Hellobee

Here is the story of our son Asher’s birth.  

As my due date, January 23rd, crept closer and closer, I worked very hard to wrap my head around the idea of going overdue again. I figured that the more I prepared myself, the less bitter I would feel about it (as compared to my first delivery, when I basically became a hermit after my due date, replying to every email or text with this link and stewing over whether it was appropriate to give a newborn a timeout for driving his mother insane).

On the night of the 21st, Colin was up crying on and off all night, and Mr. C and I spent most of the night awake with him, trying to soothe him and his nasty cough back to sleep. The next morning, when C woke up with a fever, runny nose and a major cough, I immediately called the pediatrician. While I wouldn’t have ordinarily rushed him to the doc on day 1 of an illness, I called and explained that I was due the next day, and I wanted to see as soon as possible if he had something that required antibiotics. So off to the pediatrician we went, and we arrived to find the elevator out of service. Off we trudged, up and down five flights of stairs, only to hear that C had some gross virus that we couldn’t treat, and per the ped: “Today would be a very bad day to go into labor, with a febrile kid at home. Keep that baby in there.”

I laughed, figuring it would be a miracle to actually go into labor before my due date. We headed home and spent the rest of the day hibernating and nursing C’s germs.

That night, I headed to bed early, exhausted from getting nearly no sleep the night before. Mr. C got home from work around 10, and unintentionally woke me for my first bathroom trip of the night (ah, pregnancy). I got back in bed, and after about an hour of sleeping, I woke to a strange “pop” around 11:30 p.m. I turned to my side, poked my hubby and told him to wake up because I think my water just broke. As I rushed to the bathroom (where my suspicion was confirmed), he told me that he had been in bed for less than 5 minutes and hadn’t slept at all. Poor guy. Despite only sleeping for a couple hours myself, adrenaline rushed in, and I started making phone calls. Midwife. Doula. Babysitter. Mom and dad. In less than 30 minutes, I confirmed with the midwife that since I was Group B Strep positive, I should head right to the hospital rather than laboring at home, arranged a plan for when the doula should join us there (5 am if we didn’t call sooner to let her know that things were moving quickly), arranged for a babysitter to come at 7 a.m. and confirmed that my mom would hop on the first plane to Chicago to come meet our little one and then relieve the sitter. Meanwhile, my darling husband had the lucky job of waking up our neighbors to come sleep at our place while Colin was sleeping, gathering up last minute supplies and loading up the car.

That hour at home hustling around felt so surreal.  This baby would be coming on his own, in his own timeline. I couldn’t believe that in the early hours on his due date, we were gearing up to head to the hospital to meet him, when just the day before, we were finalizing plans for a 41.5 week induction date. We crossed our fingers that Colin would sleep through the night despite his awful cough, and made our way to the hospital.

Last bump shot – taken in triage before changing into the gown

Mr. Confetti dropped me off at the entrance of the hospital and headed to the parking garage, and I checked in at triage. The hospital where I gave birth is known around town as “the baby factory” – it is always very crowded, so I was surprised to be the only person in the waiting room. They quickly got me into a triage room, gave me a gown and hooked me up for thirty minutes of monitoring for contractions (which I wasn’t having yet). They double checked that my water had indeed broken (you betcha!), and hooked up my IV for antibiotics for the GBS.

That first hour at the hospital was really frustrating, because they kept checking to see if I was contracting, but because I was stuck in the bed, I couldn’t do much to help get things going. I reminded myself that I would have to be my own advocate, and requested that they remove the monitors so I could walk the halls to see if gravity would help, and finally the nurse agreed. My doula had texted me some suggestions of things I could do to get contractions going (pumping, pressure points, squats), and I figured if strolling the halls didn’t jumpstart things, we could try some of these more exciting strategies. Thankfully, after only five or six laps around the small triage area, I could feel the contractions start. They weren’t in regular intervals – I would get two or three in a row, and then nothing for 5-8 minutes – but they were definitely happening.

By this point, I also realized that while the waiting room was empty, the triage rooms were not. Apparently, the hospital had been hopping for most of the night, and we were looking to be stuck in triage for quite some time since there were no L&D rooms available upstairs. At one point, another woman was wailing so loudly in her triage room that Mr. C wouldn’t walk near her end of the hallway, so our laps became shorter and shorter as I tried to make sure my labor progressed.

We ran into my nurse in the hall, and I asked her if being theatrical about the pain would help me get a room faster. At this point, my contractions were stopping me in my tracks and becoming more painful, but I am not the type to be overly vocal in the early stages. She laughed and offered to check me to see if my walking had gotten things moving  I had made it from 2.5 at my last appointment to a 4. I was relieved that things were progressing on their own without need for intervention. At that point, I also had the IV removed to just a Hep Lock, since my drugs were in my system, and I just promised to stay hydrated on my own.

