Birth Announcement
Connor Charles
Sunday, September 24, 2006
5:53pm
7 pounds 12 ounces
21 inches
I had been having episodes of contractions for over a week and every time they would eventually die out, so when I started having contractions late Saturday evening I wasn't holding my breath that it was the real thing. By 11:30pm though, they were coming every few minutes and I was having to stop and really focus through them. I went around the house, gathering my things and doing some last minute organizing and then at around 1:30am Sunday I called my midwives to tell them I was in labor. At 3am, I hadn't heard back from them, and I called the answering service again to tell them I was going to go ahead to the hospital. My husband and I dropped off our dog at my mom's house, and then headed off to the hospital. We tried to stop at McDonalds to grab some food on the way in, but the first one we went to the credit card machine was down and we had no cash on us. The second one, the 24 hour drive through was closed. Go figure!
I had just arrived at the hospital and was in the waiting room when the midwife on call, Sarah, finally called me back. Turns out the wind storm we were having caused some problems with their pagers, and she didn't get the pages until about 4am. Sarah met us at the hospital quickly, and checked me to see if I should be admitted. Holy god, that exam was the most horribly painful experience because my cervix was apparently VERY far back and difficult to get to. Thankfully I was about 4cm dilated and 80% effaced, so I was admitted.
Once we got to my room, a very nice nurse came by to draw some blood and ask some questions. She also gave me a birthing ball, and sitting down on that was quite comfortable and nice. I was still feeling pretty good. The contractions were painful, and I had to really concentrate during each one, but I was managing fine. I couldn't sit or lay down on the bed or in a chair though because then the contractions were unbearably painful, so I walked around, leaned on the bed, and sat on the birthing ball. At 7am, the nurses shift changed and I got another really nice nurse. My midwives shift also changed, and there was actually a midwife, Midge, who had JUST joined the practice who came on call. I hadn't even met her at any of my appointments yet, but she was very experienced and I felt comfortable with her when she came to the hospital so it was all good. Shortly after she came in, she checked me so she could see for herself where everything stood. Again, getting checked was horribly painful because my cervix was still really far back. The baby's head was VERY low, I was about 5-6cm dilated, but Midge said that the baby was posterior (his head was facing my stomach, "sunny side up", rather than facing my back like it should have been). While it's quite possible to give birth to a posterior baby, apparently it's much harder, more painful, and takes longer so she wanted to try some things to get him to turn around. Since he was already far down, we actually had to get him to come up and out of my pelvis a bit so that he could hopefully turn and settle back in properly. Midge had me get on all fours and rock back and forth against her hands to try to push him up and out of my pelvis. It was a really interesting sensation, because I actually felt him "pop" up and out of my pelvis. Then the nurse put a heat pack on my lower back, a cold pack on my lower abdomen, and had me stay on all fours for a half hour. My knees were killing me by the time the half hour was over, and I was praying that it had worked and he would turn just so I wouldn't have to do it again. After I was able to get up, I went and sat in the shower for a while. Water hitting my stomach was annoying, especially during a contraction, but the shower head was removable and the warm water felt really nice on my chest, shoulders and back. I think I probably stayed in the shower for about an hour.
By the afternoon I was getting really exhausted, since I hadn't slept in over 24 hours. The baby's head was so low at that point that I couldn't even sit on the birthing ball anymore. The only position where contractions weren't unbearably painful was standing next to the bed, leaning over. Problem was, I was just too tired to keep standing and my ankles and feet were hurting a lot too. I had done a lot of reading about different types of pain relief and the pros and cons, and I had decided I would go as long as I could without anything, but that I wasn't totally opposed to using some medication or even getting an epidural, depending on how things were going. Since I was already 7-8cm, my contractions were strong and regular, the baby was showing no signs of distress when we hooked up the monitors and he had apparently rotated into an anterior position, I decided that I was comfortable with getting an epidural. I got the epidural at about 3:30pm, and let them hook up the fetal monitors again as well as a bag of IV fluids, since I wouldn't be walking around anyways. The anesthesiologist was very nice, and having it put in really wasn't a big deal at all. I felt a little prick and some pressure, but that was about it. I was in a great mood after the epidural took effect, and I stayed awake for a little bit and had fun watching my now painless contractions on the monitor. I also decided to let Midge break my bag of waters after I got the epidural. Then around 4pm I fell asleep, and I woke back up around 5pm.
