On location from the hospital...

She's here!

Delaney Grace was born at 8:58 p.m. on Thursday, August 9 (exactly 1 week early).


She was 21.5 inches long and weighed 8 pounds, 5 ounces.


Her brother Garrett has met her, just briefly, and pronounced her "cute". While we are not really sure who she looks like, Laura has cleared up that whole argument by telling us "she looks like DELANEY".


She is gorgeous and we love her so much.


You know I love to share, so I'll give you the briefest version of the birth that I can. I am taking a lot of Percocet right now and do not claim to be totally with it at the moment.


Contractions / loss of my mucous plug wake me up at 8:00 a.m. Thursday. We are at the hospital by 9:00, where I am found to be in active labor and dilated to 5 cm.


I labor naturally for ten hours, until around 6:00 in the evening (getting very disappointed - my second child was delivered in under 6 hours). Get to 9.5 cm, but with a "rim" or "lip" of cervix remaining.


Start pushing while laboring on hands and knees. I lose all control from the pain, as in biting-scratching-hair-pulling-spitting-screaming-kicking-pounding-hitting-swearing-pinching. Not pretty. Beg for epidural RIGHT F-ING NOW. Am informed 9.5 cm is way too late for epidural.


Somewhere in here, they attempt to catheterize me with no pain meds or anesthesia. I'm pretty sure my head was spinning as I growled and cursed at the nurse. Catheter was removed quickly.


I also vaguely remember screaming at anyone who would listen that, "if I can't have some f-ing pain meds, then somebody had better KNOCK ME OUT AND CUT THE BABY OUT I MEAN IT I WANT A DAMN C-SECTION".


During break in contractions / pushing, I calmly inform the roomful of people that "I did the nature-girl thing with my last baby. I changed my mind - I do not want to do it again. Somebody better get that epidural guy up here. NOWWWWWWWW".


Epidural man comes. Epidural placed. Epidural fails.


Epidural man comes again. I am given a spinal block. I am warned that it will only last one hour, meaning I have less than one hour to push baby out, or the pain will be back.


I push as hard as humanly possible, in several different positions. I'm told they can see baby's head coming down. Within twenty minutes, I have feeling back on my right side and start to panic. I demand that the EPIDURAL MAN GET BACK IN THE ROOM RIGHT NOW.


Epidural man returns, and I pledge to sit perfectly still and curl up like a cat and be quiet and patient and perfect. Epidural takes! I tell the amazing anesthesiologist, while looking deep into his eyes, that I love him, that I will love him always.



I take about a half hour break, where I visit with waiting family and see my other two precious babies. After the break, I push for about an hour.



Baby is still not making progress moving down, and I still have a "lip" of cervix that I can't seem to push past. Her heart rate is also dropping every time I push.



Labor has been going on for about 12 hours now - including 2 hours of pushing, and the general consensus seems to be that either it's a very large baby, or the cord is being compressed when I push. The OB is getting concerned, and everyone (including me) decides a C-section is the way to go.

Once Delaney is delivered, we see why she wouldn't come down any further - she couldn't. While it's common for most babies to have their cord wrapped around something, even their neck, hers was wrapped around so many places that she couldn't get out of it, and it was being compressed when I pushed. Seth said it looked like she was caught in a spiderweb. The cord was wrapped around one leg, her body, arms, and neck.



The section was my first ever surgery, and I'm pretty sure it scared the hell out of my husband to watch me go under the knife. However, it went perfectly well and baby and I are both doing great. I must say that the pain of a C-section recovery seems to be worse than the recovery with a vaginal delivery.



So, apparently I do things backwards - I've had two normal, vaginal deliveries, and I end up with a C-section on my THIRD baby. Weird. But I now consider myself an expert in childbirth...I've had a super-long labor with vacuum extraction and an epidural, I've had a super short labor with a non-medicated vaginal delivery, and now I've had a baby delivered surgically.



I feel fairly at peace with the way things happened, but there are a few things that I'm sad I missed out on. I hope to write a post about the emotional side of this delivery, but not until I have my emotions and hormones a little more under control.



Thank you guys for all your support and encouraging words during this pregancy. I'm going to take a few days off, and then hopefully I'll have time for a quick update here and there.



Now. I know you are soooooo done reading. You are saying, bring on the pictures already, woman!

Laura's Birth Story

Ooh, I have so many things to blog about! Laura's birthday party, the Birthday Cake Disaster, the mushy "wah, my baby is three!" post...

...but today, you get Laura's birth story. Enjoy!

