Jocelyn's birth story part four

My baby girl was finally here!

Now it was time for the placenta to be delivered. The OB/GYN on call had left me with headless baby resident to stitch me up. It was way past shift change, but I think she felt a connection with me or something because she came BACK after assisting a c-section so she could be there for my baby's birth. Even though I told her that she must be tired and to not worry about staying.

Thanks to my epidural, I could barely feel the resident and nurses massaging my belly trying to get my uterus to contract and my placenta delivered in tact. Then I started to realize that everyone kept counting the minutes.

"How many minutes has it been?" the resident asks a nurse.

"Twenty since birth."

Back to pushing on my belly.

I think it was 10 minutes later when another woman (nurse? resident? attending? I have no idea based on the scrubs she was wearing) came in to assist. Again, she kept asking how long it had been since baby's delivery. She worked on me a few minutes before consulting with resident. The resident then made the decision to call the OB/GYN back into the room to see if she could get the placenta delivered.


The attending doctor came back in and started working on me. I think it was another 30 minutes before she was able to get my placenta out, only by manually extracting it. I wisely chose not to look or pay attention to what they were doing to me. Angie and Amy said it was not a pleasant sight. All I could think was that it was a damn good thing that I chose to have an epidural. I've heard manual extractions without drugs is NOT pleasant at all!

My placenta was finally delivered close to an hour after birth. I've heard it didn't look very good at all. Something to do with calcification of the placenta due to its age. I couldn't tell you what it looked like because as soon as it was removed, I pretty much felt myself beginning to pass out.

Supposedly my blood pressure dropped to 80-something over 50-something, which is why I felt so woozy. Someone lowered my bed and put an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth. All I could think of during this time is why my daughter Jaina hates nitrous oxide at the dentist. Having the mask on was annoying and it smelled like plastic. Yuck.

I finally started to feel a bit better, so I took off the mask and sat up a bit. I thought maybe I felt so awful because I hadn't eaten in hours. I am never hungry during labor anyway. I asked for some crackers and some juice.

I later regretted that decision when I threw up a few minutes later. Angie got to really play the part of my doula then; she went flying for the kidney shaped basin as fast as any experienced mom would do for their own kid. She also made me feel better with cold compresses to my forehead. I don't know what I would have done without her!

Finally, sometime after 11 PM, I was moved by bed to a room upstairs. My epidural still hadn't worn off and it was weird to watch people have to lift me by blankets to transfer me to the bed. Amy and Angie came up to the room with me to help me get settled. I sent Brian home to the kids to make sure all was well there.

Jocelyn had her sponge bath in the room with me and then Amy rocked her to sleep. She had nursed off and on for two hours and then blessed me with a 4 hour nap.

The next day, the kids came to see their baby sister.

They were pretty enamored with her :)

The rest of the day was spent with lovely visitors. I am so blessed to have such wonderful friends that came to keep us company.

We were told by both OB/GYN and Pediatrician that both baby and I were in perfect health and could go home at any time. But the nurses said that they had a strict 24 hour policy. There was no getting discharged before 9:11 PM that night, even though our discharge orders were prepared hours before.

I had everything packed up and ready to go. Brian told my mom there was no reason to watch the kids, so he just brought Jaina and Jayce up to the hospital at 8:30 to pick us up.

At 9:15 PM, a nurse came in to scan her for jaundice. The little forehead scanner thingy had to read below 7 for us to go home. It read 8.9 instead. That meant that she had to have a heel stick so they could check her for jaundice that way.

It only took 15 minutes to do the test; it took two hours for the results to come back. No jaundice.

We could finally go home!

Our complete family of five walked into our house at 11:30 PM. It felt wonderful to be home.

Jocelyn's Birth Story Part 3

Part One
Part Two

So, I was acting pretty calm about the whole c-section thing. I think part of me knew that the baby was head down and all was well. The maternal-fetal specialist that was on call came in just a few moments later. He was able to assure me that the baby's head was indeed down, however... the baby's head was a little left of center and not engaged at all in my pelvis. No wonder my contractions weren't doing anything! To dilate your cervix properly, you need the the weight of the baby's head to help out. That wasn't happening. Also, most babies are either in the posterior (sunny side up) or anterior birthing position (the preferred position for easy delivery). But this baby was turned to the left side, giving us a lovely profile view.

