The Long-Awaited Birth Story

I have been so preoccupied over the last nearly 4 months (!) with becoming a mother (go figure!) that I have completely neglected my blog postings. I think about my blog several times a week but just never actually write anything. It's time for that to change, and I'm going to start by sharing my birth story.

I want to start by saying that thinking about giving birth fills me with the most wonderful warm feeling - I feel so fulfilled by my birth experience and have zero negative associations or memories of it. Yes, it was by far the most intense "difficult" thing I have ever been through physically or mentally, but all in all I feel EXTREMELY positive about the whole ordeal. I am forever thankful for this and I know I couldn't feel this way if not for the help of some very important people along the way.

I am prone to anxiety - something I have dealt with for much of my adult life. My anxiety usually stems around health-related issues. Sort of ironic because I have lead a very healthy life and I have not had anyone close to me die or contract a serious illness to the point where I was scared they might die. For whatever reason though I get all freaked out anytime I feel my health may be compromised. So naturally, the act of giving birth would be expected to stimulate all those freak-out hormones and cause me to go into a full-on panic attack throughout the whole thing, right? Wrong - I would venture to say that I was probably the most calm I may have ever been in my life while giving birth.

My water broke at 8:00 am on Monday, May 23rd, just as Aaron and I were about to leave the house to go to work. I was absolutely DREADING going to work that day because not only was I five days "overdue" at that point, but I also had stayed home the Friday before because I was having contractions and thought they were the start of the real thing. Needless to say, those contractions had stopped over the weekend and I seemed to be back to square one with no signs of labor.

I remember sitting on the toilet and watching the fluid gush out and I seriously wondered if I was actually just peeing. OBVIOUSLY I wasn't, but my mind would somehow not let me believe that this was actually happening - that my body was preparing to finally birth my baby. Aaron came in and quickly confirmed that - duh - my water really did break and we called the clinic to tell them to notify the hospital that we would be coming in. We decided to take a little time since I wasn't having any contractions and wasn't uncomfortable in any way. We were extremely thorough about packing our bags and stopped at Bread & Chocolate for some yummy panini breakfast sandwiches and croissants since I knew I wouldn't be able to eat again until after the baby was born. We arrived to Fairview Southdale at 10:00 am, were checked by a triage nurse (dilated only 1 cm, baby was "very high" in her words) and were admitted to room 219 by 11:00 am.

I was still showing no signs of active labor. The nurse told me that my doctor wanted to start me on pitocin and my heart sank a little bit. I had wanted to avoid that and labor naturally but obviously when your water breaks you're on the clock, so to speak, and they want to make sure you get that baby delivered within 24 hours. We asked if we could try walking and bouncing on the ball for a while to see if contractions would start on their own. The nurses obliged us but it was evident that they thought we were silly for not just starting the pitocin. I walked and bounced and moved and jumped for almost an hour and...nothing. And then I did start to feel silly and consented to the pitocin.

The pitocin kicked in quickly but it was very mild at first. I definitely started feeling contractions but they were only uncomfortable, not painful. We labored out of the bed for as long as we could. I remember being on my hands and knees a lot because I was feeling the most pressure in my lower back - a sign that baby was posterior. I was hoping to let gravity do its job and rotate her around the other way to relieve the pain from my back.

Around 2:30 we called our doula, Kristina, and asked her to come to the hospital. We were ready for some assistance at that point as the contractions were starting to feel much more intense. They were coming more frequently and lasting longer and were getting MUCH stronger. I still felt in control though and like I could handle them. When Kristina arrived she helped us find some other positions to help me get as comfortable as possible, including standing and leaning on either her or Aaron. I remember everything escalating very quickly after she arrived. The contractions went straight from a 4 or a 5 to a 9 or a 10 on the pain scale and I began wondering aloud when I could have an epidural. At my last cervical check I was only 2 cm dilated so in my head it was far too early to get an epidural. I had hoped to labor to a 6 or a 7 on my own before requiring assistance. Not sure how I got that number in my head but I was focused on it.

By around 4:30 I could literally no longer take the pain. The contractions were coming one on top of another with no break in between. I felt like my body might literally just fold over on itself because I had no time to breathe or recover from any of the pain.  Someone (Kristina maybe?) pointed out that the contractions I was having probably weren't productive because they were so quick and frequent and not the long, deep contractions with a break in between that your body needs to really make progress. All my body was doing at this point was fighting the pain. Made sense to me and so I consented to the epidural (actually I think I pretty much demanded it).



