Shane's Birth Story

Shane Justin
Due February 16, 1997 - Born March 5, 1997
10 pounds, 21 inches long

It's been a month since Shane was born and this is the first chance I've had to write his birth story. Actually I started it a couple weeks ago, but it's taken me this long to finish it! The story really starts a couple weeks before he was born. My due date according to U of M was February 16^th, but according to a very early ultrasound (and according to when I knew I conceived), I was going by a due date of the 20^th. By the time I got to 38 or 39 weeks I was already feeling pressure from the midwives about the possibility of being "overdue. When I got to my 40-week appointment they started pressuring me to go for a non-stress test (NST), to make sure the baby was ok. They wanted me to go 4 days later, but I put it off for another week, making me 41 weeks pregnant by my calculations and 41 wks., 4 days by theirs. The NST was scheduled for 2/27/97, right after my regular midwife appt. Since I had been feeling very uncomfortable driving for a few weeks (it made my back hurt really bad, and I got a pain very high up under my breasts on the right side), I asked Greg to drive me to my appointment. I had already been dilated to 3cm and was 50% effaced the week before. We figured it wouldn’t be too long before I went into labor, so we talked about staying at a hotel near the hospital until the baby was born, depending on what I found out at my appointment that day. My regular midwife, Terri, was on vacation, so I saw Pam for my appointment instead. I asked her to do an exam and found out that I was 4 - 5cm dilated (4 "stretchy" to 5) and 70% effaced, with a bulging bag of waters. The NST was fine, showing a very active baby. The midwife on call said she thought she saw a slight deceleration of the baby’s heartbeat after a contraction, though (I was watching the whole time, though, and I didn’t see it!), so they pressured me into having a quick ultrasound to check the fluid level. Apparently the level is supposed to be between 8 and 22 (whatever that means), and mine was fine at 12.6. (I found out later that they get an extra 200 bucks for the ultrasound, though – gee, no wonder they wanted to do it!) Since I was adamant that I didn’t want to be induced or have an amniotomy, they scheduled me to have another NST 4 days later. We stayed at the hotel inside the hospital and I spent the next 4 days walking the halls as much as possible, hoping to get labor going. No such luck. I made it to the next NST, and again everything was fine. I asked the midwife on-call to do another exam and found out I was a "full" 5cm dilated, 80% effaced, and between –1 and 0 station. Not as much progress as I’d hoped, but at least it was something. I went home for brief "visits" twice during this time, and each time the car ride was absolutely excruciating! It did get the contractions going, though, and Greg joked that he was just going to keep taking me for car rides to get me to go into labor. I told him I’d rather die pregnant than ride in the car again before the baby was born! Terri called me at the hotel the day after my second NST (March 4), and tried to talk me into letting her break my water. I was really against it, but she was pretty persuasive. She said she really wanted to be the one to catch my baby, and I really wanted her to be the one too. She asked if I’d at least come and let her examine me, hoping I’d consider the amniotomy if I’d made some more progress. I found out that I was now 6 cm dilated and 0 station! Jeez, I felt like a walking time bomb. I mean, just how far can you go before going into labor?? I told her I’d talk to Greg when he got back from work, and thankfully he reminded me of how much I didn’t want an amniotomy. I really didn’t, but I needed him to help strengthen my resolve. I did some more walking that night, but I was so huge and uncomfortable that walking was pretty difficult. Heck, at that point everything was difficult. The baby was so big that I couldn’t get comfortable sitting down, and even laying down was uncomfortable. I also had an incredible amount of swelling, and had started having what I thought were pre-eclamptic symptoms. If I didn’t eat enough protein I started feeling dizzy and seeing spots – scary stuff! No wonder I almost gave in to the amniotomy! Still, I was determined to hold out as long as possible. I went to bed at midnight that night and was up every hour after that. I had to go to the bathroom, but mostly I was just restless. I wasn’t having any contractions to speak of, but I just felt…different. I woke up at 3:50am on March 5 to a very strong kick (in my ribs and cervix at the same time!), a muffled "pop!" sound and a strong contraction. I was pretty sure that my water had broken, but I got up and went to the bathroom to make sure. (In retrospect, I think what happened was that the baby kicked its feet, pushing its head against my cervix and breaking the water.) The baby’s head was so far down that no water leaked out until I sat down on the toilet, and even then there was just a little. What I did see had meconium in it, though, so I should have known right then that things weren’t going to go exactly as planned. I