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It took us close to a year to get pregnant with Garrett, so when we decided to have a second child, we thought we should get an early start so that they would be around two years apart. Little did we know how much easier it would be the second time around, and we found out we were expecting our second child when Garrett was just ten months old.

My pregnancy with Laura was mostly uneventful. I bypassed the massive swelling that I had with my first pregnancy, and gained less weight than I did the first time. The only weird problem was toward the sixth or seventh month, I would be walking and my entire leg would give out. I would get up, "adjust" my belly, and would feel better for a while. I think she was sitting on a nerve.

I was also exhausted during this pregnancy. I was chasing a one and a half year old little boy and teaching full time (I was pregnant for the ENTIRE school year) with the most challenging class I've ever had.

With a second pregnancy, I found you just don't get the luxury of a nap before supper, soaking for hours in a warm tub, or sitting for half an hour just watching your tummy jump around. At the beginning, I would sometimes forget I was pregnant.

Belly pictures, seven months pregnant:

Garrett kissing "his baby":

Around my 36th week, I started having regular contractions that were very bothersome. While I was hoping for just a FEW weeks of bedrest, I didn't get it...I got some medication to relax my uterine muscles instead. My doctor also discovered that I was 3 to 4 centimeters dilated...and I walked around that way for the next TWO AND A HALF WEEKS. However, it was encouraging, considering the hours of painful labor that it took for me to get to 3 cm. with Garrett.

I was due on April 27. My maternity leave with Garrett had been at the very start of the school year, and felt very difficult to prepare for. But THIS time, I had The Best Gift A Teacher Can Be Given...a STUDENT TEACHER. She was awesome, and I was ready for my maternity leave in March. And not only was I prepared as far as plans, copies, etc., I was mentally ready to check out...my class was very difficult, and I could not WAIT to turn it over to someone else. I didn't even care what they did after I was gone (they only had a month left anyway).

Nothing truly dramatic led up to Laura's birth. My body seemed to know what it was doing this time around. On Friday, April 16, I woke up around 1:30 a.m. and had to GO to the bathroom. I came out ten minutes later, told Seth to call the babysitter (a friend volunteered to stay with Garrett if I went into labor overnight), call the doula to meet us at the hospital, and to put my bags in the car. And then I went back to the bathroom.

After my bathroom trips, my contractions quickly became very painful and were about three to four minutes apart. I tearfully kissed little Garrett good-bye, and we set off for the hospital at around 2:00 in the morning.

By the time we arrived at 2:30 a.m., I was already 5 cm. dilated and was immediately taken to a delivery suite. I had chosen, again, to labor and deliver with no pain medication. Again, my reasoning has nothing to do with being a martyr or trying to prove a point. I just needed to prove to myself that I had it within me to cope with the pain that comes with delivering a child. It's an amazingly powerful thing to realize just what the female body and mind are capable of doing. While I am proud of myself for making the choice to appreciate my labor, pain and all, I also know that I was lucky to have an uncomplicated delivery that made it possible.

With Garrett's labor, I had HATED being in the bed and needed my husband constantly. My coping mechanisms were so different this time:

I spent most of the contractions on my left side, in the bed, holding my doula's hand and staring at the pattern of her heather gray hooded sweatshirt.

I occasionally sat on the birthing ball, where I stared at the flowers on the wallpaper border and tried to WILL MY CERVIX TO OPEN.

That's it for coping mechanisms. I just remember staying really, really zoned out. It was extremely painful, but I was also not nearly as afraid this time around. I knew I wasn't going to die from labor.

My doula was also a great comfort to me this time. My husband was a great comfort and help too, but there is nothing, NOTHING, like having a woman there to support you (and for me, that needed to be a woman that I liked being around, but NOT one I have emotional ties to, like my mom).

I mean, when A WOMAN WHO HAS HAD CHILDREN AND HELPED DELIVER BABIES tells me, "You're doing so well! Yes, that sensation is normal. Everything is perfect! This is a textbook labor! I promise, you're NOT wetting your pants / pooping on the table!", it's just more reassuring than it would be coming from the nervous, pacing husband who has been drinking coffee for five hours and has never had the experience of an 8 pound baby coming out of him. I needed my husband there, don't get me wrong. But we both agree that hiring the doula was The.Best.Money.We.Ever.Spent.Amen.

Around 6:30 a.m., I started sobbing uncontrollably. I wailed about missing Garrett, not being ready for another baby, and wanting to go home. I remember wanting to stop crying, but physically couldn't do it. That's when the doula decided the nurses should probably come check my cervix.

The doula knew - I was going through transition. When the nurse checked me, she found that I was 9 cm. dilated and called my doctor.

