1 Week Old!

Clearly I missed my 41 Week update, but as you can see we were a bit busy last week! Last week we finally welcomed Baby Beeb into the world. Mom, Baby and Dad are all doing well!

Birth Story

I decided early on in my pregnancy that I didn’t want birth to be something that happened to me-I wanted to participate in the amazing miracle of delivering my baby. To prepare, we had taken a 10 week Bradley class. I remained active throughout the entire pregnancy and focused on staying healthy to reduce or eliminate any high risk factors. I felt strong, confident in my body, and confident in my partner’s ability to help me through. Then we hit week 41.

It seems most women have strong feelings about their pregnancies. Either they loved being pregnant or hated it. Honestly, for me I was pretty indifferent for the first 8 months. I kept up with my normal life (for the most part) and didn’t really “feel pregnant.” I am so happy I had such an amazing pregnancy, but when  my body suddenly woke up an realized in the last few weeks that I was growing a human, my will started to fade. I got uncomfortable. I developed severe carpal tunnel in my right hand, which left my fingers numb. I saw my due date pass. I was fully aware that most first time moms see their due date come and go, but marching towards that date for 9 months really does a number on you. So there we were, in week 41. Since we were past our estimated due date, each OB appointment consisted of a Non-Stress Test (NST) to see if baby’s heart rate is thriving and an ultrasound to measure fluids and other markers of baby’s happiness. Both my 40 week and 41 week appointments went fine, through each time we had to go over time on the NST for baby to pass, which is nerve wracking to say the least. After all our preparation, our patience had run out (and probably the fact that we were seeing an OB and not a midwife influenced us) and we scheduled an induction for Wednesday February 4 at 7am.

Tuesday, February 3

My morning slowly marched on. I felt so frustrated, like my body that I was once so confident in had failed me. Why didn’t it know how to go into labor! I was also scared. There was some peace in knowing tomorrow would be the day, but as I imagined how the morning would unfold after being induced, I also imagined my hopes for a natural birth fading away. Pitocin starts the slippery slope of interventions, and I was worried I wouldn’t be able to hold out. To hopefully find some relaxation, I went for a prenatal massage. Not surprisingly, my mind was spinning with worries about tomorrow, and I couldn’t get fully relaxed. In fact, at the end I noticed my right arm was shaking. As I got up to get dressed and leave, my entire body started convulsing. I thought this was strange. I shook all the way to my car, and had to coach myself through driving home. Why was I shaking so hard? Was I having a panic attack? Could nerves do this to me? I also felt pretty achy in my hips and lower back, but that could just be being 10 months pregnant. I felt kind of nauseated too. When I got home, I crawled into bed to try to warm up and stop the shaking. If I was getting the flu, what terrible timing! This only compounded my fears for tomorrow! Would I have enough strength to make it though labor sick? I took my temperature, and it was normal, though Peter started to get concerned. I was shaking so hard. We took my temperature again about an hour later, and it was 100.4 degrees. He got on the phone with my doctor and explained what had transpired. They advised us to come into the office and we quickly gathered our things to head out. While we waited to be seen, Peter started taking my pulse, and found it was quite elevated. Sure enough, once we were seen I still had a fever and elevated heart rate. Thankfully, blood pressure was normal, but something wasn’t right in my body. We did another NST, and baby was not happy. Her poor little heart rate was sky high (in the 180s) and pretty flat. For reference, you want to see variability because it shows the baby is reacting. The NST also measure contractions, I still wasn’t showing any. I clearly had some kind of infection or the flu. The baby was stressed and needed to come out sooner than our induction scheduled for the next day. So the doctor (not my primary OB FYI) sent us straight to the hospital. I wonder how things may have been different had it been my primary OB I had been seeing.

Approximately 6:30PM

We went to the Labor and Delivery entrance, and I shivered up to the desk to check in. To make matters a bit more complicated, I was group B streptococcus positive. Normally this isn’t that big of a deal, you just get some antibiotics before delivery, but because I had a fever, there was a higher risk of the baby getting sick. The goal for the evening was to reduce my fever (they just gave me a bunch of acetaminophen) and two rounds of penicillin. The doc called and said she would be in around the time my second round of antibiotics finished to get things rolling. So we settled in for a long night. Because of the baby’s distress, I had to be hooked up to continuous fetal monitoring, which I remember frustrated me beyond belief. Every time I had to use the bathroom, we had to unplug all these contraptions and roll my IV to the bathroom. I felt like I had to go constantly. In retrospect, this may have been an early sign we should have noticed, but I attributed it to nerves and the massive amounts of IV fluids being pumped into me. I needed to get hydrated fast to help reduce my fever and lessen the burn penicillin can cause when administered via IV.

Approximately 7:30PM

Andy and Hillary arrived with a few more things we needed from home. We had left in such a hurry we didn’t bring any of our essentials that were to be packed last minute in the hospital bag (computers, chargers, etc.) I don’t know what we would have done without them. Hillary was my doula, and Andy was going to shuttle back and forth of take care of Lacey. By this point, my fever had broken, and the baby’s heart rate was starting to look better. The nurse started coming in to ask me about my pain levels. I figured this was standard, if I was in labor someone would have told me, right? I was in the doctor’s office just an hour or two earlier with no signs of labor. Huh. Well I was pretty uncomfortable, but that was mainly due to the IV I really didn’t want sticking in my wrist and the extremely tight fetal monitoring belt ties around my waist that kept slipping off the baby and trying to pick up my heart rate instead. This was around the time I started looking at the monitor. I thought perhaps I might be experiencing some contractions, but couldn’t tell for sure. I looked to the monitor, which shows my stats and well as every other room on the floor. These other women had these crazy charts, showing contractions all over the place, and peaked pretty high on the graph. Every time I felt something, or thought I was feeling something, I turned to check mine. It was pretty pitiful. I was flat across the bottom of the graph and might get a little spike. I thought, if this is labor, clearly it must get much worse because my graph sucks!

