Birth Stories On Demand

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Thursday

Jan262012

Kristin's Birth of Mac

Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 7:12AM

This birth story was used by permission from Kristin's blog:

http://macattackmondays.blogspot.com/

Always Grateful for the Sound

It was cold in Ottawa yesterday. The weather channel was warning of a severe snow storm that didn't actually materialize but it was still very windy with a combination of snow and rain for much of the day. Mac and I stayed indoors and had a great day. He got to do many of his favorite things including lying around naked, smiling at the cat, smiling at himself in the mirror, playing with applesauce and bath time.

He was as happy as can be. And then today I woke up to a blood curdling scream. As I tried to soothe him he grabbed for my fingers and shoved them into his mouth. Not able to talk he was showing me. Inside his mouth I felt a razor sharp little tooth poking through his gums and knew we were in for a rough day today.

The poor little guy was in agony and couldn't quite figure out what in the world was happening inside his mouth. And my heart broke a little as his eyes pleaded with me to fix it Mama. So I scooped him up in my arms and spent much of the day rocking him and stroking his head. I gave him some Tylenol, a cloth dipped in breast milk and then frozen to suck on, and no less than one thousand kisses. And when it was finally time to get dinner on the table I strapped him into the Ergo and let him rest against my chest as I prepared it.

But every once in awhile the pain was too much for his Mama to soothe and he cried out. Muffled sobs and loud shrieks - baby was hurting. And as I rocked him I thought back to the day he was born. It was the greatest and scariest day of my life. In the middle of pushing him out into the world the doctor stood up abruptly and consulted the monitor. Before I knew it she was grabbing a vacuum and telling me that his heart rate was dropping and that they needed to get him out NOW. She disappeared between my legs with the contraption and after a few more pushes Mac arrived. His skin was a pale blue/gray except for the purple welt on his cone shaped head. And he was silent and still. Instead of having him put on my chest as I had planned, he was whisked away to a table across the room and a team of specialists quickly entered. They marched in single file as I lied there feeling more vulnerable and helpless than I ever imagined possible. I pleaded with Tracy to please, please go check on him, go see if he is OK, GO! But she was too petrified to move. Scared for my health and the trouble the doctors seemed to be having delivering my placenta, and terrified for Maclean, she stood transfixed with her steel cold hand wrapped around mine as stiff as cement. I loved her and hated her for that. When he was born he had an APGAR score of one. Medical staff use an APGAR test to determine the health of a newborn. Babies are given a score of zero, one or two in five areas (skin colour, heart rate, grimace response, muscle tone and breathing) for a possibility of 10 points. To put his score of one in perspective - zero is dead.

Each second that passed felt like an eternity. I couldn't tell you if it took 30 seconds or 10 minutes but eventually he cried. HE CRIED! His little lungs worked overtime as he screamed out scared, alone, confused and cold. He cried and cried as the NICU team continued to shuffle around him sucking stuff out of orifices and monitoring stats. He cried for his moms and we cried too - tears of joy because the sound of his cry was the best noise our ears had ever heard. It was music and love and the sound of angels singing.

It wasn't long after that (or maybe it was, time was so hard to understand) before his skin turned pink and he was wrapped up and handed to my wife. Safe in her warm arms the tears stopped. Well his did anyway, I was crying enough for all of us.

In the days and weeks that followed I felt bad for him when he cried. I did my best to soothe him but I secretly enjoyed the sounds as I remembered the deafening silence when the cries weren't coming.

So on days like today when tears and sobs and shrieks are plentiful I hold my child close to comfort him but I revel in his cries - always grateful for the sound.

Please follow Kristin's blog here:

http://macattackmondays.blogspot.com/

Tags: Birth, birth stories, birth stories on demand, Mondays with Mac, hospital birth, resuscitation, birth stories with pictures, blog, positive birth stories, inspirational birth stories

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Wednesday

Mar232011

Erin’s Birth of Miss H

Wednesday, March 23, 2011 at 12:28PM

When I first found out I was pregnant with Miss H, I poured over "What to Expect" type books about being pregnant. I wanted to know every step of the way what was normal and healthy. Was I gaining the right amount of weight? What did those twinges mean?

Over the course of the next few months, I would have a routine pregnancy. I had all the normal pregnancy symptoms: mild to moderate morning sickness, cravings and food aversions, intense sense of smell. I lost a little weight at first and then started gaining as I was supposed to be.

