Today was the big surgery day. The day started out early, got up at 3:55am so that I could be showered and ready to be in the pre-op area by 6am. We got out of the hotel in time and made it to the hospital by 5:30am. Once we made it to admitting, we were told that they weren't in yet, but could stay in the waiting room until 6 when the woman would arrive to admit us. I was a little annoyed because I was supposed to be in the pre-op area at 6 and how could I be there if I was in admitting at 6??
Anyway, made it to pre-op about 6:15, got changed into a gown and the nurse put an IV in. This was the worst IV experience I have ever had. The lady put an 18 gauge into a vein that I didn't even think would hold a 20! It throbbed for about 3 hrs then started to feel better and I figured that having a painful IV was probably the least of my worries. At about 8 the nurse let me know that I was going to be the 2nd case for the Dr instead of the 1st so it might be awhile. Finally at about 1130 the Dr came in and everything was set for me to head into the OR.
The OR experience was awful! I knew I was going to be mostly awake for the procedure, but since they were giving me fentanyl and diprivan I thought I would at least be "out of it". No such luck, I was WIDE awake the entire time. The only thing that saved my from the pain was the lidocaine that the Dr injected into me stomach before making the incision. I think he must have injected it deep enough so that I didn't feel everything that he was doing, but I certainly felt enough to know that it hurt! They also put a drape covering my head so that I didn't see what they were doing, but the drape was so close to my face, I really made me feel claustrophobic!
Adam decided that he was not going to turn from his awful breech, right side up position, so the first thing the Dr had to do was try to manually turn him. This wasn't too bad, mostly just a lot of pressure. Then he made the incision into me abdomen and from here I don't really know too many details of what he did because there was a big drape in front of my face! I do know that he was able to successfully place a shunt into the bladder. After he did that I started having contractions and they had to give me terbutiline to stop them. During the contractions, the cord was getting compressed and Adam's heart rate was dropping dramatically. In order to stop the cord compression the Dr added some amniotic fluid and then turned me on my side. Not real sure what else he had to do to get the heart rate back up, but I felt him pushing a lot on my stomach and then after surgery he said that they had to "resuscitate" Adam. I was pretty scared for awhile thinking that I was losing my little boy, but his heart rate came back up and then they sent me to recovery.
It took a couple hours after the surgery for me to feel any movement and I was getting worried but then Adam decided to kick and let me know he was still there. I was told that I was going to have to stay the night in the hospital to monitor contractions, but instead was discharged because I am only 22 weeks 4 days and they don't consider a baby to be viable until 24 weeks so even if I went into labor, they would not be able to help him at all. That really upsets me because although I know they couldn't revive him, I would at least think that if the contractions started again they could stop them and keep him in a little longer.
I go back to Miami next week to check on the shunt, the fluid and most importantly my baby and am praying that everything looks good so I don't have to go through this again!
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