Baby Brother’s Birth Story

Wow! I can’t believe Baby Brother is already a week old! Thanks so much for all of your com­ments, posts, & well-wishes! For the most part we’re all doing fine–just adjust­ing to life as a fam­ily of 5 with a new­born. The biggest issue is breast­feed­ing. Given my pre­vi­ous breast­feed­ing issues, all the trou­ble we’re hav­ing is no sur­prise, but is still frus­trat­ing nonethe­less. So, the past week has been spent deal­ing with that, var­i­ous new­born doctor’s appoint­ments, and lots of baby snug­gles!!! But, before any more time elapses, I want to share Baby Brother’s birth story. I was so stressed in the days lead­ing up to it & was really bummed about being induced, but every­thing turned out great and was the cra­zi­est deliv­ery I could have imag­ined (in a good way)!

To recap (in case you missed the 38-week post), we found out Wednes­day evening (7/11) that the induc­tion needed to hap­pen (due to low amni­otic fluid) & the hos­pi­tal could call any­time in the next 24 hours. So, we headed home from the Dr., got every­thing ready, and thank­fully, got some sleep. The call came in at 6:00am and we were asked to be at the hos­pi­tal by 7:30.

So, we got all checked in & met our fab­u­lous nurse (it makes SUCH a big dif­fer­ence when your nurse is won­der­ful)! She set a very fit­ting goal for the day & I got changed into my cute Labor­Looks gown (all the nurses and even the Dr. com­mented on how cute it was)!

8:30am — Pitocin drip started. Hav­ing con­trac­tions, but noth­ing too uncom­fort­able. Just hang­ing out with Mr. Mom Endeavors.

9:30am — Pit drip increased to 6 (the drip starts at 2 and can go as high as 30. Obvi­ously, the goal is to use the low­est num­ber pos­si­ble). More hang­ing out.

11:00am — First check. I had been dilated to “2” since 36 weeks, so I was so hop­ing that the pit drip & con­trac­tions had been doing some­thing. Alas, it hadn’t. She said “2 to 3 — 3 if she was being really nice”. UGH! So, pit upped to 10. I was more uncom­fort­able, but still noth­ing too hor­ri­ble. An epidural was offered at this point, but I declined. With being induced, I fig­ured I would end up opt­ing for an epidural but absolutely didn’t want to get it too soon (I was des­per­ate to avoid a c-section).

12:30pm — Pit now up to 14 and con­trac­tions were grow­ing notice­ably worse. I was SO tired of lay­ing in the bed–it made the con­trac­tions more uncom­fort­able & hurt my hips/sciatica. The nurse said I could stand up around my bed as long as we could keep baby on the heart rate mon­i­tor. YAY! This was SO nice. I labored stand­ing up then for the next hour or so. At this point, con­trac­tions were com­ing every 2–3 min­utes and were strong enough that I had to breathe through them, but still not excru­ci­at­ing. 2:30pm — Con­trac­tions were now WAY more painful. I was tired from stand­ing, so I sat on the edge of the bed with Mr. Mom Endeav­ors apply­ing really strong pres­sure on my lower back dur­ing each con­trac­tion.  Dur­ing this time, I was talk­ing to my mom on the phone about her get­ting to the hos­pi­tal. We had friends who had gen­er­ously agreed to come relieve her from watch­ing the big boys, so she could come to the hos­pi­tal for the deliv­ery. The catch is that my dad was in a dif­fer­ent hos­pi­tal fol­low­ing a fairly major surgery. Since I was only dilated to maybe a 3 before, we thought she had plenty of time. We were think­ing it would at least be din­ner­time or maybe a bit later in the evening. While we were talk­ing I had to put the phone down to get through each con­trac­tion– which at this point was every 1 to 2 min­utes (per­haps that should have been our indi­ca­tion of things to come).

3:00pm -  The nurse checked me again. Surely, with the strength & tim­ing of the con­trac­tions (in addi­tion to my hour+ of stand­ing), I MUST be dilated to 5 or 6 at least. GAH! Dilated only to a “4”–and again, she said she was being gen­er­ous. UGH. SERIOUSLY? We were all shocked that every­thing was tak­ing so long. Was lean­ing strongly toward an epidural since things were pro­gress­ing so slowly, but I still declined for the time being.

3:15pm — Strong con­trac­tions and I was now mostly lay­ing down in bed, with Mr. Mom Endeav­ors push­ing back on my feet as I pushed on his hands with my legs in order to get through each con­trac­tion. Then, I felt some­thing strange inside–like a strong kick or move­ment from baby, then a pop– water breaks! My water had never bro­ken fully on its own like that before, so that was new. And, it was extremely evi­dent just how low his fluid lev­els were. Then things got crazy! We paged the nurse & every­one got very excited about my water break­ing. Baby Brother was hav­ing a hard time stay­ing on the heart rate mon­i­tor, so while the nurse mon­i­tored a few other things, she had her stu­dent (we agreed to hav­ing them observe) hold the mon­i­tor on my belly.
I knew from my pre­vi­ous deliv­er­ies that the pain inten­si­fies immensely once the water is bro­ken, but I was still shocked as to how much the pain changed this time. On the very next con­trac­tion, the pain was off-the-charts. I actu­ally screamed (which I couldn’t believe)–I didn’t want to be that lady, but I couldn’t help it. The poor stu­dent. She was stand­ing right over me hold­ing the mon­i­tor lead on, but kept look­ing away up & at the ceil­ing dur­ing the con­trac­tion while I was writhing, moan­ing, and/or scream­ing. Since I was only dilated to “4” a few min­utes prior, I didn’t think I could man­age that pain for long (espe­cially since I couldn’t move around & had to be hooked up to 5 dif­fer­ent things). So, I was now prac­ti­cally beg­ging for the epidural. Mr. Mom Endeav­ors called my mom who started head­ing over & my Dr. was called.