He arrived around 7 a.m. and said, "If I break your water now, we'll have a baby in half an hour!" And I screamed, "NOOOOO!" After some convincing from the SANE, non-laboring people in the room, my water was broken and I dilated to 10 cm. within minutes.

And THAT is when I knew pain. The most horrible, pelvis-breaking, make-you-throw-up, break-out-in-a-cold-sweat pain imaginable. And that is when I said, "I think I want the epidural. I changed my mind!"

The news was gently broken to me that we were WAAAY past the epidural point, and that I could start pushing now.

Now here is what's interesting to me about my labor. I NEVER felt the urge to push. I always hear and read that it's an uncontrollable feeling, that you HAVE to push. I didn't, not for one moment. In fact, I had to be told when to push. For me, pushing was way more painful than contractions. I could have labored all day if it meant I could avoid that damn pushing.

So began the pushing, at 7:00 a.m. And then came the screaming. I screamed my freaking head off like I have never screamed before, and I swore like a sailor (but worse). The nurses protested, but my doctor stopped them. "She is pushing better when she yells. Let her yell!"

About halfway through, I lay back on the pillow and said, "I want to go home now." My doctor said, "She wants to go home. Ah, that is so cute." (You must put the doctor's comments in a Chinese accent...he is Chinese and has a very dry sense of humor).

I was given an episiotomy (didn't feel a thing), and our 8 pound, 3 ounce baby was delivered at 7:21 a.m. When they said, "It's a girl!", I responded, "Are you teasing me?", and then I asked for a throat lozenge.

I assumed I'd been pushing for about two hours, and was in awe when I found that I'd only pushed for around 20 minutes. I got stitched up, and kept waiting for our new baby girl to cry. I had heard just small whimpers, and I kept asking if she was okay. Every time I asked, the entire room would shout, "Oh, she's just fine!" I didn't find out until hours later that she hadn't been breathing and they had to put a little mask on her face to get her started. My husband had been watching the nurses in terror.

However, within thirty minutes, all was well and my little red, round faced daughter was nursing for the first time.

Laura's first day home:

Laura's birth announcement picture. She's one week old. I took a picture of her with this bear every month until she was one.

Garrett, 19 months old, with his brand new baby sister:

Laura, 3 weeks old, with Mommy at a school baby shower.

P.S. As soon as I have some time to scan pics, I'm going to add some better shots on this post and Garrett's story too!

Garrett's Birth Story, Part Two

*If you haven't read Part One, scroll down to the post below!*

So Seth and I headed to the hospital at 5 a.m. on September 19. The ride was miserable, but that's about all I remember of the twenty minute drive (to the same hospital where Seth and I were both born, by the way!)

I was wheeled through the ER entrance in a wheelchair, trying desperately not to have a contraction IN FRONT OF PEOPLE, and was taken to maternity triage. The part I remember best about this stop was that they WEIGHED ME. And that was only the beginning of the indignities.

I was hooked up to a monitor and had an exam, where it was discovered I was having very regular contractions every three minutes, and was dilated to 3 cm, so I was admitted to Labor and Delivery. One of the nurses in triage said to my doula, "Wow! She's in a great contraction pattern! I bet we'll have a baby by noon!"

When I arrived in my room, we first had to fend off all of the med pushers. Luckily, my doula (who also works as a L&D nurse at the same hospital) was able to explain that I did not want (or need) any pitocin, that I did not want to be hooked up to an IV pole, and that I did not want to be offered pain medication.

Those things are all such standard practice, I'm sure they would not have honored my requests had my doula not been there. So they inserted a hep-lock in the back of my left hand, just in case I did end up needing fluids or meds through an IV later, and I was free to roam until the hourly monitoring on the baby (where I would have to lay in bed for 20 minutes).

So beginning at 5:30 a.m., I labored at the hospital. It's all pretty fuzzy, and I just remember doing everything I could think of to deal with the pain.

We walked the halls.

I ate popsicles.

I sucked on suckers.

I begged for water (which we would hide when the nurses came in).

I went to the bathroom a million times.

I sat on the birthing ball.

I cried.

My doula did her patented "double-hip squeeze" to ease the pain of back labor (the baby's head was turned in the opposite direction of how it should have been).

I held onto Seth's neck and swayed and moaned (my patented "sick-cow bellow").

I did everything EXCEPT stay in that damn bed, which was intolerable to me.

At 6:30 a.m., I was still only 3 cm dilated.

So I headed to the shower. I sat on the shower seat while Seth and our doula took turns aiming the hot water at my back.

At 11:30 a.m., I was dilated to 4 cm.

At 3:30 p.m., 6 cm.

