2006 Daughter #1Attempted natural, unmedicated hospital birth turned emergency c-section. We read the books. We took the classes. But no one told us about "Face Presentation". Maybe that's because it's just about the rarest birth presentation there is. I woke up around 3am with mild but regular contractions every 4 minutes. By 4am we decided to head to the hospital since my contractions were so close and regular. When I got checked I was dilated to a 1 or 2 (I don't really remember). They didn't admit patients at that time until they were 4cm, so they let us hang around a bit. At 8am I was dilated to 4cm so they admitted me. I had this horribly rude nurse who made snippety comments when I asked to have my blood pressure checked between contractions rather than during. "If she can't handle a blood pressure check during a contraction, how does she think she'll be able to do this without drugs!" Then she tried to give me an IV and busted a vein in each arm. Ouch. "I only bust two veins. I'm getting my charge nurse." Yep. That's what she said. But it was God's greatest blessing to us! An angel of a nurse came in, gave me an IV without any fuss (it was just an open line, since I declined fluids), then told me to get up out of that bed and get into the bath... and if I needed anything, or when I was ready to get out, just to pull on that red cord. When I was ready to get out, my best-friend with me pulled that cord... that first horrible nurse ran in and basically yelled at us for pulling the cord. I guess it was for an emergency, but I was just doing as told. Hours later, labor is getting rough, and since it hurt my hips so terribly to sit or lay, I did the whole thing standing. Note to self: next time, wear tennis shoes! I was getting really tired, and then the charge nurse kept coming in to adjust my monitors, and then the OB came in to check me. I was 8cm. Woohoo!!! Doing great! Except... The baby's numbers were doing funny things, so when he checked me we were all a bit shocked to hear him say, "I'm either feeling the baby's face... or its brain." Excuse me?! Bed-side manners, much? An ultrasound was brought in which confirmed it was, thank GOD, her face! She was what they call "Face Presentation, Menta Posterior", which is fancy doctor talk for "trying to come out face-first". Now, to clarify, and believe me when I say I've done a LOT of research on this after-the-fact... face-presentation is not all that uncommon, nor is it impossible to deliver vaginally. That is, if the baby also happens to be "sunny-side-up", or belly-up. In that case, it's not altogether uncommon for a face-presentation to occur. However, when the baby is back-to-belly, the "normal" way, AND face-presentation, they cannot come out. Their chin gets stuck on mom's tail bone. See the below picture. And this being my first baby, there was no way to physically alter her position. I wish there was... more on this when I had my 3rd baby... So the OB informed me that I'd have to have a c-section. I'd never had any kind of surgery before, and this was NOT in my birth plan! I was devastated and terrified. We all were. Everyone was crying or somber. It was hard to look at them in the face. I found out later that the entire Labor and Delivery staff had been rooting for me to have my natural birth (except the horrible nurse), and they were all so disappointed for us. That made me feel worse. Not only did I feel like I myself was a failure, but that I'd let down our families AND the hospital staff! It was kind of them, though, to be so supportive. I appreciated that. I walked down the hall to the O.R. to get prepped. My husband was held back in the room getting fitted for pretty blue O.R. clothes. They wouldn't let him in the room with me while they gave me the spinal block and I was so terrified. And that room is FREEZING! So all I'm wearing is the horrible hospital gown and my socks. I lay down and they tell me they're going to remove the gown. Now I'm there, on the operating table, freezing already, contracting while laying down, which is just awful, and now I'm naked. Oh yes, and then... add insult to injury, they took my socks! As if all this isn't enough humilation and discomfort, then they do wonderful things like bring out the shaver and the catheter. The only reprieve I had was that I could tell the spinal was beginning to work when I suddenly began to finally feel warm and I could no longer feel contractions. By now my husband was with me and I was a sobbing mess. I told him I was scared. At some point during the surgery my shoulder started hurting. I'm not one to complain, but more to dialogue so that the "professionals" know what's going on. As soon as I mentioned my shoulder hurting, the anesthesiologist took it upon himself to dose me up with demerol. I was all sleepy and couldn't speak clearly, but my shoulder felt slightly better. Thankfully it wasn't so much that I couldn't be aware of what was going on. Then I heard the wonderful words... "It's a girl!" (we hadn't been sure of the gender from the ultrasound we'd had) and then finally... "Look up! You're about to see your baby!" But no baby was shown. From the corner of my eye I saw a nurse quickly slip into the adjoining room and I saw a tiny foot from under her arm. Our little girl had "meconium staining" (she poo'd before birth, which can be very dangerous if ingested!). So they had to suction her VERY well and clean her off before actually bringing her to us. When they brought her to me, she looked like an Asian baby! She appeared darker-skinned than us, and so puffy from being pressed against my pelvic bone that her eyes looked narrow! She also had black hair! The only give-away that she was actually mine was that she looked like my baby picture come to life! Here I am... awww! In the end she was healthy, praise God! She had no ill-effects from the meconium or her poor positioning. She came 5 days after her due-date and was 8lbs 15 oz! She was born just about 15 hours after my contractions woke me up. While she was being tended to by the nurses in the nursery, with my husband and our families proudly looking on, I was in recovery. They spent a long time trying to get my body temperature up. One of my attending nurses was so sweet and trying to get me to see a silver-lining to the fact that I'd had a c-section, so she said, "Just think! From now on you'll get to schedule all your babies' birthdays!" My angel nurse... remember her?... heard from that adjoining room and hollered, "NO SHE'S NOT! SHE'S HAVING A VBAC!" Now I honestly didn't know what a VBAC was, but I trusted her and I had a hunch that I knew what it meant, even if I didn't know what the acronym stood for. It was that moment that I had hope that one day I would get my "dream birth". And I would! It would take a few tries, but I certainly would! Other fun tidbits about our experience. 