Henry's Birth Story

Well, now that Henry is over two months old, it's about time that I get around to posting his birth story.  Don't worry, though, the details are still plenty fresh in my mind, as it was a 27 hour saga with lots of twists and turns.  FYI, it will be extremely detailed, so I can look back on it in the years to come, but feel free to "fast forward" if you get bored.

At 2am on Monday, June 25, I woke to use the restroom, as had been my routine in the prior month or so, and felt as if I had wet myself.  I knew instantly that my water had broken.  My pajama bottoms and underwear were completely soaked.  Let the games begin!!  I yelled out to Mark that my water had broken.  He shot out of bed surprisingly quickly, given that we had only gone to bed a couple of hours earlier, and that he usually sleeps the sleep of the dead.  I felt very calm about the fact that this meant labor had begun, and we would meet the baby in the next 24 hours or so.  Hospitals impose a 24 hour deadline when your water breaks to begin labor, rather than contractions beginning labor, in order to reduce the risk of infection.  My mom, who was staying with us, heard the ruckus and asked what was going on.  We excitedly told her that my water had broken and that we would be heading to the hospital.

Because Henry came a bit early, and I had just started my maternity leave the prior Friday, we didn't have our bags completely packed.  As a result, we spent some time hurriedly throwing last-minute items into the bags and hoping that we had everything we would need.  Then, I called my OB's on-call line to let the doctor on call know that we would be coming in to the hospital.  The doctor (who just so happened to be my least favorite in the practice, of course) told me I could wait 6 hours unless I didn't feel the baby move in 30 minutes.  At this point, I decided to have a popsicle and see whether the sugar would encourage some movements.  Because my water was still leaking constantly (gross, I know), I ate the popsicle in the bathtub!  Mark ran out to the 24-hour grocery store to pick up food for the labor, since I was planning a natural delivery.  As had happened the previous afternoon, the sugar did nothing, and I was getting worried, so we decided just to head to the hospital.

Just before we headed out the door.  I look much more comfortable than I feel.

 The hours after we arrived at the hospital, at about 3:30 am, were a blur.  We checked in and I got set up in a room and hooked up to the fetal heartrate monitor and contraction monitor.  A nurse came by to ask a myriad of questions.  What I remember most is Mark telling her, "We're trying for a natural delivery," and she responded by saying something to the effect of, "We're not trying for anything.  It doesn't matter what you want.  What your wife wants is what matters."  Well, ok, then, Labor Nazi.  At this point, I wasn't having noticeable contractions at all.

Waiting to get the show on the road.

At about 8:00 in the morning, my doctor came in and announced that I'd have to start Pitocin to speed up labor since I wasn't having any contractions.  Because we wanted (and I do mean we, despite what the nurse said) a natural delivery, I didn't want to be put on Pitocin, because not only would I be hooked up to an IV and unable to move around, it makes the contractions more intense and painful, so I was more likely to request an epidural.  So, I asked if we could walk around for an hour to see whether we could get labor moving on its own.  The doctor reluctantly agreed to 45 minutes (how generous of her), so off we went.

At the end of the 45 minutes, I was feeling a little crampy, but I knew that I wouldn't be dilated enough to make the doctor happy.  Sure enough, she checked and I was only 1 cm dilated.  At this point, I agreed to a low dose of Pitocin, hoping that it would speed things along but be enough for me to tolerate on my own.  We started the Pitocin, along with an antibiotic to decrease the risk of infection, around 9:30, and I started feeling some contractions, but they weren't painful.  I was able to watch tv and breathe through them without much trouble.  Even though I was on an IV, I could still walk around some and bounce on my exercise ball.  I wasn't able to go in the shower, though, which was a bummer because I had been looking forward to using it as a pain reliever.

Still feeling pretty good.

Able to use the exercise ball to let gravity do its thing.

Now that I was on an IV, all of the foods Mark bought at 2am were off limits.  It was a liquid-only diet for me.

A visit from my mom!

After a few hours, the contractions began to intensify and I could no longer concentrate on anything else.  We moved locations several times to help me find the most comfortable positions.  We spent about an hour in the bathroom with me sitting on the toilet, and then we moved to the bed where I leaned over the exercise ball.  The contractions were coming about 1-3 minutes apart and lasted about 45 seconds to a minute each.  They were getting very painful, and I was finding myself tense just waiting for the next one to begin, so I wasn't resting.  After about 5 hours, I told Mark that if I wasn't 4-5 cm dilated, I would just cave and get the epidural, to help me relax and hopefully speed the labor process.  There had been a shift change, and now my favorite doctor, Dr. Crowther, was on call and checked my progress.  Unfortunately, after over 5 hours of painful contractions, I was still only 2cm dilated!  I was so disappointed.  I decided that I had tried hard to make my goal of a natural birth a reality, but with the time constrictions of my water breaking and the fact that I had to be on Pitocin and couldn't move around much, I could get an epidural without feeling like I had failed.  At around 3:30, I think, the anesthesiologist came in to give me the epidural.  With all of the pain I was experiencing from the contractions, I didn't even feel the needle going in.  The relief was fairly immediate, and our nurse, Jamie, who was absolutely fabulous and kept me calm throughout the whole labor, could now increase the Pitocin level.