went and woke Greg up and told him "well, we won’t have to worry about Terri breaking my water…" I hadn’t had any more contractions, so dummy me was actually contemplating taking a shower, but I decided to check the baby’s heartbeat first (it sounded fine), then call my Dad and tell him to come pick Jakie up. By that time I’d had a couple more strong contractions, so I knew there wasn’t going to be any shower for a while! I contacted the midwife who told me to come right over to labor & delivery (about a 5-minute walk inside the hospital from the hotel room). Things were feeling pretty serious by this time, so I decided not to even wait for Greg to get Jakie & my suitcase – I left without him and told him to meet me there. I walked (waddled!) up to L&D, having to stop a couple times to deal with contractions, and Trish (the midwife) got me right into a room. By the time she checked my cervix, I was already dilated to 8cm! It’s funny, I remember everything, but it’s kind of hazy – I went right into that "birth amnesia" stage where I was more focused inward and not paying a whole lot of attention to what was going on around me. Trish said that because of the meconium I was going to have to be on constant (external) fetal and uterine monitors, and wouldn’t be able to walk around – just what I didn’t want! At that point I probably wouldn’t have been able to do much walking anyway, but that wasn’t the point. Besides, when you’re in active labor those monitor belts hurt and make it harder to deal with the contractions. Scratch two items off my birth plan… Also, because of the meconium, I wouldn’t be able to delay the cord cutting, cut the cord myself, hold the baby immediately after birth, or hold off on the suctioning (scratch a few more off the birth plan…). Luckily Terri had ordered my antibiotics from the pharmacy (for the GBS) earlier in the day, because she said it sometimes takes a few hours to get the orders, and I was supposed to be on them for at least 4 hours. Well, as fast as my labor was going, it was doubtful that I’d make it that long. I was in the middle of a huge contraction as the nurse was trying to get the hep. lock in my arm, and when I asked (moaned!) if she could wait a second, she just kept poking at me. Luckily Greg was there by then and he TOLD her to wait (good for him!). I felt like things were just going so quickly! I hadn’t really had any "early" labor to speak of (although technically I’d been "laboring" for a couple weeks), and all of a sudden I was trying to cope with these huge contractions while all of this activity was going on around me. It felt pretty overwhelming! By the way, my Dad hadn’t gotten there yet (I found out later that he was waiting for us in the lobby. When we didn’t show up, he finally figured out where we must be!), so Jakie was in the room with us, sleepily watching from a recliner in the corner. He couldn’t really see anything, but I was still worried about him, making it even harder to concentrate on my labor. I don’t know how long it was, but I think it was about an hour later when Trish checked me and said I was almost fully dilated. She said there was just a tiny "lip", and I could start pushing whenever I wanted to. I didn’t feel any urge whatsoever, so I didn’t want to push yet, but a little while later I was sort of pressured into it. Trish kept saying that the sooner I pushed, the sooner I’d have my baby. I wish now that I’d waited at least a little longer, but I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly at that point! The contractions were still incredibly intense, but they had spaced out a little, so I had at least a tiny break in between them. Trish said to tell her when I felt the next one coming, and to push with it. Well, I tried to push, but it hurt like hell!! I remember her saying that some people just never feel the urge to push. She also said that some people like pushing, but some people don’t feel anything but pain. She said she hated pushing when she had her baby. I think now that maybe if I had waited a few more minutes, maybe I would have felt the pushing urge. As it was, I had a hard time coordinating my pushes, and an even harder time really getting into it. It hurt so bad that I tended to hold back, but once I "pushed through the pain" (I always thought that phrase sounded stupid!) it got a tiny bit easier. The bad part is that I had to "push through the pain" with each contraction! One good thing is that after I started pushing, Trish told the nurse she could take off the uterine monitor (I didn’t need the monitor to tell me when I was having a contraction!) and a little while later she took off the fetal monitor too. It felt so much better without them! Finally, after what seemed like an eternity to me, Trish said she could see the head. I think I really started pushing hard after that. I remember grabbing Greg around the neck (he was standing next to me), tucking my head down, and pulling with all my might as I beared down with each push – I’ll bet he had one sore neck the next day! For the longest time it seemed like I wasn’t getting anywhere, but then Shane’s head was right there! I got a huge part of his head out during the next contraction, but had to wait