The birth of Harvey

Thursday night, August 24th...

Rob and I were playing World of Warcraft, becasue hey, why not?  As we're playing there's some discussion in the guild about one of the girls who was being induced the next day.  I mentioned to Rob that I was having contractions, so he decided to start recording the times of them.  He missed a few of them becasue I wasn't really differentiating between "oh there's a monster to slay" and "oh that was a contraction" very well.  But overall we determined they were inconsistently 8-10 minutes apart.  Not powerful ones, but noticable and uncomfortable.

When we finished playing for the evening, we went downstairs and cued up an episode of "Holmes on Homes" to watch for an hour before going to bed.  I need to put my feet up to reduce the swelling, so watching an hour of tv before bed helps a lot.

Since I wasn't really sure what "losing the muscus plug" means, or how to watch for it, I decided to call my sister-in-law.  Since she's A) had two of her own kids, and B) has worked the maternity ward at her hospital for a while, she seemed a safe bet to call.  As we talked she decided that I really should play it safe and head over to the hospital triage to get checked over.  The worst would be that they sent me home.  Now given Mira's experience, and the fact that I had seen her on Wednesday, she had been predicting that I was going to have the baby within the next 5 days.  Or more specifically, before the weekend.

So I said I'd go to triage.  I showered first, becasue hey, people poking.  We also had to finish packing up the hospital bag, because I put it off until the last minute.  So we did all that then made our way over.

Now I had been to the backup OB on Tuesday, who told me that I was 1 cm dialated.  When I got to the Triage Thursday night (around 11 pm) and they checked me out, I was then 3 cm.  They were also able to tell me that Harvey had dropped his head fully down into the birth canal, and he was getting ready to come.  So they sent me for a walk for an hour.

As we left the building to do the hour of walking, (because who wants to walk an empty hospital at night?) we met up with a small black cat.  He'd tried to sneak into the emergency while we were coming out the doors, and we'd called him back.  This brought the cat on the walk around the building with us.  As we were walking past Emergency again, we decided to walk down to the lights at Clarica then turn around and come back, as it would be the last 10 minutes before we needed to be back in Triage.  Of course, half way to those lights, the sky opened and the rain began.  So we lost the cast at that point.  He was smart and went for cover.  I couldn't move that fast and we ended up getting pretty wet.

During our walk we called the sisters-in-laws to update them on how things were going.  I called my mom to let them know, but told them not to come out because we had no idea what was really going on at that point.  So the sisters-in-law stayed at their homes, and so did the parents.

We got back inside and I got rehooked up to the monitoring machines.  And as a side note, those monitoring machines really need to be revisited.  The elastics that hold the monitor devices in place, one for the baby and one for the contractions, are wide, thick elastic torture devices.  I'm already going through pain and discomfort, I really wanted to have these really tights bands wrapped around my waist.  I mean come on.  The triage nurse apologized for the discomfort they caused, and wanted me to know that she hadn't come up with the bands, she just had to use them.

So she left me there for a while.  We got to hear Harvey bounce around quite a bit, and I dozed a little while they recorded things.  I hadn't had any dilation change since my first check, and the contractions had almost completely stopped.  I was sent home.  The triage nurse sent us home with a "You'll be back before morning, but try and get some sleep if you can, you'll be more comfortable that way."

So we got home.  Rob covered up the bassinet (which was under the covered portion of our deck drying form the final coat of paint that evening), to protect it form blowing rain.  We were both exhausted so we headed to bed.  We opted not to call anyone just in case they were all back asleep, besides, there was a chance we wouldn't be back.

We really should have trusted the Triage nurse and just called everyone.

An hour and 30 minutes later, I woke up thinking my water had broken.  The pain was much worse, and the ache was all over.  I poked at Rob saying that I thought my water had broken and I thought we needed to go, then headed into the bathroom.  As I was in the bathroom it actually did break.  So back to the bedroom I went.  Rob hadn't budged.  "Aren't you getting up?"  Rob bolted out of bed, got dressed and off we went.

The closer to the hospital we got, the faster the contractions came.  Also, the more intense they were.  It seemed the longest drive to the hospital I have ever taken.  My regular OB's office is accross the street from the hospital, so we'd made it that way several times, and it never seemed to take so damned long.  Rob dropped me at the Emergency doors and went and parked the car in the garage at the hospital.  When I walked into the Emergency deptartment, one of the nurses came out and declared I could not give birth in the Emergency department, because otherwise I'd have to name it Jennifer (her name), and that was a bad name if it turned out to be a boy.  So while I waited, she and I talked about Harvey, fertility treatments (she was trying herself) and some other random things.  It was actually quite nice as she kept me talking and relaxed and going through the contractions.  She opened the door for us when Rob came through and off we began to walk.  We passed one nurse, whom we'd seen earlier who thought we were still walking.  She seemed really surprised that I had been sent home.  She wished us luck and we moved on again.

