Friday, April 13, 2007

My Birth Story!

I have been thinking about doing this for some time and I wanted to do it on Matthew's actual birth-day, April 19, which for those of you keeping count is actually next Thursday. Knowing how horribly forgetful I have been, I wanted to at least get this up in case Thursday proves to be a bad day to write on here.

We were planning to take the day off but Matthew is sick once AGAIN so we each took a half day off today. I am fairly certain Kevin and I have used our entire time off for the year by now because of sickness (I wish I would b**** about this but I will restrain myself.) Plus the thought of spending an entire day with Barb makes me want to hurl myself off a very tall building (she is arriving on Tuesday which is much sooner then I thought, after I told Kevin to ask her to come LATE on Thursday so we could spend the day as a family and she is leaving... oh you know whenever she is ready to leave... FREAKING KILL ME NOW.) Happy thoughts, happy thoughts. Ah, so I went and found the birth story that our doula, Molly, wrote for us. This is what I put in Matthew's baby book in lieu of an announcement which we so did not do. I love Molly and would recommend a doula to anyone planning to have a baby ever. She rocked. If I have time, I will write my own version of Matthew's birth. Without further ado:

Matthew Stephen Henry Schmidt’s Birth Story

Written by Molly Mendota

Christina tried everything she could think of to get labor going after she passed her due date, but she ended up having labor induced beginning April 18. She, Kevin, and Adriana went to the hospital that evening and I met them there. Liz placed the cervadil next to Christina’s cervix at about 9:20 pm. With all the talk about tubes, fluid, and “blowing out the baby” (what they call it when cervadil alone causes a quick labor), Kevin said, “It’s like being at Jiffy Lube!” Adriana and I left a little after 10:00 pm, and Christina and Kevin planned to try to get some sleep.

Kevin called me again around 8:45 am the morning of April 19. Christina was 2 centimeters dilated, and Liz had broken her bag of waters. I went to the hospital around 10:45. At 12:20 pm Christina was 3 centimeters dilated and 80% effaced. She was definitely in labor, but things were moving somewhat slowly, and Liz said she’d want to start pitocin in a couple of hours if Christina’s labor didn’t pick up. We all went walking in the halls to try to get things moving faster.

At 2:40 pm Christina was 6 centimeters dilated – hooray! She continued to be great about changing positions and moving around during her labor. Kevin was wonderful too. He talked to Christina quietly and kept telling her how great she was doing. He also didn’t complain when Christina wanted to hold my hands instead of his since mine were smaller! Christina got very internal during transition and kept her eyes closed. She told us later that she was having a conversation with herself, which we only heard part of – to us, it sounded like, “I can’t, I can’t, no, okay, okay, yes, I can, I can.” She really stayed with the labor and took it one contraction at a time the whole time. At 4:30 she was 8 centimeters; at 4:45 she was 9, and by 5:15 she was pushing.

At first, Matthew was coming down nicely with her pushes, but after awhile he wasn’t moving much. Christina pushed on her side and in a semi-sitting, leaning back position. After almost three hours, the baby’s heart rate began to decelerate during contractions and Liz began to get concerned. She consulted with Christina and decided to call in Dr. Weiler. Dr. Weiler arrived and determined that the baby was posterior. She said that she could probably turn him around, but didn’t want to try while Christina could feel it, since it would be painful. Christina decided to get an epidural, and that was placed at 8:15 pm. Around 8:30, Dr. Weiler manually rotated the baby’s head so that he was in a better position. She then tried using vacuum extraction to help bring him down. He was still pretty high in the birth canal, and the vacuum didn’t work very well. Christina pushed on her own for awhile longer, and made a lot of progress. Dr. Weiler used the vacuum one more time at the end to pull Matthew out. He was born at 9:25 pm.

After she was tucked in with her sweet baby, Christina said, “I just thought I’d try a little bit of everything!” She got to experience a smooth, normally progressing labor all the way into the pushing stage, and then had the more medicalized version. Matthew had a headache from the vacuum extractor, and a couple days later they were back at the hospital again because Christina had a spinal headache! Other than mom and baby’s poor heads, everyone looked great. Thanks for asking me to be a part of this experience!

No comments: