birdwomyn
08-03-2003, 12:20 AM
It is hard to believe, but Sam's one week birthday was yesterday!
First things first: If you want to see a picture of Sam, click on the following link, and put "Bird" in as the password, you can see the three pictures they took of Sam at the hospital:
http://www.growingfamily.com/webnursery/babypage.asp?UrlID=3R7Q9C5W4C
The birth story:
When we arrived at the hospital on Thursday, July 24th, we knew we were there to be induced and that we wouldn't be going home from the hospital still pregnant.... we were excited, overwhelmed and eager to meet Sam face to face. The Doctor ran some blood work on Thursday to make sure that I did not need to have an immediate c-section due to pre-eclampsia. The blood work came back within reasonable ranges, so we began a variety of induction attempts Thursday afternoon/evening (moving from least invasive to more invasive). By Friday morning about 4am, it became clear that I was finally "in labor" and that we were making progress. We were scheduled to add a Pitocin drip to speed up labor at 9:30am that morning, but I was at the point by then that "discomfort" had turned to PAIN and I knew from Mom's here at MDC that Pitocin was most likely to make the contractions harder, longer and on top of each other, so I refused to accept Pitocin until I had an epidural. I went into labor wanting to do all I could to have a non-medicated labor and delivery -- Unfortunately with the high blood pressures, the swelling and the other medical issues I also had, I ended up fairly quickly on monitors which meant in bed. Contractions were painful but manageable while I could still have freedom of movement, but too much for me once I was stuck in bed. What I feel good about is that our Dr. functioned as a team-player with us and advocated for us with the nursing staff and every decision that was made was one that we were a part of and our wishes were respected.
April (DP), Jamie (our 21 year old DD) and Suzie (my older sister) were my labor coaches/companions. I could have not made it through the 2 to 2 1/2 hours before the epidural without the three of them. April coached me on relaxation and breathing while she massaged my shivering arms, Suzie massaged my shivering legs and lower back and Jamie massaged my legs and feet. I'd never experienced the strong shivering pain response before, it stayed with me off and on until 3 days after the delivery.
Eventually, it came time for me to get the epidural, and along with it came other interventions such as a catheter (since I could no longer get up and walk around) and the need to supplement my contractions with either pitocin or rupturing of my membranes. All along, we'd had trouble keeping Sam on the external monitor, and Pitocin would make this monitoring even more important (and probably require rupturing my membranes in order to do an internal fetal monitor anyways). By this time I was dilated to about a 7, Pitocin seemed to be both overkill and inadequate, so we decided on the Dr rupturing my membranes and moving forward with the internal monitoring to keep better track of how Sam was doing and how my contractions were progressing (specifically in relationship to my previous uterine surgery to remove a septum at the top of my uterus).
Sometime between 2:30pm and 3:00pm, the Dr ruptured my membranes. The fluid was clear (without meconium) and things were looking good. He got Sam's internal monitor in place (attached in his scalp to monitor his blood pressure, heart beats, etc...) and was working on placing an internal monitor in me to measure contractions -- this part gets kind of fuzzy, but I think I remember a second flow of fluids and then the Dr started having me roll from one side to the other -- apparently Sam's heart rate was not doing so good. It went from 148 (which is good) down to 50 (which is bad) -- at this point he calmly started saying he didn't like how this looked and we may need to get Sam out sooner than later -- that was when he was trying to get me to get in a position to take "pressure" off Sam's cord -- and then Sam's heart rate went to 0 (yes, zero) and everything changed.
The doctor said "We need to get the baby out now" and suddenly nurses were appearing from nowhere, April and I got to have eye contact once while the nurses were plugging and unplugging machines and suddenly I was being wheeled to the OR for an emergency c-section. At this point, there were still no heart tones -- we were just so scared. While I can't say the Dr stopped to ask my opinion about an emergency c-section at this minute, I can say that we'd been clear with him all along that our priority was a healthy baby and he'd been clear with us that his greatest concern was cord placement and the implicaitons for labor of my previous surgery -- so I have NO hesitation in saying that he had my consent to address the crisis my baby was in!
April and Jamie were left standing in the room (my sister had gone downstairs for a smoke break and had no idea this was all going on). The Dr. spoke briefly with April to tell her that we'd have the baby in 5 minutes and that he would let her know ASAP how thing went....
Once in the OR, everything is blurry until they have me moved onto the operating table and the next thing I remember is that they are all relieved because Sam's heart tones came back -- they decided that at this point, the situation had stabilized enough that they could do the C-section with the epidural and April got to come in and be with me. We couldn't see what was happening because they had a screen up, but within a matter of minutes, we heard the sweetest sound of a baby crying and Sam had been born at 3:12pm.
April got to carry Sam to the newborn nursery -- he was big enough and strong enough that even with the trauma of no heart tones for those minutes, he never had to go to the NICU at all.... he weighed 6lbs, 3 ozs and was 19 1/4 inches long. He was born July 25th, three weeks exactly before his due date.
He's had some trouble with his blood sugars -- partly because my milk came in kind of late and partly because of hospital nursery scheduling issues.... The blood sugar thing seems to have straightened itself out, although it did mean an extra night spent at the hospital. Yesterday, after his 1 week check-up, we found out that he has jaundice levels have continued to rise and we will need to address that through his feeding patterns and the use of sunlight or possibly lights in the home.... but these are both things we can deal with....
So.... we have a baby.
And we are exhausted..... sore from surgery..... joyous..... in awe of the beauty of life..... hopeful..... and so much more.
Thank you for all your support, insights, thoughts and prayers....