Midge checked me after I woke up, and I was fully dilated. At this point, the room filled up. There was my husband, Midge, my nurse, another nurse from the nursery for the baby, and then Sarah too, who had come back for the birth. I started pushing around 5:20 and after 15 minutes or so I was starting to get a little discouraged and wondering what the hell I'd gotten myself into. At that point, Midge got a bar hooked up over the bed, and tied a sheet around it. I was able to brace my feet on the bar and pull on the sheet, and that worked really well. Connor was born suddenly at 5:53pm, before anyone was actually expecting it. All of a sudden there was a bunch of commotion and I heard someone say "Here come the shoulders!". I hadn't even realized he was coming, and all I could think was "Wait! If the shoulders are coming, that means his head is already out?!" And then suddenly he was on my chest, screaming, and I was just shocked and staring at him.
His apgars were 9 and 9. We waited a few minutes to clamp and cut the cord, and I delivered the placenta. I took a look at it, and it was pretty neat. I was surprised by how long and thin his cord was, even the midwives commented on it. I had a second degree midline tear, so I got a few stitches while a nurse wiped Connor off a bit and wrapped him up for me. I got him latched on, and he nursed perfectly for nearly half an hour. Then everyone pretty much vacated the room, leaving just me, my husband, and Connor. Both of our moms stopped by for a little while and around 7:30pm or so, a nurse came to take him for the official evaluation - weight, length, etc. After she took him, my husband and I both fell asleep again.
I woke up to a nurse coming into my room around 11:30pm, and I freaked out a little when I realized what time it was and that Connor hadn't been brought back yet. The nurse told me that while he was being evaluated he had briefly turned blue and they currently had him on a pulse oximeter to monitor his blood oxygen saturations and were waiting for a NICU doctor to come by to see him. The nurse took my upstairs to the post partum floor where the nursery is and had me wait for the doctor to come talk to me. He said that everything seemed fine now, but that they wanted to do a chest x-ray and bloodwork, and keep him on the pulse ox for a while. Then they finally brought Connor in so I could nurse him. He looked fine and ate well, but the pulse ox was a real pain in the ass. It was just a sensor that was taped to his foot, and whenever he'd move his foot around it would set off the alarms on the monitor and a nurse would rush in, take him from me, and start rubbing his chest and back. They acted like he needed to be resuscitated, even though he was pink and alert and perfectly fine.
I wanted him back in my room with me, but the nurses refused to let me take him from the nursery. I wasn't pleased at all, but there wasn't a lot I could do about it, so I left instructions that he NOT be given formula or a pacifier and that I be called when he woke up to eat next. I went back to my room, and when I woke up again in the morning, I realized it had been way too long since I had last nursed him and no one had come by or called me. I got up and went to the nursery, only to find that they had disregarded my instructions and had given him a bottle of formula and there was also a pacifier in his crib with him. I gave the head nurse a piece of my mind about that, and a sign was put on his crib stating no nipples and no formula. From then on, there were no more problems with that and they called me whenever he woke up so I could come nurse him, but I'm still pissed off that he got a bottle. His test results came in, and everything was fine, but for some inexplicable reason they insisted on keeping him hooked up to the pulse ox "just to be safe" and absolutely refused to let him leave the nursery. So for the two days after he was born, I was getting out of bed and walking to the nursery every couple hours to sit in a hard wooden chair and nurse him with monitor alarms going off and nurses snatching him away from me every few minutes. It was absolute hell, really stressful and frustrating, and I wanted to kill someone. I would have been okay with it if he actually NEEDED the monitor, but it was obvious that he was perfectly fine (even the damn doctor said he was fine) and the nurses were just being paranoid. I briefly considered trying to check him out AMA, but decided that the resulting issues with CPS weren't worth it. While we were there, I also met with a really nice lactation nurse a few times, and she helped me out with some pointers on nursing. Finally after two days, we got to check out.
All in all, my labor and delivery experience were really good. The L&D nurses and my midwives were awesome and I'm very happy with how it all went. The post partum stay is a different matter, and I didn't like the nursery nurses at all. If I ever deliver in a hospital again, it'll be with the understanding from my pediatrician and midwives that I will be checking out shortly after birth, WITH the baby. Despite the annoyance of our post partum stay though, at least now we're home. I'm starting to feel more normal, and we're working on this whole nursing thing.
