Birth Story - Dean

THE PREGNANCY
My journey to this point should be a separate blog post on its own, but here are the cliff notes.
In Jan 2018, I started to interview midwives and plan my perfect home birth. To my surprise, later that week I found out I was pregnant! So, we ended up having to chose a midwife sooner than planned. Since I've been through midwifery care before and my pregnancy and birth were uneventful (other than a surprise breech) I just went with the personality I liked most vs who might have been best qualified.

Fast forward to Memorial day weekend and I'm on my 2nd miscarriage. At this point I tried to focus on improving my health and keeping life moving as normal. One of the changes I made was getting regular acupuncture. In addition to the treatments, my practitioner told me I should hold off getting pregnant for 6 months! It was really hard advice to listen to, but we waited.

Now it's October and it's Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness month and I post about my troubles on Instagram. A friend from work sees the post and comes to talk to me and recommends her OBGYN. He has a reputation of being good at helping women get pregnant. So, even though I'm not a fan of this type of doctor and pregnancy path, I take a chance and visit him. We do some testing and start a treatment plan and by Thanksgiving, I get another positive pregnancy test!

So, now I'm in the care of an OBGYN and on the path of a hospital birth. NOT the plan I wanted, but it's the path I was on and things were going well early on. At my 9 week appointment, the doc pulls us into his office to discuss the pregnancy plan and he's already trying to schedule my induction, tells me I'll have to birth on my back, and he's totally opposed to delayed cord clamping. I felt these ideas where closed minded of him and I decided this isn't how my pregnancy will go and I leave his care.

Now, I'm on the hunt for a 3rd care provider...

Using Facebook as my research medium, I find a pair of midwives that work in a hospital and at 15 weeks pregnant I pick up prenatal care again. Everything is going smoothly until 38 weeks, when my baby flipped and became breech again. Since the hospital would require me to have a c-section, I was on the hunt again for provider #4.

At 39 weeks, the new plan is now to have out-of-hospital midwifery care and a home birth!!

THE LABOR
I had my 40 week appointment Wed, Aug 7th. I didn't feel any signs of labor but I was really hoping to go into labor that night. I worked from home that day since my appointment was in the afternoon and way down in Dallas. Mom was with me and it was all uneventful. Later that night, mom and I went Kohls to buy new bath towels. It was great because the cashier asked, "when are you due" and I said "today" 😆.

I went to bed that night like normal. Then around 3:30 am on Thur, Aug 8th I woke up with a lot of lower back pain. Since it was only in my back I wasn't convinced it was a contraction, but they were painful and I was already past my due date, so I thought "the timing it right". Since I was really worried if the full birth team would make it or not, I texted my midwife with a general update after about 15 min. Around that point I started timing the contractions and they were averaging 1 min long, but weren't consistent in strength - and were getting stronger but still only in my lower back (nothing in my stomach area).

Not long after 5 am I called the team in (well, I think Dan did) so they wouldn't get stuck in morning traffic. So, I would assume my team started to arrive 1-by-1 between 6 -7am. Meanwhile, Sean was sleeping and eventually got up and got ready for school (his last day of summer camp actually). By the time he was ready to go, I was in the tub and he came in to give me a hug (which we got a picture of!). His "visit" timed pretty well because I was in between contractions, but I could feel another one coming on and tried to wrap it up before it started.

Over the next few hours labor was going alright, but it wasn't progressing as it should. At this point no one was really saying anything but I knew something was off - not bad - but off. I was in an out of the tub for a few hours. The contractions felt a lot better in the tub, but I had started to notice they were slowing down too. Again, while I knew it wasn't "right" it felt good to have those long breaks. I was really getting exhausted. When I was in the tub for this last time, my doula decided to comment that my contractions are slowing down. I said I noticed that too and she suggested I get out of the tub to get this moving.

By now the main birth team wasn't in the the bedroom anymore, it was only me, Dan, my doula, and the photographer. My midwife came in and said if I can't get things moving, she was going to kick me outside to do some weird stuff (and it was really hot outside that day). She asked a few times if I wanted a cervix check and I kept declining. To get thing moving we started all the weird things, started with pacing the house fast, that didn't seem to do much. She figured the baby maybe needed to be positioned over my cervix better, so for the next few contractions they had Dan put a rebozo under my belly and lift up while I leaned back (we were both standing). 1) this didn't seem to work 2) was extremely painful.

They had me labor in the captain morgen position and do a number of contractions on the toilet. Overall, not much improvement....I think at this point my contractions were almost 20min a part. My midwife asked again if I wanted my cervix checked and this time I said Yes.

It was probably around 10am, and she confirmed I was fully dilated and she could feel a bulging bag and little wiggling toes. Maybe for the next hour they had me do a whole bunch of squatting, but it wasn't working - just made me more tired.

This entire time I kept watching the clock and felt like I was going to have my baby around 1-2pm. While at the same time, it didn't make sense since I was also seemingly so close to being done.

Maybe around 11/11:30 I asked my midwife if she wanted to break my bag, and she said she wasn't opposed to that idea - so she did. Nothing new happened after that. Maybe around 1:00pm my midwife said, "it's time to have the hard talk" and she recommended we transfer to the hospital.

