Birth Story from Mom's Perspective

Well, it’s been a couple weeks since Eli was born, and I’m starting to feel like my feet are underneath me again. So, I thought I’d share my view of our labor and delivery story.

It all started on Wednesday, May 25, after I got home. I had gone shopping for a few hours after work and was really exhausted. Jon was working later that night to try and get some projects done before the baby came (little did he know!). Anyway, I went to the bathroom and was leisurely enjoying a magazine in the potty when I felt a gush of very warm fluid. I immediately knew what it was and was terrified. First I went into denial – “That wasn’t my water breaking, I just really had to go to the bathroom some more and couldn’t control myself, yeah, that’s it.” When I stood up and walked into the kitchen though I knew it wasn’t a bladder control issue. I felt more and more liquid gushing out – I was afraid I was going to leak on the floor. I ran back into the bathroom and just sat there crying my head off until Jon got home (thankfully only 5 or 10 minutes later). I was really terrified and overwhelmed – this wasn’t the way this was supposed to happen! The baby was two weeks early, I knew it wasn’t just a trickle of fluid that I was having, and I had visions of everything we had worked so hard for in preparing for childbirth being wiped away. Plus, I had left my childbirth books at Jon’s mom’s house, so I didn’t have any of our notes and readings to reassure me. Once Jon came home and comforted me we called the doctor. My water had broken just before 8 pm, and the doctor said we should head into the hospital to get checked out to make sure everything was okay. Jon was thinking that we were going there and would probably come home, but I had a feeling that we were going to be there for the long haul and only coming home with a baby in our arms. Jon made me eat my dinner, but I didn’t have much appetite, I just kept crying. We packed our bags (we weren’t completely packed), called our moms, and then headed to the hospital.

We arrived around 10 pm and were brought into the triage area were I was hooked up to contraction and baby heart rate monitors and my fluid was checked. It was amniotic fluid that I was leaking, and there was also meconium in the fluid, indicating that the baby had had a bowel movement and was under some amount of stress. I was hooked up for about an hour, and started having irregular contractions. When they checked my cervix though I was only 2 centimeters dilated and my cervix was still very firm. The doctor gave us two options – put in a cervix softening agent or start pitocin. Well, I didn’t want either one of those! They knew our birth plan and desire to have as natural a birth as possible, and gave us another option of walking the halls for a few hours to see if my natural contractions would start up and take over. Then they would recheck me and see how much we had progressed. We opted for that option and were admitted into the hospital around midnight.

Around 1 am Jon’s mom arrived and we finally were situated in labor and delivery room number two. Jon and I took off walking the halls, checking back with the nurse to be monitored about every half hour. My contractions were getting stronger and more frequent, but were very irregular and erratic. Sometimes they would be about 2 minutes apart and then the next one would be 6 minutes later. They weren’t really settling into a rhythm that the doctors wanted to see, and the clock was ticking since my membranes had already ruptured. Jon and I were very very anxious at this point since it was sounding more and more like the plan was to get pitocin and we had visions of a whole cascade of things that we didn’t want – continuous monitoring, an epidural, etc. Mom wrote in her notes on the birth that when the nurse asked for a copy of our birth plan I replied, “Well, that’s all gone out the window already!” Both Jon and I were quite worked up about everything and it was such a blessing to have Jon’s mom there to pray with us and to give us another perspective of staying calm and doing what was best for our baby.

After walking the halls for about 2 hours and taking a shower there still wasn’t much progress with contractions, and we were re-checked by the doctor around 3:30 am. I was 3 centimeters and now 70% effaced. Meaning, my cervix was now too “ripe” to have the cervix gel, but my contractions were still not strong enough or regular enough to make significant progress. The doctor recommended that we start pitocin to get the labor started (I wasn’t technically considered “in labor” yet!). Mom’s notes record that the doctor told us that the risk of infection was significantly higher 18 hours after your membranes rupture (which would be about 2 pm for me), and I most likely had at least 7 more hours until full dilation with the pitocin, and then time for pushing as well, which would put me pretty close to the 2 pm time. Jon and Mom and I talked about it for a while and finally decided to go ahead with the pitocin and get our baby on the way out!

At 4:40 am I was finally hooked up to the pitocin, and was actually able to rest for about 2 hours, since the contractions weren’t that intense yet. Jon and his Mom were able to sleep a little, and though I couldn’t sleep (those darn contractions have a way of waking you up!) I was able to rest. Around 7 am the doctor came back in to visit and recommended that I get out of bed and in more upright positions to see if we could get the contractions, which were now quite regular, to be more productive.

Once I became vertical I started having a lot of pain in my back. I tried sitting on a birth ball for a while so I could lean over the edge of the bed and relieve the pressure on my back, but the baby’s heartbeat kept getting lost by the monitor. Our nurse, Shannon, kneeled next to me for at least half an hour trying to adjust the belts and find Eli’s heartbeat. That was the most annoying part of the whole labor – I was having to constantly worry about the stupid monitors instead of just being able to focus on relaxing through contractions. Finally Shannon told me that I couldn’t sit on the ball anymore since we weren’t getting enough stretches of Eli’s heartbeat being recorded. She settled me into a reclining chair, and though it wasn’t as comfortable as the ball, it was better than laying flat in bed!

