We're VERY happy to welcome Maelle (pronounced "my-elle", meaning "ambitious") Mai ("may"--also Milena's, her mom's, and her great-great grandma's middle name) to the family! Maelle was born on July 27th at 4:29am via C-Section after 24 hours of active labour (contractions 3-8 minutes apart), and 48 hours of pre-labour (contractions 15 minutes-1 hour and 30 minutes apart). She was 10 pounds, 9 ounces at birth, and 58cm long (22.8 inches). Now on to the rest of the story.
It was 5:00am on Saturday the 24th when Milena woke up with the first contraction of her pre-labour experience. It kinda shocked us both initially, but then became fairly exciting because, after all, we'd waited almost 2 weeks past the due date for this to come. As the day progressed quickly, her contractions became more intense, and actually were difficult to speak through alot of the time, so Milena would kinda put everything on hold, have one of us apply pressure to her hips by pushing them together, wait for the contraction to pass, and then continue on with things. What made us a little shocked about it all,
was that these contractions were lasting between 2-5 minutes. Yes, that's 2-5 minute long contractions. We didn't actually believe it at first, but then if you felt Milena's belly as soon as one started, you'd feel it tense up with the contraction, and finally release anywhere between 2-5 minutes later. So needless to say, they were pretty intense.
Those contractions carried on all day Saturday and all day Sunday, with no real change in pattern or length or anything like that. When 5:00am on Monday morning rolled around, Milena took a solution of castor oil, lemon verbena, apricot juice, and almond butter (which she said actually didn't taste bad, other than the oily aftertaste), which was something she had decided on with our midwives in the event she hadn't gone into active labour by Monday morning (Milena wanted to try everything else before settling on a medical induction). About a half hour after taking the castor oil, Milena's contractions started coming fast and fierce (every 2-8 minutes, 2 minutes long, and VERY intense). She worked bravely through these contractions with the help of myself, our friend Ashley (Milena's Doula), and both our Moms. At around 11:00am, the castor oil had finally cleared her system, and we had transferred from home to the Midwive's birthing suite here in town (they have a house that they do all their clinic visits in, and it's set up for home births and whatnot--when you go into labour as one of their clients,
you can book it as your birthing center.) We rode out the rest of the day there, switching between standing, laying on the bed, kneeling, showering, and being in the bathtub to keep Milena mobile and feeling "good" despite the contractions. A couple times throughout the day, the midwife checked Milena, and kept her encouraged by filling us in on the progress she was
making.
Around 11:00pm, the midwife checked her again, and said she was about 8cm dilated, and that it would probably be advisable to break her water at that point, since she could easily be stretched to 10cm, and her water still hadn't broken. So we took her advice, and found that the baby had pooped in the amniotic fluid. What this meant was that we had to transfer to the hospital, because there is a risk that baby might breath some in while birthing, so they would need to be right there to check and make sure that everything with that would be properly taken care of.
We trucked everything down to the hospital, and since baby wasn't showing any signs of distress at all, Milena was allowed to continue to labour on her own, with no medical intervention. About three hours later, her contractions were coming closer together and becoming stronger, and the midwife checked her once more, and announced that, unfortunately, Milena had stalled out at 8cm, and was no longer stretching to 10cm when the midwife tried to stretch. So we had to call in an obstetrician to consult and see what we could do.
When the obstetrician got there, he took a look at her chart, got the whole story from the midwife, and took a look at Milena himself. After finishing with that, he told us that if she wanted to keep labouring, they could give her an epidural (sp?) and see if that relaxed things any (since baby was still not in distress, they were not worried about anything if she DID want to keep labouring), but that his advice at this point would really have to be to go in for a C-section. Part of this was because, at some point in labour, baby had shifted from having her back kinda facing sideways, to her back facing Milena's back. They told us (after the birth) that trying to birth a baby in this position (posterior) adds 2-3 pounds as far as how the baby functions trying to come out, so (as you can see--and they told us THIS part right there), with her size, it was unlikely that it would work to deliver normally at this point. It had kinda taken the wind out of Milena's sails a bit that she hadn't moved forward at all in almost 4 hours, and she was SO exhausted at that point from the three days leading up till then, that she looked at the doctor and said "You know, I feel like I've tried everything I really can at this point, and I think that's probably the best way to go."