We were going on 15 hours of labor that Wednesday, September 19, having had no sleep since Tuesday night. To say we were all exhausted would be a major understatement.

At 5:00 p.m. (16.5 hours in), I'd finally dilated to 8 cm. The labor nurse felt that it would be a good time to break my water, hoping that would speed things up. I agreed.

My doctor arrived to check me at 6 p.m., and announced that I was 6 cm dilated. I immediately burst into tears, the only laboring woman in the world whose cervix goes BACKWARDS. The nurses explained that I was 6 cm instead of 8 cm because the bag of waters was no longer pushing and stretching my cervix open.

It was at this point that my doctor recommended an epidural. He felt the baby was really big, and that I had to get some rest before I had to start the hard work of pushing. I was still holding my ground as far as 'no meds', but everyone in the room - my mom, Seth, the nurses, my doula - were in agreement. I had to let my body rest.

So I had an epidural placed at 6:30. To this day, I still feel like a quitter, but that is another post within itself. Everyone was supportive, or trying to be - "there's no gold stars, Stacey...you just want a healthy baby, no matter how it gets here!" And I'll just tell you, friends - I DO keep a little bag of gold stars, and when I visit friends who've delivered naturally (hey, Shawna!), I give them their damn gold star. So YES, there are gold stars for labor. I have them.

Anyway, I will admit that the epidural was a miracle from heaven helpful. The pain went away, but there was still that uncomfortable, disturbing sensation of pressure. However, Seth was able to go grab a bite to eat in the cafeteria, and I got in some catnapping and visiting with family and friends. It was fascinating to watch those double-peaked contractions on the monitor and not feel them at all.

But once the interventions have started, there is no going back...I got a permanent blood pressure cuff that nearly severed my arm every 20 minutes, and at 8:00 I was catheterized.

At 8:30, the baby's heart tones were showing signs that it was getting tired. At that point, I got an "amnio-infusion", although I'm still not sure what the hell that is. I also had another exam and I was 9 cm dilated!

By 9:30 (about 21 hours in, now), I was fully dilated and ready to push.

After pushing, with very little progress, for 2-1/2 hours, my doctor suggests that my epidural should be turned off (and I also hear him give the nurses a little chewing out for letting me push so long without calling him). I am starting to have a real fear that this baby is only going to be able to get here by c-section. I can feel everyone else thinking it.

So the baby that should have been "here by noon!" on Thursday, September 19, is NOT.

It's now Friday, September 20. At 1 a.m., I'm in my third hour of hard pushing, my 24th hour of labor, and have been awake since 6 am on Wednesday.

The pushing business is getting serious, as the baby's heart rate is dropping with each contraction. Someone starts pushing on the top of my belly, trying to help force the baby down. One of the nurses (I like to call her Old Horse Face Nurse) yells frantically, "YOU'VE GOT TO PUSH THIS BABY OUT RIGHT NOW". I'm thinking Horse Face had never tried to push anything out of HER totally numb hoo-ha.

My doctor does an episiotomy, and attaches the vacuum extractor to the baby's head to help pull him out. Finally, amid my screaming of very ugly swear words, the baby's head is out and I'm pretty sure I'm about to die. I actually whispered, "Am I going to die?" to my doula. Once I was fairly certain that I would not die, I was convinced that my entire pelvic and hip region was going to be broken in half. And that is when the baby's shoulders got stuck.

At 1:21 a.m. on September 20, our first baby was finally delivered. I vividly recall the sensation of the baby's body slithering out. It is the most bizarre thing I have ever felt. And then ALL THAT PAIN was gone in an instant.

They announced that it was a screaming, pink, 8 pound and 1 ounce BOY! We looked at him for a while before deciding that he looked like a Garrett.

He got cleaned up, I got stitched up, and then got to enjoy Horse Face Nurse "massaging" my belly to help my uterus contract ("since you don't want any pitocin").

Garrett nursed immediately, and then I was wheeled to my room with a teddy bear and balloons sitting on my tummy.

For all of you having your first baby (FREMA!), childbirth is messy, exhausting, disgusting, surprising, beautiful, and surreal. As many words as I've used to describe it here, it still doesn't do it justice.

*I didn't have a digital camera when Garrett was born, so I'll come back to add some pictures after I scan them!*

Garrett's Birth Story, Part One

I'm in a birth story kind of mood, and I've never posted much about the births of my children, so I figure now is as good a time as any. Enjoy! (I mean, if you like this sort of thing, which I definitely do.)

