 |
| My last preggo picture! |
Monday morning I woke up early because I felt like I was leaking fluid - just a little bit. I had an appointment with my midwife that afternoon so I wasn’t too concerned. I told Josh to go to work as usual and thought that before I kept my plans to spend time with Gloria in the afternoon, that I may as well start throwing together a hospital bag. You know, just in case.
Gloria came to pick me up and took me to my midwife appointment in Lakewood. Josh and I had plans to deliver at St. Joe’s birthing center - preferably with no meds and in a tub was my aim but I felt like making few plans here was better than being rigid. My midwife delivers at the birthing center but her office is in Lakewood. At the appointment I told her how I was feeling and she swabbed my leaking fluid and tested it to see if it was amniotic. The test was negative and she suggested that maybe I had a yeast infection and ordered meds for that purpose. She felt some small contractions and told me to continue bed rest and moving slow for the foreseeable future.
I still felt decent by the time we left there, around 2:30pm. We headed to Panera for a slow lunch and then headed to Target to pick up a few things. We walked in the front doors and headed for the clothing section when I looked at Gloria and said, “You know how people’s water breaks in the movies? Gushing everywhere? THAT JUST HAPPENED TO ME.”So now, things were happening. There was a frantic dash to the restroom to try and contain the uncontainable, frantic phone calls to the midwife office who didn’t call back for way too long, and I think somewhere in there I must have connected with Josh. My contractions intensified immediately after my water broke and were about 5 minutes apart. We went back to the midwife since her office was so close and she took one look at me and said to get to the hospital - apparently we were having a baby today!Thank goodness for the waterproof blanket in Gloria’s car. And for Gloria just being who she is. She was calm and caring throughout this whole day and I couldn’t be more grateful for her place in Sam’s birth story.
She drove us to St. Joe’s hospital in Tacoma where I had to check in through the front desk for the hospital - no birthing center with an early birth. Womp womp. Checking in was a debacle as they forgot to put my middle name on my bracelet which is apparently a very big deal and so they left me sitting in the lobby for a long time. Then they moved me to an upstairs waiting room where, picture this: me in a wheelchair with active labor contractions about 4 mins apart leaking fluid all over the floor - in front of other people just trying to use the room as it’s supposed to be. Cool.
Somewhere in here I’ve talked to Josh on the phone and told him he needs to leave work and go home to get the car (with the hospital bag and car seat in it) and make it to the hospital. This is quickly upgraded to a direct order to come straight to the hospital and NOW PLEASE - no time to stop at home. It’s 5pm now - Gloria and I take time for a selfie and a good look out the window. Sam was born on a beautiful night.
 |
| SO thankful for my sweet friend on this day. Here we are, not long before Sam was born! |
When I was finally put into a temporary sort of room, I was given a nice nurse who wanted to talk a lot. Rather, she didn’t tell me anything useful and she wanted me to talk through my contractions. She also did not want to check my dilation just yet as they believed that this early with my first baby, I may not be very far along in labor. They kept a monitor around my belly to keep an eye on the baby and I remember it being incredibly painful. My belly was so taught with contractions that the extra pressure from that band was excruciating. This should have been a good sign to us all that I was really much further along.
 |
| The view from my hospital room. |
Mental health check in on me right now - I have no clue what’s happening. I’m in such a whirlwind of dealing with contractions, not understanding everyone’s lack of alarm, really wanting my husband’s hand to squeeze, and totally not registering that we were going to hold our baby VERY SOON. I wish so much in retrospect that someone had just said to me, you’re having a baby today. I know I wrote it up there earlier but it didn’t really occur to me logically until after I was holding her. Obviously, I knew I was in active labor and things were progressing VERY quickly. But I was in shock - I needed someone to look my in the eye and remind me what this whole journey was about. Instead I was filled with a ton of fear because I thought that the level of pain I was in could possibly continue for many many more hours to come.
Josh arrived. Go Team Baird. We can totally do this.
Sometime after Josh arrived, we decided to have Gloria go home. They still weren't really checking me and we had no idea how long it would be until a baby arrived. I totally regret this! If we had only known that Little Miss was only a little over an hour away from making her arrival, I would have asked her to stay. No one deserved to be here to witness this moment more.
A midwife came in to talk to me and I asked her to just talk to me about my pain management options. She said but I thought you wanted a natural birth? I was offended by this because YES BUT what is happening right now is not sustainable. I didn’t know how to put all those words together at that time. I wish we could have had a conversation at this point, or that she and I had any previous relationship to fall back on. But we didn't. She left the room for awhile and then when she came back, she finally offered to check how far I was dilated and that sounded like a great idea to me - and guess what?! 10 centimeters and fully effaced - I GUESS WE SHOULD GO TO THE DELIVERY ROOM NOW. If I had known that I was this far along already, I would have been much better off mentally because that would explain that I was actually in active labor, meaning - it would be over soon. I did not have 20 hours of THIS in front of me, I was actually VERY near the finish line.
