Spencer's Birth Story: Part III

Part one here.
Part two here.

So the props and tricks didn't work.  My doctor came back in and kept his doctor like vigil while I pushed for a while longer. (He left during the prop phase.)  Birthing a baby is strange business.  My doctor told me he had a meeting to go at noon and that it would last about an hour.  He asked me if I thought I could keep pushing while he was gone.  I asked him if I could take a break, I was so tired I didn't have the strength to even think about the word "push."  I imagined if I just laid there, the baby would eventually find his way out, right?  I would just lay in a position that he could walk on out and climb in my arms and we would take a nap together.  In my state of pushing, and being in pain and things not going how I thought they would, this was a fantastic (albeit absurd) thought.  I'd much rather think about this image than pushing.

Dr. Draper said of course I could rest and when he got back, we would try pushing some more.  I thankfully closed my eyes and had my hand ready to rub that hot spot on my hip when another contraction came.

That hour passed quickly and Dr. Draper was back, all chipper and asking me if I was ready to push.  Uggh.  No.  Still eeeeeeexsausted!  Contractions were still regular, powerful and often.  Yet, my little baby was not interested in going anywhere.  We tried a few more rounds of pushing. I mustered up strength.  Found something from down in the basement and really tried to help get the baby to moooove.  Nothing.

I head a sigh from my doctor and I could tell he was getting ready to tell me something.  "We have a couple of options," he said.  He was worried how stagnant the baby was and despite every signal that my body was ready to deliver a baby, the baby was not interested in being delivered.  We were at about 20 hours of labor, fully dilated, effaced, head down, everything but the movement of the baby.

This is the part of the story that has caused me so much delay in telling the rest of it.  I'm not happy about how my baby was born.  That's a hard thing to admit.  Hard to say out loud because I never want it to be confused or construed with my feelings of my baby being born period.  I'm incredibly happy about the event and I haven't missed a day thanking God for another sweet soul to nurture and hold.  But it's been a hard thing for me to remember and recall how things went.

Dr. Draper told me that our best option of having a regular delivery was a forceps delivery.  He would try one time, and if it didn't work, I would have to have a c-section.  It would be too dangerous to let me labor any longer with the baby being in the position it was in and NOT moving.  Because a c-section suddenly became a possible scenario, I would have to be prepped and ready for one.  The next phase of labor would happen in the O.R.  I paused.  Looked at Chris.  He took my hand and smiled.  I waited for my doctor to tell me my other option.  But he didn't.  This was it.  (I had lost control of the situation a long time ago.)  I numbly and wearily nodded my head in assent.

The nurse brought Chris some scrubs and he changed.  My monitors were being unplugged and I felt my bed move as the wheels were unlocked and moved away from the wall.  This was happening now.  They told Chris to put on his gear and stay in the room until they called him in.

And I was wheeled down the hall.

I wondered if this hospital had several rooms for situations like this.  Wondered if I would be taken to a part I had never been to before.  But my heart started to beat a little faster as I recognized the hallway and doors I was wheeled through.  It was the same room where I delivered my two pound babies.  Where they quickly took me down the hall, gave me drugs and cut me open because my body wouldn't do what it was supposed to do and these babies needed immediate NICU care.  So immediate that there is a window in the room where a nurse stood, blanket in hand,  she was the first one to hold my tiny babies.  Hold, resuscitate, whatever the situation called for.

Something triggered those dark days of waiting and watching tiny, sick bodies learn how to breathe and eat.  Although my bucket of joy and happiness about my older kids is much bigger than those three months of dull, consistent darkness, my heart went cold again at the memory of what happened here last time.  I didn't want my babies to be born 3 months early, but they were.  I didn't want to try and deliver my baby with forceps, in an operating room, but it was going to happen.  (I was not in control.)  I looked around at all the masked staff in the room.  A few were having their own conversations. (I couldn't tell what.)  My nurse would occasionally come to my side and ask me how I was doing.  I managed a faint smile, but my insides were terrified.  Her eyes were kind above her masked mouth, but the masks all around me only reminded me where I was and what being in this room meant.  Masks, masks, masks.  Muffled conversations behind those masks.  I glanced at small window in the back of the room.  I knew what was on the other side.  I fought back tears.  How did I end up here?  Again?

I looked up at the ceiling, trying to be a brave girl, and strangely grateful for the extra dose of drugs I got in anticipation for a c-section if needed.  My hip had finally stopped throbbing.  A few tears escaped my struggling ducts.  Be brave, I kept trying to tell myself.  This isn't the same situation as your first delivery. (Only the same room, doctor, little window, masks, medication, bright lights...)  Be brave. (Why did I think I could handle another baby?  I can barely keep up with my 2 year olds.) Be brave.  (How was this going to work?  FOUR kids?!? Am I crazy?  God must be joking sending me one more...)