Garrett's original due date was October 2, 2002. However, as the pregnancy progressed, they moved up his due date to September 26 because of his anticipated size of Huge. I even had to have a pelvic x-ray and go visit a perinatologist to determine the size of the baby's head.

They also wanted to check out the tubes that ran from Garrett's kidneys to his bladder...they thought something was wrong there, or that he was possibly missing a kidney (nothing like ultrasounds to scare the bejeezus out of a new mother - we found out after his birth that he was perfectly normal, healthy, and missing no parts).

Anyway, during the midst of a fairly enjoyable (though horrendously swollen) pregnancy, I was still working full time teaching Kindergarten...and that is NOT a 'sit down' kind of job, not to mention it was 95 degrees when we started school in August.

We had hired my substitute teacher near the beginning of the school year, so I spent August, and what I had of September, preparing obsessively complete sub plans. Would you expect any less of me?

I had also decided from the very start of the pregnancy that I was going to have a drug-free, intervention-free labor if at all possible. My thinking was that my body was MADE to do this, and that I wanted to embrace this experience fully. We took a Bradley natural childbirth class, along with every other class pertaining to pregnancy, nursing, or infants that our hospital offered. We also hired a doula (labor assistant) to do some pre-labor preparations with us, and to be there for the entire labor and birth.

So on September 18, I read "Our Teacher Is Having A Baby" to my class, and then planned on staying after school to finish up the sub plans (and by 'plans', I do mean writing eight weeks worth of plans, copying and neatly organizing every worksheet into daily stacks, making lists of every classroom rule and procedure, writing and copying eight weeks worth of parent notes, preparing two months worth of book orders, and threatening informing my class about proper behavior for the substitute teacher.

My body obviously knew something that day that I did not know. Normal people nest at home...teachers nest at school.

So I stayed after school and worked, worked, worked. The more I worked, the more obsessive I became. At about 6:00, I called my husband (Seth) and begged him to bring dinner and help me get finished.

He showed up with cheeseburger pizza from the local Casey's, and we had a greasy dinner accompanied by Cokes. We continued to try to finish up the disaster area my room was becoming, and I noticed after dinner that I was beginning to have contractions. I assumed they were from stress and exhaustion, so around 10:00, we headed home. I was nearly in tears because I hated to have that mess to come back to the next morning. Plus, my house was trashed due to the excessive time I had been devoting to my classroom.

We got home around 10:30, where I took a hot shower and cleaned the toilets (the NESTING!). I fell into bed, feeling totally trashed, around 11:30.

At 12:30 a.m., I woke up with a start. I had to go to the bathroom...I mean GO to the bathroom. I stayed in there for quite a while, thinking I was getting a horrible stomach bug (or that the Casey's pizza was not such a good idea.)

I tried to go back to bed, but was back in the bathroom again at 12:45. When I lay back down to try to get some sleep, I started noticing that I was having terrible cramps, and they were consistently ten minutes apart. I woke up Seth and informed him that I was pretty sure I was in labor.

A little after 1 a.m., the cramps were growing stronger and more painful, and I told Seth that we HAD TO GO BACK TO SCHOOL AND CLEAN UP THAT MESS. He was game (I mean, what sane husband is going to argue with a groaning, screaming pregnant woman?), so we called my principal to tell her to call up the sub in the morning, and I started getting dressed to go back to school.

But...

...by 1:30 a.m., I was positive that I was having real contractions, and they were already about five minutes apart, so we called our doula. The fact that I was crawling on the floor, moaning, and rocking myself back and forth had Seth wishing for some back-up, anyway. School would not be happening tonight.

Patti (the doula) arrived at our house by 2 a.m. She rubbed my feet, massaged my back, and generally tried to get me to relax a little, while Seth called our parents and scurried around loading up the car and putting my last minute items in my hospital bag.

The chunk of time spent at home is actually kind of a haze for me. I think I fell in and out of sleep for several hours, in between contractions and muttering "The sub is going to kill me! I'll be fired! I can't leave my classroom like thissssss!" By 5 a.m. (4.5 hours in, now), my contractions were 3 minutes apart, and everyone felt we should head for the hospital.

Now. The one thing that stands out most vividly in my mind is how I felt at that moment, standing outside my house getting ready to leave for the hospital.

We left before sunrise, when it was still and quiet in our little neighborhood. It still felt like summertime, and it smelled like rain might be in the air.

I was eating a grape ice pop and wearing Coco Cabana body lotion. Whenever I taste a grape ice pop or wear that lotion, it takes me straight back to that moment.

When I remember that morning, I can still summon up that feeling...the combination of anxiousness, nervousness, anticipation, fear, and excitement.

And with that, we headed for the hospital.