After another hour or so of pacing the halls, there were still no rooms available, but my midwife came down to reassure me that I would be heading upstairs soon – not to worry. Finally at 5 a.m., we made our way to the elevators and arrived in room 869 (insert my husband’s immature giggles here). We met Kasia, my nurse, who told us she had already assisted with two births during her night shift, and she hoped she could get me through to the nurse who would relieve her in a couple hours. She seemed to be fairly new to the L&D team and quickly got on my bad side by insisting that I get in the bed to be hooked to the monitors. At this point, my contractions were much stronger and laying on my back felt terrible. The nurse was extremely fixated on picking up my contractions, because the monitor wasn’t sensing them well, and then she became concerned that the baby’s heart rate was dipping during contractions. Shifting from side to side in bed was excruciating, and eventually it became clear that the monitor was shifting from the baby’s heart rate to my heart rate, and that the baby was handling the contractions with only minimal dips on the monitor.

Thank goodness, my doula arrived around this point, and she helped me explain that I wanted to use the monitoring system that allows you to be mobile within the room. She also helped me get an exercise ball, and helped Mr. C help me to and from the bathroom a couple of times. In both of my labor experiences, being in labor made me hyper aware of the need to go to the bathroom. This time, my nurse (who I was liking less and less) didn’t want to let me go because she was worried I was having the need to push in the bathroom. It was incredibly frustrating because there is absolutely no mistaking that feeling with a basic need to go to the bathroom…as she would soon find out.

Birth Photography Photo Credit Lindsey Monroe

Back on the ball at my bedside, I sat hunched over the side of my bed, moaning and getting to the brink of tears through my contractions. I asked the nurse if someone could come and check my progress. My midwife was busy with another birthing mother, so a senior nurse came in to check my progress. It was 6:13 a.m., and she judged that I was between a 7 and 8. She left, and Mr. C and our doula continued to coach me through contractions back on the exercise ball. I had a fine toothed comb in one hand and Mr. C’s hand in the other, squeezing them both with all my might, while the doula gave me calming instructions to breathe and envision the contractions doing their work and feeding me sips of water between contractions.

Less than five minutes later, I felt the overwhelming need to push. Somehow I clambered back into the hospital bed, and I began yelling that I needed to push. The nurse told me that it wasn’t possible, that I wasn’t ready, and that I shouldn’t push. She paged my midwife (who was still wrapping up the other delivery), as I screamed that I needed to push, and that if I wasn’t allowed to push the baby out, someone would have to give me counter-pressure to push him back in. She alternated between saying that she could see the head and that I shouldn’t push. To say at this point that I was screaming hysterically would be an understatement.

At this point, my doula looked over to my husband and yelled his name out loud. Mr. C told me after our first was born that seeing me in so much pain had him literally weak in the knees, and he had to sit down. Well this time, hearing me in so much pain (combined with nearly zero sleep in 70+ hours) was enough to knock him out, literally. In all of my hysterics yelling at the nurse, Mr. Confetti had passed out cold at my bedside. At this point, the doula went to take care of Mr. C, and the nurse rushed to get my midwife and some backup nurse care for Mr. C. All the while, I was lying alone on the hospital bed, still screaming about needing to push. Another nurse rushed in with orange juice for Mr. C, and finally, after a couple minutes that felt like hours, my midwife arrived, took one look at me and said, “let’s get this baby out.” The nurse resumed her monitor obsession, and with no one holding either of my legs, I gave one gigantic push and the baby came flying out. I exclaimed, “Oh my g-d, I feel so much better!” as they brought the little guy up to my chest, and there he was. Perfection.

Sweet sweet relief. My sweet Asher, we finally meet.

Mr. C regained his sea legs and joined me at the bed to marvel at our little guy. The midwife cut the cord since my hubby was still a bit uneasy on his feet, and then the nurse took him to be weighed and examined while we cried tears of relief and joy. In a blur, the midwife had me deliver the placenta with one more push, and then she stitched up my small tear while we brought the baby over for his first attempt at nursing, which went so much better than with my first. He spent over an hour and a half at the breast while we spent that time mostly in shock and awe over the whirlwind that was my delivery. In just 13 minutes, I went from a 7.5 centimeters to holding a baby in my arms. Interestingly, we also learned that when a baby comes out so fast, he doesn’t have much time to get a cone head, but the impact of flying through the birth canal can cause bruising and/or a black eye, both of which he had. At nearly two weeks old, it has thankfully faded almost completely.

Baby Asher Isaac was born on January 23rd at 6:26 a.m., weighing 7 lbs 3 oz and measuring 20.5 inches. He is already so loved, and we can’t wait to see what the next chapters of his life have in store.