Rowan's Birth Story

I cannot believe I am currently the mother to the most precious, beautiful little boy. Rowan is the sweetest little miracle and I am so incredibly in love. We are still unfortunately in the hospital getting Rowan's jaundice under control and I can hardly wait to bust this joint. Six days in the hospital is waaaay too long. (recent update: totally busted free yesterday and being home is the best feeling in the universe)

This is going to be an extraordinarily long post because this guy's birth was an extra long 42 hours. Buckle up and enjoy!

Wednesday 9:00am- Sel and I went to my 41 week 3 day appointment to get an ultrasound done and see if the habanero laced salad I had eaten the night before had finally gotten things going. The second my OB walked into the room, we knew this was not going to be the quick appointment we were expecting it to be. He let us know my amniotic fluid was low and he would like to set up an induction. I asked if Monday was a good time to which he just stared at me blankly. "Oh no. You have to go to the hospital right now. Did you bring your hospital bags with you?" I started to panic because we certainly did not bring our bags and I was not emotionally prepared for all of this. Sel had stayed up until 3:00am the night before playing LOL and I had woken up at 4:00am starving. We were both going off little sleep and now we had to prepare ourselves for a surprise induction. I know I had been whining for a week straight about wanting our babe to make an exit, but I had envisioned the process of that going totally different than this. My idealized fantasy birth started with me having contractions at home for hours while stoically braving each one as a zen birthing goddess. We would have gone to the hospital when my contractions were unbearable and our baby would have come to us with a miminmal amount of medical intervention. Rowboat's birth honestly couldn't have been more opposite.

My last picture being hugely pregnant. I have such a love-hate relationship with that room behind me. 

Wednesday 12:00- we get admitted to the hospital and my birth plan goes straight out the window. I had really wanted to just get a heperain lock put in and wait as long as possible to have an IV started. Apparently when you are put on Cervadil (a little shoe string device meant to get your cervix super excited about pushing a baby out), you have to have an IV, be on a clear liquid diet and be hooked up to fetal monitoring for the whole twelve hours you are waiting for the Cervadil to do it's magic. The nurse who put in my IV was terrible at it. She ended up audibly breaking one of my veins (weirdest thing to hear) and ended up getting another nurse after three botched tries to put it in for me. 

Wednesday 2:00pm - they check me and I am at a lowly fingertip dilated still. They put the Cervadil in and tell us to rest up in our room for the next 12 hours. I had already been having cramps off and on since Monday and as soon as they put the Cervadil in, they started to get more regular and slightly more uncomfortable. Other than that, nothing really happened during those 12 hours. The Cervadil did try and sneak out around 4:00pm and a resident with gorilla hands put it back up there for me. Holy ouch! I swear he was part ape. Sel took off around 8pm to grab dinner for himself and grab some things we had forgotten in our mad dash out of the house. We both got about four hours of sleep from 10:00pm-2:00am. Poor Sel was on one heck of an uncomfortable couch that ensured his sleep deprivation was just going to get worse and worse during our stay. 

Thursday 2:00am - they took out my Cervadil and I had somehow regressed. I was still only at a fingertip dilated despite 12 hours of cramping and somehow I had gone from being 80% effaced to 50%. I was super depressed, but figured once they started Pitocin that things would change pretty fast. They let me eat some solid food and take a quick shower before they moved me along in the labor process. The cafeteria was understandably closed at 2:00am so I got to eat a junky chicken Cesar salad that I suspected must have been some nurse's leftovers. We also got an awesome nurse at this point, Shannon, who rounded up some wireless fetal monitors for me so I could move around during contractions. 

Thursday 4:00am - they decided to put in a bulb catheter to help me dilate and started me on 3mg Pitocin with the idea to up my dosage by 1 mg every hour. Having the bulb catheter inserted was miserable. Since my cervix was still on the ultimate lockdown, it took the OB 15 straight minutes of essentially fisting me to put it in. Once she was finished, I started bleeding like crazy. They very unfortunately noted at this point that they might have ruptured my membranes. They didn't, but this note in my file made things get pretty scary a bit later on. 

Sel and I started walking the halls right away. We wanted to get things progressing as fast as possible. The contractions hit like a freaking freight train and we ended up back in our room after only an hour. I started sobbing and doubting my ability to handle this without medication. All of the emotional signs pointed toward active labor, but I knew I still had such a long road to go because I still was so very little dilated. I then vomited up the entire salad I had eaten along with a popsicle. Step in saint Shannon. She came in during my break down and suggested we try some Nubain. She had read over my birth plan and was so incredibly supportive of everything I wanted. She never pushed anything on me despite the fact that they had been offering me an epidural since we were first admitted. The Nubain was a blessing from on high. It helped me refocus and calm down enough to work through each contraction. 