At the elevators, we passed another nurse carrying lab supplies.  We exchanged a nod and up the elevator we went to the 4th floor.  I picked up the phone at the door and said "I'm in labour".  They opened the door and there was the triage nurse.  She smiled, she laughed and said she'd be with us in a second.  So we proceeded into the triage room and just a few seconds later along came the really kind triage nurse we had seen earlier.  She saw that I was obviously farther along.  She joked with us about how quickly we came back, it was even faster than she had been expecting us.  She was happy to know that I was able to get a couple of hours of sleep.  So she hooked me up to all of the monitors while I laid there in absolute agony.  It was never sharp apins, but an ache that tightened me all over.

So I was checked to see if I had progressed any with the dilation.  At the point of check it was probably around 4ish.  At that point I was 3-4 centimeters dilated.  So not really progressed much from where I had been when we were there earlier.  But according to the monitoring, baby was coming no matter what.  So they were gearing up to get the IV into me.  I was one of 40% of women who happened to be Group B Strep positive for this pregnancy.  This meant I had to have antibiotics, and they really need a long time in my system to be of any effect (like usually 4 hours).

Now I'm no fan of needles.  Anyone who knows me well has watched me over the years freak out more and more about those nasty sharp instruments.  And the last time I had an IV I ended up with 6 people holding me down.  Granted, I had managed to get better and better with needles over the course of the pregnancy, but I still hate the buggers.  The complications with the IV came in the form of contractions.  The poor triage nurse was trying to get the IV into me while I was having a contraction on top of a contraction on top of another contraction.  Becasue they had reached the point of back to back contractions.  The first attempt didn't actually hit a vien properly.  The second attempt went in, but didn't last the next contraction as the force of the contraction blew the IV line.  At one point I asked if there was blood dripping off my hand.  Rob  kindly said to me that there wasn't any blood and I was doing great, but it turns out that I really was dripping blood and there was a great puddle of it on the floor next to the bed I was in.  So into the back of the hand the IV went.  This meant I had to be careful about how I positioned my hand during the labour process.  I hate IVs.  This is the only part of of the whole process where I cursed.  The pain was excruciating for that blown IV.

Once the IV was in and the drugs administered I was checked for progress again.  And it was only 30 minutes after the previous check.  Hey hey, 7 centimeters dilated.  At this point the nurse realized just how fast I was going.  They started asking me all the important questions.  Like what's your plan for birth?  Do you want an epidural?  Dad, do you want to cut the umbilical cord?  Don't have an exact plan, yes I want an epidural if it will make the pain go away, and Rob didn't care one way or another about cutting the cord.  So in comes the on call OB, Dr. Potts, he sayds hi, gets an update on my progress and wanders out again.  So the nurse is filling in forms and I have to sign the one.  Boy did my signature look absolutely nothing like anything I have ever signed before.  To which the nurse says no ones is ever very good while in labour.  Then she tries to fill in the epidural paperwork.

Contractions are coming fast and horribly strong.  I mean horribly strong.  So the nurse looks over the monitors and decides to check me again.  Now it's only been another 30 minutes at the most.  Surprise, surprise I've gone fully dialated.  At this point I'm told it's now too late for the blissful relief that may have come from the epidural.  They also begin to rush to get me from triage into an actual labour and delivery room.  I wanted to hold Rob's hand as they rolled me along, but becasue we were going through the maternity ward hallway, there wasn't enough room for him to hold my hand while I was rolled.  It was distrubing to not have his hand to hold as I laid there rocking in pain from the repeated contractions.  Thankfully, it wasn't a long trek from triage to room 13.  They pushed the triage bed up against the labour bed and told me to hop over.  I seriously thought they were kidding.  But no.  They fully expected me to move myself form one bed to another while suffering contractions that had weakened my entire body, not to mention causing my entire body to shake uncontrollably.  As I tried to make the first puch form one bed to another, I ended up stopping momentarily on the crack between the two.  This freaked out the nurses completely, and I think I snapped rather nastiuly that I was trying to keep moving dammit.  But I could have only been thinking it, I don't know for sure.  Eventually, I made it accross.  And all this time I had to be careful about how I postioned my left hnad as the IV was sticking out of it and they didn't want me jamming it into my hand accidentally.  Awkward.

