Norah's Birth Story

Tom and I arrived at Charlton just after 8am on Friday morning. Molly was waiting for us in the lobby. We headed up stairs to the Family Centered Unit and the nurse, Patti, showed us to our room. The first thing I had to do was change into a Johnny and provide a urine sample. It felt really strange to wear a Johnny but I did it anyway and got into bed. Patti hooked me up to the fetal and uterine monitors, started an IV of fluids, took my blood pressure and had me complete some paperwork. Molly, Tom and I basically spent the first few hours chatting and hanging out. They were watching Norah’s heart rate and my mild contractions on the monitors. I was knitting.

It seemed that 11 am came fairly quickly. That was when Patti and the other nurse (who’s name I forget) started the Pitocin through the IV. The dose was gradually increased for the next couple of hours. Around 1 pm, my mom arrived to join Team Norah. The pit hadn’t really done too much so around 2pm the covering Doc came in and broke my water. That wasn’t awful but it certainly felt strange. The gush of fluid was weird: basically like peeing but not being able to stop. It turned out that the fluid was not clear, meaning that Norah had a bowel movement in utero and there was meconium in the fluid. For this reason, they informed us that the neonatologist would be present at the delivery to suction her. I was glad to know that ahead of time so that I didn’t panic when he came in.

The breaking of the waters really got the contractions going and it wasn’t long before I was getting pretty uncomfortable. I changed positions in bed quite a bit, moving side to side and getting on my knees. I also sat on the birthing ball and ate a couple of popsicles. The intensity progressed pretty quickly and Tom and I decided that taking some Stadol through my IV might be a good idea. I wanted to keep away from the epidural but wasn’t sure that I could manage the pain I was having through the long haul with nothing at all. The Stadol really helped, mostly by making the high point of the contractions a little less high and by allowing me to relax in between contractions. Even with the Stadol, the pain intensified pretty significantly. I found that the breathing techniques helped a great deal with the pain but I was surprised by how much energy it took to use them. I would be out of breath at the end of a strong contraction and had to use the short break in between to get it back.

As we moved past the 5-6 cm dilation point, the contractions and the pain got much worse. It was really, really hard and I wasn’t sure that I could make it. I was a bit loopy from the drugs and I mostly kept my eyes closed because my vision was blurry when I opened them. Tom, Molly, mom and the nurses were great. They kept feeding me ice chips, putting cool cloths on my forehead and rubbing my back. I found the “counter pressure” on my low back very helpful. Some of the contractions were so intense it was hard to believe. I think I did a good job of using the breathing. There were some contractions that I yelled through and I remember crying during some too. I was able to get a second dose of the Stadol but only half the original dose because Norah was close to arriving and they didn’t want either of use to be too medicated.

The end of the active labor was pretty tough and honestly I don’t remember it that clearly. I remember that I kept moving around because I couldn’t really get comfortable. They ended up removing the external monitors because all of my moving around was knocking them out of place. They used the catheter type that attached to Norah’s head to keep tabs on her heart rate. During this time I was also having episodes of leg spasms (which will make more sense by the end). Around this time, I was having really strong urges to push. I remember thinking that pushing would feel better than the incredible pain I was having in my low back. I had to hold off though because I wasn’t fully dilated, especially on the right side for some reason. I remember hearing Jen say that the right side of my cervix was swelling. That can happen when the baby’s head is pushing against a cervix that isn’t open all the way.

Dr. Lowney came in couple of times to check on the progress of things. Finally he said it was time to start pushing. I was excited because I was sure that pushing would feel better than the contractions did. That turned out to be partially true. They got me in position and coached me to let the pressure build and then push. It really was obvious to me how this was supposed to work, your body just knows. The first few pushes were tough and I had to get the hang of coordinating my deep breath so that I could hold it for the count to ten. I remember Ally repeatedly telling me to push through my bottom and not through my face. This is where I started to realize that something wasn’t quite right. The pushing was really difficult (but not painful). I was having trouble making my legs do what I wanted them to do. Even though I was trying to push through my bottom, I kept pushing through my face. There were a couple of times I thought my head was going to explode. Tom said I turned really blue, almost black a couple of times. The pushing seemed to take a lot longer than I thought it would, especially since they had been telling me all day how low she was. At one point, the contractions stopped and they had to restart the pitocin. I think they had stopped it earlier because my contractions where so close together. It was funny-I realized that I was lying on my back, legs in there air, no pants on while about 8 people stood around waiting for the next contraction to come. Strangely, at that moment in time I didn’t really care. Finally after a bunch more pushes Dr. Lowney decided to use the vacuum to help get Norah out. Eventually, I pushed and could feel her head come out! He told me to sit up so I could see her. There was her head, sticking right out of me-kinda freaky. Now I had a better idea of what the problem was. She was facing sideways, instead of down. This meant that her shoulders were running up and down instead of side to side. That was the reason for the severe back labor (her digging her shoulder into my spine) and the pushing without effect. Even with the head out and the vacuum, Dr. Lowney had trouble getting her out. In the end, she arrived. She had a broken collar bone and I had a fourth degree episiotomy! Delivering the afterbirth and getting stitched up was not fun. My mom stayed up near my head with me and distracted me. I was also watching the nurses and Ernie take care of Norah in the “baby toaster” as Tom called it.

It was probably a good 15-20 minutes that she had been over there and I still hadn’t gotten to hold her. Finally, Ally brought her over and tucked her under the covers with me. Our first moments together weren’t that great. I was really shaky and uncomfortable, mostly because I was flat on my back and still being stitched up. There was still a lot of commotion in the room and both Tom and I were feeling bad about the fact that we had already “broken” her. I told her that we would get on track once everything settled down. And we did….

She had to spend quite a while in the warmer (which was in my room so I could see her and Tom stood next to her) so I had time to eat some dinner, go to the bathroom and take a shower. Once I was all settled, the nurse brought her to me (in her new purple hat from the volunteer knitters) and we got started with breastfeeding. Norah didn’t take to it at first, so I just held her for a while. We tried again a bit later and she has barely stopped nursing since!

We had a very nice night nurse named Shelby who checked on us and eventually helped us get moved over to our room on the postpartum floor. Finally around 1 am we sent daddy home to get some sleep. Norah and I didn’t sleep much that night. We just hung out together, she ate on and off and I played solitaire on my ipod. I was pretty jacked up from the whole experience. I was exhausted, hungry and sore, but I had my daughter and all was right with the world.