Well, after all the effort into trying to have a vaginal birth instead of a repeat cesarean, my doctor told me last Friday (June 1) that she did not think I would go into labor before my pregnancy hit 41 weeks, at which time she would repeat a cesarean (on June 8). It was discouraging and upsetting, but I continued my acupuncture treatments and the power of positive affirmations.
It worked. On Monday, June 4, I went into labor with Lucas. It felt different than it had with Josh, and I wasn't sure it was labor, but I knew it was
something, and something we should have checked out, so we went in to find out.
I'd been feeling different all day Monday, but felt what I (eventually) thought might be contractions beginning around 1 pm. Around 3, I asked John to come home from work to be with me. By the time he arrived home, I knew we'd need to go to the hospital.
Our friends Michelle and Breon arrived to stay with Josh, and we loaded up and headed out. Josh gave us a parting high five.
We arrived at the hospital around 7. It had been made very clear to us that, because of my prior cesarean, we could not labor at home at all and needed to be in the hospital, under the supervision of a doctor, and on electronic monitoring the whole time. So as we arrived, they walked us down to our room. By then, contractions were about 5 minutes apart, and the labor was pretty hard. We waited, waited, waited, waited, alone in our room. We finally saw a nurse at 7:40 or so. We got the good news: I was 100% effaced and 2 cm dilated. It was really labor, we were staying, and baby was coming!
Our nurse said she'd leave us on the monitors for a bit to try to get a better read on Luke's condition--how he was handling labor (given Josh's fetal distress). Again, we waited, waited, waited. By now I was thinking that it was odd that we had been firmly lectured on our "need" for constant supervision, yet here I was in labor and we had seen no doctor, had not been assigned a nurse, and were basically left alone. Anyway, the nurse returned an hour later, and I had rocketed to 5 cm dilated! Halfway there! We were thrilled. There were high fives. It was hard, but it was really paying off to make so much progress in only an hour.
Our nurse said she'd get our room ready. We thought we were in our room and had already unpacked, so John started throwing everything back in our bag. Of course we needn't have rushed, we had plenty of time before anyone actually came to move us.
By the time we got settled in our actual birthing room, and got checked in, again, to the computers in that room, another hour had passed. This time, I was at 6 cm. I was hoping for faster progress, given the jump from 2 to 5, but at least we were moving forward. By now, however, labor was really hard. I took some fentanyl while we continued all the check-in and monitoring procedures, and continued to labor. It was hard work. Luke seemed to be posterior, so I was having painful back labor. After another hour or so, I was still at 6 cm and feeling a little discouraged. The nurse paged a doctor to break my water, thinking it might help things along. We also paged the anesthesiologist, because the back labor was getting to be excruciating and I was going to go for the epidural. Then my water broke on its own, but Luke didn't drop further down as we thought he would. The anesthesiologist prepared my epidural. Then...
Everything hit the fan. All of sudden there was a rush of activity. It started calmly but frighteningly enough--the nurse put an oxygen mask over my face and told John to hit the call button. People started flooding in. Fortunately, the doctor had already been paged to break my water, and the anesthesiologist was already there for the epidural, so everyone was there quickly. They were flipping me over and back, checking monitors, all a rush of activity. John thinks they tried some sort of electric shock wand too, I'll have to ask what that was at my follow-up appointment. It was all fast and a bit confusing. I didn't know if I was in distress (rupture of my previous scar?) or if the baby was. Everyone was talking, but they were all very active and we weren't sure what the problem was. Finally we understood that I was okay but Luke's heartrate had been decelerated going on 9 minutes. They had been trying to move him around, which is why they'd tried flipping me around, and were trying to get him more oxygen through my mask, but he hadn't rebounded yet. We would need another emergency cesarean.
Things went quickly from there. His heartrate actually finally rebounded before the surgery, but the doctor said she would not allow me to continue to labor given the situation and my prior history. During surgery, they could see what had caused the deceleration: his cord had gathered in front of his face, (not around his neck, just in front of his face), and he had leaned forward and pushed his head on it, effectively cutting off his own oxygen supply. When he finally moved, it relieved the pressure and his heartrate rebounded. So he had not suffered any actual problem and would be fine.
They also saw that he was not in fact posterior, but was facing sideways. He was head down, but instead of facing front or back, he was facing to the side, which is why the contractions were so painful and why he didn't drop lower when my water broke. The doctor said it would have caused further problems in trying to move him down the birth canal and, in fact, he probably would not have made it and it would have been an emergency c-section for that reason, if we had gotten that far.
He was born at 11:31 pm on Monday, June 4. He and Josh are both Monday babies.
7 pounds, 12 ounces
20 inches
brown hair, though I suspect it may be going blonde.
Now that you know the story, without further ado, here are the pictures:
Labor:
Birth:
(John calls this the hallelujah photo, for obvious reasons. You can almost hear the choir in your head. If only he were centered a little more under the spotlight!)
Meeting mom:
(I really liked that they delivered him directly to me. With Josh, they cleaned him up, weighed him, etc. before bringing him around for me to see. Here, they brought Luke right to me as soon as he was detached, then did all of his other stuff after we'd had a few moments together.)
Proud papa:
Proud mama:
