Mayah’s birth story
I figured that it is time to start trying to write out the birth story. I may have to edit it as I remember how things went, but this is a start… sorry it’s so long!
On Monday, August 18, I woke up and thought it was possible that I was leading fluid. I called my midwives and described everything and they decided to have me come in to check to see if my water was leaking or not. We went in to the appointment at 1:30. I had to hook up to the machine for the NST and to watch the baby’s heartrate. Everything looked great for baby, but it turned out I my water wasn’t breaking and everything was still in place. Kyle and I were kinda bummed out, but we weren’t in a hurry to rush labor because we knew it was important for the baby to be fully ready. We left the office and decided to go to Costco and walk around, and then to Target. I mostly wanted to do this because I didn’t want to just get back in the car and drive again. While in Target, I had a couple of deeper contractions than I had ever had. They were pretty far apart, so I didn’t see a reason to stick around in Olympia, so we headed home.
On the way home, I had a couple more contractions and by the time we got home I couldn’t talk or walk through them, but they were still further apart than they needed to be for me to think of calling the midwives again. We hung around the house for a while and gradually the contractions got deeper and more consistent (about 4-6 min apart). I finally called the midwives at 7pm and told them what was going on. Karen was on call and told me to go ahead and head to the hospital. We gathered our stuff up and headed out. By this point, contractions were so intense that I began to realize this must be the real thing. I got a little emotional as we left the house, not knowing what to expect in the next few hours.
After the long drive to the hospital, we finally got there at 8:15pm or so. Unfortunately, I had not dialated anymore since my appointment in the afternoon (almost 2 cm). The nurse called Karen and told her and she said to have me walk around the birth center for a couple hours and see if I progressed. By this point, I couldn’t walk or talk or even stand through contractions, so this walking around was difficult, but I knew it was important, so I got to know the walls and handrails in the birth center pretty well! We walked for a half hour (until about 9:30pm) and headed back to our exam room to see if there was any progress. I felt like I needed to use the bathroom first so I stopped in there and ended up getting very very sick, so much so that Kyle came in to help me. I was crying at this point because I felt so bad for making such a mess…
When the nurse came to the exam room, she was surprised I had gotten so sick and even more surprised that in that half hour, I had dialated to 4 cm. She said she was going to call and tell Karen about my progress and then I could go to a labor and delivery room and get in one of the big tubs. This sounded great to me! I was in a lot of pain and water sounded perfect for it.
We headed to the new room and had to get all situated. I was given my IV of antibiotics (group b strep positive) and then I was allowed to get in the tub. Karen came in a while after I had gotten in the water. I remember wondering if she had been there earlier if she would have let me get in the tub so quickly or if she would have had me walk the halls some more. But, I was very content in the tub and thankful for how deep it was. I stayed in til the water was getting too cold and then I got out to get checked.
I spent some time out of the tub on my side and then my back and then we decided to use the tub for a little more. So, I got back in the tub and was in there for a while until I felt totally different, I wasn’t sure if I needed to push or not, so we called for the nurse and right then, I started getting sick again…I got out of the tub and found out that I was only to 8 cm, so I couldn’t push yet. Pretty much I just tried many different positions as I tried to get fully dialated for the next bit of time. When I was finally fully dialated, it was somewhere around 5am, I know this because I was very distracted by the clock through the next couple hours.
Somewhere around this time, my contractions for some reason just seemed to stop coming or at least they weren’t as strong anymore as they were. This was strange to everyone, so we tried changing positions to get them moving again and they didn’t, so eventually I gave in to getting some Pitocin so that things wouldn’t just stop like they were. I was not happy about needing to do this, but realized that this is one of those times that an intervention like this may be necessary. I was so exhausted. I was very scared of the pitocin contractions (I had heard they were worse than other contractions), but in reality (at least for me) the contractions that started after this were the same as before… they just needed the jump start.
To make the next part a little shorter, I pretty much pushed in a ton of different positions for the next four hours or so. We tried laying on my sides, squatting, birth stool, and a few positions that I don’t know what to call them, but the goal was to get Baby’s head to turn correctly because it was sitting at a 2+ station for hours and not even beginning to mold. I also had a small lip on one side of my cervix that was keeping the baby from coming down any further. Each position we tried was done with the intent of getting things to progress without the needs for any other intervention. Karen came to my side at one point and sat down and explained what was going on. She explained where the baby’s head was and what should be happening (or should have happened at this point). Baby should have turned and the lip in my cervix should have thinned out, especially with all of the different positions we tried that were specifically targeting these things. She said that an option that we may need to consider soon was to either do a vacuum extraction or do a c-section. I felt so helpless at this point because I really didn’t want to use any interventions, but I knew inside that things were not progressing right. It just seemed like I was aimlessly pushing just to hear them say the Baby was back in the same spot as it was before each contraction. I didn’t make a decision at this point, I just continued to try to push the baby out in some of the different positions we had tried. After another hour or so, Karen came back and explained the situation again and said that we really needed to make a decision what we would do. I didn’t want to make any decisions and kept feeling so helpless over the situation. Finally, Kyle started telling me that it was ok to do this if this is what needed to be done and that he was proud of me for working so hard and that encouragement was enough for me to pull myself together and say it was ok for the vacuum extraction. Almost immediately the anesthesiologist was walking into the room to give me the single shot intrathecal that was required to do the vacuum extraction. This was a very stressful bit of time for me because I was still somewhat doubting the decision to do this, but on the other hand I knew we had been trying for hours and Baby’s head had not budged and I was so exhausted that I was beginning to not be as effective in my pushing. Karen had explained that if we chose to do the vacuum extraction, I still had to push and have the energy and strength to get the baby out, even though there was going to be assistance. If I didn’t have the energy and strength needed, it would turn to a c-section really quickly because of the stress that it would cause on the baby. I understood that now was the time to do it.
Once I got the intrathecal, it took just a few minutes to start working and then it was time to use the next contraction. With everything in place, the next contraction came and surprisingly in 3 pushes a baby came out! She was born at 9:23am. I was so surprised that there was a baby being laid onto my chest that when they said it was a girl I could hardly believe it! She let out her first cries immediately and I was so happy to finally meet her! I got to hold her for a few minutes, until they told me I needed to hand her to Kyle so they could stop my bleeding. He took her and just sat and smiled at her. This is when I realized that everyone was in a rush to get my bleeding stopped. I guess it was excessive and they didn’t want me to pass out while holding her. As I got taken care of, Kyle took her over and let a nurse start checking her. The nurse said she was going to need to check her blood sugar levels and the oxygenation in her blood, so Kyle went with her, while I was still stuck on the bed being checked and taken care of.
I guess by the time they got down to the nursery with her, she was fine and they checked her and confirmed that. They were back pretty quickly, although I felt like it was an eternity! I was so thankful to know that my baby girl was ok when they got back!
Kyle and I somewhere in this time period talked about if we still liked the name Mayah Elizabeth for our baby girl. We decided it was perfect and that would be her name. I was excited when Kyle could finally go down and tell our parents and family that we had a daughter! I guess he cried when he told them, which is very sweet. I have to say that there is no way I could have even begun to make it through the entire labor and delivery without Kyle. He was so supportive and patient. I am very blessed to have him in my life.
This experience was indescribable to me. It was not at all what I expected, but I am happy that the end result was a beautiful baby girl. We are very much in love with her and can’t imagine life without her!