Then I saw them. A pair of eyes hovered above mine. Those eyes.  I recognized those eyes.  Those beautiful blue eyes that my kids all had.  All three of them.  Maybe this one would have blue eyes too.  They belonged to my best friend.  My partner in this crazy journey we started together.  He leaned down, stroked my tangled, matted hair and said, "Hi baby."  My iced-over heart thawed, relaxed.  Oh yeah.  I remember.  I'm not doing this alone.  My strength, courage, and force of what makes me a woman and an intensely capable mother returned.

By now, the doctor was ready for me to push.  He told me he was going to have me push 4 or 5 times.  He played coach for a minute and gave me some kind of Rocky-esque speech on giving him all that I had. There was some kind of count down and I pushed.

Chris brought with him an air of renewed strength that I absorbed.  Three BIG pushes and my baby was out.  Chris leaned over, and looked at our new little one.  "Oh Kara, it's a boy!"  We didn't officially know until now.  I gave him an exhausted smile.  I was not surprised.  There are some things a woman just knows.  And I knew for the last 6 months leading up to my delivery that I was growing a little boy inside me.

He was big.  8 pounds, 15 ounces.  He didn't go through the window.  He came right into my arms.  My big, baby boy.  I marveled at his size and tried to take in everything I could at that awkward, laying down on a surgical table angle.  But from what I could see, he was perfect and he was here.  And at that moment, that's all that mattered.

Spencer's Birth Story: Part II

In case you haven't read part one, it's here.

Ahhh.  Sweet, sweet relief.  That was the thought and the momentary sensation that was running through my head, and entire body after I had been drugged up with that epidural I was so certain I was not going to be receiving.  The pain went from, I'm going to jump off a cliff to end it, to ok, that was not pleasant.

I was relaxed, a little more calm and now it was time to hurry up and wait.  I was still laboring of course, but now that I was drugged up, I was confined to my bed.  I think Chris was relieved about this.  Relieved that I was no longer retching in pain and agony and relieved that he could grab a seat on the extendo chair and try to rest a little.  

My room had finally cleared of everyone who teamed up to make the pain stop.  Chris was settled on his chair, all 6 feet 2 inches of him were sprawled and trying to rest.  I was in my bed, never to get up again, and it was quiet.  I tried to rest myself, but even being comfortably numb, there was still some discomfort.  It was about one in the morning at this point.  The hours passed and although I had drugs, somewhere along the line it wasn't enough.  I remember there was this one spot on my right hip that simply ached the entire rest of the time.  It wasn't a dull ache either, it felt like my bone was being squeezed by the Grim Reaper himself.  It was intense, and during a contraction it went from a 9 to a 20.  My right arm became sore because the only thing I could do to somewhat alleviate the pain was to rub it.  

Between 1:00 am and 6:00 am, it is kind of a blur or still being in pain and at times simply forgetting I was there to have a baby in the first place.  Because the epidural did not take everything away.  I was still feeling these enormous contractions with an apex of awareness.  Except, at times it was so painful, I didn't think of them as contractions, I just knew it hurt and I wanted it to stop.    

I remember thinking at one point how far I was from that quiet, natural birth I had imagined.  The room was quiet and dark, Chris was sleeping and I was hurting.  I remember being slightly frightened because I had lost control of the situation.  I was beginning to recognize this feeling.  The night I had the triplets, I felt the same way.  

I said a sincere prayer.  I prayed for the baby and I prayed for myself.  I wanted us both to come out the other end of this healthy and well and that I could feel a little peace.  I didn't know what else to pray for.  I was inarticulate and in pain.  I wanted to get control again.

Peace did enter the room.  Nothing changed.  That dang spot in my hip was still on fire and the contractions and labor didn't stop or get easier.  But the peace did come.  I had a little more strength to get me through the next phase of this birth.  Shortly after this, I felt like I wanted to push.  I told my nurse this.  I told Chris this.  But my doctor wasn't there.  What felt like days, but was only about an hour, here comes my doctor (FINALLY! Aren't you just sitting in the lounge waiting for me to be ready?  What do you mean you have other patients?!?) and he tells me to go ahead and start pushing.

This is where it gets silly.  I really wanted to push a certain way.  I had practiced this certain form of pushing and even though I was drugged up and not having a natural birth, I at least wanted to push the way I had been practicing all this time.  The biggest difference was in the breaths.  My way was pushing while breathing down through the contraction. The nurses and doc wanted me to push while holding my breath and trying not to pass out.  So here I was, in pain, drugged up and still trying to hold onto a scrap of my original plan.

