I must get some of my thoughts and memories down before they start to fade. I wanted to get a good solid birthing story out. I have quite a few notes jotted down with pen on paper, so that is a good start.
We are so happy that Gilby is here. The journey to meet him was quite the emotional workout. The hardest times I have ever experienced and of course the hardest thing K has ever been through. Thank goodness the outcome was so marvelous!
K tried out all of the different birthing options delivering Gilby. I’ll give the abridged version of the story here for the journal.
On Friday night (11th) K had some stirrings that she thought might be something.
On Saturday (12th) we continued with our normal activities like mowing the lawn (me). By the night time around 6PM K started to feel what she was beginning to think was contractions. Here she started to feel it all in her back. We called K’s sister, Sarah who we had come over to the house. Sarah was our doula and did an amazing job. We can’t imagine how it would have been without her there.
At 11:25 PM we thought (little did we know then) that the contractions were progressing along enough that we should go into the birthing center.
We chose to have a natural birth at Andaluz Waterbirth Center. They have been great. We highly recommend them.
We got to the birthing center at 12 in the morning on Sunday. There’s this horrible thing called back labor. K had outrageously horrible back pain during her labor. The midwives were begining to believe that baby was in occiput posterior position. Sunny side up.
K labored like this for 24 hours at the birth center. It was very hard for me to see her in so much pain. At hour 24 K was exhausted and we all were suffering from lack of sleep. After an examination it seemed that there hadn’t been any progression. K was ready to be done with the pain.
We all got in the cars and caravanned to Plan B. Oregon Health and Sciences University. We got settled in there at about 12 AM Monday (14th). Once there, the sciences kicked into high gear for us. K was given an IV and was brought to great relief with an epidural. K felt a million times better and was able to finally rest a little. One thing she said after the fact was that before the epidural all she could think about was the agony of the pain, but after the epidural she was actually really excited and thought a lot about finally meeting the baby.
K was stalled at four and a half centimeters dilation. They let her continue to labor with just the epidural for about 2 hours. After two hours without increased dilation they started her on a pitocin drip. We continued this way for 6 more hours. When they tried to increase the pitocin levels the babies heart rate would go up (or was it down?) so increasing pitocin levels was turning out to not be an option.
When K was examined again she was just a tad more dilated at 5 cm. This was far too slow of a progression for how long her body had been working at laboring. It was becoming evident that we were approaching a diagnosis of arrest of labor.
The baby was healthy and strong and the doctors were thinking that it would probably be good time to get him with a cesarian before waiting for it to become an emergency situation. K and I didn’t want to wait much longer and put baby’s health at risk so we agreed that it was time for a cesarian birth.
The doctors let Sarah and I be present with K during the operation (daddy was a given, having Sarah there also was a rule bender). I was very scared. Everything was SO intense. I was a mess while waiting to go in the operating room.
One of the cool, funny things that happened was the doctors agreed that they wouldn’t announce the sex of the baby, keep it a secret and allow K to declare it once she saw the baby. This was cool because it was something that I had thought would be special a while ago and then forgot about. When baby was born, the doctors lips were sealed, they showed us baby over the curtain and I instantly yelled “IT’S A BOY!” before K got the chance to announce it.
Gilby was born at 12:15 PM, Monday April 14th, 2008.
We were all besides ourselves with joy when we heard little Gilby crying and screaming. I held his little naked body next to K’s head so she could kiss and love him.
An hour later we were all together in the recovery room.
We would find out a few days later when talking to the doctor that operated on K that Gilby didn’t appear to be sunny side up but may have turned slightly at the last second. After 36 hours of labor his head hadn’t descended very far and he was in the womb sideways.
We had hoped to have a natural birth, but that didn’t work out, and that’s fine. We feel good about making the right decisions. We have a healthy baby!
There’s a larger coulda shoulda debate concerning cesarian births that I probably won’t have the strength to get into for a while.
This was the view from the window in our hospital room at OHSU. Down the hill and in the distance there is a nice shot of the city.
We spent the next 3 days recovering in our hospital room at OHSU. I went home once to check on things and get cleaned up, but stayed every night with Gilby and K.
That OHSU campus is something else! What a massive complex. I was quite impressed with the crazy eclectic architecture. Building stacked on top of buildings stacked on top of other weird buildings. There are a number of what look like to my untrained eye, architectural stunts being performed. For instance, what’s the deal with that mammoth bridge to the veteran’s hospital? I would really be interested in reading more about the history of the place. What made them think that it would be a good idea to build a giant hospital way up on the hill? Perhaps I will give it a good googling shortly.
Oh yes, I did ride the tram (free). It was pretty alright.
The staff at OHSU was amazing. We probably saw about 100 different faces during our stay. Every morning our team of 5 specialists came in to our room to wake us up and give us reports. We really felt like we got top notch treatment.
By day 3 though we were SO ready to go home. When we finally got home and were able to take a breath again, the water works flowed! Happy gusher tears of joy and relief.