Sam is, without a doubt, our miracle baby.
Kathy and April
First things first: If you want to see a picture of Sam, click on the following link, and put "Bird" in as the password, you can see the three pictures they took of Sam at the hospital:
http://www.growingfamily.com/webnursery/babypage.asp?UrlID=3R7Q9C5W4C
The birth story:
When we arrived at the hospital on Thursday, July 24th, we knew we were there to be induced and that we wouldn't be going home from the hospital still pregnant.... we were excited, overwhelmed and eager to meet Sam face to face. The Doctor ran some blood work on Thursday to make sure that I did not need to have an immediate c-section due to pre-eclampsia. The blood work came back within reasonable ranges, so we began a variety of induction attempts Thursday afternoon/evening (moving from least invasive to more invasive). By Friday morning about 4am, it became clear that I was finally "in labor" and that we were making progress. We were scheduled to add a Pitocin drip to speed up labor at 9:30am that morning, but I was at the point by then that "discomfort" had turned to PAIN and I knew from Mom's here at MDC that Pitocin was most likely to make the contractions harder, longer and on top of each other, so I refused to accept Pitocin until I had an epidural. I went into labor wanting to do all I could to have a non-medicated labor and delivery -- Unfortunately with the high blood pressures, the swelling and the other medical issues I also had, I ended up fairly quickly on monitors which meant in bed. Contractions were painful but manageable while I could still have freedom of movement, but too much for me once I was stuck in bed. What I feel good about is that our Dr. functioned as a team-player with us and advocated for us with the nursing staff and every decision that was made was one that we were a part of and our wishes were respected.
April (DP), Jamie (our 21 year old DD) and Suzie (my older sister) were my labor coaches/companions. I could have not made it through the 2 to 2 1/2 hours before the epidural without the three of them. April coached me on relaxation and breathing while she massaged my shivering arms, Suzie massaged my shivering legs and lower back and Jamie massaged my legs and feet. I'd never experienced the strong shivering pain response before, it stayed with me off and on until 3 days after the delivery.
Eventually, it came time for me to get the epidural, and along with it came other interventions such as a catheter (since I could no longer get up and walk around) and the need to supplement my contractions with either pitocin or rupturing of my membranes. All along, we'd had trouble keeping Sam on the external monitor, and Pitocin would make this monitoring even more important (and probably require rupturing my membranes in order to do an internal fetal monitor anyways). By this time I was dilated to about a 7, Pitocin seemed to be both overkill and inadequate, so we decided on the Dr rupturing my membranes and moving forward with the internal monitoring to keep better track of how Sam was doing and how my contractions were progressing (specifically in relationship to my previous uterine surgery to remove a septum at the top of my uterus).
Sometime between 2:30pm and 3:00pm, the Dr ruptured my membranes. The fluid was clear (without meconium) and things were looking good. He got Sam's internal monitor in place (attached in his scalp to monitor his blood pressure, heart beats, etc...) and was working on placing an internal monitor in me to measure contractions -- this part gets kind of fuzzy, but I think I remember a second flow of fluids and then the Dr started having me roll from one side to the other -- apparently Sam's heart rate was not doing so good. It went from 148 (which is good) down to 50 (which is bad) -- at this point he calmly started saying he didn't like how this looked and we may need to get Sam out sooner than later -- that was when he was trying to get me to get in a position to take "pressure" off Sam's cord -- and then Sam's heart rate went to 0 (yes, zero) and everything changed.
The doctor said "We need to get the baby out now" and suddenly nurses were appearing from nowhere, April and I got to have eye contact once while the nurses were plugging and unplugging machines and suddenly I was being wheeled to the OR for an emergency c-section. At this point, there were still no heart tones -- we were just so scared. While I can't say the Dr stopped to ask my opinion about an emergency c-section at this minute, I can say that we'd been clear with him all along that our priority was a healthy baby and he'd been clear with us that his greatest concern was cord placement and the implicaitons for labor of my previous surgery -- so I have NO hesitation in saying that he had my consent to address the crisis my baby was in!
April and Jamie were left standing in the room (my sister had gone downstairs for a smoke break and had no idea this was all going on). The Dr. spoke briefly with April to tell her that we'd have the baby in 5 minutes and that he would let her know ASAP how thing went....
Once in the OR, everything is blurry until they have me moved onto the operating table and the next thing I remember is that they are all relieved because Sam's heart tones came back -- they decided that at this point, the situation had stabilized enough that they could do the C-section with the epidural and April got to come in and be with me. We couldn't see what was happening because they had a screen up, but within a matter of minutes, we heard the sweetest sound of a baby crying and Sam had been born at 3:12pm.
April got to carry Sam to the newborn nursery -- he was big enough and strong enough that even with the trauma of no heart tones for those minutes, he never had to go to the NICU at all.... he weighed 6lbs, 3 ozs and was 19 1/4 inches long. He was born July 25th, three weeks exactly before his due date.
He's had some trouble with his blood sugars -- partly because my milk came in kind of late and partly because of hospital nursery scheduling issues.... The blood sugar thing seems to have straightened itself out, although it did mean an extra night spent at the hospital. Yesterday, after his 1 week check-up, we found out that he has jaundice levels have continued to rise and we will need to address that through his feeding patterns and the use of sunlight or possibly lights in the home.... but these are both things we can deal with....
So.... we have a baby.
And we are exhausted..... sore from surgery..... joyous..... in awe of the beauty of life..... hopeful..... and so much more.
Thank you for all your support, insights, thoughts and prayers....
Sam is, without a doubt, our miracle baby.
Kathy and April