Thursday 7:00am - a shift change happened and my incredible nurses were replaced by a horrible new nurse. This shift change was hugely significant for us and instantly made everything way more stressful and overwhelming. 

Thursday 10:00am -the new OB on shift ordered that the bulb catheter be taken out despite the fact that it was supposed to either fall out when you reach about 5cm dilated or be taken out after 12 hours. Since it had only been in there for 6 hours and it had been incredibly painful to insert, we were understandably a bit confused on why this was happening. We were informed by our nurse that each OB has a different personal preference and this was just what the new OB liked. Sel and I kept pressing the issue and resisting, but no one really seemed to care that we had an opinion about it. So out comes the bulb catheter and up goes my Pitocin. We spent the next billion hours laboring through contractions with another dose of Nubain and attempting to walk around.

Thursday 4:00pm - The resident with gorilla hands came into check me. I politely told him his humongous man hands had no business anywhere near my downstairs and requested that someone with normal sized hands check what was happening. Luckily King Kong wasn't offended and another resident let me know that my cervix was still sealed shut. Disheartened is a light word for how I was feeling at this point. We had been laboring technically for 26 hours at this point and to find out NOTHING had changed at Fort Knox Down Under was a horrible feeling. This is where things took an extremely downward spiral. The resident shared a knowing look with the nurses before leaving our room and left whispering to one another. Our horrible nurse returned a few minutes later with surgical caps and masks in her hand. She placed them right next to the hospital bed and let me know we would be doing a C-Section around 8:00pm if I hadn't progressed. She also let me know I could no longer have any water or other forms of liquid. We asked exactly what amount of progression they were looking for here. As in, I progress to a two by 8:00pm and we are golden or were they looking for a baby to be delivered in the next four hours. As stated, our nurse royally sucked at her job and she essentially told me it was baby by 8:00pm or I was going under the knife.
After another bout of sobbing, Sel's parents arrived at the hospital. My wonderful familia had been keeping us company for the past few hours and had also been privy to watching me push through apparently "nothing" productive. We all got to sit around at this point and think about me having a C-Section. I know that plenty of women have them and everything goes wonderfully, but surgery couldn't have been further from what I was hoping to get this baby here. The other extremely upsetting part about this moment was that our little guy was still doing amazing in there and showing zero signs of distress. My water hadn't broken despite it being potentially noted as having ruptured when they put in the bulb catheter. There was absolutely no reason to panic and rush to the operating room. Alas, no one listened to our adamant protesting and probing of why this was what was happening.
Thursday 7:00pm - Our prayers were answered with the shift change. Our crappy nurse wished us well (yeah right) and a new angelic nurse named Maria came on. I honestly attribute almost everything positive about Rowan's birth to this incredible woman. She is actually a member of our church, but attends a different meeting time. She walked straight into our room when she got there and let us know she had no intention of accompanying me to the OR that evening. She has a reputation of getting things going when someone has stalled in their labor. At first, I was really overwhelmed at the idea that I was no longer having a c-section. Over the past three hours I had come to accept the situation and was almost looking forward to the relief of finally having our baby out and not being in labor any longer. When Maria stepped in, I was immensely grateful, but also terrified at the prospect of now having to face what I imagined was another millennium  of contractions. Luckily our family's and Sel were there to encourage me because I was almost at my breaking point. Maria switched out my bag of Pitocin and told me to get ready to be even more uncomfortable. She dropped my dose back down from 20 mg to 10 mg then started to re-up the dosage every hour.
Thursday 9:00pm - I asked our family's to leave because my relaxing techniques were starting to fail. I didn't need everyone to watch me close my eyes every two minutes and slowly count in my head through each one. Almost twenty minutes after they left, Maria swung by our room again. I asked at what point would I be able to get an epidural if I ended up deciding I needed one. She let me know that the one person who was actually any good at administering them was about to go off shift. If I even sort of thought I wanted one, I should get it before Epi Expert exited the building. I debated quite a bit with it, but after imagining going through another potential 12-18 hours of labor, I made my decision to get that sucker before somebody who would paralyze me went on shift. The Epi Expert entered and it seriously took her 6 minutes from the time she walked in the room to the time she left. She was amazing at what she does and nothing that I was immensely afraid of in regards to getting it happened.
