Evan Jameson's Birth Story

Labor day weekend ended up being full of labor (pun intended).  Just like I called it, baby Evan was ready to make his big debut on a weekend where 90% of our immediate family was out of town for work or traveling.  Why would he come when it's convenient?  My mom was the only one still around and she had decided to come out to our house on Friday night for dinner and to spend the night so she could spend all day Saturday with us too.  Saturday morning started just like any other day.  We woke up.  We had breakfast.  We went to the farmer's market.  We went to the library.  We came home.  Then things got interesting.  We were starting to put a homemade pizza together for lunch when I noticed I was having what I thought were timeable contractions.  They were about 10 minutes apart.  They weren't super painful though.  I didn't think too much of it until I went to the bathroom and noticed I was spotting.  I decided I should probably call the after hours answering service for my OB practice to see what they thought of the spotting.  Sure enough, Dr. Salem was concerned and told us to head to labor and delivery.

We ate lunch quickly, grabbed all our bags, and thanked our lucky stars my mom was already here at our house to watch Sean.  Upon arriving, they hooked me up to a few monitors and the long wait started to see what this would be.  After monitoring me for two hours, doing a speculum exam (ouch!), and an internal exam (double ouch!), they thought it was more "irritability" than contractions and decided I was passing a brown blood clot and had nothing to worry about.  I was "closed and high" so I wasn't even making any so called progress from my "irritability".  So, they sent me home.

Later that evening starting around 6pm, I started having more intense contractions and by 10:30pm I was in so much pain every 5 minutes that I was clenching my fists and in tears each time.  I tried a hot shower, I tried to watch Breaking Dawn to get things off my mind, and by 10:30pm I reached my pain threshold and called the on-call doctor who advised me to go back to labor and delivery.  Considering my mom had gone home after dinner, we had to wait for my mom to drive out to our house again to watch Sean overnight.  Waiting the long hour for her to get out was torture.  I was in so much pain and was just trying to breathe through each contraction, bounce on our exercise ball, and try not to freak out. We were in the driveway waiting for her and we made the 30 minute trip to the hospital with my contractions every 3 minutes apart and me passing some serious blood, bright red.

In triage, they found I was 2cm dilated, contracting every 3 minutes, and was indeed passing more blood than I should have been for just a clot.  So, after monitoring me, an internal exam again (ouch!), and a speculum exam (double ouch!) they admitted me and by 1am we were in our labor and delivery room.  For two hours, I rocked on the birthing ball and tried to breathe through each contraction while I waited for them to come back and check me.  When they came back in I wasn't dilated any more than I was 2 hours before in triage.  I was devastated.  They decided to give me some morphine in the IV to help me sleep for a few hours and would decide what to do when they checked back later.  I was either going to be sent home or could stay if I made progress.  I was so upset thinking the worst as usual, but was grateful for a break from the pain and some rest.  Thankfully, after sleeping a while, I woke up to find that I was 4cm and my OB decided to break my water right there.

From there, things just got worse.  I was dilating consistently each hour, but when I asked for the epidural around 6cm, it didn't work.  They had to place it lower because of the position of my prior back surgery and they weren't sure where the medicine would travel to.  I was in excruciating back pain and had no relief from anything.  All the while I was still losing blood.  They tried to give me other pain meds through the IV to help manage the pain, but nothing took the pain away and instead made me very loopy.  By now my mom had arrived and I had a nice team of Scott, my mom, and my awesome labor and delivery nurse, Kris by my side helping me through each contraction.  I know hours had passed, but it just felt like I was living through one giant contraction that never went away.  No position made me comfortable and the only relief I had was by crying out random things (luckily, they weren't obscenities).  By, noon, I was 9.5cm and my OB said I could try to push.  I felt so out of it and could barely grab my thighs up high enough to push.  I tried to push for 15 minutes and the OB and nurses were concerned that Evan's heart rate dropped to 80bpm and wasn't going back up.  I was still losing a lot of blood.  So, my OB made the decision to take me in for a c-section.

At that point, I just wanted pain relief and I wanted him out so I wasn't too upset about having the c-section.  His health and safety were the my only priorities and if this is what they needed to do, then I would be supportive despite how badly I wanted a successful VBAC and despite how close I was to having that.  They had enough time to try to get a spinal in, but shocking, it didn't work either.  So, they quickly decided to put me to sleep for it.  Poor Scott was in the hall in his scrubs waiting to come in to the OR and found out his son was born when a nurse came out to tell him.  He had no idea they even started the surgery.  The baby was rushed to NICU since his heart rate was so low and we found out that my placenta had abrupted, which caused all the blood loss, the drop in the heart rate, and my intense back pain.  My OB told my mom and Scott while I was in recovery that it was a good thing she decided to do the section when she did because the baby had started to ingest the fluids from the placenta and it could have led to more serious consequences had we not reacted so quickly.

When I woke up from recovery, the first thing I did was sob.  I sobbed for not getting my VBAC, for how much pain it was for me to go through that, that I hadn't seen Evan yet, and that I missed getting to see Scott's face when he saw Evan for the first time.  It was such a release to just cry and let it out. They were able to take me to the NICU to see Evan and I was able to nurse him immediately.  It was such a beautiful moment and a relief since he nurses so well.  He latched on right away, unlike Sean who needed help with his latch for the first few weeks.  He was ready and waiting for me and it was like him and I had been doing this for months.  He was released from the NICU an hour later and was with us for the rest of the time at the hospital.  All of his vitals and stats were great the entire time we were there.  The last day his biliruben level was a little high so they sent us home with a bili blanket for him to use over the next 24 hour period.  Also, when they removed my staples from the incision, the outer layer of skin separated so I have some additional pain while I wait for the skin to re-attach on it's own.

While it wasn't the birth I anticipated, I realized that I'm lucky to have a happy and healthy little guy and that end result is far more important than how he got here.  He was born at 1:17pm on Sunday, the 2nd at 7 lbs. exactly and 20.5 inches long.  Big brother Sean got to meet him on Monday at the hospital and it's been so fun watching him fill in the role of big brother. We were released on Wednesday afternoon and have spent the last few days taking each moment as it comes, trying to take deep breaths and remember that this will all go by so fast.  While it's been intense adjusting to being a family of four, I wouldn't change it for anything.  Our family is complete and I feel so different as a mother this time around.  More relaxed, more at peace, and more natural.

And now...a few pictures:

And the journey just begins....