Hi Jessica, Tomorrow is Lennox's 2 week birthday! I can't believe that he was inside of me 13 days ago at this time.... His birth story is a life lesson in itself. Although I didn't think that I had any expectations, I clearly had a vision of how I wanted the birth to go. What actually happened did not fall into my plans to say the least! I was in labor for 4 days before Lennox was born. He was clearly not ready to come out, but because of all the hosipital rules about inducing when the babies are 10 days late, I felt all this pressure to get things going. Tuesday night I woke up with contractions, they were mild and about 20 minutes apart. I had a non-stress test the next day. (I was six days past my due date at that point). I was 50% effaced and 1 cm dilated. The doctor stripped my membranes, (without asking). I also had a massage later that day, where she worked on all those pressure points you're supposed to avoid when you're pregnant. Later on that night, my contractions started picking up...they were about 10 minutes apart and a little stronger. I called my doula early in the morning. It turned out she had another birth that day, so she sent another doula for the day. My contractions were getting stronger and closer together, but were still not consistent. Finally, Nancy, our doula, arrived late in the evening. My contractions must have been stronger and relatively close together, because we decided to go to the hospital. It was around 1am Friday morning. When we got to the hospital, my contractions became inconsistent again. I was still 1cm dialated and now 75% effaced. They wanted to keep me and induce me, but we said no and got home around 4am. Friday morning I woke up and felt so done, but Nancy, my AMAZING doula, calmed me down. That day we went to acupucture...that was interesting having contractions with needles in me. Nancy was also giving me homeopathic meds to bring on contractions. But the rest of the day, even though my contractions were getting stronger and they were 5-7min. apart, they weren't consistent enough to go to the hospital again. I was so lucky to have my partner Renee there, my mom and Nancy, they really took care of me. That night was the worst. I started having some back labor,
and I could only sleep for 5 minutes at a time, in between, I was doing my hypnobirth
CD. Renee and Nancy would take turns staying awake with me through Saturday moring, again, I was done, in tears, ready to have Lennox out. Nancy calmed me down again. Around 10am I started having contractions every 5 minutes, for about 2 hours. We were so excited...but when we came back from our walk, they stopped. I was supposed to have another non-stress test that day and we decided, that no matter what, I was going to have the baby, I could not come home from the hospital again to no sleep. We made the decision to go to the hospital around noon, 3 hours before the NST was scheduled. I knew that I was going to need pitosin and an epidural, and suspected that I might end up with a c-section too. When we got to the hospital, I was fully effaced and 3cm dilated, we
were so excited!!! We decided to give in a few hours and see if I would dilate
any more. Unfortunately, I didn't, so I had to give up on my vision of a drug-free birth and get pitosin and an epidural. I didn't like it one bit, it felt so weird to me to not be able to feel my contractions, very unnatural. By midnight I was 6cm dialated and they brought everything into the birthing room, preparing for a vaginal delivery. At one point my epidural was wearing off, but I was willing to deal with the pain, because I thought I might be pushing soon. But the baby's heart rate kept dropping because the pitosin was making my contractions too close together, so they had to stop it and my contractions were not doing the job on their own. By 6am, I was still 6-7cm dialated. I was so exhausted
and demoralized, we begrudgingly decided to have the c-section. Lennox didn't
seem ready to come out, and my body wasn't pushing him out. On the way to the operating room, they took my temperature. It was 100. 5. Now all of a sudden they wanted to seperate me from my baby for 48 hours!!!! As hysterical as I was, my mom was even more so. We were yelling at the doctors, because we knew that Lennox was just fine and this was just the way of the hospital covering their assess. They were worried that my uterus had an infection and that it would or had passed to Lennox. They promised that I could still visit and breast feed Lennox in the NICU even if I still had a fever. At 9:19am Sunday, April 9th, our beautiful blond hair, blue eyed Chinese boy was born. He stayed in the NICU for 24 hours...we had him in our room by lunchtime the next day. The whole experience was very traumatic, but Lennox is such a joy, it was all worth it. The only thing I feel like I missed out on was a vaginal birth...but now I have something to look forward to the next time!!!!
Thanks for everything! Nikki |