BB's Birth Story: Part 6

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

So, I pushed. I pushed and I pushed and I pushed. But nothing happened. BB wasn't even crowning. At one point during the pushing, a scrub nurse came in my room and watched me push. "She's never going to make any progress pushing like that," she said to my nurse.
Oh - and did I tell you the VERY BEST part? That evening, while I was pushing, my nurse was none other than our dear old friend, Nurse Ratched. When she came in my room to introduce herself at the beginning of her shift, my heart sank. I wondered if I could request a different nurse. But I figured that since I was in labor, she HAD to be involved with me tonight. And she was, just not in a very helpful manner.
When I was told that I could go ahead and push, she told me to count out loud to 5, take a deep breath, and bear down. So I did. Over and over. And that might be how it's done, I don't know. But I do know that it's hard figuring out how exactly to bear down when you've never had to bear down before. Looking back, I wonder if things would have progressed quicker if I had had a better idea of what to do.
After the scrub nurse's assessment, Ratched handed me a rolled up towel and held onto the middle of it, giving me the ends to hold onto. I guess the point was to change my position a bit, but it was never explained. She had me push 2 times like that and then she threw the towel into the hamper. I guess the towel wasn't working too well for her.
By 9:3o, I had been pushing for 2 hours. My O2 stats were low, so I was given an oxygen mask to wear, which I found cumbersome. The doctor wasn't in my room the whole time, but he did come to check on me every so often. [I should explain at this point that there are 5 doctors in the practice that I used. During my failed induction and subsequent labor, all 5 of the doctors were involved at one point or another]
With a 5 doctor practice, there are a lot of patients. As it turned out, several patients from the practice were in labor at the same time as me. One of the other patients from the practice was better at pushing than I was, so with a last check at me, he instructed me to stop pushing while he went to be at the delivery of the other patient.
Now - if you have ever been in labor, you know that once the urge to push kicks in, it pretty much takes over your whole mind. That's ALL you want to do. True, I had been pushing for 2 hours and I hadn't been doing a very good job at it, but I still wanted to push. When the next urge to push came, and the nurse had me breathe through the urge without doing anything, I got mad. I've never been so mad in my life. If I could have beaten my doctor and nurse, I would have. The delivery with the other patient went quickly, and it looked as though I would be able to push again soon. However, just as the doctor was wrapping up his part of the job, another patient from the practice went into fetal distress, requiring an emergency C-section. A message was delivered to Ratched that I still wasn't to push, and that another doctor from the practice had been called in. It was about this time that my epidural ran out. The anesthesiologist would have to give me another dose - except for the fact that he was in with the C-section. So I waited. And got madder. And I started to yell. Not really from the pain, but because I was so mad, frustrated, hungry, and tired.
At 10:30, the other doctor from the practice arrived. She wasn't really there to help with the delivery unless it was absolutely needed. She was there more or less to watch, so she took a position over by the wall away from the bed. She told me that I could start pushing again, so I did. BB's head finally started to crown, and I was encouraged that the end was in site. Once I started being able to push again, I stopped yelling (at least, I think I did - no one really remembers). I kept trying and trying to get BB's head to clear, but he wasn't budging. I don't know if other staff members had gotten curious, or if Ratched had sent a message, but other medical personnel were starting to gather in the room. Around this time, the doctor on call came into my room, and the other doctor left.
Once the doctor that was on call arrived in the room, BB's head finally crowned. But then he stopped. And I noticed that things were starting to get dark. And everyone sprang into action. The scrub nurse who had critiqued my pushing progress climbed on top of me and pushed down on my abdomen at the same time that the doctor reached in and broke BB's right clavicle. The combined actions got BB out, and he was blue and limp...
Part 7