The Birth Story  of  Noah William

We'll start at the beginning of early labor, which was on July 2, 2004.  It was a full moon and I had joked earlier that perhaps this would be the big day.  Sometime around 8:30pm that evening, I went into the bathroom and discovered that I was losing my mucous plug.  This would be the beginning of a whole new experience for me, as with my previous two pregnancies that had never happened.  I was so hopeful that this was a good sign, though I knew that labor could still be about a week away.

Within an hour, I began to have some pretty regular contractions.  They were pretty short, lasting only about 25 seconds or so, and they were about 8 minutes apart on the average.  We started walking around the house just to see if things would progress, but as it turns out I would spend the next several hours in this same pattern, making it pretty impossible for me to get any sleep until about 2:30am.

I woke up the next morning, July 3rd, and it seemed that nothing was happening.  We were planning on staying around the house, just to be safe, but by 11am we really needed to get out of the house so we packed up the kids and drove an hour south to my parents house to spend some time with them.  We took the kids to the pool there for a while, then came back to the house and ate dinner.  We finally headed back home around 6:30pm and on the drive back home I began to have some regular contractions again.  These would again last only about 30 seconds, were anywhere from 8 to 12 minute apart, and continued well into the evening.  I finally got into bed sometime after midnight, and woke up around 1:30am with a very familiar feeling.  I rushed into the bathroom where I found that my water had broken.  This had happened to me with Nicolas, so I knew what it was, though it wasn't the amount that I had with Nicolas and it was much smaller.  I still knew this would put me on the clock for delivery.

The next morning, July 4th, I felt fine for the most part.  Every now and then I'd have some contractions, they felt a little bit stronger this time, but again weren't lasting very long or becoming closer together.  Around 9:30am I called the doctor's office and ended up speaking to the OB that was on call for my practice.  He asked what I wanted to do, and I told him I'd just like to wait it out for a while, which was okay to him.  I told him I'd speak to him again later that evening.

Around 7:30pm, when it was obvious that the contractions weren't coming regularly, I again called to speak to the same doctor.  He really wanted me to come to the hospital, which I agreed to do to at least monitor the baby and make sure that everything was still okay with him.  We headed to the hospital and when I arrived I got to speak to the OB again by telephone.  He did express concern that I was approaching the 24-hour mark with my water being broken, and my chances of infection for myself and the baby would begin to increase.  Since I knew the last 2 nights seemed to be the time when I'd have more regular contractions, I told him I wanted to wait one more night and I'd come into the hospital the next morning if nothing was happening.  He agreed to that, we stayed to have them monitor the baby for about 20 minutes, and all looked good and we headed back home.

On the morning of July 5th, we showed up around 8am to the hospital.  I spoke to another OB, Dr. P, who was on call for that day.  He did an internal exam where it was determined I was only about 1cm dilated at that point.  He explained that I was still in early labor, and it could be about 18 hours or so of labor once I hit the next stage, and during that time my risk of infection to both myself and the baby was only increasing.  Due the fact that I was a VBAC candidate (vaginal birth after cesarean) he would not approve any measures, such as pitocin, to try to augment labor as it may increase my risk of a uterine rupture.  Though it was not an easy decision, I knew it would probably be best to go ahead and have the c-section as I just couldn't risk a chance of infection at this point.

By 9am we were being prepped for surgery.  I got a full explanation about everything that was going to be done, since this was a new hospital for me and their procedures were a little different.  I explained some of my previous reactions to both the spinal and the painkiller after surgery to the anesthesiologist and we discussed ways we might reduce a repeat of those things.  I always get sick on the table right after the spinal, and I also get very sick the 18 hours or so following surgery due to the painkillers.  She decided they'd give me some doses of anti-nausea medication in my IV after surgery to try to prevent the latter.

Frank walked into the OR with me and they prepped me and inserted the spinal.  Sure enough, as I was laying on the table, it was only a matter of minutes that I began to get sick.  Since I had not eaten since about 9pm the previous night, there wasn't much to empty out of my stomach but the different antacids they had given me in triage earlier that morning.  Surgery began and Frank got to watch the whole thing and even take photos.  Noah was extracted at 9:50am and as they tried to get him suctioned and ready he was clamping onto his very own umbilical cord very tightly.  They took him over to examine him and his apgars were 8 at 1 minute and 9 at 5 minutes.  They declared him looking great, measured him and found him to be 8 pounds even and 21 inches, which I couldn't believe at all.  They bundled him up and brought him over for me to hold for a second and took some quick photos of all of us before taking him out of the room to be examined and observed further.  Frank went with the baby while I got to wait the next half an hour or so with just the OR team while they finished putting me back together.

By about 10:30am, I was finally wheeled over to recovery to see Noah again.  His temperature had dropped about 2 degrees and they really wanted to get him warmed up.  They put a big plastic blanket on me that they then blew warm air into which was very nice.  They kept Noah in just a diaper and layed him on my chest, skin to skin, to warm him up.  I figured he would be eager to nurse, but he didn't seem interested at all in that.  Instead, he just layed on my chest and stared at me very bright eyed as I talked to him, and he had great neck and head control for being so small.  After a few minutes of staring at me, he then latched on and nursed for a while.  Of course, every 20 minutes they would have to remove him to recheck his vitals and temperature, which did not make him happy and he screamed each time.  However, his temperature did come up quickly and after an hour in the recovery room together we were wheeled up to our room.  It was there that he got to meet his grandparents ( my parents) for the very first time.

A few hours later, we had a room full of guests, including Frank's parents, Nicolas and Noelle, Frank's sister and her husband, and another of our friends and his fiancee.  Frank was not in the room when they all arrived, as he had gone with Noah as they gave him his first bath.  He returned and was greeted by everyone and I was pleased to see just how thrilled Nicolas was to finally meet his little brother and Noelle just couldn't stop kissing him.  It was a wonderful birth day for Noah.

Just over 48 hours later, getting no sleep at all in the uncomfortable hospital bed, I was released to go home.  We returned home around 1:30pm on Wednesday July 7th and everything went pretty well.   Unfortunately sometime that evening, as I was getting up with Noah about every 2.5 hours, I came down with a terrible headache that was extremely painful.  When it wasn't going away the next day and with the motrin I was taking, we called the OB's office and it was determined that it was a spinal headache.  It's one of the risks of a spinal or epidural.  It is very painful and is characterized by the fact that it disappears as long as you are laying down, but the minute you stand up it's very painful and drugs do not make it go away at all.  I also had an echo and ringing in my ears and head from it, that just made matters worse.  I was told the only way to help it along was to keep very hydrated, drinking lots of fluids, and also taking in a lot of caffeine as that helps.  I did just that for 2 days, and while it got a little better by Friday afternoon, I was still concerned.  I was told I could go back to the hospital where they could perform a procedure that was about 90% effective in getting rid of the headache, but it required another spinal, and hour recovery time there, and also had a risk of another spinal headache after it was done.  I decided to take my chances and hope that this did not last the week that they told me it could last, and by Saturday morning thankfully it had disappeared.