The maternal-fetal specialist said that I did not have enough amniotic fluid to try to turn the baby into a better position. However, he thought with just a touch of pitocin, the strong synthetic contractions would move baby down into a better position.

Ugh, pitocin. I knew immediately I wanted an epidural. I did not feel like laboring in a bed hooked up to an IV on pitocin without pain relief. Remember, this baby had already given me 19+ hours of painful contractions on two separate occasions. I was just done. I didn't want to feel another contraction ever again. '

By the way, he checked me and I was 5-6 centimeters dilated! So those piddly contractions were doing something! He was sure that my body just needed a jump start and the baby would be out in no time.

While they were trying to get my blood drawn and my epidural started, my friends Amy and Monica showed up for some moral support. Brian had gotten there by this point as well. You're only supposed to have 3 visitors while you are in L&D, but we had four the whole time (Brian, Angie, Amy, and Monica) and no one said a word :) Maybe it was because everyone was so well-behaved?

Let me just tell you.... getting an epidural before your contractions start is very different than getting one when you are in transition like I was with Jaina. It was easy-peasy. Before the anesthesiologist started, I questioned him on his rate of unsuccessful epidurals and how many patients required a spinal patch afterwards. He wasn't put off at all and answered them honestly. I really liked him. I told him that we couldn't name our baby after him, though, because we already had a Jason and a Jayce in our family and those were enough!

I got my epidural around 6 PM and at 6:30 the pitocin was started. It was a really small dose, like 2 mg or some sort of measurement. Immediately I started having contractions on top of each other. I could feel the pressure from the peak of one so I knew when I was having contractions, but I felt no pain. It was the perfect epidural.

At 7 PM, I was dilated to a 7 or 8. They upped the pitocin a bit to 4 and then 8. The mood in the room was super relaxed. Angie was updating Facebook; Amy was taking pictures; Brian was being his annoying self; and Monica left to go get everyone Taco Bell :) I laid in bed and texted all my friends that weren't on Facebook :)

A little before 9 PM, I started to panic a bit. I felt something coming out. And since Jayce came literally flying out of me, I was a little scared that the same scenario would take place again. A nurse checked me and I was completely dilated and the head was down low. Luckily, the baby was not what I felt coming out. It was all that other lovely mucousy stuff that accompanies babies sometimes :) Again, Brian was extremely glad we were not having a homebirth. He hates the mess. At one point, he even noticed that people were tracking my amniotic fluid all over the floor. Oh well... no one said birth wasn't messy!

A doctor I had never met before came in and told me to hold off on pushing until she got everything ready. I asked her if she would delay cord clamping and she said that she would milk the cord and give it a minute before clamping. That was good enough for me. Then I asked if Brian could put on gloves and help deliver. She went above and beyond by actually instructing Brian on what to do every step of the way. It was the most involved he had ever been during a birth!

The baby came out at 9:11 PM. The doctor told Brian to flip her over and announce the gender.

"Its a girl!"

I couldn't believe it. I literally have spent my entire pregnancy with about 95% of people in real life telling me I was having a boy. Only my blog readers and a few friends thought that it might be a girl. I kinda had to do a double take because her girly parts were really swollen and for a second I thought Brian was just an idiot and couldn't tell the sex. But then I saw he was right :)

They handed her straight to me.

I was kind of laying at an awkward angle so I wasn't interested in breastfeeding until they had delivered my placenta and stitched me up. However, that seemed to be taking a really long time. So I passed the baby off to my friends and my husband to hold.

Kinda glad I did that.

And I might want to mention that I am really glad I got an epidural.

Because the next part of the story isn't all that fun.

Stay tuned for the final installment of Jocelyn's birth :)

(imagine maniacal laugh right now. I'm so mean!)

Jocelyn's Birth Story Part Two

You can read Part One here, if you need some back story. But really, this post is where all the action is anyway!

(and LOL to you guys who compared my cliff hanging Part One to the Twilight series! )

Okay, where was I?

Oh, the birth center. 4:00 PM.

It might be prudent to mention that my cervix had NOT been checked at this point. The back up midwife did not feel comfortable doing an internal exam after my water had broken. I do understand her cautious philosophy of not wanting to introduce more bacteria into the mix, but still... very frustrating to not know how many centimeters dilated I was, nor how much effacement has happened.

