Levi's Birth & Delivery, & My Recovery

A couple months ago, our third child and first boy was born! Levi Edward Watts, 6 lbs 9 oz. As has been the case with each child, the entire experience was no walk in the park--more like playing hopscotch over a volcano.

Laborious Labor
Contractions began eight days before his due date at 7:00ish in the morning. They were gnarly things that wrapped around from my front to my bum. They stayed far enough apart that Clayton could go to our 9:00am church and conduct the choir for the Easter Program (proof that God loves his music, right?), and shortly after he got back, they were five minutes apart and off we went to the hospital.

While I was all curled up and moaning with each contraction, the anesthesiologist stabbed me with the epidural and did his thing. An hour later, it still wasn’t working. He gave me another dose, and after fifteen more minutes of contraction pain and failed medicine, he realized he had to completely redo it. By this point I’d been hit with intense contractions every five minutes for more than two hours, and when the pain of him stabbing me with the second epidural hit, I broke down. I cut off the circulation in Clayton’s hand from squeezing it while I cried and waited for the pain to stop. The anesthesiologist, who had been quite chatty the first time, said nothing this time. I think he was a bit flummoxed.

Finally I had the peaceful satisfaction of looking at the monitor and seeing the spikes of a contraction that I couldn’t feel. Hallelujah!

After a few hours passed, I progressed from a 4. . .to a 5. I wanted to cry whenever the nurse came in and checked me and I was still only at a 5. But at last, the doctor herself came in and broke my water, AND they gave me Pitocin. I then zoomed from a 5 to a 10 in fifteen minutes. (Would’ve been nice if they’d done that sooner!)

Delivery: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The Good: Levi came out in less than fifteen minutes of pushing.

The Bad: I asked the doctor if I had hemorrhoids, because I’d had those with every birth so far. She said, maybe some internal ones. I literally thought, oh that doesn’t sound so bad. But as she sewed me up she said things like “You’d better never have an 8-pound baby…” and “You’re the perfect candidate to be induced early so your baby doesn’t grow too big.” Sounded ominous.

The Ugly: I got a third-degree tear. I tore so deep I tore my freakin’ external anal sphincter.

Quick Lesson on Human Anatomy
Let’s talk about the external sphincter. Besides just being a funny word, this sphincter is a muscle that keeps stuff from coming out of you when you’re not ready. It’s what helps you keep those toots in when you’re feeling polite. It’s also what gives stuff the final push; when things move and you feel an “oomph” amount of pressure and then you’re in the clear. Our sphincters definitely have the crappiest jobs in our body (har har), but they’re very critical to our comfort and health.

And my anal sphincter was broken. Which, by the way, they told me nothing about. But more on that later.

My First Bad Reaction to a Medicine
I was very nauseous after delivering Levi. I was also in a ton of pain thanks to my hugely swollen lady bits, the hemorrhoids (which weren’t pushing through to the outside yet), and my broken bum. So I was on painkillers around the clock--an opioid with codeine (which makes you constipated--remember that!) and Motrin. To counter the codeine, I was also taking stool softener pills.

To counter the nausea, I took Zofran. I had taken it twice with no problems. But the third time, something freaky happened. The nausea vanished, but I became really dizzy. My muscles felt really heavy and I could barely lift my hand. My body felt so awful and weird that I started crying. And then it felt like there was a weight on my chest and I couldn’t inhale a full gulp of air. At that point I began shouting “I can’t breathe,” which in case you’re wondering, are the three magic words for sending a bunch of people flying into the room.

I confused everyone because my vitals were fine. No change in blood pressure, no spiked fever. The top nurse thought I was freaking out over nothing. “It’s probably an anxiety attack, do you suffer from anxiety?” Uh, no lady. “Maybe it’s a panic attack.” Aren’t those the same thing? “Do you have asthma?” Nope, never. I began to be afraid as I lay there unable to breathe properly or hardly move my body.

Eventually they left me alone, though they kept an eye on my vitals. Clayton had been gone at the start of this episode and came in near the end. He massaged my chest and arms, and gradually the heaviness vanished and the pressure left my chest. After that, the pharmacist came in and told me she believed I’d experienced a rare reaction to the Zofran called “bronchial spasms.” These happen when oxygen suddenly leaves the muscles. They’re not life-threatening, she said, but can be very scary. I was so grateful she validated what I’d felt that I would have jumped up and done a happy dance if I hadn’t just pushed out a baby.

Recovering at Home
I was in a lot of pain. When I didn’t have the codeine painkiller in my body, I could barely move and worse, hardly sit. Nursing was awful because I had to sit upright and directly on my bum, and no pillow or donut could help. I knew by the end of the first week that I would run out of the painkiller, so that Friday I went to the doctor for more. I still didn’t know at that point that my sphincter was torn. In hindsight, I imagine that when the nurse told the doctor I hadn’t gone to the bathroom yet, he knew I couldn’t keep taking the painkiller with codeine--so he gave me a different one without it.

All I knew then was that when I brought the medicine home and saw it was different, I was so disappointed and worried. I tried the new painkiller but as I feared, it didn’t work at all. By then their office was closed and I was terrified of facing the weekend without something to ease the pain. In the end, I asked Clayton to go to the store and buy me a flexible ice pack, which ended up being the only thing (besides hot baths) that offered me relief from the pain.

Pushing Rocks Past a Broken Sphincter
When the pressure hit my bum, it was terrible. I tried to go for an hour and there was pressure and pain the entire time. You can’t really push much with a broken sphincter, see. Plus the area was covered in hemorrhoids so that sucked. Eventually enough came out that I realized how hard it was and how much trouble I was in.

The next time I tried to go was one of the worst experiences of my life. The best way to describe it is to picture a rock with a spike on it trying to come out and getting stuck in that “oomph” spot. The pressure and pain were unbearable, and I cried and cried and cried. I didn’t know how to make it stop. Eventually, of course, things resolved for the time being, but it was bad.

In desperation, I threw all kinds of stuff into my body: Milk of Magnesia (ewwww), the stool softener pills, a stool softener powder, fiber pills, and a suppository that was supposed to make me have a bowel movement. NONE of it worked, at least not for days, and certainly not in time for my body to try and shove things out again. That next time I had to go was just as awful; I was yelling from the pain.

But at long last, my body did its job, and I was able to get a break for a while. I even started to drink prune juice to help transition my body off all the softeners. After a few weeks I could do a little more each day around the house and with the kids. My sphincter is still healing--the doctor said it could take months to heal all the way, isn’t that grand--but I can function, and I’m so crazy grateful for that.

Every Experience is Different
There is no one-size-fits-all for delivering babies. Our bodies are so different and individual, so our experiences are also (though it is a great feeling when someone has experienced the exact same craziness as you!) And yet, there’s a struggle of some kind for ALL of us when it comes to this baby business, so we can always relate to each other that way. Go mommies!