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Sienna River was born 4/17 at 225am weighing 8 lbs, 19.5 inches long. The birth was hard on me, much more than I expected! This was my first birth, but I have attended 100+ births in my midwifery training, so I thought I woulod have "some" idea what to expect...But as my midwife told me "Midwives have the hardest labors sometimes" and it was true! 50 hours of labor and for most of it she was posterior, causing very painful back labor. We ended up transferring from the planned homebirth to the hospital for pain relief, after trying pretty much everything under the sun at home to get her to rotate, including the tub, out of the tub, walking, knee chest positions, homeopathy, pleading with the baby, visualization, rebozo, and (the most painful thing I have ever experienced) the midwife tried to reach in and manually rotate her on 3 seperate occasions. She just wouldn't budge because she was already so low (+1 station even before labor started) and my cdervix was posterior. The midwife would move my cervix forward and try the manual rotation but she wouldn't move and the cervix would slip back behind her head. I was at 5cm this way for the last 12 hours at home, and finally after the 3rd manual rotation, I realized I was at my threshold with pain. I knew she wasn't going to rotate unless I could relax my muscles, and that I needed to go to the hospital for a epidural, if I was to have a chance for a vaginal birth. Otherwise even if I could get to complete at home and push out a posterior baby, I would probably not have the energy to do so. So, even though it was not my plan, and I had a lot of tears and emotions about it. I requested to transfer to Tacoma--35 minutes away. Our local hospitals have a reputation for giving "time limits" and that was what I needed was time. So the midwife arranged the transfer to Tacoma, and I was able to transfer to one of the most patient OBs there that we know. I had attended some births (VBACs and transfers) with this OB in the past as a midwifery student, so I was confident that if I was to have the chance to have a vaginal birth, this was my best option. The ride up to Tacoma was absolutely intense, being in the back of the car with such bad back labor, exhausted, and scared of what was to come. But it was the best thing we could have done. The transfer was a great idea, it totally worked the way it was intended to. I got the epidural (very strange experience--It ended up as total pain relief on one side, but only mild on the other side--but still it was enough.) Sienna was able to rotate with my pain under control and was born vaginally, about 12 hours after getting the epidural,though we were both very tired! It was very important to me that my only intervention was the epidural, I didn't want them to break the water, I didn't want pitocin, etc. And her water broke by itself, my contractions stayed 2 minutes apart the whole time, even with the epidural, and I was able to just labor on my side with no extra medical intervention. I still was at 5cm for a long time, but then I went from 7cm to complete in 2 minutes at the end, and pushed for about 1+ hours, most of that she was crowning. The epidural ran out at the end so I felt pushing and crowning very intensely. I couldn't believe how long she crowned for, and at the end I pushed with everything I had, and she came shooting out, head and body in one push, right into Chris' hands! The doctor let Chris catch her, even in the hospital, and we both feel so happy about that. She aslo was very respectful with our wishes fro delayed cord clamping, the cord was left intact for about 15 minutes, and was only clamped at the end of that time because it was a short cord, and I couldn't get her up past my navel level to my breasts. We were also able to keep the placenta, our midwife took it home for us that night. We are so grateful for the support we had from our midwife and her two students. Originally when we found out that we were going to have two students at the birth, Chris thought that would be too many people. But it turned out to be perfect. Each person gave us the most tender and thoughtful support during this epic "adventure" of Sienna's birth, and I couldn't imagine any of those three not being there.
Our hospital birth was actually very pleasant, and really the only issue we ran into was because we were up in another city, they assigned us a pediatrician for the time we were there since our local one wasn't able to come up. This on-call pediatrician had some issues about the fact that we chose to do oral Vitamin K, and treated us like we refused Vitamin K alltogether. So her protocol was that baby had to stay in the hospital for 24 hours for "observation" if no K was given. I talked with so many different people to try to plead our case, we were just desperate to get home as soon as we could postpartum. The nurses were lovely and even though the ped was being very forceful with her decision to keep us there, they got me the number for the head of her office, and finally I spoke to the woman in charge of the ped group, and she promised she would handle it. 5 minutes later a nurse poked her head in and said "It worked! You can be discharged early!" We were able to go home by 18 hours pp, and are now on day 6, having passed the day 4 pp low point with sore nipples, sore bottom (I had a 2nd degree tear with associated skin splits) and milk coming in emotional ups and downs. I'm tired but very happy and she is already back up to birthweight! I also had some strange post-epidural reaction where it did not wear off my right side for over 12 hours...I had to get a neurology evaluation, and the head OB anesthesiologist came up to see me and talk to me. They thought that maybe a nerve had been nicked, but were confident it would get better, but thought it could take a long time, which was scary. But it did get gradually better over the time I was there, and the neurologist finally decided that I was having a delayed clearance of the epidural medication for some reason. It's all better now, which I am also very grateful for!
As for us right now...We are working on sleep and the associated issues of sleep with a baby right now, trying to figure out life with a newborn and learning about her as she learns about us. I will post more later!
Our hospital birth was actually very pleasant, and really the only issue we ran into was because we were up in another city, they assigned us a pediatrician for the time we were there since our local one wasn't able to come up. This on-call pediatrician had some issues about the fact that we chose to do oral Vitamin K, and treated us like we refused Vitamin K alltogether. So her protocol was that baby had to stay in the hospital for 24 hours for "observation" if no K was given. I talked with so many different people to try to plead our case, we were just desperate to get home as soon as we could postpartum. The nurses were lovely and even though the ped was being very forceful with her decision to keep us there, they got me the number for the head of her office, and finally I spoke to the woman in charge of the ped group, and she promised she would handle it. 5 minutes later a nurse poked her head in and said "It worked! You can be discharged early!" We were able to go home by 18 hours pp, and are now on day 6, having passed the day 4 pp low point with sore nipples, sore bottom (I had a 2nd degree tear with associated skin splits) and milk coming in emotional ups and downs. I'm tired but very happy and she is already back up to birthweight! I also had some strange post-epidural reaction where it did not wear off my right side for over 12 hours...I had to get a neurology evaluation, and the head OB anesthesiologist came up to see me and talk to me. They thought that maybe a nerve had been nicked, but were confident it would get better, but thought it could take a long time, which was scary. But it did get gradually better over the time I was there, and the neurologist finally decided that I was having a delayed clearance of the epidural medication for some reason. It's all better now, which I am also very grateful for!
As for us right now...We are working on sleep and the associated issues of sleep with a baby right now, trying to figure out life with a newborn and learning about her as she learns about us. I will post more later!