We briefly talked about castor oil (YUCK!) or even trying some black and blue cohosh. I was uncomfortable with either of these options. They can both have some serious side effects and possibly may not even put me into labor. And let's say they worked.... it takes about 4 hours for that stuff to kick in. Now we're talking going into labor at 8:00 PM and having ANOTHER night of crazy contractions. No thank you.

I was done. It was at that moment that I released all my preconceived notions of having the natural water birth that I wanted. Now I just wanted the baby out.

So, here I am, stuck at the birth center with no midwives around. My mom has my van and Jayce is already an hour into his ABA therapy. I called Brian and asked if he wanted to pick me up and take me to the hospital.

"Nope." was his answer.

Now, before you start getting out your stale loaves of bread to come and smack my husband on the back of the head with, let me tell you his reasoning.
1. He hates the hospital I would be transferring to.
2. We've never had a good experience there.
3. Any time we go, we wait for HOURS before being seen.

He knew that the second I walked in that hospital, it would be hours before I was seen in Triage or put into a room. He said to call him when all that happened and he'd be happy to meet me at the hospital.

So I called my friend Angie, my doula, and asked if she'd take me in. She had been following my progress all day through text and FB, so she knew what was going on. Her fiance was nice enough to take us both to the hospital.

We arrived sometime between 4:30-5:00 PM. I had had several small contractions by this point and I remember thinking, "Wouldn't it be ironic for my labor to kick in now??"

Because my midwife's birth center has a transfer agreement with this particular hospital, it was smooth sailing for me. We went straight to Labor and Delivery and right into a room they had ready for me. A resident came in immediately with my file in her hand.

"Your baby is breech?" she asked, looking at my file.

"No, no, no... my baby was breech, for like two weeks (thanks to my friend Jessica, lol!! just kidding Jess!) but its head is down now," I answered.

She got out the u/s wand and proceeded to confirm that the baby was indeed in the proper birthing position. I was concerned about low amniotic fluid by this point, so I asked her if she could check the fluid levels with this particular u/s machine.

"Oh, I don't know how to do that," she answers.

ooookaaaay......

"Well, my husband and I are keeping the gender a secret, so if you happen to see anything on u/s, please don't tell us, okay?" I ask.

"I don't think I could tell anyway," was her reply.

Hmmm... not really knowing what to think at this point. Normally I'm used to very overconfident residents at this particular hospital so I'm not sure how to respond to one that is completely unsure of what she is doing.

She starts the scan.

"I can't find the head," she says.

I'm sorry, but Angie and I can't help but giggle. Really? I have a headless baby? I'm pretty sure he/she had a head at the 22 week u/s I had at Maternal Fetal medicine, so I'm not really upset by her news. I knew that my baby probably still had a head.

She spends a long time scanning, but cannot locate the head. One of the nurses, trying to be helpful, pointed out on the screen that she thinks she sees a face with a nose and two eyes. This is when the wand was pretty far down near my pelvis.

"No, I think the baby is transverse breech," was what she said. "You are going to need a c-section."

Now, I need to interject with something right here. Brian's best friend Thad and his wife Danielle had given birth to their baby boy just the day before and they were still at the hospital recovering. Angie is friends with them, too, so she let them know where we were. Thad chose this exact moment to walk into my room. All he heard was "c-section".

"Where's Brian??" he demands.

I shrug. "Still at work. I haven't called him to come over here yet."

The next thing I know, Thad's on the phone with Brian. "Dude, get over here now. Your wife has to have a c-section."

Its at this point as well that Angie calls my mom at home to update her on what's been going on. Angie is not an alarmist, but does mention to my mom that a doctor did mention the dreaded c-section word. My mom relays the info to the two ABA therapists at our house and now we have THREE people at home freaking out about a possible c-section.

Stay tuned for Part 3 :)

Jocelyn's Birth Story Part One

If you are a birth junkie, like me, then you are probably dying to hear about my labor and delivery of Jocelyn.

If you are a random family member, like my brother or something, you probably will just want to skip this blog post.

Just a warning :)

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It all started on a Wednesday, not surprisingly at all. So far, all my labors have started on a Wednesday. I even had false labor with Jocelyn on a Wednesday.