Once in the chair I felt like the contractions started to pick up. By this time they were at least 2-3 minutes apart and lasting about a minute. I started having to actively work to relax through them and was not able to talk during them anymore. Jon’s mom (who had woken up at 7), now woke Jon up so he could help me. I was in the chair for about an hour and really felt like my back was hurting, so Shannon suggested that we get a telemetry unit on me and I go in the Jacuzzi shower and see if the jets on my back would feel good.

The shower was wonderful!!! I had to hold the unit that recorded Eli’s heartbeat at a weird angle so it would pick up the heart beat, but it was worth it! My back felt much better under the warm water. Once again though I felt the contractions get more intense and closer together. Jon was great at helping me through them though and keeping me focused. After about 45 minutes or so Shannon suggested that we get out of the shower and try lying on our side in the bed with my legs propped up to get my pelvis open a little more. By the time I got in bed and on my side I really felt like the contractions were intense and VERY close together. I felt nauseous and Mom noted that at 10 am I started throwing up. It was red from the red jello I was eating and Jon thought it was blood at first. I remember, after throwing up, telling Jon that I didn’t think I could do this much longer. Jon and Mom took this as a sign that I was in transition and were very supportive that we were close and our baby was almost here, which helped me stay focused.

At 10:10 am Dr. Merkel came to check on me and explain that they needed to place an internal contraction monitor. We had done a good job getting Eli’s heartbeat recorded (finally!), but now the contraction monitor wasn’t working right! So they couldn’t tell when his spikes and dips in heart rate were occurring during the contractions, and were not sure if they were normal or not. They also wanted to place a catheter inside me which would add fluid back into the womb since I was losing quite a bit of amniotic fluid. At this point I didn’t give a fig newton what they wanted to do, I just wanted to the baby out! And I wanted to know how far I was dilated.

When Dr. Merkel checked me and placed the internal monitor though, I was only at 6 centimeters!! So 6 hours on pitocin had resulted in only 3 more centimeters of dilation. I was really discouraged when I heard how little I was dilated, especially since the contractions were so close together and I was having a hard time staying on top of the pain. I felt that the baby was very low also and was feeling quite a bit of pressure. Shannon encouraged me to change to the other side to see if we could get the baby to move down some more, and Jon’s Mom went out to the waiting room to tell Jeremy, Jessica, and Grandma Sherry that it was going to be a while yet.

After flipping to the other side the contractions were still very intense. I have no concept of time, but I think it was about 10 or 15 minutes where Jon talked me through the contractions. They were coming so close to each other and often one right after the other. When I was lucky and there was a 20 second break between them, the pressure I felt in my pelvis was intense and I couldn’t relax. I threw up again and started saying that I couldn’t do it, it hurt too much. I was feeling more and more pressure, and remember the nurse asking me if the pain was bothering me or the pressure. I said the pressure and she said that it was going to get a lot worse. Not what I wanted to hear! Shortly after that I felt an overwhelming urge to push – it was the weirdest feeling because I couldn’t stop it! I told Jon that I had to push and he told the nurse, but Shannon told me not to push and instead pant or blow through the pushing urges. She left to check on her other patient and I kept trying to pant when I felt the urges to push. I couldn’t do it though and told Jon that I HAD to push! It felt so much better when I pushed! He called the nurse back in and she told me to pant again, but then decided to check me after seeing that I really could not just pant through the urges. I don’t think she believed me that I was ready to push since it had only been about 20 or 30 minutes since I was checked last and was only ay 6. But when she checked me I was at 10 centimeters and completely effaced, with the baby ready to be pushed out!

Unfortunately Dr. Merkel was in the OR, so Shannon told me not to push so we could wait for him. Yeah, right! I tried for a few contractions and it just was not working, so Shannon called in a resident just in case they were needed to deliver the baby. The resident said that I should go ahead and start pushing since first time moms usually took a while to push the babies out. Jon ran out and grabbed his mom from the waiting room (her notes say it was about 10:45 when he came out), and when he got back I started pushing. I was on my right side with Jon holding my leg up in the air, and with the next contraction I bore down and pushed. I had 2 or 3 pushes during that contraction and heard the resident say, “Oh my, I see the head.” The contractions were farther apart at this point so I was able to rest a little before the next one. When the next contraction came I pushed again and felt the burning and stretching that women talk about – Elijah was crowning. The hospital’s attending OB came into the room then, and on the next contraction I pushed twice – once and Eli’s head was out and then the next push for his body – and Elijah was born. And then I was able to see his tiny little body, all covered in goo. It was the most beautiful thing! Our doctor missed it all, and the staff doctor only saw the last few pushes it was so quick.

Elijah Scott Schneider was born Thursday, May 26th, at 10:54 am -- only 35 minutes after I was checked and was at 6 centimeters. Looking back, both Jon and I agree that I really was in transition when I was checked and was at 6. And we were both so happy that we were able to meet our goal of a pain medication free childbirth, even if we were disappointed that we needed pitocin to get labor going. The most important thing was that our son was born safe and healthy though. He weighed in at 6 pounds and 8 ounces, and was 20 and ¼ inch long. After suctioning him to make sure he did not swallow any meconium they brought Elijah back to me and put him on my chest. He looked at me with his big blue eyes and I was in love instantly. It was one of the happiest days of my life, and I’ll never forget the first moment I held my beautiful son!