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.
You're amazing, Liz! Can't wait to meet baby Josie!
ReplyDeleteCongratulations! That is a beautiful birth story. Isn't it just incredible what your body can do?
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