The physical part is all done. Emotionally I'm much stronger. It's neat to see how the body and soul sort of work together. This past weekend I did a lot of physical work with the miscarriage. Now the emotional burden is much lighter.
I delivered my baby at a Catholic Hospital about 70 miles from home. I kept the same OB practice when I moved to West Virginia. This was the same hospital where I delivered 3 of my daughters. My medical care was awesome!
The doctors were extremely conservative with my induction because I had a history of 5 C-sections. They started me with 1/16 the normal dosage of induction medicine. I slowly worked up 1/2 the normal dose. As a result, my labor took forever!
I started the medicine at 12:45 PM on Friday. I didn't have regular contractions until 11:15PM Friday night. At 5 AM on Saturday morning I hit a low point. I couldn't see any way to get out of the hospital before Sunday afternoon. Then at 9 AM, the rotation changed and I got a new doctor. Doctor T walked into the room and the whole atmosphere change. She had helped me in recovery from one of my daughter's birth. I really trusted her judgement. She said that my body could handle more of the medicine. She increased my dosage. So at 9 AM, I got a much higher dose. I started having major contractions immediately.
I gave birth to Leo at 10:30 AM on Saturday, October 19. The nurses looked at him first because I felt a little squeamish. A nurse named Bridget popped her head around the closed curtain where they were washing the body and said "It's a boy!" That was one of the best moments of the weekend. It felt really good to be correct about the gender. It felt like we got to know him and bond with him during my pregnancy.
I ran into trouble passing the afterbirth. My labor almost totally stopped around 11 AM. The doctor gave me another dosage of medicine around 1:30. My body had strong contractions for a small amount of time but stopped at 2 PM.
By 3 PM I was super tired. I asked my favorite nurse to give me a pep talk. She did. Then she called Pastoral Care so I could get the Eucharist. At 3:30 I was going nuts .I'd laid in my hospital bed for more than 24 hours. Jon unplugged my IV, and I started walking the hospital hallways while Jon followed me with my clunky IV pole. I was totally defying my nurse's instructions to stay in my bed until after my placenta delivered.
As we walked the halls we found a new room. The High Risk Perinatal parent break room. It had a computer. With Internet!!! That let me ask for prayers on my blog and send a quick email to a blogger friend in Texas. Rebecca F. called seconds after my nurses had chased me back into bed. She was so hopeful and encouraging. I was so tired and flat. She made me pray to St. Gerard and St R---something of the unborn. I prayed with her without any hope or enthusiasm. God didn't care about my lack of enthusiasm. He answered our prayers quickly, anyway.
While I was still on the phone with Rebecca my doctor visited 30 minutes ahead of schedule at 4 PM. She did this stuff with forceps and by 4:20 PM everything was completely out of my womb. I was free to go home! I left the hospital at 6:30 PM. I picked up my happy kids at their amazing babysitters at 8:30 PM. At 9 PM, I crawled into my own bed and feel asleep.
Today I'm doing well. I didn't take any pain meds after leaving the hospital. There is less flow than a normal period. I think my body worked really hard on Saturday, so now I'm almost totally done with the miscarriage.
Leo's body is still at the hospital. The lab can't discharged it for 2 to 5 days. That's actually really comforting to me. I've got time to get his funeral together. For the next few days, I'm taking a break from funeral planning to recover from my miscarriage.
I went to the grocery store today. I added chocolate and red meat to our cart. I decided that was the best "post childbirth" diet I could prescribe for myself.
Thank you for all your prayers and well wishes. I've read every email.