So, on this particular Wednesday morning, I was sitting on the couch cuddling Baby H (the toddler I keep a few days a week) when she decided it was time to go eat breakfast in her high chair. I stood up and felt some... um... leakage, for lack of a better word.

Now, if you've been pregnant before, you know lots of things can be considered "leakage" at this stage in pregnancy. There's that wonderful thing called a mucous plug that is just as appetizing as it sounds. Then there is your lovely overtaxed bladder that happens to have a 8 lb head laying on it.

I ended up ignoring my leakage for now. I had a toddler to feed and a day to get on with.

By 1:00 PM, however, I couldn't ignore the "leakage" any longer. It was clear, didn't smell like urine, and was very thin and wet. My midwife happened to be in the next town over all day, but she told me I could come in and do a PH test to see if it was amniotic fluid.

Baby H and I arrived at the Birth Center around 1:30 after securing a ride home for Jaina from a friend. The test turned positive immediately. The receptionist took a cell phone pic of the test and emailed it to my midwife. "Yep! Your water has broken!" :)

I left immediately to go get Jayce from school.

Those poor teachers. I have become very close with several of my children's teachers over the years that they have attended this elementary school. Each and every one of them in car line duty that afternoon was upset to see me in line. They knew the day my mom picked up Jayce instead of me must mean I'm in labor.

I rolled down my window and told Jayce's former Kindergarten teacher that she should not despair... my water had indeed broken and I was probably going to have a baby in my arms sometime in the next 24 hours. She coincidentally had the bull horn in her hands and made the announcement through out car line that my water had broken :)

Life went on. Kids home from school, ABA therapists arriving, etc. Homework to do. Baby H was picked up at 5:30.

My contractions started somewhere between 6 and 7 PM. They were 10 minutes apart and lasting 30 seconds. I tried to lay down and get some sleep around 9 PM, but they were a little too strong for that.

So I got up and watched TV with Brian. He went to bed at 11 PM. My mom came over about this time to spend the night, too.

My contractions got up to about 1 min 15 seconds every 9 minutes. I was having to work through them. My daughter was just hilarious when she parroted me having a contraction by moaning and leaning against a wall. Just hilarious. Well, to everyone but ME who was not in the mood for such things!

By 2:30 I was exhausted. I laid down on the couch and slept from 3-6 AM. When I woke up, I realized that I had slept through most of my contractions except for about 6 or so.

Uh-oh. And I wasn't having any more.

Seriously????? I knew at that moment that the baby inside me MUST be a girl. A total drama queen girl that is enjoying the fact that her mommy has gone through one whole night of false labor and one whole night of what I thought was real labor, only to have it all stop in the morning.

I called my midwife at 8 AM. She sighed and said we needed to talk. My water had been broken 24 hours at this point. She wanted me to come in for an NST to check on the baby. (Non stress test for you newbies). However, she wasn't going to be in the office at all that day. The back up midwife was going to be. Whatever, didn't matter to me. She mentioned that I could also bring a breastpump to the center to see if some nipple stimulation would kick my contractions into high gear.

Tracking down a breastpump was a nightmare. First of all, I am the owner of THREE breastpumps. My Avent Isis manual was at my friend Tarah's house. My Medela Pump n' Style was being loaned to someone I didn't even know through my friend Angie. And I think Angie still had my single electric pumps, too.

I started texting everyone I could think of that could loan me a pump quick fast and in a hurry. I stopped by my friend's office to grab her Hygea pump only to discover that all the parts weren't there. A quick stop across the hall at another friend's office helped me grab some Medela pump parts that would work as well.

I arrived at the birth center by 1:00 PM. My mom dropped me off and then took the van to go get in line to pick up kids from school.

My NST was first. The baby sounded reactive and demonstrated some heart rate variability. But the back-up midwife wasn't quite happy with the lack of good accelerations. Not to worry or panic over, just something to keep in mind.

I pumped for an entire hour from 2:30-3:30 while sitting on a birthing ball. I had exactly 3 contractions during that time. They lasted 20 seconds long and I could talk through them just fine.

Shit.

At 4:00 PM, I was on the phone with my midwife who was now STUCK in the next town over with car trouble. The back-up midwife had left the center for an appointment and it was just me and the receptionist left there. Let me just tell you how comforting she was to me. She checked on me without bothering me and let me cry and vent to her. I pretty much knew by this point that there was no way I was getting the water birth that I wanted to have so badly.

