labor and delivery

We had a birth plan…so what!?!

We had a birth plan.  And then that plan blew up in our face. This is our story. And it sure was nothing like the movies.

Thursday 4pm

Until 48 hours before our daughter was born, the pregnancy had been relatively easy. No morning sickness, no complications, no scary moments. Aside from the normal fatigue, soreness, emotional changes, and typical side effects, we had been super lucky.

Then we went to our 38 week check-up and the OB saw that the baby still hadn’t dropped any further than the week before, so he did an ultrasound. The ultrasound revealed that she was on the small side and measuring two weeks behind what she should have been.   So…he sent us to go see “the ultrasound guru”.

Friday 4pm

Getting an appointment with this guy a week in advance is difficult enough, but we were able to get one the next day. He did a full anatomy scan, confirmed that she was smaller than she should be, and noticed that the amniotic fluid was also low. In short, something was preventing her from getting what she needed on the inside and baby should come out as soon as possible.

Friday 10pm

After a drive home through rush-hour LA traffic, eating, finishing packing (which THANK GOD we had already done) and some final preparations, we were back at the hospital. (I was also able to shave and cut my hair.)

Normally one would have already started having contractions before going to the hospital. And said contractions would have already started getting the cervix ready for delivery. Not the case when the mother needs to be induced. She started from scratch. We were at zero centimeters (pushing starts at 9-10 cm) and with the baby still high up,  our little one was clearly not ready to enter the world.

Thus began the saga of getting the cervix ready. This started with “placing” medication behind the cervix (Cervidil) to soften it so that it could dilate with contractions and let a baby pass through.  After placing an IV in her arm (ouch!) and the first dose of Cervidil around 1:30 am, we got into bed and tried to get some sleep.

Saturday 1pm

Each dose of Cervidil lasts about 12hrs. The first dose got her from 0cm…to 1cm. A “finger-tip” ie. NOT CLOSE TO 10CM. So, they administered another dose and we waited.

Saturday 5pm

Contractions begin, good sign right? Since we were in a hospital, we could see our contractions and baby’s heart beat…and everyone else in labor too! This shows up on a screen that is placed in every room on the floor and on a 50″ screen at the nurse’s station. So it became a game – who had the stronger contractions…clearly, we were not winning.

labor and delivery screen
We were SM-2552-1.

All hell breaks loose. The contractions start coming strong and more frequent. But if you were one of the other lucky souls watching the monitor you’d think we were having it easy. I can tell you otherwise. The next 10 hours consisted of:

  • Watching my wife writhe in pain on her bed, gripping the sides for dear life.
  • Watching multiple episodes of “Scandal” to try and distract us.
  • Walking the halls, thanking our lucky stars for the support bars lining the walls for this exact reason.
  • Bouncing on a yoga ball, again, not much help.
  • A warm shower that only helped for maybe 15 minutes.

Oh, and after all this, the nurse would come back at 1am and tell us that the medication hadn’t done anything and she was actually not dilated at all. (Um excuse me??? Didn’t someone else mention a “fingertip”… YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING!!!???)

Sunday 6am

They left the Cervidil in a little longer. And when they checked, still nada. Seriously? 24 hours of this shit and still nothing? UGH.

Sunday 11am

Cervix check.  At this point, we were both physically and emotionally exhausted.  We had begun to lose hope and had assumed that they would be putting in a third dose of Cervidil.  Our amazing nurse actually came into the room with the third dose in her pocket because she had also expected the same.  But lo and behold,some progress! 4-5 cm.  We were all shocked and a bit confused as they had just said a couple of hours previously that she had not dilated at all.  Our nurse thinks that maybe the other nurses who had been checking were not able to really feel what was going on with her cervix and that she had been dilating all along.  Our nurse (Jessica, we are so grateful for you!) immediately ordered an epidural.

Note: Our birth plan had said to wait as long as possible for this…fuck that. Any man that thinks the epidural should wait for some preconceived time is delusional – it makes all the difference. Her pain disappeared, and we both could finally sleep.

They had also started her on Pitocin – another thing we didn’t really want. But baby needed to come, so we were willing to do whatever was necessary. Turns out baby didn’t want Pitocin either and it kind of pissed her off each time they started it up. So it was stopped.

Sunday 3:15pm

Cervix check. 9cm!! Everyone was super surprised. Immediately the OB was paged and the whirlwind began. The room occupied by the two of us became a staging area as nurse after nurse came in.

The OB got there out of breath. NICU came in on standby. Baby’s heart rate began to drop a little.

Time to push.

Sunday 3:57pm

Pushing starts.

Our plan had said we didn’t want an episiotomy – so of course the doctor says to us, “I have to cut, you have no choice.” So much for that part of the plan.

Sunday 4:03pm

After six minutes of pushing, our beautiful baby was born!

Our plan had said we wanted delayed cord clamping – kinda hard when the cord is wrapped around baby’s neck.

Our plan had said immediate skin-to-skin – not gonna happen with a tiny baby and NICU there to make sure she is OK.

Our plan had said to leave the vernix on. Kind of impossible when NICU needs to check her.

Aftermath

Baby is doing fine. She is definitely small (still less than 6 pounds) but gaining weight. She does have jaundice (or high levels of bilirubin), but that will soon go away.

The moral here is be flexible. Your plan might work perfectly. Ours sure as hell didn’t, but at the end of the day when you have your amazing, healthy baby safe in your arms, it really doesn’t matter.


Comments

2 responses to “We had a birth plan…so what!?!”

  1. […] – We had a birth plan. It went to hell when we had to induce labor. The safety of our baby took precedence to any previous […]

  2. […] was never able to pull an all-nighter in college, and I’m sure I still can’t (although one of those nights in the hospital was close). But I am now able to consistently operate on less sleep, which enables […]

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