1) I passed out in the shower and the nurses can all attest that "it's a boy". (My husband was helping me shower and didn't have trunks!) 2) I had no help with nursing. No lactation consultant came to help and I struggled with nursing for 4 months. I finally gave it up. 3) I had trouble bonding with my daughter. This was so hard. You know that moment you look at your baby and fall in-love? Yeah. That didn't happen and that was devastating. And people just don't understand and make rude comments. But it's real my friends, and it's VERY common for moms who've had c-sections, especially unplanned ones. Thankfully, about 5 weeks later, I looked at my daughter, and loved her. I loved her before with all I was doing to take care of her. But this was different. I finally FELT the love I was giving her. And it was beautiful! 4) I had a coldsore on my lip when she was born, so I couldn't even kiss her. That certainly didn't help with the bonding. 5) The pain in my shoulder during surgery was referred pain from the OB caulderizing a cyst on my ovary that he didn't tell me I had and didn't inform me he was going to treat. I read all about it in my medical records. 2007 Loss #1Just six months after we had our little girl I found out I was expecting again. This was such a shock. I told my husband on a Friday. We were both in such shock it was hard to feel excited. By Saturday, the idea was sinking in. Sunday, we were actually starting to get excited! And then I started bleeding. I went in Monday for a check-up and things weren't looking great. By Thursday or Friday that week, an ultrasound and blood-test confirmed I had lost the baby. That was devastating, despite our original surprise at having conceived again so soon. Every baby is a blessing and losing one at any gestational age is still the loss of a child. I was about 6 weeks pregant. (I was thankful despite all that I did not need a D&C, nor would I for the other 3 losses we would suffer over the next few years) 2009 Daughter #2Attempted natural, unmedicated hospital VBAC, turned medicated successful VBAC! I was approaching my due-date and my OB wanted to schedule a repeat c-section since it is againts California law to artificially induce a woman who's had a prior c-section due to hightened risk of uterine rupture. I was not going to be scheduled! I switched OBs and found one who was comfortable with me going up to two weeks past my due-date. Even still, I did whatever I could to induce labor on my own: spicy food, pineapple, even castor oil! The castor oil put me into false labor for almost 24 hours. When my contractions stopped, the wonderful nurse on-staff, who ironically was my "Angel-Nurse" from my first birth, but at a different hospital!, told me they could try to get my labor to kick back in again or I could go home. I opted for the latter. We went home, had dinner, and we slept. The next morning I woke at 8am with contractions that came every 3 minutes. The problem came when by noon I had not felt the baby move. Not even once. We drove to the hospital and thanked God that she was looking good on the monitors and Bonus! I was 4cm dilated! I continued contracting every 3 minutes. These contractions were no joke! They were hard and I was exhausted. By 10pm I was still 4cm and I told them to get me an epidural and break my water. At 11pm they broke my water and my epidural was giving me enough of a break that I could sleep. We sent everyone home to also get some much needed rest. Finally sometime around 4am. they checked me and I was 10cm! They suggested I let my body do as much work as possible. In the meatime, we called everyone back and I started pushing around 5:00. One thing I didn't mention. You may or may not know that epidurals work with gravity. I was lying on my left side, so my right hip was experiencing some intense pain. At one point I turned over to relieve that pain and my baby's heart rate dropped to SEVEN BEATS PER MINUTE! I immediately feared they'd rush me into the OR for a c-section. However the nurse was very calm and suggested I roll back over, which immediately caused her heart rate to recover. I mention this because when her head was out, the OB tried to remove the cord from around her neck. Now, one thing I've learned is that a "nuchal cord" is not uncommon nor is it necessarily dangerous. In this case, however, it was so tight he had to clamp and cut it off while she was still in me! My best guess is that when I rolled over to my right, it cinched the cord around her neck! When she came out, she was struggling to breath and her lifeline had been cut. It took the medical team FOUR MINUTES to get her to breath on her own! That is a lifetime! Watching them work on her across the room, helpless to do anything, I just kept saying, "I want to hold her, I want to hold her" because I couldn't say what I was really thinking: Dear God, don't let my baby die! The first image below is right after she was born before we all discovered she was having trouble breathing. I was just feeling the endorphins and feeling so in-love. The second image is after she was ok and they brought her to me. I was in shock. I was so thankful she was ok, but still so emotionally distraught over what had almost happened. In the end she was just fine! It was a very long and hard labor and ended with a scare, but she was worth every minute of it! And she came 5 days "late", just like our first. 2011 Son #1Drive-by baby! Check-in to birth in just 28 minutes! Story coming soon! 2012 Loss #2Story coming soon! 2013 Son #2Planned assisted home-birth turned unplanned unassisted home-birth! Story coming soon! 2014 Losses #3 & 4Story coming soon! 2016 Daughter #3Planned assisted home-birth. That's it. It actually went according to plan! Story coming soon! 2017 Daughter #4, Coming Thanksgiving!Planned assisted home-birth... we'll see how it goes! Story coming soon!
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