Pretty quickly after the increase in Pitocin, several nurses and the newest on-call doctor, who is not part of my OB practice, rushed in.  It turned out that Henry was not tolerating the increase well and his heart rate was dropping.  At this point, I got pretty scared and began shaking almost uncontrollably; even my teeth were chattering.  The doctor gave me oxygen to help calm me down and get Henry's heart rate up.  It worked, but it meant that they had to stop the Pitocin altogether for an hour or so to allow Henry time to recover.  The good news was that because of the increase in Pitocin, which allowed for stronger contractions, I had dilated from 2cm to 5cm in an hour!  The doctor said that is uncommon to go that quickly.

The families came in for a few minutes after the epidural.  I was pretty tired and out of it at this point.

Meanwhile, the epidural had worked, but it worked too well on my left side, to the point where I couldn't feel or move my left leg.  You're supposed to have some feeling in your legs in order to bend them to help push the baby out.  The anesthesiologist tried just pulling the epidural line in my back out a bit to decrease the amount of the drug that was entering my system, but it didn't work.  This was not helping my stress level, because one of the main reasons I didn't want an epidural to begin with was a fear that the numbness wouldn't subside after the delivery.  After an hour, the decision was made just to take out the first epidural and try again.  Right after the epidural was administered (you get an epidural by sitting on the side of the bed hunched over, with your stomach facing the bed and your back away from the bed), I lost my balance and nearly fell backwards off of the bed!  I began yelling that I was falling and Mark and Jamie caught me just in time.  That would have been a disaster.  The second epidural worked like a charm, thank goodness, and I began to regain some feeling in my left leg. 

Not long after the second epidural, the Pitocin was restarted at a bit higher level.  As had happened earlier, Henry didn't tolerate the increase and his heart rate began to drop.  The doctor and nurses tried to insert internal heart rate and contraction monitors, to more accurately track Henry's progress, but, as I had found so far, nothing went easily in this labor.  The internal contraction monitor worked just fine, but the heart rate monitor was broken.  They tried to replace it, but they never got it to work.  Eventually, they gave up and just kept the external heart rate monitor and used the internal contraction monitor.  I received more oxygen, and I remember the nurses turning me over to my hands and knees in an attempt to find a position that Henry liked better.  This did not work at all, though, and I began bleeding and his heart rate dropped more.  They moved me back to my back and had me lie on my left side a bit, with the oxygen mask on, which stabilized Henry.  This second increase in Pitocin had helped me dilate from 5cm to about 9cm, though, and Henry had moved down to a zero station (about halfway), so it looked like delivery was near!  One nurse even entered the room and asked if it was time to "call it," meaning to bring in the delivery team.  They did set up the tools needed for delivery on a table, so they would be ready.

At this point, it was about11pm, and everyone began making bets about when the baby would arrive.  Mark thought he would come that evening, and my guess was 2am.  The doctor told me that I could begin pushing when I felt pressure, and that I would know it when I felt it.  In the meantime, Mark and I tried to rest as much as we could.  I was freezing, and I had wrapped myself with several heated blankets, so the only part exposed was my face.  At one point, the anesthesiologist came in and was annoyed that I was so uncomfortable, and called the nurses' station to complain that the room was too cold.  I thought it was nice that he would bother to do that.

I asked Jamie intermittently throughout the night whether I could begin pushing.  She kept saying that I wasn't quite ready.  The hours passed, and Mark and I got a bit of sleep.  At 5am on Tuesday, June 26, the doctor entered the room and said that it was time to consider a cesarean section, because I had not fully dilated even though it had been six hours since I progressed to 9 cm.  I honestly was shocked by this, because although I knew we had a time limit because my water broke, I thought I was progressing so nicely.  I was upset and asked the doctor to check, in case they couldn't tell that I had dilated fully through the monitors.  She checked, and not only was I not dilated to 10cm, I had regressed to between 8-9 cm, and Henry hadn't moved any farther down in my pelvis.  This was extremely disheartening to hear, since I had been so close a few hours earlier, and the doctors estimated that Henry was only a 7lb baby.  I started crying as the doctor explained that she felt that my pelvis was too small for Henry to fit through and that his heart rate had started to drop in the overnight hours.  I did not want to have a c-section (I viewed it as the final nail in the coffin of my natural birth plan), but I felt that I had run out of options, since 6 hours had passed and not only did I not make progress, but I regressed, and Henry wasn't handling labor well.  Honestly, had my water not broken, I probably would have pushed for a few additional hours, but I didn't want to risk an infection just to avoid a c-section.  Mark and I agreed that a c-section was the safest option for both Henry and me, so we said we would do the surgery.

They wheeled me to the operating room.  Mark put on the scrubs, and I was transferred to an operating room bed.  The surgery took about an hour as a whole, but it only took about 10-15 minutes to get Henry out.  He came out screaming, and it was the best sound I've ever heard.  I immediately began to cry.  He was bright red and had a cone head from trying to maneuver his way down the birth canal.  After he was cleaned off, they handed him to Mark and I got to touch his beautiful face.  Although labor did not go as I had hoped, Henry and I were both healthy, and that's all that matters.