Thursday 10:30pm- The OB came in to check me and WAHOO I was at 3cm. Whilst checking me, my water broke. I seriously almost reached over to caress Maria's arm and tell her she was my favorite person. At this point, I felt absolutely no pain and my cervix was finally deciding to cooperate. It felt like I might actually have this baby in 2014. Sel and I both managed to finally get in a little bit of sleep and I was allowed to have some real water instead of sucking on sponges! Yeeeaaah!
Friday 3:00am - Maria checked me and heavenly light descended on that awful hospital room. I was dilated to 10cm!!! Sing hallelujah! Even though Rowboat was incredibly low, Maria thought it might be a good idea to tilt my hospital bed to a 90 degree angle so I could labor down for a little bit. I think it is a bit funny when people say that instead of feeling pain with an epidural you just feel a lot of pressure . Last time I checked, the pressure of a two ton truck on my abdomen would pretty much spell pain in my book. I honestly think I might have straight up died if I was feeling those last three hours of contractions without an epidural. The "pressure" for those 90 degree contractions were intense.
Friday 3:30am - Maria comes back to our room and lowers my bed. She actually had been removed as my nurse at some point during the night due, but had sweetly decided to keep working with me despite not technically having me on her round anymore. She had only intended to leave me at the 90 degrees for 30 minutes, but the patient she was actually supposed to be attending to had entered the pushing stage to bring her 10 lb 11 oz little chunker to the world. Needless to say, she was a bit caught up with that horrendously painful sounding situation.
Friday 6:00am - Maria announces that we are going to try some practice pushes before she calls the OB down. Part of Rowan's head showed up on my first practice push! She called the OB and told him to get his hiney over here quick. I was really hesitant to have the mirror present to watch everything happening down there, but I am so glad I decided to opt for it. It was incredibly motivating to see a little bit of Rowboat's head every time I pushed. I ended up only having four contractions that I pushed through and then the most miraculous thing I have ever done happened at 6:23am. I became the mother to our 8 lb 15 oz and 21 inch long son. Watching Rowan come out was an indescribable moment. Physically, I felt my stomach almost instantly deflate when his body came. I also luckily felt absolutely nothing else. I was able to somehow avoid feeling the ring of fire or any other of those super duper fun feelings of pushing a bowling ball through a golf ball sized hole. Emotionally, I was in awe that the little thing that had been kicking and punching me was real. The OB held him up for me to see better andR owboat decided to promptly pee all over my leg. I remember being happily reassured right then that the ultrasound techs had told us right and Rowan was, in fact, a boy. They laid his tiny purple body right on my chest and I got to hold my heart on the outside for the first time. He used his strong little frog legs to push up on my chest where he then began to root around in my cleavage for the milk buffet he had been promised. I was amazed and still am so amazed at how powerfully motivated he is to eat. I am also immensely grateful that we had such an amazing headstart to breastfeeding with him making it his number one priority seconds after entering the world. Maria had to take Rowan over to the warming unit to help him get some fluid out of his lungs and Sel stayed right by our little guy the whole time. The OB had ended up giving me a midline episiotomy and I had a third degree tear to get repaired. While he narrated to the resident the art of stitching up lady parts, I focused all my attention on watching Sel hold Rowboat's tiny fist while Maria continued to suction fluid out of his lungs.

We were both a little worn out after our 42 hour process of getting that sweet boy here. 

Things finally got settled down after I was stitched up. We called our family's to tell them Rowboat was finally here and I got to snuggle the sweetest new addition to the world for the next 45 minutes. I still doubt I will ever be able to capture the powerful emotions from that day. I still look at him and can hardly believe that he was inside of me. This perfect little person started out as a microscopic cell and grew into this incredibly sweet baby boy. I know almost every parent thinks this, but he is the most wonderful being I have ever been blessed to meet. I can hardly wait to see what type of person he will be and how lucky I am to be such a big part of his life. I have also fallen even more deeply in love with the man who gave me this beautiful boy. Sel is the most adorable father around. He absolutely adores Rowan and can hardly wait for his turn during the day to hold him. He just stares at Rowan as if he is his whole world. I already think Rowan looks so much like his daddy and I could not be happier about it. We are both absolutely smitten with this little miracle of ours! Aw! Life is so beautiful with these two sweet boys of mine!

6 hour old Rowboat

The two things I love the very most about this world.