Baby Sadie

What an experience! I "thought" I knew what I was getting into. We've already done the whole "labor & delivery" thing with our first child and I felt SO confident that I had learned from the "mistakes" with that one and this birth would be so much better/easier/expected. Ha! One "mistake" I didn't learn from the first time was to not have expectations!

Background on Sophia's Birth (scroll down to skip to Sadie):
Our first child came 2 1/2 weeks early, my water breaking at home. It was a beautiful Sunday morning in November. We'd taken the birthing and labor & support classes and I was confident we would have a wonderful birthing experience. The contractions were so managable that I made Wade stop at the grocery store on the way to the hospital to pick up snacks for our Sunday School Class (not expecting our first child to be early we had signed up to bring snacks to class that Sunday). Just to be sure we got the right thing I even went into the store and did the shopping with Wade, then we headed over to the church to drop the snacks off - this time Wade wouldn't hear of me getting out of the car to go with him to drop the snacks off. The contractions were getting longer and closer together and I guess he didn't want me to have the baby in the church ;) We made it into the hospital, contractions still suprisingly managable and I am thinking this is going to be easier than I thought. Then the nurse "checks" me... Wade later described it saying she decided to check my molars by taking the long route :p Everything we had been expecting went out the window at that point, the pain went from slightly uncomfortable to mind numbingly painful and despite all of our planning, classes and carefully packed "labor" bag I had an epidural. From the time my water broke to the time I delvered Sophia I was in labor for 13 hours, of those 13 hours, 4 were spent waiting for family to arrive and 2 were spent pushing (because I couldn't feel anything with the epidural). While disappointing, it was a blessing because when Sophia was born her cord was wrapped around her neck and she was a blue-grey shade, which concerned the midwife enough to pull Sophia out both shoulders at once (like a linebacker - according to Wade). It took them close to 5 minutes to get Sophia to cry/breath. The epidural saved me from an even greater amount of pain in the end, as I needed about 12-15 stitches, but still we thought we learned enough from the experience to be able to have our second child medication free.

Sadie's Birth:
At my 36 week Dr apt. they do a "check" and discover that I am 80% effaced and 2 cm dilated. Given the fact that Sophia was 2 1/2 weeks early, the midwife tells me that while it is not uncommon to walk around like that for weeks, I should be prepared to "go any day now." Every week at my check ups I am further dilated, but no contractions...every week the midwife would say, "be prepared to go any day now"... finally at my 39 week Dr apt. the midwife checks me and discovers I am 6 cm dilated with still no contractions. She tells me I can go into the hospital today or tomorrow to have them break my water, but she doesn't want me walking around any longer than that or I might not make it into the hospital. Not wanting to have this child's birth make the 10 o'clock news because we had to stop on the side of the road to have the baby, we opt to go in on the 24th.

Thankfully this gave us enough time to call my parents, who were here in about 11 hours, get some last minute things finished & ready for baby and make sure we had everything we needed to go to the hospital. Being the planner that I am, knowing you are going to have the baby on a particular day was a pretty nifty deal. My mom was even able to go with us to the hospital and be in the delivery room the whole time.

So we wake up on Thursday, June 24, very excited to be going in to have our second child. We arrive at the hospital armed with the knowledge that we gleaned from Sophia's birth - I don't have to be checked by the nurses, I can wait and be checked by the midwife, - I don't have to stay attached to the bed, I can get up and walk, move, use all of the handy dandy labor techniques I never got to use with Sophia's birth AND with the knowledge that this delivery is going to go by much faster.

We get settled, the midwife arrives, she breaks my water at 9 am almost on the dot, then says, "now we'll just see how you progess." She heads out the door to do something and I have my first contraction. "Woohoo!!" I yell, excited to finally be on the way to having this baby. The nurses look at each other knowlingly, unfortunately I dismissed the exchange, little did I know...

The contractions wasted no time in coming, and I wasted no time in getting out of bed and putting to use my two classes of labor & support techniques. I used the birthing ball, I walked, I was massaged by my fabulous husband, I breathed, I counted, I visualized, I prayed and 30 minutes later the contractions were stronger, longer and harder and I was starting to get vocal.

At first it was just, "Ow," then the "ow's" grew into "This SUCKS!" mixed with "Oh Father! help, please help me do this!" and another 15 minutes later I was debating with myself about why I wanted to do this medication free. But still I kept at it...for another 15 minutes... At that point the pain was so bad I couldn't even talk, all I could do was utter a weird gutteral half scream half growl thing. Then with the next contraction, Wade told me to breathe and I snapped. "I don't want to freekin' breathe!" I hissed at him. Apparently when in extreme pain I get grouchy :p

It got to the point where I was so worn out from the lack of sleep over the past week (finishing an addition while expecting a baby at any moment is NOT recommended! And no we did not plan it that way, the addition was *supposed* to be finished over a month before the baby's due date) and from the pain that Wade grew concerned as he tried to engage me in between contractions and I was barely able to respond - I simply did not have the energy and by that point I was seeing three of him and it was too confusing to try to figure out which husband to respond to!

