I had my baby girl on 12/22. I made an impression on multiple medical professionals. Again. Get snacks and a drink. It’s a long story.
I was scheduled to be induced since they suspected my girl would be 8.5-9 pounds. I’d also needed physical therapy to get through the pregnancy. Lots of people had a good March because L&D was hopping. I had to wait for rooms to be ready and had someone who was ahead of me in the triage order.
Induction starts with pills you have to cheek and basic IV drips. I had several monitors strapped to me. Baby girl was notorious for kicking anything that invaded her space in utero. She did this to at least 3 L&D nurses while they tried to place different monitors.
The doctor who delivered my son was on call when I came in. She remembered me 4 years later. Apparently, a vacuum assisted, unmedicated delivery straight out of triage during a shift change is a rarity.
I got spoiled with my son’s speedy labor and departure. My daughter took long enough that I got bored. I got a balloon and became my own party favor. If you don’t know what that means, great! Remain ignorant. That plus pitocin ramped up my discomfort. Hubs knew when I was contracting because I’d get still and quiet.
Eventually, they get the crochet hook of doom to break my water. That tends to speed up the uterine evacuation. I was fully dilated when it broke the first time so this labor was very educational.
Had I known how quickly my labor would progress after this, I would not have gotten an epidural. The unforeseen consequences were NOT worth it. It also did very little for my pain when push came to push. Unfortunately, I’m not psychic. My labor could have been 2 more hours or 12. I opt for the pain meds since baby girl was taking her sweet time prior to this.
I get my epidural and I’m doing a great job of staying still. Nothing like waves of pain to keep you still. I’ve got the needle in my spine, holding on to the L&D nurse, when it feels like all the nerves in my head catch FIRE! My pain was a 9/10 only because I could say it was 9/10. I was clearly distracted but Hubs heard the anesthesiologist say something to the effective of “That doesn’t usually happen.”
It’s over and that headache never totally goes away. I get 20-30 minutes of diminished pain before baby girl is over our nonsense. She was fighting the eviction but finally decided to take the hint and leave.
Hubs tries to boost the epidural doses but I felt EVERYTHING. Again. The worst pain was right before baby girl hit the birth canal. Once she was on her way out, it was more bearable. They get her out, plop her on my chest, and my first words after a day of labor was “OMG, finally.”
We bond, I’m sitting at an incline, all is well. Later, in the moment and baby ward, I get up to pee and my head starts pounding. I go back to my reclined position, get a visit from anesthesiology and they don’t think my symptoms sound like a spinal headache. My symptoms were pretty mild and could possibly have been something else. Sinuses, hormones, etc.
The next morning at dark o’clock, I hit the bathroom, get the pounding and tinnitus. I flop back in bed thinking it will go away after I sleep. It did not. I report my symptoms to the OB and she thinks it’s probably my (chronically problematic) sinuses. Baby girl and I doze off waiting for discharge paperwork. I wake up and my neck hurts. Weird but I’m over 35 and sleeping in a hospital bed at a funny angle.
Some of you in the know may suspect what went wrong.
The car ride home was *rough*. I was dizzy, nauseous, and in one of this ‘sick sweats.’ I flop out on a chair in our building lobby while Hubs feeds our fussy baby. We’re a mess but IDGAF. We get upstairs and I collapse in bed. A hour later, I felt so much better. I get up, better got gone, the pounding resumes, and the ringing in my ears upgraded to roaring.
Every time I tried to sit up or stand over the next few days, my head starts pounding, my neck hurts, my back hurts, my ringing ears start roaring. I could only lay on the couch for a couple of hours before it hurt too much. I couldn’t change diapers. I could barely prop myself up enough to feed my baby. Hubs was amazing since he had to take care of both of us. Baby girl still knew her mama. If Hubs brought her to me in bed, she’d be out for 2-3 hours.
I looked up the symptoms for a CSF leak. I had half of them. I was gradually getting better but I needed to get better much faster if I wanted my oldest back home. Basically, my epidural went wrong and caused me to leak spinal fluid. It’s why I was OK lying in bed and nowhere else.
I talk to the OB on call and she agreed my symptoms sounded like a CSF leak. We bundle up baby girl and head to the ER. Hubs went in to get a wheelchair for me since I couldn’t walk. After the drive, I was barely lucid.
Baby girl never left the car. I refused to have her in the ER. I’m barely holding it together while I’m evaluated, begging to lay down. Pounding headache, nausea, dizziness, sick sweats, ringing ears. I almost fainted.
Unable to walk on my own, recently had a baby, spinal leak? Triage ‘win.’ I got a bed in under 10 minutes. I launch myself out of the wheelchair and into the bed. Amazing what lying down can do for you.
The admission lady comes in and I just lose it. I missed Christmas with my son, I can’t care for my baby, and I’m in the ER alone on 12/26. The saddest part? Still not my worst Christmas ever. As soon as I said I didn’t have a mom, the admission lady was my mom for a minute. It truly helped.
I get seen and evaluated pretty quickly by the nurse and ER doctor. The on-call anesthesiologist comes in to get started. It’s the same doctor from my delivery!
I lose it again and start crying while he explains the procedure. Doc tries to be understanding and then I explain all of the things going in to these tears. Once I said ‘still not my worst Christmas,’ he felt BAD. ‘As he should’ has been the collective sentiment.
The procedure I got is called a blood patch. Basically, it’s another epidural but they inject my own blood to clot/scab over the leak in my spinal fluid. I was right that it would have healed on its own…after 2 weeks. This procedure was necessary to get my body and my life back.
They prep me and once the needle goes in, I start sweating and shaking. I can feel the pressure but they need to get the blood during the procedure. I was dehydrated so this proved difficult. At one point, they had to let the vein refill to keep going without sticking me a third time.
The whole time, I’m keeping as still as humanly possible. 1 in 30,000 get nerve damage and the odds were not in my favor once already. They finally get enough blood and I get to lay back for 2 hours to ensure proper clotting.
I got stiffness and pressure in my hips which is normal. The doctor propped my legs up with pillows and got me some water with a straw. I appreciated the TLC. The ER was not slow so even though the procedure was successful, it took a while to get me discharged.
I felt so much better, one of the first things I did was wash and sterilize bottles. I was so happy to finally be able to do things to take care of my baby. I was stiff and achey but functional. I’m still stiff and sore but only dome of it is from the postpartum perdition. Healing from pregnancy is also pretty tough too.
Looking back on the speed of my ER admission, the anesthesiologist giving me his unit’s phone number and extra TLC, and the ER doctor calling me to see how I was doing, made me wonder. Either I had the most epic sob story of the holidays or the grounds for a malpractice suit. Maybe both.
I could use more sleep but I’ve got both my kids and mostly have my body back. That’s all I wanted. I’m more than happy to close that chapter and move on.
JesseJaneReads 