At the time, I was driving 75 miles one way to work to a job that I loved. As my pregnancy progressed, I began to worry about the driving back and forth. My back was killing me from sitting so much (and from being pregnant!), so I managed to work a couple of days from home. Finally, I told my boss that I would be resigning at the end of my 28th week. I could not risk going into labor on the drive on my way home, or in the city I worked in which was over an hour away from where my husband worked.

After I stopped working, I filled my days with watching "A Baby Story" on TLC and what seemed like incessant cleaning. My husband would come home from work and find all the cabinets organized. I think he even said something along the lines of, "Are you nesting or something?" Who me? I'm only 32 weeks pregnant! This is not nesting. Nesting comes at the end.

A few days later, I headed to my 32-week prenatal appointment. There was an unusually long wait that day, and I remember being irritated that things were so behind. When I was finally called back, my blood pressure registered 135/100 (I actually have that number committed to memory.) My normal blood pressure is 100/70. The midwife who met with me for that appointment noticed my increased blood pressure and sudden weight gain of 15 lbs in four weeks and looked at me with concern. She told me to take it easy and to come back in two weeks instead of four.

Oh, how I wish I could relive that appointment! How I yearn to remember to tell her how badly my back was hurting! How much do I want to go back to that exam room and beg her to check my cervix for dilation.

Hindsight is 20/20 friends.

After that appointment, I went to the grocery store. I drove home, unpacked the groceries, and made a snack. I lay on the couch for a while before I went to meet my husband at our childbirth preparation class. I remember feeling like I had to pee, and attempted to several times, but couldn't.

I drove to the hospital for our childbirth education class. And that is where my water broke. Right in the middle of practicing our relaxation techniques, I felt liquid running down my legs. At first I thought that I must have peed my pants, but it just kept coming and coming and coming.

At 32 weeks and 4 days, I was admitted to labor and delivery with preterm rupture of membranes. I measured 2 cm dilated and was told that I was not having contractions. The doctors decided to monitor me overnight and then keep me in the hospital until my baby was born which they told me would be no longer than two weeks.

I lay on the examination table and tears ran down my cheeks. I was not prepared for this. At all. We didn’t have a car seat yet. We didn’t even have her name picked out.

We called our families. Everyone sounded concerned. We were concerned. Neither of us knew what was happening, why this was happening, or how this had happened. We were going to have a preemie.

All night long I was having stronger and stronger cramps, but nothing was registering on my contractions monitor. I was being monitored by a nurse and an Obstetrical Resident and neither seemed completely convinced that I knew what I was talking about. When I threw up, they offered me anti-nausea medicine. When I told them that I was having cramps, they offered me pain medicine. I took both and later regretted it.

What was happening here is that neither of them was listening to me and realizing that I was actually in labor. I asked repeatedly to have my cervix checked, but they were afraid of introducing bacteria because my water had broken. Because I was so out of it from the drugs that I had accepted, I could not fully advocate for myself and demand another nurse and or doctor if need be.

The next morning after being told all night long that I was NOT having contractions, I pleaded with my new nurse (thank you shift change!) to have someone check me. One peek under the sheet and that doctor said, “Yup, there’s the head.” I was 10 cm dilated, +1 station, and ready to push. I also still had not peed all day the day before and all night. They drained 500 cc of urine from my bladder.

Because of the pressure my bladder had been putting on my uterus, I had what is called a boggy uterus. That means that I could no longer feel my contractions in order to push effectively and they had a hard time getting my uterus to contract down after my baby was born which led to a lot of bleeding.

Once I was able to push with coaching, we discovered why my contractions were not able to be picked up by the monitor. My baby was in the face-up position (occipital presentation or OP) which causes back labor. Helloooo!!

A few minutes later Miss H entered the world as a big 4lb-13oz 32-week preemie. She was wisked off to the NICU where she spent her first 25 days learning how to eat and growing.

Thank you for reading my story. Preterm labor can happen to anyone, and if I can help one person recognize the signs and help prevent them to experience what I experienced, then this all will have been worth it. Also, do NOT be afraid to advocate for yourself. Only YOU know your body and what is normal and what is not. Only YOU can tell your husband, your nurse, and your doctor exactly what is going on with your body. If the medical staff you are assigned is not listening to you, find someone who will.