So, knowing it would take about 30 minutes to get the epidural going, we decided to get the IV needed for it started, just in case, and hoping that the IV fluids will help "revive" me enough to push through (<- ha! push, get it?! I know, I'm corny!). So the nurse leaves to get the things for the IV. 30 minutes later we get the IV going, by this point I can't even respond to Wade in between contractions, all I remember thinking was "I just need to sleep, quit talking to me and let me sleep," as if a person can sleep in the 30 second interim between contractions...

Apparently the nurse decided to start the IV in the middle of a contraction and had to deal with a moving target. The good news, when you're having a contraction, you don't notice the pain of being poked repeatedly in the arm with a needle...

The IV finally got started and I came too enough to have the following conversation with Wade:
Wade: Do you want to do the epidural? We could always try some of the other pain relief options...
Me: No, that's not good for the baby...
Wade - converses with nurse & gets confirmation that the epidural is really the only thing (other than med free birth) that doesn't have an effect on the baby
Wade: Do you want to do the epidural? You can do this you know...
Me: Yah and I could also jam a red hot poker into my eyeball...(contraction comes, pain is even worse to the point that I hit the bed rail repeatedly, realizing I'm SO not in control at this point and not wanting to add the cost of a new hospital bed to our bill...) Ok, I want to do the epidural. I guess I'd rather have them jam a needle into my back than jam a red hot poker in my eye (made sense to me at the time :p).

We have to wait another 30 min. to get the epidural. It is now 2 hours into labor, the Dr comes in to do the epidural, the nurse checks me again and tells me I am almost 10cm, she neglects to tell me I can start pushing any minute, Wade is simply focused on getting me to hold still long enough for them to get the epidural going so I don't end up paralyzed because I moved at the wrong time, the nurse pushes a pillow into my arms and says, "Here, hug the pillow." A contraction starts again and I throw the pillow hissing (apparently I also do alot of hissing when in extreme pain), "I don't want to hug the freekin' pillow!" I found out later she wanted me to hug it so that I would curve my back the right way for the epidural, thankfully I was able to apologize to her before they moved me to my overnight room.

Dr. decides to to a CSE (combined spinal block and epidural) The spinal block kicks in immediately and I transform back from Mr. Hyde, to Dr. Jekyll. The epidural Dr leaves, in comes the midwife, checks me and says, "Ok, I see the head, time to push!" I almost turned back into Mr. Hyde. Had I known that I would have sucked it up!! Argh! Oh well, the lack of feeling in my uterus is an amazing relief, so I go ahead start to push.

Because I opted for the epidural, they now have me strapped into the bed, so to speak, with a monitor for the contractions and a monitor on for the baby's heart rate. With the first push, the nurse says something about the baby's heart rate. The midwife pulls out a hand suction do-hickey and attaches it to the head, with the next push she starts to pull, her manner changing from sunny to serious as she tells me to push as long and hard as I can, the suction thingy pops off. This goes on for a while with the hand vacuum continuing to pop off before the midwife can make much progress. The nurse says something again, and suddenly the room goes from two nurses and the midwife, to literally 12 people, including the Dr on call and some weird machine thing (I later find out it is a high powered vacuum to help pull the baby out). The baby's heart rate had dropped and wasn't going back up, so the midwife wisely called for backup.

The Dr. had me change positions to push and told me to not push on every other contraction, that helped bring the baby's heart rate back up a bit, but still the urgency to get the baby out was clear. Of course I'm pretty much oblivious to all of this as I am just trying to figure out how to push when I can't feel anything. As soon as I get "pushing" the right way so that everyone in the room would get more excited and encouraging, I would run out of air and have to take a breath and then start all over.

All in all, I pushed for about 30 minutes. They didn't end up using the Baby-Vac 2000, which is a good thing. Wade said that the baby's head looked like a lego block from just the hand vacuum the midwife was using.

Baby Sadie (Mersades Marie Mascia) was born at 11:32am on June 24, 2010. She weighed 7lbs 14oz and was 20in long.

In the end the epidural turned out to be a blessing in more ways than one. First, if I had never had the epidural I would not have been strapped up to the baby heart rate monitor and they would not have known the baby's heart rate dropped and our second child could very well have been born dead. And finally, the mid-wife, who is very pro-med free birthing, told me she was glad I ended up getting an epidural, as all of the vacuuming to try to pull the baby out would have been excruciatingly painful, much more so than a regular delivery (according to her) and because of the focus on just getting the baby out, I tore once again, which would have also been incredibly painful to feel.

So while it was not the birth experience I expected, it resulted in a LIVE, beautiful, healthy baby and a damage free medical bill ;) If we do decide to have another baby, I will most definitely NOT have any expectations for the birth and I will be sure to have them start that IV right away. :) I may just make Wade a shirt to wear during labor & delivery that says, "Red Hot Poker in the Eye or Needle in the Spine"