So I guess Cherish has relinquished to me the "honor" or relating the birthing story. I will try to tell it as accurately as possible, though things may have tainted a bit darker with time.
On Monday morning at 3 am Cherish started having contractions. She didn't tell me, but used an app that she had on her kindle to quietly keep track of their duration and separation. I awoke at one point in the night and asked her if she was okay. She responded that she was and so I fell back asleep. When I woke at 6 am her contractions were coming more forcefully and regularly. We were sure we were going to be having a baby today so I emailed my professors and asked to be excused from class and then gave Cherish all of my attention. At 7 am her contractions were every 4 minutes and lasting at least 90 seconds and she thought (at the time) that they were pretty bad. That was when we decided to call the doctor.
Dr Lendore, our doctor gave us his cell number as well as his office number, of course I didn't write down which was which so I ended up trying both and... no answer on either. Great... I waiting 15 minutes and tried again. Still nothing. Cherish suggested that I try calling the hospital and asking them to call him. I did and after about 10 minutes he called me back. I told him our numbers and he asked that we come in to be checked out at the very least. We left the house at 8:15 am.
I had never driven to the hospital at 8 in the morning before. For those of you that have to try it in the future its pretty much crazy! The roads are extremely skinny and apparently everyone drives on them in the mornings. It took us about 20 minutes to finally arrive. The drive over must have made Bridget decide she didn't want to be born because when we got to the hospital Cher's contractions had slowed to about every 8 minutes. Kids these days. We got checked in the hospital and they took us up to the patient room where we just kind of hung out for the next little while.
Cher wasn't in a lot of pain yet, so we laid on the bed together and watched tv and talked. Cherish's mid-wife (she was a hospital employed worker) came in to help us "get settled" and then she was gone until the doctor came in to do his initial exam. He checked her and she wasn't dilated at all, not 1 cm. He ordered an enema for her, apparently that gets things rolling and cytotec (maybe? IDK what it was, but it was a pill they gave her vaginally that was supposed to dilate the cervix). The midwife gave Cher the enema and then left to talk to some lady or hangout in the break room and we waited for things to get rolling. The doctor went back to his office to see patients and said he would be back after lunch time.
While the doctor was gone Cher progressed ever so slowly. I brought her the pregnancy/exercise ball and she bounced around on that for the most part because her contractions were getting bad enough to where she couldn't walk or even really stand. The doctor came back at 12-ish and check Cher. She had dilated to a 3, but the baby was face up! The doctor told her to keep waiting and she should turn on her own. We kept waiting, but her contractions were getting pretty bad and she was getting tired. She kept bouncing on her ball and I kept bugging her to breathe during the contractions.
Between 12 and 3pm the contractions got a lot worse and Cher was getting worried that she wouldn't have the energy to push when the baby decided to come. The midwife would make appearances every hour or two and tell Cherish, "You need to walk." Stupid idiot, can you not see that she can't walk and that's why she is bouncing on the ball? Sheesh. That was all that midwife would do/say. She would enter the room, stare at a bed or something, just listening to us, and after a minute would give us the advice and then leave. Finally at 3 I called in the doctor and Cher told him that she just wanted the baby out, C-section or natural, just out. He checked her again and she was still at a 3. This and the fact that she was getting so distraught and tired got him moving a little. He took some blood to check for anemia (Why? IDK.). He did this during a contraction too, so Cher got a nice bruise on her arm from it. Why would you ever draw blood mid-contraction?? He told Cher that if she wasn't ready by 6pm they would do a C-section.
Those last 3 hours were the worst. Cher cried from frustration, I cried from not being able to do anything useful, the midwife did nothing (seriously, nothing) and the doctor got ready for a possible C-section. We hadn't eaten all day except a bowl of cereal at 7:30 am. They wouldn't even let Cher drink water. The doctor came in at about 5:30 because Cher was starting to have the desire to push. When he checked her she was at 10 cm and it was go time. The delivery bed where they had her sitting didn't have handles, or stirrups, or anything to make having a baby in it a possibility. They wrapped Cher up in "sterile cloth" which looked like old bleach stained shirts and forbade me to touch her anywhere but on the hand and back. Then they told her to grab her thighs from behind and balance on her butt (because there was no backrest, or bed elevator or anything) and push. In case you're having a hard time envisioning this, I understand. That type of positioning is not in anyway a comfortable, restful, nor really possible position to be while pregnant, nevertheless giving birth. It's like putting your whole body in a V (like one of those intense ab workouts) and grabbing the back of your quads while going through a contraction.
