The Birth of My Kids: Our Story (Part 1)

Burrito baby!

Everyone loves a good birth story, right? I know I love to hear them, anyway. I've been going back and forth on how I want to write about my oldest son, Emmett's birth. I wrote a post on Facebook a couple days after he was born (why was I not snuggling him and/or sleeping instead of writing a mini-novel?). When I read through it now, it makes me a little sad. Not because of how his birth went, although it took me quite a while to get over that sadness, but because of how I perceived the events and how very little I knew about the process back then.

I thought about rewriting it now, from a more knowledgeable perspective, and having reflected on it more than just a day or two. But then I decided not to. Parenthood, and life in general, is a journey. We never stop learning or changing. So I decided that I owe it to myself and our story to leave it exactly as I wrote it then, in all it's rawness and inaccuracy. We do the best we can with what we know at that time. I have learned an incredible amount about birth, life, and humility in the past four years, and I'm sure I will be able to say the same thing in another four years. His birth, that experience, and the many months after changed my life and who I was meant to be. I now see it as the blessing in disguise that it was. And with The Birth of My Kids: Our Story (Part 3), I will bring it all full circle.

Here it is, Emmett's birth story:

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May 22, 2011 (originally posted)

For those of you who haven't been following my pregnancy, I was preparing for a natural and unmedicated birth. My pregnancy went extremely smoothly without complications. Everything was looking great and going right on schedule. However, the Army felt it needed to intrude on our plans and my due date was to fall on the same day of Loren's departure ceremony. He is set to leave for his Mob. station in a few days and we couldn't bear the idea that he would miss the birth of his first child (we didn't know if we were having a boy or girl). So my doctor decided she wanted to induce about a week early so that he wouldn't miss the birth and so that we could get settled in at home before he leaves.

That is what we were preparing for, but much like life in the military, Emmett's birth was anything but what we had planned.

On Thursday, May 19th at 4pm, I went into the hospital for my planned induction. Once they had me settled in and all my paperwork ready to go, they started me on Cervidil to get my cervix to ripen and get things rolling. I continued to have Braxton Hicks contractions for the first hour or so and then about 2 hours in, I started to have very strong contractions. After a couple hours, they had increased in strength and frequency and lacked a "down" period. I went straight from one contraction to the next without any sort of relief. Hyper-stimulation is a risk of using Cervidil, so they took it out hoping that my contractions would continue at a more normal and bearable pace so that I could progress naturally without needing and pain meds.

Well at this point I was extremely worn out and had been in constant pain for the majority of the night. At 11pm I agreed to Nubain to relieve the pain and give me a chance to rest and hopefully get a little sleep. I felt great! That stuff was like magic and I was able to sleep for a couple hours. A few hours later it had worn off and I was back in some major pain, so they agreed to give me a second dose explaining that it usually isn't as effective the second time. It worked good for me, but it pretty much put Baby to sleep. His heart rate was fine, but he lacked natural ups and downs and the Dr didn't like that, so she said I couldn't continue with that.

So at about 6am on Friday, they started me on Pitocin to hopefully get my contractions under control and regulated. Well, Baby didn't like that either. So they turned that off as well. I, against my original plan, decided that an Epidural was going to be the only way to make it through labor. (Having been in strong labor for just about 12 hours) I got my Epi and of course felt better soon after. So all morning on Friday, I was able to labor and progress with just the use of an Epi for pain relief. My cervix dilated and thinned out great, so things were looking good that with just a few adjustments to our birth plan, we'd still get our mostly natural birth.

And that is when things really went awry. At about 1 o'clock, they checked me and I was nearly to 10 cm, however there was a piece of my cervix that was a bit swollen and in the way. They wanted to leave me a bit longer to see if it would thin out on it's own. I felt the urge to push and my Epi had wore off enough that I could feel everything but was not in any pain. So the Dr and nurse decided I could start pushing and hopefully be able to push past that last little bit. I started pushing my absolute hardest, multiple times with each contractions. But I could feel that he wasn't really moving. I continued to push while they tried to get his head past that little bit of cervix, but he would slip back each time. After 2 hours of pushing, they finally got his head past it, and he was right there where they could see his head!

He was now in a position where it was extremely uncomfortable between contractions because he couldn't slide back up, but he wasn't moving down either. The Dr was concerned that his head just wasn't in the correct position and that his head was trying to come out sideways. She called the on call OB down for a second opinion. He checked me on the next push and confirmed that little man's head was lodged behind my pubic bone and most likely would not budge from my pushing. He tried to get his hands in to turn him, but there just wasn't enough room.

The OB then told us that in his opinion, a C-section would be the only logical option. Loren and I were both heart broken. It was our absolute last option and was our "only in an emergency" solution. Baby's heart rate was fine and he wasn't in any distress. I was also fine, but EXTREMELY uncomfortable because my body wanted me to push, but I had no where to push him. This being 21 hours into labor, 2 of which were spent pushing, I just didn't have it in me to continue trying different options. So we agreed and they prepped me for surgery.

Being exhausted and having essentially everything go exactly how I hoped it wouldn't, I was beyond emotional. I wanted it over and I was pissed at myself for not being able to do what I had planned. I laid in the OR with my eyes closed just wanting it to be over and not wanting to talk to any of the nurses. Loren was equally upset, but kept reassuring me that I had done everything I could have. The surgery went well and pretty quickly considering how long the rest of the process was.

But we weren't done yet. When the Dr pulled the baby out, Loren was able to stand up and take pictures of him being pulled out (very cool pics if you want to see them!). Loren immediately announced to me that it was a boy! I tried to smile, but I was so drained I'm not even sure I did. They took him off to the side to get cleaned up, but he wasn't crying. More and more nurses crowded around him with oxygen and all sorts of things, but he still didn't make any noise. I could see that he was moving a bit, but he was sort of behind me and was hard to see. I closed my eyes and thought for sure that after everything we had been through, that we were going to lose him.

Loren was able to hold my hand while still watching the nurses. I heard one of them call up to the NICU and said they needed a resuscitation. It was like a terrible nightmare that I couldn't escape. After almost 4 minutes they got him to whine a little, but he never did cry like a newborn should. Finally a nurse came over and explained that as bad as it looked, he was going to be just fine. Apparently whatever medication they gave me and gotten to him a bit and he was very groggy and out of it as well. His APGAR scores were 1 at 1 min, 9 at 5 min and 9 at 10 min! Talk about scary!

They got him cleaned up and I got to give him a kiss before him and Loren left us to go wait in recovery. It took what seemed to be forever to stitch me up, but the worst part was, I had the shakes...BAD! I couldn't NOT shake. It was like I was having a seizure. But it is evidently normal because of all the hormones. It was just the terrible icing on the cake to my ridiculous labor.

But since we got back into a room and settled, everything has gone wonderfully! Emmett has passed every test with flying colors, taken every needle prick and poke like a champ, and hardly cries more than a sad little whimper! Breastfeeding is going as well as can be expected. We're still both learning, but we'll get there. I am pretty uncomfortable as I essentially went through both a natural labor and c-section. But thankfully saved myself some very uncomfortable tearing, etc.

We are home now. Both my OB and the pediatrician okay us to leave a day early as long as things looked good with both of us. Most all the Dr and nurses knew of our situation and did everything they could to get us prepared and out of there so we could be settled at home for a couple days before Loren has to leave. We had some pretty amazing staff helping us out, and I thank our lucky stars for that.

Meeting my son for the first time during my cesarean birth.