It was an awkward combination of the staff trying to continue to respect my requests mixed with their impatience that I just wasn't doing it right.  I tried my way for a while.  The baby didn't budge.  I tried their way for a while.  The baby didn't budge.  It was an exhausting exercise in futility.  I was fully dilated, pushing like a world class...something, and the baby wanted nothing to do with moving anywhere.  After going back and forth between different methods of pushing, the props started coming out.

The first one reminded me of a gymnastic bar.  "Well, we were just over at the Huntsman Center watching some gymnastics and thought we might bring this over to try and help you have a baby!"    Mind you this is after I had been pushing for hours.  The nurse (bless her heart, I was not an easy patient) suggested I simply put my legs up on the bar, then grab that same bar with my hands and push away!

I did laugh.  At least my sense of humor was still working at this point.  I told her I had ZERO strength and holding a bar was a laughable proposition, but I would try anyway.  Legs up.  Arms...almost...if you could just push my back a little...almost got it...just a little more...there.  Arms up.  Getting into this position was even more exhausting than pushing through a contraction.  So, no actual pushing happened.  The moment I grasped the bar, I immediately fell back down.  (This is a level of fatigue I have never experienced.)  I apologized.  I mean it seemed like it took at least two people to bring that dang thing in here and I didn't even use it.  Now what?

Prop number two.  I call this one, The Prison Escape.  I was handed the end of a knotted sheet, (similar to what one might use to toss out the window when trying to escape from prison) and the nurse had the other end.  "We're just going to have a tug-of-war,"  she said with a smile.  The idea being I would use the physics of this motion to push and move this baby out.

Am I on on candid camera?  I had to laugh again.  The idea that I had the strength to grasp the sheet, let alone push and pull and escape from a minimum security prison all at the same time was just too much.  Chris even sensed my ludicrous meter going off and gave me a secret grin.  I agreed to try, because really, it was around 11 am at this point, something had to work.  It was a similar attempt as the gymnastics bar.  I geared my brain up to do it, but my body just limped out  and I fell back before I even began.  Still exhausted.  Still in pain.  Still really, really pregnant.

Next time.... we're going to prep you for the OR, but just a precaution...  

This baby really liked his living quarters. 

Spencer's Birth Story: Part I

I've thought about and tried to write this in my head about a hundred times.  Writer's block is a real thing folks.  Even if it means you are being blocked by other (seemingly) pressing things going on in your life.  Blocked by a baby and 3 wildly entertaining and needy toddlers is the most recent thing that comes to mind.

So I'm just going to start telling the story of how my 4th baby was born.  I'm just going to put it out there.  I may not even proofread or speel check. I'm not even going to blog about my three wildly entertaining and needy toddlers turning three.  Their birthday is always something to write about and celebrate. However, if I go one more blog post without talking about child #4, he might begin to feel like a footnote.  Which he's not.

So, without further ado or spilling of my subconscious mind, the story of when Spencer as born...

"So what did you decide?"

My doctor asks me this on a Wednesday afternoon.  I'm 39 weeks pregnant and it's the first appointment that Chris has come with me.

I look at my handsome partner and he smiles, we both know we're going to have a baby that day.  At least that's what we thought.  After all, my body had actually labored before with the triplets, so the second time around is speedy and quick, right?  Baby comes out like it's got somewhere to be? Plus, with ALL my hypnobirthing training I had done over the past 4 months, surely this would be the most beautiful and most perfect birth in the history of all births.   That's what we had anticipated.  At least I had.  I never would have predicted that nearly 24 hours later I would be in a surgical room, with a team prepped in masks and gloves hovering around me.

"Yes."  I answer confidently.  "We want to have this baby today."

A week prior, my doctor had given me the option of induction.  The baby was measuring big and had even earned the term macrosomia.  

{neonatal macrosomia (n) : a baby that is measuring large for its gestational age.}

And he was big.  I had a handful of doctors and nurses after they saw him ask me if I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. (I wasn't.)

So the baby was measuring big, and I had stressed with my doctor that I did NOT want a c-section this time around.  I wanted as close to natural as I could get within the confines of being comfortably safe in one of the best hospitals in the state.  In my laser focus of not wanting a c-section, I focused on the macro-thingy and worried the baby would be too big and not come the way I planned and all that planning and hoping about channeling mother nature herself in the birthing room would be a pipe dream.  So focused on NOT having a c-section that I didn't look too deeply into the effects of pitocin and what exactly an induction meant for me.    