{In case you were wondering, the low back pain I had been experiencing for weeks before my water broke was actually preterm labor. The increased blood pressure and sudden weight gain all should have been red flags. In my opinion, I probably should have been on bed rest, but failed to mention all of my concerns to my health care provider.}

Erin blogs at Cultivating Rosebuds, where she writes about the sometimes thorny, but mostly sweet adventure of raising her children. Her daughter read about in this story is now a happy and healthy 4-year-old princess. Her second daughter, Lil’ B was also born early at 35 weeks, spent one week in the NICU, and is now a firecracker of a 20 month old.

Read Erin's Journey as a NICU mom here:

http://cultivatingrosebuds.blogspot.com/2011/03/adventures-of-nicu-mommy.html

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Sunday

Feb202011

Gail's Birth of Dawn

Sunday, February 20, 2011 at 9:22PM

Gail’s Birth of Dawn

This is the story of my birth as writtem by my mom Gail Short on December 25, 1973 to me:

Momma was wide awake dressed and quietly slipping a few last into things into a small green suitcase, when your Daddy woke up and asked inquisitively "What are you up to?" "I have a feeling we might get that "special" Christmas gift you told Rene'a about." He turned to Rene'a who was just sleepily entering our roon and asked if she would like mommy to have our new baby this Christmas day. Rene'a immediately threw up her arms and clapped happily saying Yes! Yes! Yes!

Daddy placed the suitcase in the car and we went over to grandma Helen’s to visit. We returned home in the afternoon so momma could get some rest. We called the doctor and were given the "go ahead" to the hospital. We dropped Rene'a by Grandma's then went on to the hospital, checked in at 4:00 pm, then up to the labor room. That was easy enough; the hard part was yet to come.

Since I had such a long labor with your sister, Dr. Applegate speeded this labor up. It was hard and very rough, but within the hour I was overjoyed with the plump, pink little bundle lying beside me. I stroked your still damp hair, kissed your sweet pink cheek and wiped the tears from my eyes, then said my first I Love you to our lovely little girl.

**It's a short little story, but one I will always have. My sister was almost 4 years old when I was born and remembers asking Santa for me that year. She laughs that the next year she asked him to take me back. My mom also tells everyone that my sister and I were born at the same hospital, in the same room and with the same doctor. She also recalls that the doctor wanted to "speed things up" because he had a Christmas dinner to attend, he made it, I guess, because I was born at 5:52 pm the Christmas day.

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Tuesday

Nov232010

Julia’s birth of a daughter

Tuesday, November 23, 2010 at 4:12PM

Julia’s birth of a daughter

There have been very few instances that have really driven me over the edge, but the birth of our second child sticks in my mind as one that still leaves me shaking my head.

I was living in the same town as my parents while we were expecting my daughter. My mom was only ten minutes away, and we had decided that we would call her to watch our son when I went into labor. I had felt overwhelmed with the number of "visitors" I had while in labor with him, and since we had such a hard time keeping my mother in law out of the delivery room with my son, I had expressed from the VERY BEGINNING that I wanted this one to be just my husband and myself. Since the in-laws lived over an hour away, we planned to call them from the hospital to let them know that things had started, but I assumed that they wouldn't come to see us until the next morning, during visiting hours, and after the baby had arrived.

I left for the hospital about 11:30 that night, in pretty advanced labor. We waited and called my mother in law just before 2:00 am when it was obvious that I was going to deliver in the wee hours, mostly as a heads up for visitation the next day. My beautiful girl was born at 2:33 am, and my mother in law arrived just before three a.m. She had called her oldest son at two in the morning (he lived 45 minutes away) had him pick her up, and speed her to the hospital to "catch" the birth! They had just finished sewing my major tear, I hadn't even held my daughter yet (much less nursed her), and I looked over to see that my mother in law was now the third person to hold my newborn daughter.

I was even more irritated when I headed home from the hospital twelve hours later to find both my in-laws at my house already waiting for me. They were "showing support" in their way, and I just wanted time alone to bond with my child and recover from labor without needing to feel like my house wasn't clean enough or having to entertain company at 12 hours postpartum. (For the record, my parents called when our daughter was three days old to ask if I felt up to having company or if we needed them to bring anything over.)

Julia's birth of a daughter,

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