for the next one to push it all the way out. It felt so weird (painful!!) having this huge head partway out – ouch! The next push got Shane’s head all the way out, but his body was stuck. He was so big that we had a problem with shoulder dystocia. I’m not sure how serious it was, but Trish and Greg were pretty serious all of a sudden, telling me to PUSH! I pushed, Trish pulled, and at 6:10am Shane’s body came slithering out. I had said I didn’t want any "announcement" of the baby’s sex, so I looked down and discovered for myself (as he peed all over the place immediately after coming out!) that the baby I was so sure was a girl definitely wasn’t! He wasn’t breathing when he was born, but I know that’s not all that uncommon. The pediatricians had planned to take him right away to suction him anyway, so I watched as they took Shane over to the warmer at the side of the room. They wiped him off and suctioned him and he started breathing right away (whew!). I knew he looked big, but I couldn’t believe it when they told me how much he weighed – 9 lbs. 15 oz! (I converted his weight from kgs. to lbs. later and realized he was really 10 lbs.!) Wow, no wonder I was so uncomfortable the last part of my pregnancy! It seemed like forever, but was probably only a few minutes when they finally brought my beautiful little boy back to me to hold for the first time. I had waited so long for another baby, and had anticipated this moment for so long (being 17 days overdue had given me plenty of time to anticipate! ) that it was absolutely love at first sight. I didn’t want to let Shane out of my sight! My Dad had gotten there when I was halfway through pushing to pick up Jakie (so much for the best laid plans, huh?), and since the baby was almost here they stayed in the waiting room. Jakie wanted to be the first one to know the sex of the baby, so we put a blue hat on Shane and let Jakie in the room to meet his new baby brother. He was still really sleepy, but I could tell he was really excited. He’d been hoping for a boy. Then we let my Dad in the room so Jakie could tell him the big news, they stayed for a short while, and then my Dad took Jakie home to his house for the night. Unfortunately I was told that, since I’d only been on antibiotics for 1 ½ hours, Shane was going to have to be on antibiotics for 48 hours, until they found out the results of his GBS culture. This is exactly what we’d hoped to avoid, but we didn’t have much of a choice. They had to take Shane away to put in a hep. lock, but Greg went with him to watch everything they were doing. When Jakie was born they took him away, gave him a bottle while he was gone (although they knew I would be breastfeeding), and didn’t bring him back until I went looking for him hours later! They tried to get Greg to leave this time, saying they’d bring the baby back when they were done, but he wouldn’t let Shane out of his sight. When they got back to my room Shane didn’t leave my sight the rest of the hospital stay. Except for our nursing problems, the rest of the stay was pretty uneventful. I was amazed at how much assertiveness it took on my part to keep Shane with me, though. It seemed like someone was constantly coming in wanting to take him for something or other. They must have thought I was a real pain in the you-know-where, though, because I made them do almost everything right there on my bed, and if they couldn’t I went with them. Shane’s culture eventually came back negative, and we went home when he was 2 days old. As for the nursing problems I mentioned, Shane is a month old today and we’re still having problems! At first, in the hospital, he refused to latch on at all, and if I did get him latched on he’d just fall asleep without sucking! I finally learned how to get him latched on and he nursed fairly well…until my milk came in when he was about 2 ½ days old. I still have a problem getting him latched on right, but his biggest problem is that he doesn’t stick his tongue out far enough. Because of that, when the milk lets down he has a hard time keeping the suction and he makes "clicking" noises as the suction breaks. He took a really long time to regain his birth weight, but he’s gaining well now. I found out that our scale weighs really light (it was 7 ½ oz. lighter than the dr.’s. office out here), but according to that he weighed exactly 9 lbs. when he was 4 days old, and he didn’t regain his birth weight until 17 days. As of today he’s about 11 lbs. though, so I guess he’s not having any problems getting enough milk! This tongue problem is driving me absolutely crazy, though. Why can’t I ever have one of those babies who latches and nurses like a pro right, after birth? Well anyway, that’s my story. After weeks of mostly painless "pre-labor", a 2 hour labor and a 10 pound baby - wow! Not everything went "as planned" (when does it?), but things went so quickly that most of it didn’t really matter. Besides having a wonderful healthy baby, I did get a couple of the things that were most important to me: a natural childbirth without being induced or having any kind of anesthesia, and a beautiful baby who never left my sight the whole hospital stay!
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