Pictures later. :)
Sunday, September 24, 2006
5:53pm
7 pounds 12 ounces
21 inches
I had been having episodes of contractions for over a week and every time they would eventually die out, so when I started having contractions late Saturday evening I wasn't holding my breath that it was the real thing. By 11:30pm though, they were coming every few minutes and I was having to stop and really focus through them. I went around the house, gathering my things and doing some last minute organizing and then at around 1:30am Sunday I called my midwives to tell them I was in labor. At 3am, I hadn't heard back from them, and I called the answering service again to tell them I was going to go ahead to the hospital. My husband and I dropped off our dog at my mom's house, and then headed off to the hospital. We tried to stop at McDonalds to grab some food on the way in, but the first one we went to the credit card machine was down and we had no cash on us. The second one, the 24 hour drive through was closed. Go figure!
I had just arrived at the hospital and was in the waiting room when the midwife on call, Sarah, finally called me back. Turns out the wind storm we were having caused some problems with their pagers, and she didn't get the pages until about 4am. Sarah met us at the hospital quickly, and checked me to see if I should be admitted. Holy god, that exam was the most horribly painful experience because my cervix was apparently VERY far back and difficult to get to. Thankfully I was about 4cm dilated and 80% effaced, so I was admitted.
Once we got to my room, a very nice nurse came by to draw some blood and ask some questions. She also gave me a birthing ball, and sitting down on that was quite comfortable and nice. I was still feeling pretty good. The contractions were painful, and I had to really concentrate during each one, but I was managing fine. I couldn't sit or lay down on the bed or in a chair though because then the contractions were unbearably painful, so I walked around, leaned on the bed, and sat on the birthing ball. At 7am, the nurses shift changed and I got another really nice nurse. My midwives shift also changed, and there was actually a midwife, Midge, who had JUST joined the practice who came on call. I hadn't even met her at any of my appointments yet, but she was very experienced and I felt comfortable with her when she came to the hospital so it was all good. Shortly after she came in, she checked me so she could see for herself where everything stood. Again, getting checked was horribly painful because my cervix was still really far back. The baby's head was VERY low, I was about 5-6cm dilated, but Midge said that the baby was posterior (his head was facing my stomach, "sunny side up", rather than facing my back like it should have been). While it's quite possible to give birth to a posterior baby, apparently it's much harder, more painful, and takes longer so she wanted to try some things to get him to turn around. Since he was already far down, we actually had to get him to come up and out of my pelvis a bit so that he could hopefully turn and settle back in properly. Midge had me get on all fours and rock back and forth against her hands to try to push him up and out of my pelvis. It was a really interesting sensation, because I actually felt him "pop" up and out of my pelvis. Then the nurse put a heat pack on my lower back, a cold pack on my lower abdomen, and had me stay on all fours for a half hour. My knees were killing me by the time the half hour was over, and I was praying that it had worked and he would turn just so I wouldn't have to do it again. After I was able to get up, I went and sat in the shower for a while. Water hitting my stomach was annoying, especially during a contraction, but the shower head was removable and the warm water felt really nice on my chest, shoulders and back. I think I probably stayed in the shower for about an hour.
By the afternoon I was getting really exhausted, since I hadn't slept in over 24 hours. The baby's head was so low at that point that I couldn't even sit on the birthing ball anymore. The only position where contractions weren't unbearably painful was standing next to the bed, leaning over. Problem was, I was just too tired to keep standing and my ankles and feet were hurting a lot too. I had done a lot of reading about different types of pain relief and the pros and cons, and I had decided I would go as long as I could without anything, but that I wasn't totally opposed to using some medication or even getting an epidural, depending on how things were going. Since I was already 7-8cm, my contractions were strong and regular, the baby was showing no signs of distress when we hooked up the monitors and he had apparently rotated into an anterior position, I decided that I was comfortable with getting an epidural. I got the epidural at about 3:30pm, and let them hook up the fetal monitors again as well as a bag of IV fluids, since I wouldn't be walking around anyways. The anesthesiologist was very nice, and having it put in really wasn't a big deal at all. I felt a little prick and some pressure, but that was about it. I was in a great mood after the epidural took effect, and I stayed awake for a little bit and had fun watching my now painless contractions on the monitor. I also decided to let Midge break my bag of waters after I got the epidural. Then around 4pm I fell asleep, and I woke back up around 5pm.
