This pregnancy has been full of many days of waiting as well
as many ups and downs, so why would the date of Ava’s scheduled C-section not
follow suit? It sounds like several of you were waiting patiently to see the update
on Facebook about the good news. I have been told by many friends who were
Facebook stalking me that as the day went on the worry increased. So here’s the
story of September 29th…the day that feels as though it’s never
ended.
Ava Catherine McKay
Born September 29th, 2016 at10:19pm
I hardly slept all night. This was like Christmas and my
present was going to be one of the best of my life. My night nurse (who
happened to be one of my first nurses’ during my stay) came in at 6am to check
my vitals and update me about the prepping me for the rest of the day around
7am. At 6:30am, my Aunt Kim, Aunt Sheree and Debbie (one of my mom’s best
friends who might as well by my Aunt) came into my room. Since my roommate was
still sleeping we all went down to the patient lounge to chat and wait for
Dave. Little did we know there was a truck that had hit a sign on the 400 and
Dave was stuck in horrible traffic. It took him just over 3 hours to get to
Toronto when it usually takes 2 hours. My stress was increasing when he hadn’t
arrived by the time I was hooked up on the IV and changed into a gown. He
finally made it around 9:15am and I was thankful that I hadn’t been pulled over
to Labour and Delivery yet. At 10am, one of the OB’s came to see me to complete
a final ultrasound to finalize where the incision would be. I was a little
annoyed as 10am was when I was scheduled to be in the OR, but over the past 34
days I had learned that the hospital runs on it’s own time. We were told that
Labour and Delivery was quite busy with a lot of emergencies, so we would have
to be bumped until they were emergency free.
Back to my room in the antenatal unit we went to sit and
wait. At 12pm we were finally taken over to Labour and Delivery. The unique
thing about this room was it was the first room I was ever admitted to at Mount
Sinai following my first PRI on August 17th. By this time, I was getting hungry (saline
really does nothing to curb ones appetite). The hours started to tick by and
the annoyance factor started to increase. Rational Sheena understands that if
there is an emergency it should take precedence over a stable patient. Rational
Sheena would have never forgiven herself if any woman lost their baby because a
stubborn patient wanted to go in first. Rational Sheena was also missing and
replaced with Hangry Sheena, Impatient Sheena and Tired Sheena – not my finest traits,
especially when combined together. The nurse came in around 2pm to let me know
that I had been bumped once again. I asked if my support team had enough time
to go get lunch as I could tell they were fading. The team went downstairs and
I was left upstairs with my nurse where I might have had a little breakdown. My
team came back and we decided to watch TV to pass the time. Every hour or so,
we were told again that I had been bumped. I am not good at waiting, so I
decided to use the little energy I had left to pace the halls and walk (scowl)
at the nurses station, checking out the monitor behind the station to see if my
name had popped up on the OR list yet.
At 6pm, the OB surgical team FINALLY came in to tell me
there were two ahead of me and I was definitely next following them…pending no
further emergencies. With two OR’s open this meant I should be in there around 7:30/8pm.
Excitement mounted in the room – it was almost go time. We took a few last
photos of my last hour of being pregnant. I went for one more walk around the
unit to try to distract myself from hunger pains and nerves when I saw a
stretcher being wheeled into the OR – presumably another emergency. At this
point, I was DONE. I would need to rate this blog posting R if I wrote what I
actually said to Dave, but it was something along the line of if they don’t do
this soon, I am going to lose it. They are either doing it now or I am eating.
Imagine that sprinkled with some expletive words and that’s close to what was
actually said. No wonder the nurses had stopped coming in to give me the bad
news that I had been bumped.
Just before 10pm my nurse came in and said it was go time! I
am certain a cheer went up in the room, but I was so tired by this point that
most of what happened is a blur. I remember walking through the doors I stared
at all day with Dave by my side. Dave was sent to the partner chair in the hall
while I was brought into the OR to be prepped. My Anesthesiologist, Dr. Ho, started
the party off with some 90’s dance music (think Night at the Roxbury) and a nice
spinal for me. I will spare you the rest of the fun details. Those of you that
have had a Caesarean section probably have flashbacks of the moment that the
surgical team is applying so much pressure to get your baby out that you are
certain they forget that there is an actual person attached to body they are
working on. The stress and emotion of the day went away as soon as I heard her
little cry (well, big cry) at 10:19pm – almost 12 hours after I had expected to
hear that cry. Dave got to take many
pictures of her first moments and got to cut her umbilical cord while I got to
watch her on a little screen by my head. Earlier that day I had prepped Dave
that if they took her up to the NICU to follow her. We really weren’t certain
if she would have been allowed to come back to the recovery room with us. As I
watched her get oxygen, I worried that she would have to go and I wouldn’t get
to meet her until September 30th. Much to my surprise they handed her to Dave
to introduce her to me. After all was said and done (and stitched up) Ava got
to come back to the recovery room with us and meet her Great Aunts as they
popped the prosecco they had been waiting all day to pop. They left shortly
after so they could finally go home to get some sleep and my little family was
whisked off to another room to recover for the night.
First (of many) family photo!
I deeply regretted all the pacing of the halls I had done
since I was now exhausted and as the spinal wore off the pain came on. The only
great thing about that night was getting skin-to-skin time with her from 5:45am
to 7:45am. The rest of that day was dreadful and any updates that went out were
from Dave as I was in a lot of pain despite the meds. It took all my might to
use my physiotherapy knowledge to get mobilizing and walking instead of staying
in bed. We were moved to the recovery floor where the mom’s with healthy babies
go. I was a little heartbroken that I was not headed back to my old unit as I
thought it was only fair that the nurses that cared for me for weeks be the
first ones to see and hold the baby, but alas they deemed us healthy and up to
the 16th floor we went. The afternoon and night were equally as
horrible, very little sleep was had due to this recent onset of right shoulder
and rib pain that left me basically useless. I had to sleep sitting up and
couldn’t care for Ava. Thank goodness Dave took onto the role of Dad very
quickly.
On Saturday morning, I finally left the room on the recovery
unit for a walk. The OB resident came to see me and told me that we could go
home that afternoon. The prospects of going home were quite motivating. I did
everything I could to hit all the checkmarks to go home, including going to
breastfeeding class, seeing a lactation consultant and trying to get rid of the
right shoulder pain. Around 11am, my nurse told me that I could attend
discharge class at 1pm and go home shortly after that. We attended, were given
a vast amount of information about what to do when we got home as well as Ava’s
temporary OHIP card. We had one more checkmark which was checking in with the
lactation consultant again. She was surprised I wasn’t being made to stay
another night, but signed off on the plan.
Ava got to meet Mouse-Pig
I was finally allowed to leave Mount
Sinai, but not before I went to say goodbye to the unit I lived on for 34 days.
Thankfully, so many of the nurses that cared for me were there that afternoon
and not doing active care so were able to chat. It was there that I learned
that my roommate (who was 28 weeks + 4days) had gone into labour that day and
was over in Labour and Delivery having an emergency Caesarian (she emailed me
later that day to let me know that her little one was born at 3pm at 2lbs and
10oz and had a lengthy NICU stay ahead of her). I went up to the NICU before I
left to visit with another roommate from the unit and meet her little one.
After this, we were off! I was officially allowed to leave and not just me, Ava
was allowed to leave. We were the fortunate ones from 15 Murray. Most of the
women that spend their pregnancy there are allowed to leave at the end, but
usually their babies spend time in the NICU. Despite the day feeling never
ending (is it still September 29th today?), it was worth it to
finally meet Ava and to stop calling her Baby A.
Ava
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