3:30pm — The anes­the­si­ol­o­gist arrived and started to attempt the epidural. The process took for­ever because I was hav­ing a ter­ri­ble time hold­ing still through the con­trac­tions. It was excru­ci­at­ing and try­ing to hold absolutely still was almost impos­si­ble. He got quite crabby with me and there was one point that we almost called it off. I wish we would have. But, finally, with the help of two nurses hold­ing my head & shoul­ders and talk­ing to me very softly, they get me to hold still & focus through the pain.

3:50pm — Epidural is in. A slight edge has been taken off, but the pain is still really intense. So, the nurse decides she bet­ter check me. Um, yah…dilated to 10!!! So much for the epidural! LOL! Every­one then joked that I just went through all of labor “med-free”–and I went through tran­si­tion while get­ting the epidural. No won­der that was so ridicu­lously dif­fi­cult!! Since it took about 20 min­utes to get the epidural, they hadn’t had a read­ing on baby’s heart rate dur­ing that time. Once they put the mon­i­tor back, they couldn’t really pick his heart rate back up well. It was there, but hard to find, mak­ing every­one ner­vous. So, they slapped oxy­gen on me and tried to get a good read­ing on baby. It wasn’t happening.

At this point, they were try­ing to decide on whether or not to wait for my doc­tor to get there. My nurse paged the charge nurse & they con­sulted for a minute. Then, they called for some­one else to get an ETA on my Dr.–apparently 5–7 min­utes out. So, they decided to call in the OB on staff at the hos­pi­tal. He came in & con­ferred with the nurses. Every­one kept talk­ing about the issue of “lots of vari­ables” (I think they were mean­ing the 2-vessel cord, the low fluid, his heart rate, etc.). So, he made the deci­sion to get things rolling, see where we’re at, and hope­fully by then my doc­tor would be there.

While all that was going on, we talked to the stu­dent nurse about tak­ing pic­tures for us since no one else was there. And, I’m SO glad we did. She got some won­der­ful shots and took one last shot of us as the hos­pi­tal Dr. was get­ting all set up.

4:10pm — We’re all set up and the Dr. checked me. Sure enough, dilated to “10”, but he said that baby was still super high up. I then explained that the same was true with Lit­tle Brother. In fact, with him, I was dilated to “10” for two hours while they tried to get him to “labor down”. But, he never did. Lit­tle Brother was 9lbs. 4oz and I only pushed for 15–20 min­utes, even with him being high up. So, the Dr. basi­cally said, “ok then, let’s see what you can do”.

And so, on the next con­trac­tion (which I could still feel), I started push­ing. Then, every­one was shocked because it was work­ing. In fact, it was work­ing so well that every­one kept telling me to just keep push­ing. The Dr. then said, “I think this might be a one-pusher”. So, I kept going and sure enough, about 1 minute later, Baby Brother was born with the hos­pi­tal OB lit­er­ally catch­ing him after just.one.push!!!

Wel­come to the world, Baby Brother!

Born at 4:12pm on 7/12/12 (less than one hour after my water broke!)

It was amaz­ing how fast every­thing had hap­pened & was incred­i­ble to have felt the whole thing. The edge had cer­tainly been taken off by the epidural start­ing to work, but I could still feel every­thing! We were all shocked at how fast I pushed him out! It was so won­der­ful when he was placed on my stom­ach and we could see that every­thing was ok with him (espe­cially after the Down Syn­drome scare & 2-vessel cord). Then, we were imme­di­ately struck by how incred­i­bly tiny he seemed. Ear­lier in the preg­nancy he was in the 80th per­centile for size & after Lit­tle Brother’s HUGE size, we had been plan­ning for & expect­ing a rather decent-size baby. Def­i­nitely NOT a big baby at all– in fact, he’s our lit­tlest one yet! 4:15 pm — He was taken over to the warmer to get checked out, weighed, cleaned up, etc. Right after that, my mom walked in (with tears in her eyes because she missed the whole thing ). Then, about 2 min­utes after that, my doc­tor walked in. LOL! Every­one was still SO shocked at how fast every­thing hap­pened & that he came out in one push! And, then I was even more shocked (and pleased) to find out that I hadn’t even torn!! Their “tech­ni­cal” term for it was a “skid­mark”. No need for a stitch or any­thing! Amaz­ing!! The stu­dents then thanked us for let­ting them attend & said how incred­i­ble it was to see, espe­cially since I was appar­ently the first vag. deliv­ery of the day at the hos­pi­tal– all the rest had been c-sections! Wow!

His apgar’s were great at 9 & 9. And, his “tiny­ness” was con­firmed: 6lbs. 6oz and 19.5 inches long! We were (and still are) in awe of his per­fect lit­tle self!

It was also so great that things went quickly in the end, because my mom was able to bring the boys up to see their new brother. It was around their bed­time, so they were a lit­tle extra unsure about every­thing, but it was great to see them & have them meet Baby Brother. Every­thing went so great that we were able to come home on Fri­day. We left the hos­pi­tal exactly 36 hours after they started my pitocin drip! I’ve known some who have had 24 hour long+ inductions/labor. So, to be home so soon, hav­ing had such an easy deliv­ery, & hav­ing a healthy, beau­ti­ful boy was all SUCH a bless­ing!

And, now…back to enjoy­ing time with our pre­cious lit­tle guy!

Thanks for read­ing!