Approximately 10PM

I started to feel some more intense pelvic pain, and thought again, wouldn’t someone tell me if I was in labor? In retrospect, I should have known myself! After all that planning, our birth class drilling into us signposts to look out for… still, I was stuck in this mindset that my body had failed on the whole learn how to labor part of the class and I was nervously waiting for my OB to arrive to start that terrifying induction. Meanwhile, I guess my body decided it was time to get on board with this labor. Hillary was timing what I now realize were contractions, and they were coming about every 2-5 minutes apart. I still thought, that can’t be right. If I were in labor, they would start every 20 minutes or so, and we would be dancing to the awesome playlists Hillary made to help me cope. Instead, we sat in a quiet room (occasionally we played the calming mix she made) and I kind of retreated into myself. I didn’t really want to talk to anyone, or be touched by anyone, until a contraction happened. At one point I decided a keyhole on one of the cabinets in the room helped me through. As I retreated into myself, I recall grunting at Peter “move!” After the contraction ended, I said sorry, you were in front of the keyhole. Haha. As they increased in intensity, having a focal point seemed less important. Peter would come over to hug me and I remember grabbing his shoulders and slightly hanging down. That seemed to help. But still I thought, this can’t be labor, right? Someone would tell me! Around this time the nurse came in for another check on my pain level. After pausing, I said, now I am fine, but do you mean during a contraction? That was the first time I acknowledged I had been having them. I reported a 5-6 level pain. I remember seeing Peter’s face and he looked shocked. I couldn’t tell if he thought I should have reported higher based on my actions, or if he was surprised it felt that bad to me. I started to get anxious again, looking at the clock. The OB was supposed to get here around midnight, and the 11 o’clock hour seemed to crawl by. I was still fascinated by the monitor. The entire evening, after I felt a contraction, I immediately turned to check how I measured up. My graph still looked pretty wimpy. I did have a regular pattern now though, with clearly marked peaks for contractions, but they still looked so small compared to everyone else. I though, gosh, this must mean I have so much farther to go. The only picture we took during what I now realize was in fact my labor, is pretty hilarious. It is time-stamped almost 2 hours before delivery, and I am leaning in the bed smiling. At least I was in good spirits!

Midnight came and went, and the OB hadn’t arrived. I still felt like I had to go to the bathroom, but now during contractions I felt like I had to cross my leg to hold everything in. In retrospect, this was probably the urge to push. I started chanting to myself, alternating between “I’m OK, I’m OK” and “You’re doing it, you’re doing it.” She finally arrived around 1AM. At this point, I think we all knew I was in labor, the question was how far. I thought maybe 7 cm, and I was preparing myself to look to Peter and Hillary to help me find the strength to push on without pain meds. I had come this far without even realizing it, I could surely do a little more. To my surprise, when she did an internal exam the OB said, just as I suspected, you are through transition and about 10 cm. Let’s get ready to push!

Hold on, 10 cm, how is this possible? Who cares! I might not have had the labor I imagined, having fun distractions at home before going in for the real deal. But I ended up making it though labor drug free, somehow without even realizing it for most of the time, in about 6 hours! She broke my water (it really does feel like a warm gush) and everything happened pretty quickly after that. I wanted to use a birth bar, so the nurse set that up. We waited through another contraction or two before the doctor came back, and then it was go time!

Sometime after 1AM

Pushing really did feel so much better. It was like a bunch of pressure had built up inside of me, and pushing released some of it. After one contraction with pushing, the baby’s heart rate started to drop. So we switched positions. From a semi-seated angle, we could see the baby’s progression much more easily. The doctor started to get concerned about the baby’s heart rate, which frightened me. She grabbed a mirror and set it up in front of me, so I could see the baby’s progress. WOW. Within another set of pushes (we did 3 per contraction) I could see the head. WOW. WOW. WOW. It really was amazing. I remember the OB getting more and more concerned, and she started talking about urgency in getting the baby out, or we might need to do an emergency C-Section. Oh hell no. I was going to do this. I am this far, I can see her, and I am NOT having surgery. With a few more pushes she was almost there. The OB said she needed to come out on the next one because the baby wasn’t looking happy. When I felt the next wave I pushed with everything I had. I couldn’t see the mirror anymore, but I could feel the difference. The OB confirmed what I was feeling, that the head was out. I am chalking it up to a mixture of adrenaline, disbelief, and determination, because I don’t remember this being painful at all. I had completely lost all sense of time, but it seemed to take forever before she announced there are the shoulders, and the rest of our baby slipped right out. After a few seconds I heard her cry! I did it! I looked to my left and saw Peter crying. Because of her heart rate issues, the NICU nurses had to see her first, instead of doing immediate skin-to-skin with me. Peter went with her to the corner of the room where they examined her. Hillary stayed with me and then went to check on the baby too. I had already delivered the placenta and gotten cleaned up by the OB by the time our baby girl was ready to come back to me. You hear people talk about the body’s hormones masking any feeling of pain, and creating a natural high after birth. I felt like I was on cloud nine. I felt proud. As I held our baby girl in my arms I felt a joy I never knew existed. We had both had a pretty unexpected evening, but we pulled through together. Josie Marilyn Mullins came into this world at 1:19AM weighing 8lbs, 9ozs and measuring 21 inches long.