After what seemed like seconds, the other bed was removed and they were positioning the labour bed for the whole delivery process.  These modern delivery beds are pretty neat, removeable parts, a bottom part that lowers independently from the upper.  But really, hard as a damned rock.  I noticed the discomfort only momentarily during labour, but I think it should be noted here.  So at this point a second nurse has made her presence in the delivery room.  I don't think I ever caught her name, but she seemed nice enough.  She was the primary nurse who coached me through the delivery, even though my triage nurse was there for the majority of it as well.  My knowledge of the remaining events of delivery is pretty fuzzy.  Mostly because of the pain.  But I have no concept of time, with the exception that at one point I looked up, noticed the clock and mentioned something along the lines of how can it only be 5:30?  Rob was positioned on the right hand side of the bed, out of the way of the monitoring machines, the oxygen supplies and the nurses.  It also turned out that he was behind me for the majority of delivery.

See Harvey wasn't positioned entirely correctly.  He was posterior instead of anterior.  This means that the wrong portion of his head was in position to pass over the pelvic bone.  Not a serious concern, but they had me lie in a side position in the hopes that gravity (I can only assume this is what they were doing anyway), would help Harvey turn into the proper position.  During our pre-natal classes, the side pushing position is probably the only position that we were never shown.  It's awkward.  My right leg up in the air (or resting on the stirrup when not pushing), and my left leg laying along the bed (or pushing against the nurses leg when actually pushing).  Not to mention that I was laying on my left side, which was also the side that my IV was in.  It was all pretty awkward and uncomfortable.  And Rob was positioned behind me, which meant he ahd to lean accross my body to offer me comfort during this whole process.  There were several times when I actually wanted to see his face, but I couldn't just becasue of the way they had me laying down.

When it came time to more forward into the final stretch of pushing, they flipped me from my side to my back and took the bed apart for ease of delivery.  At this point I rolled over and, for the first time, noted the difference in the room between the time they put me in it and then.  There was a half dozen people in there.  There were a ton of trolley trays with a variety of different medical instruments spread accross them.  There was a nurse prepping the baby bassinet and heat lamp.  It was a buzzing hive of activity.  I think I made some form of comment, maybe a wow or something.  Because with the operating room lights that are inset into the ceiling, I felt totally on display, but I didn't really care so much about that.  The whole room seemed so surreal.

Now let me just say, Rob was very diligent in his encouragement, and holding on to me while I was in pain.  At one point a nurse suggested I might enjoy a cool wet clolth, and Rob spent a lot of time wiping my forehead and my face.  Considering I wasn't aloud to eat or drink, the cool cloth wiping accross my lips was almost as refreshing as an entire glass of cold water would have been.

Back to delivery...

Once positioned on the bed, the need to push was so overwhelming.  It seemed immediate, but I'm guessing some time passed between moving to the delivery bed and the pushing.  It couldn't have been much though, considering the whole timeline for Harvey's birth (I'll review the timeline at the end).  Now all through out the prenatal classes, and even prior when hearing about other people having kids, I wondered what "pushing" actually felt like.  Well let me tell you, it feels like taking the most painful poop of your lifetime.  It's not an easy thing to acheive, pushing.  Forcing yourself to move on, even when you feel the most painful pain.  And taking such a deep breath and holding it for 10 seconds is tough too.  It feels like your head is going to pop the pressure builds up so much.  I can understand why they are worried about blood clots and so on.  Your body goes under a ton of different stresses.

At one point I had pushed Harvey out to the point where he had crowned.  At this point, the very helpful nurse brought over some hot towels to press against me to help the skin stretch.  Well, the slight pressure she applied to press the hot towels up against me, felt like she was trying to push Harvey all the way back inside me.  Thankfully, I felt the burning desire to push again and she took the towels away.  It's difficult to say whether I enjoyed the hot towels, or whether I hated them with a passion considering the feelings envoked.  I certainly did not enjoy the feeling of Harvey being pushed backwards, especially after I spent so much time pushing him the other way.  Then again, the feeling of having something hot and soothing pressed against a rather tender part of you was quite nice.  I'll take stand and say that the discomfort outweighed the positives.