So they prepped her for surgery, brought her down to the OR, and gave her a spinal to freeze her from the chest down. After she had been frozen, the midwife came to get me, and I got to sit next the Milena's head and hold her hand while they did the surgery. After I had been in the room for about 5 minutes, there were a couple small cries, and they took baby over to the table, cut and clamped the cord, and siphoned out her nose and lungs, allowing her to breathe easily. She was REALLY purple, and her head was VERY pointy in the back, from where she had actually been trying to come out of Mom. But they actually brought her over at the obstetrician's request to have some skin-to-skin time with Milena while they started to stitch her up, and so we got to spend a few moments with baby before I had to take her up to the nursery with the doctors to get her vitals all checked out and wait for Milena to get out of recovery.
What has followed since then has been a bit of a whirlwind of events that seems like only a day and at the same time like several weeks =P. We had our fair share of having to "duke it out" with nurses who insisted on trying to feed Maelle formula as a supplement on top of breast milk, rather than only breast milk (because of blood sugar concerns)...But Maelle silenced them by repeatedly refusing to take any of the formula (she'd make funny faces and spit it out, and just lay there playing with the nipple). We had to deal with not having her in the room with us (and therefore having to go to the nursery to nurse every
time) until Thursday morning at around 11:00am. We had to deal with them trying to force the hosptial's schedule on Maelle's feeding times and all that wonderful jazz, and also with a short stint (20 hours) under the UV lights for mild jaundice. In the end, though, through all the tears and likes and dislikes, we are now home, happy, and healthy, and looking forward to the new adventure that each day brings with this little one in the house.
A couple more things about the experience: There were several people in the hospital and involved with the birth that made it SO much easier--both Moms and our friend Ashley were an INSANELY awesome support and help, and we'd have felt pretty lost without them through the whole process. The team that did Milena's surgery was incredible, and we were told afterward by the midwife that we couldn't have gotten a better team. Apparently the doctor that consulted and did her c-section is the LAST one at the hospital here to recommend c-section--he'll try everything else first, unless there really doesn't look like any other way out. So we were blessed by that, and the fact that he was an incredibly friendly, helpful, and gentle man. The anestesiologist (sp?) was cracking jokes with Milena the whole time, which REALLY put her at ease, and allowed her to relax through the surgery. The entire surgical team was really upbeat and positive the whole time, which made for a good experience. Our midwife was awesome, and a huge help and encouragement as far as advocating for us while we stayed in the
hospital, and just helping us to really adapt to trying to still handle things as closely to how we wanted them, while working with the hospital policies. Most of our nurses (especially Milena's night nurse) were VERY friendly and helpful--there are only a couple of them we'd really rather not see again =P
And now it's my turn to brag about my wife a little while. =) I knew Milena was capable of alot--but I had no clue until this week how much. She was SO incredibly patient and cheerful through the entire labour, even when the castor oil put her contractions out of control for about 6 hours on Monday morning. She smiled between contractions, laughed (even in the middle of them) when someone made a joke, and apologized whenever she felt she had even KINDA snapped at someone (which she never actually did). The midwife said to both Milena and I how impressed she was with how Milena handled it...she said that NOT only had she never seen a woman labour as long and intensely as Milena had, but she had NEVER seen anyone handle it with no complaints, no begging (or even asking!) for pain
meds, no begging to just be done with it, and such a positive attitude through the entire process, even though it didn't end up the way she had hoped they would go. To sum it all up, she said "Milena's pretty much a goddess--I was SO amazed to be a part of her labour". So, all that (and more!) to say, my wife is by far the most incredible person I know, and I am SO blessed to have her as a part of my life. I could not ask for a better or stronger partner or friend. I couldn't hope for a better mother for Maelle. I can't say how much God has proven what a blessing she is to me through this whole experience.
So that's the update for now--I've got a lot to take care of here at home, so I'll leave you with this, and the promise to post pictures soon (though if you can peek on facebook, there are some photos that Karin and Ashley have posted already on there).
God bless, and hope all is well with all of you!
Sam (also on behalf of Milena and Maelle)
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