I think part of the reason I have been so reluctant to share the entire birth story is because I feel responsible for how things turned out.  I naively thought I would be given something to "get me started" then my body would just do it's thing and I'd pop that little critter right out!  

Also, my older kids have been on a routine and schedule since the day all three of them were home from the hospital.  We live and die by a routine around here.  So the lure and temptation of being able to plan when the help was going to be with them was too much.  Too much I tell you!

So I decided to go ahead with the induction.  And I can't even type the phrase "against my better judgement" after that.  Because I really did think I was doing the right thing.  It felt right.

So we were shown to a room in the delivery unit and the nurse began my check in process.  I had brought along my birth plan and told her I wanted to go over it with her.  I look back and wonder what she was thinking, right before I was to be induced, when I told her I wanted NO talk of pain, or pain scales or asking me if I was in pain etc, etc.  Because, after all, this was part of my master plan.

So around 5:30, I gowned up and was given the drip.  This was it.  I would surely have a baby that night.  I was dilated to a two and 75% effaced.  I made a big deal about wanting the "big" delivery room that was shown to me on a tour a few weeks back.  It was unavailable when they checked me in, but on one of my hallway strolls, I noticed it was clean and ready for a new momma, so the nurse was nice to let me switch rooms.

I decided to walk and walk and walk during the first few hours to help things along.  I wish the unit was bigger because at around 9pm or so, I think I just looked crazy.  There's that insane woman who is hooked up to a pitocin drip and thinks she's going to have a pain-free birth. Is what I now imagine the entire staff was thinking every time I walked by the front desk with my rolling IV stand.

Around 8pm the anesthesiologist came in to see when I wanted my epidural.  He wanted to go over the side effects and risks at that moment so we wouldn't have to waste time later when I needed it.  I assured him I would not need an epidural and hence, no explanation of side effects or the like.  I told him I had been planning this drug-free birth and I felt fine so far and was completely confident I would never need to see him again.

He smiled, told me that was great, but wanted to do it anyway.  I sent him away with a smile.  NO talking about pain, and he was the representative of pain.  He was of course professional, told me he would be there until midnight and to call if I changed my mind.  I told him I would (which I definitely wasn't) and thanked him for coming by.

Three hours later, I was checked and to my surprise and disappointment, I was only at a 4.  Do you know how much walking I did?  Remember I had that flipping drug pumping through my veins?  My doc wanted to break my water, he felt like the baby needed some encouragement.  It had been too long.  Ok, how bad could that be?  I felt like I was doing an ACE job with my hypnobirthing training, because every contraction up to that point was manageable.  I successfully breathed through every one and they were strong and regular, regular, regular.  I felt like I was laboring how I envisioned.

Then my doctor broke my water.

Something happened that I don't know how to adequately put into words, but I'll try.

Before my water broke I was a whole, competent, strong, laboring woman.

After my water broke, my contractions went from manageable (after all, I was a competent, strong, laboring woman) to I think it would've been better if I was born a man.

With my hypnobirthing training, I was taught how to breath through each contraction.  The breath starts with a big belly breath as you visualize the breath traveling from the top of your head all the way down through your toes.

The very next contraction I had after my water broke, I started to inhale for that big belly breath.  I coughed and sputtered.  I couldn't even take breath in, the pain (THE PAIN!  I WASN'T SUPPOSED TO TALK OR THINK ABOUT PAIN, BUT IT WAS PAAAAAAAAAAAIN!)  was so intense.

All I could do is double over and wait for the contraction to end.  The breathing, the visualization, my happy place, all went out the window.  I was a little shocked and tried to recover for the next one.  Ok, I told myself, that was bad, but I guess I wasn't ready.  Focus Kara, here comes the next one.  You got this...

Two minutes later it hit again.  Another contraction.

And I was ready and focused.  And I ended up on the floor, doubled over with pain, gasping at what was happening to my body.

The nurse was there, as was my husband (he was looking alarmed) and she asked what I wanted to do.  (Bless her heart, she remember my blasted birth plan and request to not talk about pain.)

I said I wanted to see what the next one felt like and wait it out.  I couldn't throw months of planning out the window!  Between these immense surges of absolute agony, I would gear up and prep myself to breath and visualize--I can do this.  

I think I went through five or six of these.   I automatically doubled over and squeaked incoherent syllable every single time. Chris kindly suggested it would be ok to take something.  He told me there was no shame in abandoning my plan and calling the anesthesiologist.  (He would have the best secret eye roll ever, huh?)