Somewhere here there was a problem with Harvey's heart rate.  It had dropped rather significantly.  So to compensate, they pumped a bunch of oxygen into me via a mask on my face.  Now I'm all for having good pure oxygen available.  However the constant presence of it was drying out my mouth incredibly.  Not to mention the sweat that began collecting under the rim of the plastic mask, that was not comfortable at all.  Thankfully, as part of Rob's wiping my forehead, he also wiped around the mask, and wiped my lips and toungue a few times to keep them from being totally dried out.  This was probably the best thing he could possibly have ever done for me.  Having him there, holding me, wiping my face, encouraging me.  He was absolutely fantastic.  He handled the whole process like a pro.

After some time, Harvey's heart rate came back up to normal, and since I seemed to be fidgeting with the mask alot, they took it off of me.

So they took me from pushing in two sets of 10 seconds pushes, to three sets of ten second pushes.  And they began giving me gentle instructions about not taking more than one breath in between the pushes.  I was taking that damned extra breath because I could barely get a second full breath for the next push.  But hey, they knew what they were doing, so I tried.  And boy did I try.  It's really hard to do, take a deep breath, hold it for 10 seconds while pushing against a pain so intense, then let the breath go and start all over again on the next breath.  Labour is not an easy thing, and breathing out through contractions and pushing is even more difficult.  Labour and delivery is damned hard.

After some hard pushing, the nurse disappeared and the doctor walked into the room.  He made a few comments which I no longer remember - something about the quick progress, while he washed his hands.  Then he came over, told me to push, and push again, and maybe even again.  At that point, he told me to stop pushing.  Rob looked over and then back to me just beaming.  Harvey's head was out and they were clearing his airways and clipping the umbilical cord.  Rob kept talking about how beautiful he was.  I could hear in the background the doctor mention that he thinks some mucus was swallowed during the initial pushing.  So airways are cleared, but Harvey's still silent, he's moving about a little, but no noise is made.  So they want me to begin pushing again.  I push.  They tell me to stop again becasue Harvey's shoulder is caught up on the pelvic bone.  Remember me saying that he was facing the wrong way?  Yeah, the shoulder hurt.  So I can feel the doctor's fingers moving about inside of me to try and unhook Harvey's shoulder.  Mere seconds, which seemed like forever when fighting the urge to push and the pain and discomfort, he told me to give another good push.  Out popped Harvey at 6:02 am.  Rob kept repeating that I'd done it, the hard part was over, and he was the most beautiful baby.

Instead of doing the usual placing of the baby on mommy's tummy, the Dr carried Harevy by one foot and the other hand on his shoulder (the one that had been hooked up on the bone), over to the bassinet so he could be checked over by the nurse.  He was moving about when I saw hime, but not really making any noises.  Once the doctor came back to me, Rob moved over to see Harvey in the bassinet, where a nurse was rubbing him down and checking him over.  I couldn't really tell you what the nurse wass doing to Harevey, I couldn't see him past the other nurses.  But Rob was there, and I could see him smiling, so I stopped being worried, even though I kept hearing the nurse repeatedly asking Harvey to make louder noises (he'd begun making tiny, tiny, tiny noises).

After that, the Dr asked me to push once more to clear out the placenta, which went quickly. The Dr then began the job of cleaning me up some.  I had to get stitches, I really don't know how many, but I did handle getting the needle down there alright.  The needle was to freeze the area while he stitched, it bothered me, and I tensed a little, but I took it without a freakout.  I also handled the stitching without a freakout.  And I could feel every stitch and pull the doctor made.  After what seemed like forever, he pronounced he was finished and the nurses came over and packed me up and tried to get me more comfortable.  The bed was put back together (which involved me having to shift my butt upwards on the bed, a freaking impossible task considering how badly I was still shaking from the strain on the muscles and the pain of the earlier contractions).  Dr. P offered his congratulations as he was leaving, and both Rob and I thinkaed him profusely for being there to catch Harvey as he came out.

Now honestly I don't remember who brought Harvey over to me, but there he was, being placed on my chest for me to finally get to hold.  I think he was already around half an hour old at this point.  But finally, I was holding my baby boy.  Rob was right, he was beautiful.

Comments

[lia]

So amazing, Jenn, thanks for writing this up! Much love to you Drimmies.

P.S. The oh there was a monster/contraction bit had me laughing out loud. So funny! I can totally imagine you doing that!

[YSA]

Seriously, Rob missed a lot of contractions becasue I wasn't being clear enough on whether it was a monster attacking, or a contraction happening.  Only us, only us.