New baby!
I don't have a lot of time to compose an exciting tale of mystery and romance, so I will just give a time line of events and a quick thought or two. Those of you who are tired of reading can go directly to photos on flickr, www.flickr.com/photos/jacobfeuerbach/ to view some pictures.
Beginning:
Friday April 27th:
12:45 PM: We are at the doctors office for Natalie's prenatal
checkup and the doctor discovers that she is 1 cm dilated and
more than 50% effaced. She stripped the membrane, and said that it may
help to induce labor.
Saturday April 28th:
11:00 PM: Natalie begins having contractions. They are about ten minutes apart. We both are excited that it was about game time.
Sunday April 29th:
2:00 AM: We call labor and delivery and inform them that the contractions are fairly regular and that we might be in later that day. We call it a night and Natalie tries to get some sleep while having contractions.
7:00 AM: Natalie wakes up and thinks that her water is broken. She wakes me up and we start getting everything ready to go to the hospital. We don't get too anxious and take our time. We had been reading that it is more relaxing to do part of early labor at home, because the hospital can interfere with concentration, relaxation and can wear the laboring mother down.
10:00 AM: We get into the triage room at the hospital and Natalie gets hooked up to the monitoring equipment and answers some questions. Doctor Thoma was at the hospital and she came up once she heard that we had arrived and possibly were in labor. She has been Natalie's doctor throughout the pregnancy and will be our family doctor. She examines Natalie and finds that she is 4 cm dilated and 75% effaced. Natalie was definitely in labor!
10:30 AM: We get moved to the actual labor and delivery rooms and begin working on getting this baby out so we could finally meet him.
We go up to the floor above Labor and Delivery and walk the long corridors. We have to be back every 30 minutes to get the babies heart rate checked. That gives us enough time to do a quick down and back. We continue doing this until Natalie's next pelvic exam. During this time her contractions are getting steadily more intense and I can see her beginning to work harder. I try and help her relax during the contractions and try rubbing her back to ease some of the tension.
12:15 PM: Dr. Thoma gives Natalie the exam and find her 6 cm dilated and 90% effaced. The doctors and nurse are very sure that the baby will be out that night and even suggest that Natalie will be eating supper later. It was very exciting news to hear. Natalie decides to give the whirl pool a try. She jumps into her swim suit and slides in. It seemed to help with the contractions, but the were still coming about every 3-4 minutes and usually lasted a minute. The nurse was able to monitor the baby's heart rate with a portable doppler monitor so she didn't have to get in and out every thirty minutes. My job is pretty easy at this point, say nice things, mark down the times and duration of the contractions and get her anything she needs. The two hours go by and towards I could really see the effort it was taking her to get through the contractions.
2:15 PM: Her next exam finds that she is only 6.5-7 cm dilated. Which was a little disheartening because of the speedy progress she had been making. Natalie decides to give the ball a try for her next contractions. The ball we used is more like two balls right next to each other and in the shape of a peanut. This allows her to sit on it and not worry about falling off. She continues to work hard through the contractions and I try my best to support and comfort her. The contractions are getting closer together and lasting longer than before. The ball seems to be helping but she moves around and tries some different positions. I am finding my role to be more important because the contractions are intense enough that she tenses her body up to deal with the pain. It was my job to notice this and help her to relax so the contraction wouldn't be inhibited by her tense body. She is doing a great job, and I was beginning to wonder if we had practiced enough, if it was a bad idea to not actually go to a Bradley Birth class and just "do-it ourselves", and if we were strong enough to take the teachings we had read and actually implement them.
The exact time of events start getting a little fuzzy here, but I'll try my best to recall the events as accurately as I can remember.
4:00 PM: Natalie contractions are getting very strong and she gets another exam. She is a full 8 cm and coming along nicely. The doctors assure her that she will be fine without medicine and to keep on doing what she is doing. We go contraction to contraction, I assure her that we are almost there and it will be only a few more. She concentrates and gets through each one, some are very hard but she sticks with the plan. We try a lot of different positions and just try to make through each contraction as it comes. They are starting to feel like they are coming one right after another. It is amazing to watch her work through them, it looked terrifying but she was doing great. I can see her getting tired and she starts to verbalize her doubts. I just try and reassure her that she is doing perfect and it will be over soon, just a few more contractions was a line that I used quite frequently.
4:30 PM: The contractions are close and intense lasting more than 80 seconds and coming very frequently. Each one looks painful and it takes an extreme amount of effort on her part to get through each one. Each contraction I have to reassure her that everything is OK. She has a couple that she screams out and says she has the urge to push, I tell her to not push and it will be over soon. I see this as a sign to get the doctor. I go into the hallway and say "Kate (the doctor) I think Natalie needs to talk to you. Natalie gets examined and she is fully dilated on the left side and almost fully dilated on the right. The doctor asks Natalie to lay on her right side for the next contraction, this was described by Natalie as "horrible", but it did the trick.
The nurse and doctors get the bed set up for the pushing phase.
4:45 PM: The pushing begins! Each contraction I pull Natalie's left leg up to her chest, grab her left hand and help hold her head down to her chest while she pushes. My days of wrestling were finally paying off, the position closely resembled a cross-face cradle. She seems to be getting a little bit more time between the contractions and she is doing beautifully. Every once in awhile she belts out a scream and the doctor yells, "Natalie compose yourself" it seems to help her refocus on pushing. After a few contractions the doctors have me go down to the business end of this operation and take a look, I can see the babies head trying to make it down into the vaginal passage...I could see hair. I go back to my post and help Natalie any way I can, dab her with we wash clothes, feed her ice chips and give her positive assurances that she is doing great. I feel a little shy at first telling her things but that quickly fades and I am full blown yelling my support. Natalie later described it as rugby yelling and says that I've never yelled at her like that before. I would describe it as supportive, and stern but necessary. She continues working hard and the baby keeps on moving down. I will let her write her own account of the different feelings she was going through, but at one point the pushing contractions were quite painful and the doctor says, "Ok you are going to feel some burning feeling down there while everything begins stretching." Natalie replies, "Anything will be better than this." From what she has said to me, she was wrong, the burning was worse than the previous pains. Soon each push you can see the head come out a little further. I was beginning to worry in my head because the head only looked like it was really small. She kept pushing and all of a sudden that small head I was looking at turned into a grapefruit sized baby head. I was amazed. Natalie kept pushing, and then the doctor started to pull. The babies shoulders had gotten caught on her pelvic bone, which is called shoulder distortia. Then all of a sudden the baby was on Natalie's chest, it was amazing. There was a little more work pushing out the placenta and a little bit of cleaning up for the doctors but our baby was born at 5:36.
More later on the rest of the hospital stay.
That is my summarization of the whole process from beginning to birth. I have a new found respect for women, not just from the laboring but the whole pregnancy process. It has been amazing.
I mentioned the method we were using somewhere up above, it is called the Bradley Birthing Method and it teaches techniques to successfully have a non-medicated pregnancy. I am so happy that we were able to accomplish our goal that Natalie had proposed to me several months before. We wouldn't have made it through the delivery like we did without a lot of practice and trust on both our parts.
Go take a look at the baby pictures on flikr and here is one of Natalie and Jackson that I took 5 minutes ago:
~Jacob
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