January 21, 2007
-
Memory Post- Conor’s birth 02
The first in the full story of Conor’s birth. Enjoy!
On the same page- Conor’s Birth
In order to get everyone on the same page,
it’s about time I sat down and gave a brief (I’ve explained it enough I don’t
have tiiime for the long version, and I’d bore everyone anyway!) run-down of
the birth. There’s a LOT that happened! The end result is a healthy baby boy-
with a little jaundice, which is normal- and a somewhat tired Katrina. But how
we got from point A to point G is a bit more complex! This way you all (and
anyone else who wants to know what happened) can read it here and future
conversations can all start off from the same page!Pre-Labour
I mentioned in a previous post the Easter
Lilly Story- you can go back and take a look if you like. Here’s how it
happened. Monday night Kat didn’t get more than a few hours sleep, and that
more in the early morning. I got a LONG nine hour sleep, and woke up on my own
around when her alarm for work went off- about 7 AM EST. About this time, when
she woke up, she began having a different feel to her normal braxton-hicks contractions-
or “practice contractions” if you will. Instead of a specific cramping feeling,
it was more like the broad kind a woman gets around her period- it started
mainly on one side and later spread to the other, starting in her back and
going to the pubic area. From this point on, Katrina never really let herself
believe this was the “real thing”- no matter how much convincing it took. It
was not until her water broke, and she stated this, that she would really feel
“this was it”.Meanwhile, Mom has an Easter Lilly that
belonged to Kat in college. It was almost dead, but she nursed it back to
health over the last few years, and it bloomed already earlier this year. It
was outside, and so it shouldn’t bloom again- but one single bud came up, and
Mom was certain that it WOULD bloom when Conor was being born. That morning,
ten minutes before I snuck a call to her, Mom (who looks at it every morning,
so knew it hadn’t bloomed the morning before) looked and saw that it had
bloomed for the first time. She was going to call and tell me- but I got her
first. Before she could say anything, I told her… labour had started! She
responded, “I knew it… you may not believe me, but the lily bloomed this
morning.” I made her promise not to tell ANYONE but Colleen, and later I agreed
Dad could know- so she sucked it up, and when her good friend and neighbour
called she said “No, I was wrong” when asked about the lily- even let Anna
laugh at it. I’m sure Mom got the last laugh, though.Kat stayed in pre-labour overnight, and the
next day- Wednesday- I called our Bradley (natural birth method, you can google
it) instructor, Janalee, who is a dear friend and has guided us a lot. She felt
that we should just go on with life, not focus on the pre-labour, but she had a
feeling this would be a long labour and this very well could be it. Conor was
officially due on November 25, but based on Kat’s chart of her period he was
due on the 18. However, labour started on November eighth! If she could eat,
drink, and function well- getting the rest and nourishment she needed- then we
should let it play out. However, Kat had NOT gotten a solid sleep at all since
Sunday night- the fact she got a poor sleep Monday night was just really bad
luck, it seems, and made things worse. We decided Wednesday that we would call
the midwifes and move our Friday visit up. If they wouldn’t do that, then we
would just come in to the emergency room like we would if she were in full
labour (full first stage, contractions 5 minutes apart, etc). They got us an appointment…
ironically, with the ONLY midwife of five midwifes that we had NEVER met with
up until this point. It was frustrating- we didn’t know her, and she didn’t
really know us or understand our desires yet- so it made communication
difficult in the middle of things.To Induce, or Not to Induce
Katrina wanted to be induced by this point,
and Janalee had said she wouldn’t blame us at all by this point. We wanted a
natural birth- and if Kat could have gone on, it probably would have been about
Thursday or Friday at the earliest before her body moved on to full labour on
its own. However, Katrina was wearing down, and by that point she would have
had serious trouble with exhaustion. She wasn’t favourable for induction- and
while she was 38 ½ weeks along, due to the fact her original blood test put
Conor a week younger she was 37 ½ weeks old. The midwife, since she felt Kat
had motive, would not believe her- and said that even if the baby were
favourable for induction, she could not induce her at 37 weeks. She was going
to let her go, but… she couldn’t get the baby’s active heart-rate to get up
quite as high as she wanted. It wasn’t BAD, but it didn’t meet their “official
criteria”. So she had an ultra-sound done to check. The woman who did it said,
very clearly, “This is probably an eight pound baby! There’s no way he is just
37 weeks.” She rated it a 4- I’m not sure what that means, but apparently it
was a 4/8, and that was enough to get us to suddenly be sent to the labour and
delivery. Our new midwife apologized for the mistake- that he was indeed 38 ½
weeks due to his size- and said she would induce Katrina.After this, everything went awry- at least,
for us. We’d planned around a natural birth, and
we were trained to watch the
body for signs… but these signs and stage are based around a body delivering
WITHOUT unnatural conditions or drugs. The two induction drugs they gave her-
the first one, sydotec (sp) was used off-label, to induce but also mostly to
thin out her cervix, since she was only about 20% effaced. The next morning we
started a pit (I forget the full name, something like pitosin) drip IV, which
would push her forward slowly into full labour. The draw-back was there was no
break- breaks her body would normally have given her. Since most women induced
use pain medication, Kat was going at this behind from the start. Wednesday
night was a long, hard night with no sleep from Kat. She went from light
labour, to very uncomfortable labour by morning on Thursday. By Thursday
afternoon she was in hard, painful labour. I was ready to hear, based on her
body signs and the pain- and the fact she was begging for an epidural- that she
was in transition, and soon she would move on to second stage, and get some
relief. But that is how it would happen naturally- this was with drugs.So we were informed late afternoon that Kat’s
cervix was 90% effaced… but… she was dilated only 1.5 out of 10. This was just
the start of some of the heavier labour, and it could go another day at least.
Kat and I had agreed ahead of time that we would not use pain medication, and
to avoid the fact she would beg for it when transition came- it’s very common,
even in natural birth- we agreed that it would NOT happen unless I agreed to
it. Oh, and that morning our midwife had changed to one we knew- the one we
both liked and wanted- Terri! Kat also liked Linda Ballist, who… by God’s
grace… ended up being the one who took over her delivery about an hour before
she gave birth! But I’m getting ahead.(To be continued… since nobody likes a nine page entry, and that’s how long this story is…)