I was beginning to be absolutely terrified for the next contraction instead of welcoming and embracing it as I had prepared to do.  I mean I was mortified that I would need many more of these to get this baby here.  I physically couldn't do it.  A girl has her limits.  So, 15 minutes before he told me he would be leaving the hospital, they called the man, whom I told I wouldn't need his services, thank you very much.

He came, and with a hint of annoyance, told me he had to go over the side effects and possible complications of having an epidural.  I nodded, assented, agreed, whatever I needed to do to make the pain stop.

Between contractions, I was able to joke with him about our conversation earlier.  He then gave me a staggering statistic.  I'm sure it was just something he pulled from the air as a generalization, not an actual statistic, but still.  He told me he wasn't surprised he was back in my room because 99% of women that are induced with pitocin end up needing an epidural.  He had seen very few women be able to labor on pitocin without pain medication.

Are you *bleeping* kidding me?  What?  How did I not know this?  Do you know how much stinking reading and research and classes I participated in?  How did this not come up?  How did I not know this or overlook it or NOT know this was the case?  I'm sure a large percentage of you are reading this, shaking your head and thinking, duh!  What did you expect?  But this is my story.  It's all truth.

As I felt the cold medication enter my back, I felt relieved, and stupid and comforted and disappointed.  It was a weird moment.  But here we were.  The only thing that had gone as planned was my initial refusal of pain medication and the room I requested.

But since these contractions felt so strong, surely the baby would be here soon.   Right?  Right?!



Next time....

You do remember you're here to have a baby, right?  Or, here, go ahead and grab this gymnastics bar we found and give us a few pushes.  

Spencer's Birth Story: Preface

I'm going to tell you the story of how my baby boy, child #4 was born.  Before I do, we need to have little chat, a big ol' fat preface.

I told you about my grand plans of having a hypnobirth.  My mind and heart were so set on this.  I had practiced, visualized and 100% expected this would be the perfect birth I had imagined.  When I say perfect, I don't mean perfect.  I just mean I knew it would happen as I had envisioned and planned.

I had my birth plan that I had lovingly written out at my kitchen table one night.  I tucked it away in a bright green folder and placed it in my packed and waiting hospital bag.  Then, once at the hospital, I went over this birth plan with the nurse that checked me into the labor and delivery floor.  Looking back, I wonder if L&D nurses ever have to practice their nods and polite assents to a fresh faced expectant mother as she goes over her "plans" about how her birth is going to go.  I wonder if they try not to imagine this chatty, put together woman as a disheveled heap of fatigue and damp strands of hair hanging in her face at the end of it all.  You know, so they can be professional and not laugh in her face when she says under no circumstances is there to be any discussion about pain.

I know every birth is different, I know some women actually have a good experience giving birth, but this written plan I had brought with me -- forget about it.  Not one thing went as I had envisioned, practiced, imagined or planned.  I'm not exaggerating either.  Nothing.  Nil.  Zip.  Nada.

So, the question is, was I disappointed?

I believe the act of bringing another life into this world is so monumental, so important, so grand and significant that if you allow yourself be disappointed on how your personal experience went, I truly believe it can make some permanent, albeit unintentional, scar on your heart and maybe even effect that little spirit you just helped usher into this life.  That's my personal theory.  So although NOTHING went as I wanted it to, I felt I had to let that go in the moment it happened.  So as I relate my story in upcoming posts, know that my heart is well.

There were literal hours dedicated to this natural, hypnobirthing malarky. (Ok, I still think hypnobirthing is a legitimate and successful way to have a baby, and although my heart is well, I can still be snarky.) I had grand plans for a quiet, peaceful, drug-free birth.  So to tell you toward the end of it all, in the 11th hour, I was in an operating room, identical to the one the triplets were delivered in via emergency c-section, with a room full of people hovering around me in surgical masks, you'll know what a feat it was to let go of my months and hours of preparing for the exact opposite of how things went.

Which is why I wanted to have this chat before I relayed the story.  Just so we're clear about the injustice of life and no matter how in control and well thought out your plans may be, you're never really in charge.  At this point in my short experience of being a pregnant person, then mother, I really shouldn't be surprised by this.  Because I seem to get this lesson in so many different ways, and each time it's always a light bulb moment.  I suppose I'm grateful for a patient God who still cares to teach this stubborn, slow learning daughter that I need Him every hour.

Next post will be part one of this harrowing tale of triumph, heartbreak and water breaking birthin' fun.  I'll sum up 21ish hours in a couple posts. I'll leave you with a shot of what I looked like on the last day of being pregnant with my little (or not so little, as I will soon tell you) baby.

And this guy... I said, show me your "I'm ready to be a dad for the 4th time" face.  This is what I got...

I believe he was telling me he is ready to rock?