We were pretty prepared (we thought) but nothing could have prepared us for this whole ordeal. Cher was pushing like we had been taught and I though she was doing great. The doctor and midwife however were less than impressed. "Stop screaming," "You are pushing wrong," "No, no, no" were all the words that were said. I was in shock! Holy crap! Finally Cherish stopped after pushing one more time and said, "I don't know how else to push!"The doctor explained that he wanted her to push and not make any noise... (really?)... and she got to work doing it. The stupid midwife kept saying over and over like a broken record, "Pushing like your pushing a hard stool." Yeah we got it lady, like your pooping now shut up. After 35 minutes of this fiasco the doctor sent the midwife to find stirrups that we could add to the bed to help Cher push better. She came back with them and tried to give them to me to put on. HELLO?! I am kinda busy and I don't work here. The doctor snapped at her to do it herself and so she finally did something useful. Once Cher had the stirrups I sat behind her on the bed to help hold her up and 10 minutes later they laid a baby girl on her lap (this was something Cher did not want, but in the heat of the moment she didn't mind at all)!
Looking at that little baby for the first time was amazing, even after all that Cher had to go through to get to this point. Cher's first words about the baby were, "Look at those fingernails?" (They were pretty darn impressive.) The midwife then took that baby and got to "cleaning her up" and suctioning out her mouth and throat. A few moments/minutes (who knows how long, it felt like forever) the baby cried. It was at that point that we "knew" that all the crap was over. They finished cleaning Cher up and sent us back across the hall to Cher's room. Cher got into her bed and we took a picture.
After that I took her to the bathroom. At that point she started to feel overheated, so I put her in her wheelchair under the A/C unit. They then brought Bridget over and I held her for a while. We decided it was time to go and get Cher's mom so she could meet her grandbaby. I gave Bridget to Cher and went to tell the nurses what I was doing. When I came back in to see Cher she was feeling super sick. I took that baby just in time for her to start vomiting- probably caused by dehydration and over-exertion. I helped her as best as I could and buzzed for the nurses. They never came, so I went and told them what was happening. They really didn't seem to care which really bothered me. There she was barely sitting up in a wheelchair with our newborn across the room. I helped as best as I could and she eventually got feeling a bit better at which point I left to get Cher's mom.
When we got back to the hospital Cher was looking better and the baby was fast asleep. Cher's mom got a chance to see and hold Briget. It was probably the nicest part of the whole experience. Cher started to get tired so we got ready to go. On our way out I told the nurses I would be taking Cher's mom home and then coming back to stay with her overnight. They told that I couldn't do that and that I would have to just come back in the morning. I told them that was not going to happen because I did not trust them with my wife and baby without me there. They said I had no choice but to leave her. I told them again that I was staying, or Cher was coming home with me because I knew that I would take better care of them then they would. The nurse tried to backtalk again and I interrupted her and told her just to write up the discharge papers. I went back into Cher's room and told her what was happening and she was in accordance with me. The head nurse then came in and said that if we left that night we would have to pay cash for the delivery and that they would not bill the insurance. At this point I was livid! I laid into her with all of my frustration and told her how big of a joke their hospital was. The nurse apologized for our bad experience and promised that SHE personally would do a better job than the other nurses had before. With no real other options I had to agree and Cher's mom and I went home.
The night was as you would imagine... long. At 6 am I got up and got ready to go back up to the hospital. We got there and Cher and the baby were fine. We hung out, washed the baby and waited to be discharged. We finally were at 11:30 am. They kept trying to kick us out, but I refused to leave till we had talked to both of the doctors. Once we had, I asked them to give us a birth certificate. Guess what? They told us they do not do birth certificates... in the hospital?! We were told that we had to go into town and then back to another office to get an "official" birth certificate. The only thing they gave us at the hospital was a receipt for our down-payment and a copy of a paper that basically said "You had a baby. It weighed X and was X cm long". Yeah, really official... And with that, we were gone and the nightmare was over.
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