I very quickly agreed that it was the best idea. She wanted me to go down to Baylor (and she already called them). I didn't want to travel that far so she said Presby Allen was an option and I asked if they have good baby care and the team said Yes - So, we packed up and got in the car.


THE BIRTH
It was only a 15min car ride, but it was painful as my contractions started to pick up. By going to a hospital I knew I was conceding to a c-section, but at the same time I felt like that wasn't my path.

We arrived at the L&D door and mom and dad were already waiting outside. Some nurse wheeled me into an L&D room for triage to prep for a c-section. An OB showed up and said I could only have 3 people with me, so my midwife, my photographer, and Dan stayed and my doula stood outside of the room.

The next bit of information is from a mixture of my memory and what other people have told me:

They nurses were moving fast, but not too fast as I soon said "the baby is coming out" and I could hear (my eyes were closed) the tone in people's voice of disbelief, but they checked and sure enough, baby Dean was really on his way out now.

At this point, the shit was hitting the fan in terms of what the hospital thought. I guess the room wasn't prepped to actually be used for a delivery so they started pulling out furniture so they could put in more equipment and more people. What was an OB and 2 nurses, turned into the Entire L&D staff on that floor - the placed was packed.

I'm wailing pretty loud to get Dean out, but things are generally clam. They have me in the stirrups and the OB said she's never seen a breech baby this happy before. I was watching the clock and it kept approaching 2pm so I thought I still should have this baby soon.

I eventually pushed out two legs and a butt - but after that things took a turn. When they saw the 1st foot my midwife and the OB kept saying, that's a big foot. And I guess when the leg came out, the OB thought to herself, that's a big thigh. And eventually they asked how big my last baby was. Nobody knew, and I wasn't in a place to speak yet - but eventually I did. I know all those questions were pointing to a big baby.

The doc got her hand up in my birth canal to see what she could feel (while Dean was also in there) - the was pretty awful. And she had her hands wrapped around him the entire time and said he was slippery and needed a better grip.

My midwife suggested I push him out on my hands a knees (probably at some point before this), but the OB said no way.

When it came time to push out the shoulder, I hit a place I never knew existed. To say I felt pain was an understatement. There are no words to describe what I felt, but maybe "being split into 2" or "about to explode outward". I went from grunting and moaning to screaming. A type of scream I've never heard before and was closer to a "being murdered" scream then a being in labor scream. Once that started to happen, Dean's heart rate started to drop and the nurses said "your baby isn't happy anymore" and that I needed to stop screaming.

They put an O2 mask on me and told me to clam down and take slow breaths until a contraction came on and that I needed to stop making noise, hold my breath, grab both of my legs, and use all that energy to push him out.

I eventually got him out and he was born at 2:17pm. I looked down and had a hard time seeing him because there were millions of hands and arms in my way, but I saw the doc cut the cord and pass Dean over me to another team of doctors. No one said anything at this point, but what I saw was a limp baby and never heard a cry.

As the OB stitched me up, a team of docs worked on Dean. At one point the OB hesitantly asked the team if the baby's heart was beating and they said Yes. Still no cries though. Dan stayed by my side but kept an eye on Dean (who didn't have a name at this point). He said he could see him moving and eventually heard a cough.

Based on the hospital discharge notes, it took about 10 min to get him stable enough to transfer to the NICU, but once they did, he was brought over to me so I could see him. Even at that point he looked good to me! They dropped the side of his bed so I could see him better and touch him a little bit. Then they took him out. I don't remember it, but I guess his first cry was in front of me as they were taking off the c-pap.

After this chaos - All the millions of people left, Dean and Dan went to the NICU, and my doula came back in. My midwife was the 1st to leave (to get to another mom). I called my parents (who were at Cracker Barrel) to come back and bring food. By the time they got there, my doula left and Dan was back - and my photographer were there. She stayed a little longer to try to get some photos of Dean in the NICU. Eventually she was able to and left, and mom and dad left too so they could pick Sean up from school/camp.

I was in that room for almost 3 hours, and since it was small and not prepped they moved me to a regular L&D&R room. I don't remember how it worked, but they brought Sean back while I was still in the first room, so he could visit. At that time, I told him he had a baby brother and he wiped his forehead and said "few".

THE RECOVERY
At about 2 hours old, I finally got a good look at my son, but it was via Facetime. Dean was crying and Bright red and Covered in machines.
He was about 4 hours old before I could see him in person and it wasn't until the next day that I could even hold him (Friday).

I didn't want to name him until I could hold him without the machines and without his hat. So he was labeled in the hospital as "Stach Boy", but we eventually hurried up on a name because the lady who starts the paperwork for the birth certificate needed a name for him. Getting his first name was pretty easy, but coming up with a middle name was much harder.

I was discharged from the hospital by late Friday afternoon, but we were able to room-in the same room for "free" while Dean was still in the NICU. So, we ran home for a few hours to eat and freshen up. By Saturday morning they let Dean room-in with us and put him in our care but they would keep checking back in. They said they just wanted him in our room for overnight observations. I agreed and thought we would easily be home by Sunday morning. When there was no sign of letting us go, I started to make a fuss. Basically a combo of demanding action and crying. By late Sunday afternoon, we were all home. Just in time to get Sean ready for kindergarten on Monday!