Ian’s here, part deux
Well, Ian’s officially 5 days old now. He’s as cute as you would expect from a baby. We have some good photos to show and Kristi has typed up her birth story, which I will show now:
Ian Joseph arrived on December 5, 2009 at 4:29 p.m. It took several hours of labor over the course of 3 days, but it wasn’t all hard. We labored at home for many of those hours only to have labor stall and start again another day. Finally, 9 days overdue and already dilated to 4cm, I woke up at 2am with a stabbing non-contraction pain below my belly button that moved straight through my back like I was being skewered. Knowing that this isn’t a normal part of labor, I grew concerned. The pain made it difficult to walk and intensified during contractions. We decided to go to the hospital since we couldn’t determine if this pain was a result of something truly serious and potentially life-threatening or if it had another cause. Despite our plans to have another homebirth, I felt at peace with our decision to move to the hospital.
We arrived about 3:30am and although having mild, but irregular contractions, I advanced to 5cm, but the baby was still very high. The unusual and intense abdominal pain continued making every contraction much worse. By 8:30am, I had been placed on pitocin, opted for an epidural and was 7 cms. The doctor and the nurse predicted a baby by noon. Jason and I just laughed…we knew my past history and knew they were way off base.
In the mid-morning, I started to feel symptoms of transition, nausea, vomiting, hot flashes, irritability. I was checked and still found to be 7 cm. No surprise to us, but I think the nurse expected me to be close to pushing. After this, I continued vomiting frequently despite being on an anti nausea med, my epidural had completely numbed my left leg so that it was completely immovable and I started feeling my heart race and palpitations. The nurse was very concerned about my heart and quickly we found three doctors in the room. The cardiologist was called and he determined that I had developed a serious arrhythmia called a-fib. So I was hooked up to more monitors, given more medicine to control the arrhythmia, the epidural was turned down, and a discussion ensued about how to get this baby out quickly. Thankfully, the cardiologist said I would be fine to push the baby out on my own, so we averted a c-section and/or a forceps delivery.
At this time, I cried, this was not the birth I had planned, it was worse and far more diffiicult to cope with than my natural births at home. I always thought an epidural would bring the desired relief, but instead it seemed to make everything worse. All I wanted to do was get up and walk around, but everytime I moved my head, I vomited. Several more hours of this ensued, after numerous checks by the nurse, she became concerned about the changes she felt regarding my cervix. She consulted my homebirth midwife, who was with us during this time, and after she too examined me…it was apparent that this was the same anomaly that had presented during the girls’ births. It also explains why it takes me so long to dilate the last couple of centimeters. Finally, the doctor came back and said I looked ready to have a baby. He pushed the the last bit of cervix back over the baby’s head and I started pushing at 4:16 and Ian was born at 4:29. That was the shortest pushing stage I had ever had. Ian had great APGAR scores of 8 and 9 and was nursing by 5pm. The medical staff was amazed that as soon I pushed the baby out my heart rate completely normalized. However, the nausea/vomiting continued after his birth and I begged them to remove the epidural ASAP. It took several hours for the effects of that to wear off. I was kept overnight to monitor my heart rate and thankfully, we made it back home before Ian was 24 hours old.
Everything is going well at home…Ian has regained his birth weight by 3 days old and is such a sweetie.
Now for the photos!!!
