The Story of Maelle's Birth -unedited-

I'm about to write Elinor's birth story... and wanted to repost Maelle's first for a friend and anyone else who hasn't read it, wants to read it again, or wants to read the "unedited" version... the one where I add the stuff Sam was nice enough to leave out.  The underlined and parenthesized parts are my thoughts.

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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. (I remember not sleeping much in between contractions so the whole weekend was a flop in terms of stocking up on sleep.)

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), (but the way the oil felt going down made me throw some of it back up, sadly...) 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). (I slept between taking the oil solution and getting the strong contractions, thankfully) 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, (But not without first causing one of my biggest fears, which now seems silly, to occur: I lost control of my bowels and made a mess for people to clean up for me... but at the time, I really didn't care.) 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.  (This was my favorite part of the labor... because I didn't have the castor oil making the contractions violent-apparently it is violent enough that some midwives don't recommend using it because it produces unnatural contractions... different than medical induction but violent nonetheless.  Now that the castor oil was out, I could breathe through the contractions, was listening to Iron and Wine the whole time, enjoyed a shower and bath whenever I wanted and had lots of physical support from Sam and everyone else he mentions here.  It was the closest thing to a "home birth" that I've ever experienced and I'm so grateful for that as Maelle's labor may be the only labor I get to experience.)

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 breathe 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.  (At the hospital I remember vaguely that I refused a wheel chair and chose to walk up to the maternity ward myself.  I remember seeing people staring at me... and I didn't care.  It was slightly comical in my head at the time.  I had to stop and wait for contractions in front of people and I made noise while I was having the contractions.  Thankfully it was like a Bb-ish note-we figured that out later- on an "ah" vowel... nothing annoying but still, those people were probably a little uncomfortable...)

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.  (At this point I was starting to feel a loss of control over relaxing through contractions... probably because I sensed that things weren't going well in my body and was discouraged)

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." (At this point, I accepted the offering of some laughing gas for the time between talking to the doc and getting the meds for surgery.  BUT the nurse who was administering it kept telling me that I wasn't trying hard enough to breathe into the mask, despite me promising I'd used one before at the dentist and something must be wrong... turned out that she hadn't plugged the stupid machine in... so I was forcing myself to breathe my own air over and over from the mask... which was painful and irritating.  I was slowly suffocating myself.  All because she didn't see that the machine wasn't on.  Oooo... it bugs me now even more than it did then...)

(The memory I have from here on out is very spotty... which is why I'm so grateful for Sam's account of the labor.  I do remember Ashley climbing into bed with me while we waited and holding me while I slowly lost control of my breathing and relaxing.  It was all related to feeling the pain without hope of delivering Maelle... so that pain was "useless" now and I was exhausted.  I remember when waiting in the hall near the OR that Sam was being filled in by the midwife on all the things he needed to know since we hadn't planned a c-section and he didn't have a clue what his role was or what was happening to me... I was alone.  I laid on the bed -my least favorite position- on my back and watched the nurse peek at me out of the corner of her eye from the foot of my stretcher.  I kept asking her to hold my hand, because I was feeling overwhelmed and she was just staring at me... I figured she should do something other than just stare.  Staring made me uncomfortable.  Eventually she agreed and took my hand.  I hadn't had any medication at this point... So it was just raw transitional labor during this time and feeling another human being nearby was very encouraging.)

So they prepped her for surgery, brought her down to the OR, and gave her a spinal to freeze her from the chest down. (I immediately felt relief and was shaking from the side affects of the medication.  It was such a relief that I had a surge of energy and joked with people through the whole thing.  I probably was laughed at afterward, once I was safely out of earshot.)  After she had been frozen, the midwife came to get me, and I got to sit next to 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
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The original story is very similar, but without my additions.  I left out the paragraph of bragging that he did about me.  If you really care to see that, you can check it out for yourself.  It's a little embarrassing to be bragged about so I'll leave it out of this account.  :-P