Midge checked me after I woke up, and I was fully dilated. At this point, the room filled up. There was my husband, Midge, my nurse, another nurse from the nursery for the baby, and then Sarah too, who had come back for the birth. I started pushing around 5:20 and after 15 minutes or so I was starting to get a little discouraged and wondering what the hell I'd gotten myself into. At that point, Midge got a bar hooked up over the bed, and tied a sheet around it. I was able to brace my feet on the bar and pull on the sheet, and that worked really well. Connor was born suddenly at 5:53pm, before anyone was actually expecting it. All of a sudden there was a bunch of commotion and I heard someone say "Here come the shoulders!". I hadn't even realized he was coming, and all I could think was "Wait! If the shoulders are coming, that means his head is already out?!" And then suddenly he was on my chest, screaming, and I was just shocked and staring at him.
His apgars were 9 and 9. We waited a few minutes to clamp and cut the cord, and I delivered the placenta. I took a look at it, and it was pretty neat. I was surprised by how long and thin his cord was, even the midwives commented on it. I had a second degree midline tear, so I got a few stitches while a nurse wiped Connor off a bit and wrapped him up for me. I got him latched on, and he nursed perfectly for nearly half an hour. Then everyone pretty much vacated the room, leaving just me, my husband, and Connor. Both of our moms stopped by for a little while and around 7:30pm or so, a nurse came to take him for the official evaluation - weight, length, etc. After she took him, my husband and I both fell asleep again.
I woke up to a nurse coming into my room around 11:30pm, and I freaked out a little when I realized what time it was and that Connor hadn't been brought back yet. The nurse told me that while he was being evaluated he had briefly turned blue and they currently had him on a pulse oximeter to monitor his blood oxygen saturations and were waiting for a NICU doctor to come by to see him. The nurse took my upstairs to the post partum floor where the nursery is and had me wait for the doctor to come talk to me. He said that everything seemed fine now, but that they wanted to do a chest x-ray and bloodwork, and keep him on the pulse ox for a while. Then they finally brought Connor in so I could nurse him. He looked fine and ate well, but the pulse ox was a real pain in the ass. It was just a sensor that was taped to his foot, and whenever he'd move his foot around it would set off the alarms on the monitor and a nurse would rush in, take him from me, and start rubbing his chest and back. They acted like he needed to be resuscitated, even though he was pink and alert and perfectly fine.
I wanted him back in my room with me, but the nurses refused to let me take him from the nursery. I wasn't pleased at all, but there wasn't a lot I could do about it, so I left instructions that he NOT be given formula or a pacifier and that I be called when he woke up to eat next. I went back to my room, and when I woke up again in the morning, I realized it had been way too long since I had last nursed him and no one had come by or called me. I got up and went to the nursery, only to find that they had disregarded my instructions and had given him a bottle of formula and there was also a pacifier in his crib with him. I gave the head nurse a piece of my mind about that, and a sign was put on his crib stating no nipples and no formula. From then on, there were no more problems with that and they called me whenever he woke up so I could come nurse him, but I'm still pissed off that he got a bottle. His test results came in, and everything was fine, but for some inexplicable reason they insisted on keeping him hooked up to the pulse ox "just to be safe" and absolutely refused to let him leave the nursery. So for the two days after he was born, I was getting out of bed and walking to the nursery every couple hours to sit in a hard wooden chair and nurse him with monitor alarms going off and nurses snatching him away from me every few minutes. It was absolute hell, really stressful and frustrating, and I wanted to kill someone. I would have been okay with it if he actually NEEDED the monitor, but it was obvious that he was perfectly fine (even the damn doctor said he was fine) and the nurses were just being paranoid. I briefly considered trying to check him out AMA, but decided that the resulting issues with CPS weren't worth it. While we were there, I also met with a really nice lactation nurse a few times, and she helped me out with some pointers on nursing. Finally after two days, we got to check out.
All in all, my labor and delivery experience were really good. The L&D nurses and my midwives were awesome and I'm very happy with how it all went. The post partum stay is a different matter, and I didn't like the nursery nurses at all. If I ever deliver in a hospital again, it'll be with the understanding from my pediatrician and midwives that I will be checking out shortly after birth, WITH the baby. Despite the annoyance of our post partum stay though, at least now we're home. I'm starting to feel more normal, and we're working on this whole nursing thing.
Pictures later. :)