My midwife and I agreed that we had several factors working against me:
1. My pregnancy was at 41 weeks, 4 days.
2. My water has been broken for 32 hours.
3. Something was preventing my labor from kicking in.

It was time to go to the hospital.

(Part Two will happen whenever I can find time to type with two hands again!)

Newborn days

Every time I sit down to type out a blog post or edit pictures, my little one's sucking on her hands stops me. Its time to nurse, again, and I am more than happy to stop what I am doing to accommodate. All she knows how to do is to nurse, sleep, and poop. And the second one usually happens in my arms more often than not. I know when she gets older, I'll probably want to put her down while she sleeps independently of me, but that's not happening any time soon.

Life goes on, despite a new face in our house. Jaina has a dentist appointment today. We had a baby shower to attend yesterday and have Superbowl plans this weekend. Jocelyn has already been to two basketball games, one practice, and lunch at Chick-fil-a.

Third children are like that :)

I am thankful that she is a champ at nursing, despite how frequently she nurses. Believe me, I've been stuck on the other end with a newborn that didn't know how to latch on and didn't want to nurse more than 7 minutes every 4 hours. The stress he gave me during that phase has burned a place in my brain. So, even though I'm going through the obligatory sore nipple phase, I am so thankful that she loves to nurse and is obviously gaining weight just fine.

Shaggy, our dog, is having the hardest time adjusting to Jocelyn's arrival. He just gets a little too excited around her. My husband commented that it was the same excitement that he shows whenever he is about to chase a bunny in our back yard. I am really hoping that Shaggy does not see our newborn as a baby bunny!

Well, little miss is hungry again... let me check really quick to see if there is a picture of her re-sized on my laptop to post....

Welcome to the World

Jocelyn Claire Walker

8 pounds, 1 ounce

20.5 inches long

born at 9:11 PM

on Thursday, January 26th

3 AM update

Oh, pregnancy insomnia.... how I truly hate you. You are robbing me of my last few days (and I mean DAYS, not weeks!) of my ability to sleep all the way through the night uninterrupted.

Tonight, however, its probably not all baby's fault. I have a lot on my mind. A dear friend of mine was taken to the hospital yesterday to be induced. This is her first baby. (I'm also trying to ignore the fact that she was due after me, but whatever. So far every single one of my friends who was "due after me" have already had their babies. What's one more?)

You know I'm all for natural birth when it can happen. But its still sobering to realize that there are just some things completely out of your control. There is a reason that doctors and hospitals can sometimes be a better choice than a midwife and a birth center. There is a reason that Cesarean sections have to take place. Not every birth goes smoothly without complications.

And my heart breaks for these women, my friends, who have dreamed of the "perfect birth" surrounded by supportive family and friends, letting nature do its thing. When the dream is etched in your mind, that's all you are prepared for. Its inconceivable that another scenario might actually take place instead.

If you are the praying type, please send some prayers to lift up my friend. She needs all the positive birth vibes you can muster.
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As for me, nothing new. I was checked by my midwife on Monday morning. I was still at 2 cm, 40% effaced. Not the kind of progress I was hoping. I have had inconsistent cramping, braxton hicks, and real contractions pretty much since last week. Stripping my membranes sure stirred things up, too. Yet, active labor still hasn't kicked in. I go back to see my midwife for another check on Friday.

Baby's heart rate is excellent. Lots of movement and variability. (A little TOO much movement, if you ask me! Even fetal hiccups make my whole belly shake by this point!) When doing kick counts, it takes about 5 seconds to track 10 movements. I joked with a friend that the baby was already up to 100 kicks by 9 AM yesterday... and that's not even the baby's most active time of day!

My blood pressure rocks. My urine is always negative. I'm not measuring too big. There is literally just no reason to try to make this baby come before he/she is ready.

I just wish it would hurry up and decide that its ready. Cause *I* am ready!

Thanks for hanging in there with me :)

I Heart Faces: By the Book

As soon as I saw the challenge theme, I had just the picture I wanted to share.

It was one of our first soccer games of the season and we were running out the door so we wouldn't be late to the fields. And where was Jayce? Reading "Are You My Mother?" by PD Eastman to himself in his room. In full soccer gear :) This picture makes me smile every time I see it.

Go check out all the rest of the great By The Book entries over at I Heart Faces!