Hi all-
Here's the story of the birth of our beautiful son, Simon Cooper.
My water broke at 11:30 pm on Monday night (at 41 weeks)...contractions shortly followed. I tried to get some sleep but was unable to go back to bed. Labored all day on Tuesday (midwife arrived mid-morning with the birthing tub and 2 student assistants). DH was helpful all day too.
After laboring all day with the assistance of the birthing tub and some herbal remedies, we started to face the fact that baby wasn't coming out. Though mostly dilated, there was a small bit of the cervix that would not let the baby's head through (no matter how hard my MW pried OUCH!!), and the baby's head would not get into the pelvis.
Around 6pm, pushing contractions started in earnest. Around 9:30, we made the decision to go to the hospital and left around 10:15. The half hour drive was excruciating, pushing SUCKS in the car! We arrived around 10:45, and upon finding out my water had broke around 24 hours earlier, the doctor insisted on a C-section. I had resigned myself that this was coming and talked it over w/ DH and MW and decided this was the best course of action at this point (MW thought maybe putting me on an epidural to get some rest might be an option, but Doc said no way).
The following hour was probably the worst yet, waiting to go into surgery -- still having very strong pushing contractions with no hope of pushing baby out, I was pretty much done with the whole labor thing by this point.
Eventually, I got into the operating room and met my new best friend the anesthesiologist (DA
)...she took away my pain. The C-section went well, I was chatting up a storm with my MW and DH while on the table (I do get chatty when I'm ill...). It turned out that baby was OP with the cord wrapped around his neck. At 12:56 am Wednesday morning, my beautiful baby was born at 8lbs, 21-1/2 inches. We actually didn't decide on a name until Friday morning, so he was noname baby for a while
The baby had some rapid breathing which was causing concern, and they tried doing all sorts of tests which was frustrating (mentioning they might put baby on antibiotics the next day for reasons they couldn't say really got me going...). DH and I earned the reputation as the crazy hippie couple...boy do the docs and the powers that be not like people who actually ask questions. I really missed the advice from this board on the things that were happening...particularly during the night they were trying to force baby to nurse every two hours.
Over the few days we were in the hospital, there were a zillion docs and nurses in and out of the room, and they all had different opinions. It was amazingly frustrating, and I got to the point I was thinking of sending baby home with DH just to get him out of the doctors' line of sight.
We all stayed in the hospital until Friday evening, when I had to do some quick talking to get them to set us free. We left the hospital in good health and enjoyed our first real night together as a family.
So, long story long, our homebirth turned into a C-section followed by being held hostage in the hospital, but all that really matters is that we have a gorgeous new healthy baby boy!
Here are pix of baby and birth:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/pcrain...063re2&.src=ph
Nursing is going well, back to resting now...
Here's the story of the birth of our beautiful son, Simon Cooper.
My water broke at 11:30 pm on Monday night (at 41 weeks)...contractions shortly followed. I tried to get some sleep but was unable to go back to bed. Labored all day on Tuesday (midwife arrived mid-morning with the birthing tub and 2 student assistants). DH was helpful all day too.
After laboring all day with the assistance of the birthing tub and some herbal remedies, we started to face the fact that baby wasn't coming out. Though mostly dilated, there was a small bit of the cervix that would not let the baby's head through (no matter how hard my MW pried OUCH!!), and the baby's head would not get into the pelvis.
Around 6pm, pushing contractions started in earnest. Around 9:30, we made the decision to go to the hospital and left around 10:15. The half hour drive was excruciating, pushing SUCKS in the car! We arrived around 10:45, and upon finding out my water had broke around 24 hours earlier, the doctor insisted on a C-section. I had resigned myself that this was coming and talked it over w/ DH and MW and decided this was the best course of action at this point (MW thought maybe putting me on an epidural to get some rest might be an option, but Doc said no way).
The following hour was probably the worst yet, waiting to go into surgery -- still having very strong pushing contractions with no hope of pushing baby out, I was pretty much done with the whole labor thing by this point.
Eventually, I got into the operating room and met my new best friend the anesthesiologist (DA
)...she took away my pain. The C-section went well, I was chatting up a storm with my MW and DH while on the table (I do get chatty when I'm ill...). It turned out that baby was OP with the cord wrapped around his neck. At 12:56 am Wednesday morning, my beautiful baby was born at 8lbs, 21-1/2 inches. We actually didn't decide on a name until Friday morning, so he was noname baby for a while The baby had some rapid breathing which was causing concern, and they tried doing all sorts of tests which was frustrating (mentioning they might put baby on antibiotics the next day for reasons they couldn't say really got me going...). DH and I earned the reputation as the crazy hippie couple...boy do the docs and the powers that be not like people who actually ask questions. I really missed the advice from this board on the things that were happening...particularly during the night they were trying to force baby to nurse every two hours.
Over the few days we were in the hospital, there were a zillion docs and nurses in and out of the room, and they all had different opinions. It was amazingly frustrating, and I got to the point I was thinking of sending baby home with DH just to get him out of the doctors' line of sight.
We all stayed in the hospital until Friday evening, when I had to do some quick talking to get them to set us free. We left the hospital in good health and enjoyed our first real night together as a family.
So, long story long, our homebirth turned into a C-section followed by being held hostage in the hospital, but all that really matters is that we have a gorgeous new healthy baby boy!
Here are pix of baby and birth:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/pcrain...063re2&.src=ph
Nursing is going well, back to resting now...
