Well, the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good - I felt instinctually yesterday that the baby needed to be born, so consented to go to the induction today if I didn't have him last night. While I was working all that out, I went back in to labor - this time hard. I was indeed walking around at 8 or 9 cm yesterday. I labored fairly easily to get rid of the anterior lip that was all that was left of my cervix. A very fast transistion with the shakes - then I was pushing. OK, pushing out little babies is a blast. Pushing out big babies is NOT - ouch! I tried my birth stool - forget it. Got in the tiny little apartment tub and birthed him in the water. I felt alot of urgency about getting him out and had to make the choice of protecting front or back, so I picked front. Have a small tear in the back, but don't need stitches. A big boy for me - 8 lbs 5 oz, 21 1/4 inches long - not interested in ever birthing anything bigger than that again!!! So transition and pushing painful this time, but the rest easy.
OK, the bad - he was covered with mec stained vernix and did not breath or try. I DID end up calling the midwife, and she arrived as I was crowning. It was a good thing we had her. I'm very glad I trusted my instincts when we arrived here and hired her even though I didn't want a midwife. EMTs had to come and take him to the hospital where he is on O2. Afterwards I had some bleeding trouble and I lost quite a bit of blood - we tried wombstring and it didn't work - we think the Shepherd's Purse caused me to clot and the big clots prevented my uterus from clamping down at the bottom. She gave me pit - got a little scary then cause I'm phobic of needles and started to pass out - EMTs came again to make sure I was going to be ok, but I held it together. I'm pretty weak now.
The ugly - there is no NICU in our town and they are sending him away. I haven't held him since he was born (11/19, 12:40am), and I'm not going to get to see him before the transport and I'm probably not going to be able to follow him for at least a couple days until I can get some strength back. We're still working out the details. That's another thing - I really feel that instinctually I felt the need to disconnect from him - hence all the weird talk I did about death, etc - because I needed to be able to let go of control in order to get our family through this. It SUCKS - we so just wanted to have our baby at home post partum, and here with #3 we still cannot have that. But I feel good that we did everything we could to give him a good safe birth - and I think he had the best he could have got. I think his cord not being cut prematurely was probably a huge asset. They said he did not appear to have signs of post maturity. They talk about mec aspiration, but it doesn't make any sense, cause he never breathed after birth. His X-rays and tests look good. So I'm still wondering why he had fluid in his lungs and what went wrong. Maybe it was just one of those fluke things.
I thought girl all along, and he's a boy. He looks like a "Joseph" which means "God will add". I wish I didn't have to share all this yucky stuff, but it was a good birth, and I feel so thankful that my husband was able to stand by me and listen to my instincts.
OK, the bad - he was covered with mec stained vernix and did not breath or try. I DID end up calling the midwife, and she arrived as I was crowning. It was a good thing we had her. I'm very glad I trusted my instincts when we arrived here and hired her even though I didn't want a midwife. EMTs had to come and take him to the hospital where he is on O2. Afterwards I had some bleeding trouble and I lost quite a bit of blood - we tried wombstring and it didn't work - we think the Shepherd's Purse caused me to clot and the big clots prevented my uterus from clamping down at the bottom. She gave me pit - got a little scary then cause I'm phobic of needles and started to pass out - EMTs came again to make sure I was going to be ok, but I held it together. I'm pretty weak now.
The ugly - there is no NICU in our town and they are sending him away. I haven't held him since he was born (11/19, 12:40am), and I'm not going to get to see him before the transport and I'm probably not going to be able to follow him for at least a couple days until I can get some strength back. We're still working out the details. That's another thing - I really feel that instinctually I felt the need to disconnect from him - hence all the weird talk I did about death, etc - because I needed to be able to let go of control in order to get our family through this. It SUCKS - we so just wanted to have our baby at home post partum, and here with #3 we still cannot have that. But I feel good that we did everything we could to give him a good safe birth - and I think he had the best he could have got. I think his cord not being cut prematurely was probably a huge asset. They said he did not appear to have signs of post maturity. They talk about mec aspiration, but it doesn't make any sense, cause he never breathed after birth. His X-rays and tests look good. So I'm still wondering why he had fluid in his lungs and what went wrong. Maybe it was just one of those fluke things.
I thought girl all along, and he's a boy. He looks like a "Joseph" which means "God will add". I wish I didn't have to share all this yucky stuff, but it was a good birth, and I feel so thankful that my husband was able to stand by me and listen to my instincts.
I'm glad this part of the journey is complete for you and that you're recovering well. I'm so sorry to hear things did not go as smoothly as you'd planned. Sounds like you did a great job of following your instincts through to the end, though.
: that all goes as it should.
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