stroking my head. He kept patting me and saying ,”Poor baby, oh god poor baby”. He yelled at the nurse whowas standing there and she just stood there. He then yelled something to the extent of he wo uld do it himself. The next thing I remember was hearing my daughter cry and that was it. I either passed out or the doctor knocked me out. I woke up in the recovery room later that evening. My dad ran in out of no where yelling. He kept crying. I wont ever forget the look on his face. It was fear and relief mixed. He was so scared. He kept saying,”your okay, your okay.I thought I lost you” The nurses were telling him to get out that he couldnt come in here.. He chuckled at me and said something like they couldnt keep him away. They wouldnt even let my husband back to see me. After that I remember a few hours later they wheeled me back to my room. I was on morphine drip for a little while. It made me itch like crazy. I didnt see that doctor again for the rest of my hospital stay. It wasnt until a few days later that I found out that after the doctor stapled me up he went out ot my parents and told my mom,”She is going to hate me when she wakes up but she is goign to be fine”. I saw the nurse 2 weeks later to get my staples out and I never went back. Hate him..Yes very much! He butchered me. It wasnt until a good while later when i was finally able to talk about my experience that I learned from my husbands family that alot went on in the hall way of hte hospital that night as well. They could all hear me screaming all down the hall. They said both my husband and my father became frantic. They wouldnt let them in. They said my husband tried to break down the doors and became trapped between two doors that you had to have the nurses unlock. And they said my fahter kept pacing back and forth down the hall crying that he had just lost his son and was going to lose his daughter as well. That image makes me cry. I know I was in pain that night. But I also knew what was going on and I was in the situation. i was there. I knew what was going on.. They didnt. They had no idea if I was okay, if the baby was okay. The only image they had was me screaming. The fear and hurt I feel for what they were put through is huge. I can’t imagine feeling that fear for my child. I cant imagine being put through that as a parent.
As I said on my comment on Colleen’s blog. The recovery from that c section took me months. I was unable to do much. Sleep was the majority of what I did. I was unable to care for my own child. I was in constant pain. My cut was up and down and every time I moved a staple would lodge itself in my skin or turn around and i ended up with a part of my incision being inflammed and infected for a short while.
Not even a year later I found myself pregnant again. I did not want another child at that point. The fear was still too great from having my daughter. The pain still too real. My body tried to reject the pregnancy several times. I was put on bed rest for a majority of the pregnancy and spent hte entire pregnancy in and out of hte doctors office. I was there either weekly or every 2 weeks. I found a really good doctor for that pregnancy. he was very understanding, listened to me and we discussed a vbac. The risks were too high for me. I had scar tissue built up from the last C section plus I had had surgery in 98 due to female problems. Then the added risk of the way my incision was. My cut was nothing near pretty.. It wasnt a clean even incision either. It was rough. The problems I had experienced while trying to deliver my first.. The risks were just too high.. So he was born via aplanned c section. It went off with out a problem. The doctor was amazing. however the feelings from my first experience came back when they started prepping me for surgery. The fear was there and i couldnt squash it. I felt like I was being choked when they tied me down and started prepping me. It took them awhile to calm me down before they put me under. My son was born healthy and kicking! We bonded as soon as I woke up and everything was “great”.
Now my youngest.. That pregnancy was something else. It wasnt a bad pregnancy.. not at all.. It was rough though. I knew for a while she was never going to make it to her due date. She too was to be a planned c section due to the risks involved. On September 4 I had a doctors appt. I told the doctor she is coming SOON. he checked me said I was fine and she wasnt coming anytime soon. September 5th I went into labor.. She was born almost 6 weeks early. Now tell me I dont know? I was in labor with her for 11 hours too.. (thats my fault.. I didnt listen to my body. I was convinced the contractions would stop). The hard part of that was when they stated they were going to leave me awake for the c section. Immediately my fear came back and I couldnt breathe. I freaked out. They took me into the stainless steel room of hell and tied me down. When I really started freaking out they decided it was best to put me under. My mom told them ,”I tried to tell you guys” and explained what I had been through. Needless to say they told her hse should have t old them that from the beginning. (I couldnt speak at this point.. The fear was so much all i could do was cry and shake). Its a really odd feeling when you are strapped to a table with a mask over your face and everyone is walking around doing their job and talking but not talking to you.. sometimes its about you. its almost like you arent there. Its a very weird feeling. It was so weird I was scared they were going to forget to put me under. Suddenly i couldnt breathe so easy. And I co uldnt tell them because the mask was on my face and I couldnt grab anyone because they had me tied down. I was so scared. I couldnt breathe and I felt like I was being choked. I kept shaking and couldnt control it. The last thing I remember hearing was this loud beeping noise. Like you see in the movies. I woke up next in the recovery room. The nurse walked up to me and patted my arm.. She said,”Oh good your awake! We thought we were going to lose you” I couldnt speak yet. it always sucks when you wake up after being put to sleep. You cant talk but you want to but what you really want is a glass of water and you are so cold.. So freaking cold. when I was finally wheeled to my room the nurses and doctors came in. There were SEVERAL doctors. I was still doped up and not sure of what was going on. They explained that they thought for sure they were going to lose me that it was a close call. Apparently my fear took over and my body went beserk. Then a few of the doctors were there because of my daughter. She took a breathe on her own and hten her lungs collapsed. i was too out of it to understand so they came back and spoke to me several times. She was on antibiotics and oxygen. She had t ubes everywhere. The nurses took my camera and took pics of her so I could see her. i wasnt able to go see her and no one else was allowed to go unless my husband or i was there to go wth them. They made a rule thouh that no one co uld hold her not even my husband until i was able to hold her.. MOM FIRST! Good rule eh? I didnt get to see her for 3 days. Thats how long it took me to be able to get out of the bed. And before they would let me out of the bed. She ended up in the NICU for a week. i hear thats great. Let me explain. I hear i’m lucky that it was only a week and she recovered as quick as she did. Let me tell you though. That week was so hard. It was so very hard!
I love my kids. I sometimes think I wouldnt mind another one. But the fear I get when going into surgery. I dont think I could have another one. And I have one doctor to blame for all that.. Everyone claims I should have sued him. Ive spoken to several doctors about what happened to me. And all agree that it does happen. You do not hear about it much but it does happen. That if he can prove it was indeed an emergancy then he did what needed ot be done. It wasnt worth it to me to sue. My daughter was alive and so was I and thats what counts. It took me a year before I could even really talk about what happened to me. It took me back to a very scary place every time I tried before that. I’ve even been called a liar by some women who do not believe that this does happen on occassion. Who do not believe its possible to be done this way. When it comes to life and death.. Doctors are in the business to save lives. Even though I strongly dislike the man who “gutted” me.. And I would NEVER go to him again.. He might have saved my daughters life. (I still dont think we would have been in that situation had he listened to me in the first place instead of treating me like I was an ignorant kid). All’s well that ends well..

Sorry for the typos’.. My carpal tunnel is acting up big time but I felt the need to write..