During a contraction...I remember being in this side-lying position holding Aaron's hand A LOT



After that things settled down quite a bit. I began progressing regularly, it seemed like a centimeter every hour or hour and a half. I remember feeling in control again. The pain wasn't sharp anymore but I still felt some pretty serious pressure and used my yoga breathing to relax through each contraction. We went on this way until probably 9:30 pm or so. There were some minor issues with the baby not being in the correct (posterior) position. My awesome nurse Ana was very helpful in giving me some different positions to lay in to hopefully help rotate the baby around. Obviously you are pretty restricted when hooked up to an epidural so I really appreciated her attentiveness to making me as comfortable as possible and helping me to progress despite being bedridden. I spent a lot of time sort of rolled onto one side with one leg up in a stirrup...trying to get gravity to spin the baby around. It felt so good to be able to change positions every so often!

Up until this point everything had been going smoothly and there was no reason for any concern at all. Then I remember Ana checking me and telling me that I was almost completely dilated and effaced, but the baby was not descending into the birth canal. Her guess was that the baby might be stuck and was not going to fit through my pelvis to be delivered. She was very honest and told us there was a 50-50 chance of having a c-section. Surprisingly I felt completely OK with that information. Aaron probably not so much. He admitted to me later that hearing that news scared the crap out of him. Me though? Didn't care one tiny bit...I was just thinking, well at least this would all be over that much sooner!

Ana told me she was going to "crank up" my pitocin and give me 45 minutes to progress and then re-assess from there. Grrrrrreeeeaatttt!! That sounds like a blast. So she did, and progress I did - when she came back to check me I was at a +2 station from a 0 station less than an hour earlier. Alice was dropping and dropping fast! Yippee! I think it was probably close to midnight now because I think this is about when the pushing started. You always hear women talking about an "urge" to push and that is exactly what I felt. I asked if I could try and they said I could...and that was it. They didn't rush to get into position to catch the baby or anything, just casually nodded their heads and were like "yeah sure whatever go for it". Seemed odd to me, but obviously they knew I wasn't going to just push the baby out in one pop. Amazing what those medical professionals know...

From this point it really becomes a blur. I remember some talk about calling Dr. Jeffers. Turns out she was the one "on call" for the clinic that night so I was really happy to know that she would be coming in to deliver my baby. They said they would call her when I was about a half hour from delivering because it would take her 20 minutes to get there. I remember wondering how exactly they would know when I'm a half hour out but whatever. They knew. I pushed on and off from about midnight to 2 am when Alice was finally born. During this time I would push through a couple contractions and then take a break through one or two and just breathe through them. They also gave me an oxygen mask to breathe into when I was on my "breaks". I didn't know it at the time but apparently the baby's heart rate was slowing, hence the reason for my breaks and for the oxygen. They called Dr. Jeffers at about 1:20. She showed up at 1:45 (a little longer than 20 minutes because of some overnight construction going on). The last things I remember before Alice entered this world were: A) everyone in the room guessing how big the baby would be...Dr. Jeffers guessed 8 lbs 10 oz and ended up being spot on! and B) Florence & The Machine's "Dog Days Are Over" playing on my labor playlist and Dr. Jeffers commenting that it was a really good song to push to. I'm pretty sure Alice came out during that song.

The funniest thing to me was the utter surprise to see Dr. Jeffers holding up my baby and then placing her on my chest. The push where she came out felt no different to me than any other push and they had all been encouraging me the whole way along so I had no idea that the 57th time of people saying "You're doing so great, she's almost here!" actually meant that she was almost here. Also, Aaron kept telling me to "push really hard this time" and inside I was rolling my eyes and cursing him out and thinking "what the hell do you THINK I'm doing" but instead I just breathed and stayed quiet.

And so Alice Kathleen Doepner joined our family at 2:03 am on May 24, 2011. 8 lbs 10 oz, 21.5 inches long, with a 14.5 inch head. Here are some of her first pics...




First family photo. I can't believe how awesome my hair looks here.



This was taken in some of the first moments after birth. It's hard to tell in this low-res version of the photo, but this picture ended up being very useful to us after I dropped Alice when she was 8 weeks old and we had to endure an overnight hospital stay. The nursing staff freaked out that one of her pupils was larger than the other one, which could've indicated a brain injury...later on we looked back at this photo and realized she was born that way. I'll probably blog about her fall in a later post. Short version is that she is just fine!



Brand New Babe!



:)