The staff told me I could be wheeled into the room or that I could walk if I preferred - I chose to walk (it was sooo much further than they said) and in the middle of the hallway I had another huge contraction. I held tight to Josh’s arms and bore down hard. I’m pretty sure this was my first real push - my body just knew what it needed to do and it didn’t. I think I apologized to the nurses for making a huge watery mess on the floor. Josh apologized to me later because during this moment, I was VERY LOUD and her held onto me, rubbing my back and soothing me, softly making the shhhhhh sound. I didn't think a thing of it but he says that he felt so bad for making that noise because he was definitely not trying to make a woman in labor be quiet of all things. I found it funny because I never thought he was.
While rounding the nurses station, two of them joked with each other that they should race to see who’s patient delivered first. I piped up that they shouldn’t be letting me hear that because I like to win.
And win, we did.
As soon as we entered the delivery room I started throwing up pretty violently. The contractions were back to back and the waves of pain about took me off my feet. I’ve since learned that what I had is called a “precipitous labor,” which means in general, under four hours start to finish. This kind of labor comes on so quick that the hormones which generally help you cope with pain cannot be released by your body and everything is intensified tenfold because your entire labor is in such a short amount of time. It also happens so quickly that those helpful hormones can’t help your body loosen up to release the baby so...it’s not pretty.
The nurses asked me which music station I’d like to listen to to and of course I chose Brandi Carlile on Pandora until I realized there was a television in the room. In the middle of my contraction (again, no breaks in between) I pointed at it and Josh looked at me crazily and said, “Really?!” I nodded and when the nurses asked what I wanted he laughed and said, “She wants to watch the Seahawks game.” Uh, YEAH! Monday Night Football?! Let’s do this! It did end up being a nice distraction for a bit, I wasn’t able to track it well but Josh gave me the highlights in my ear while I focused on breathing and pushing.
Due to Sam’s early arrival we had extra staff in the room to handle anything that could happen. I wasn’t a huge fan of the big audience but I wasn’t worried at all about lacking for care either. The rest of the delivery is honestly kind of a blur. I know that things happened so quickly they couldn't get strirrups for my feet so I had a nurse on each side holding my legs in a bent position.
During my labor, I put my previous choir and theatre skills to dramatic use by exercising the FULL POTENTIAL of my lungs. While the midwife and birth team were encouraging and helpful, I could also see in their faces that the pure volume of my laboring was impressive and perhaps a bit shocking to them. No surprise there, ey? Without any medication, I think my body was just venting all of that extra energy in any way it knew how. And it let everyone in Tacoma know I was having a baby.
In just a few large pushes, Sam made her entrance into the world. The excitement of not knowing the sex before she was born was a real joy in that moment. The resounding, 'it's a girl" from Josh and the nurses was such a surprise because so many thought she was going to be a boy! The very first thing the nurses said was actually, "those lips!" Shad had the most perfect puffy, cupid's bow lips you've ever seen. She was laid on my chest directly after birth and not moved for an hour. This was the most precious moment of our lives. The neonatal team said she was healthy and doing well and so needed no immediate care. We were able to snuggle our sweet girl a coo over her beauty.
Eventually she was weighed in at 6lbs 10oz and 19 inches - pretty great for almost a month early! Can you imagine if she'd gone full term?! While they weighed her and did their checkups it was determined that she was perfectly healthy despite her early birth, a real gift to all of us. We still feel so lucky.
 |
| Brand new Baby Baird!
We were transferred to a suite for the night where we finally called all of our family and let them know that, SURPRISE! We were now a family of three. Sam latched immediately to nursing and became a great sleeper from day one. Due to high bilirubin levels, Sam was placed on bili-lights the day after she was born. We were discharged from the hospital and sent home on the evening of 11/9. The next day we had some blood work to complete and it showed her levels were still high, so we were connected with Infant Home Phototherapy who immediately sent nurses to our house for evaluation and to set up a bili-light system for Sam, right in our home. It. Was. Amazing. We ALL received phenomenal care from these seasoned nurses - frankly, far better care than we received from St. Joseph's. Sam was on the bili-lights for 7 days total, at one point, her levels spiked and she was placed on a double coverage light. It was stressful in that we could only hold her when she was nursing and all we wanted to do was snuggle our girl. Luckily, the treatment worked fabulously and she has no lasting issues from that or other health issues related to her premature birth. Yay, Sam!
|
 |
| Sami under the bili lights at the hospital. |
 |
| Joshua talking to his Dad. The cutest. |
Due to her early birth and the fact that we waited to find out her sex until birth - we really had NO CLUE what to call her once she arrived. We had a LONG list of potential names but none really stuck out. Joshua loved the name Sloane for her first name and I wasn't terribly partial to anything. The day after she was born, he suggested Samantha Sloane from our list and it just sounded right. We tried it out and it really seemed to just fit her. Samantha means "listener" and Sloane means "warrior," so we will so how that goes as she gets older. Ha!
 |
| Sweet baby girl. |
 |
| Our first family selfie. |
I've had a lot of time to reflect on her birth now (ummm, two years, duh.) and have come to peace with the form of her arrival. I still wish that my care team had been more proactive from the beginning of our experience and that they had actually communicated with me about what was happening. I think maybe it happened a little too fast for them too. As a first time mom, they expected me to progress much more slowly and I think also to be making a lot more noise through my contractions so they couldn't tell I was in active labor. Ultimately, our birth "plan" had included a natural, non-medicated birth and I was hoping to labor in a tub, if not deliver that way. While the tub and natural birth center were not options for me because our baby was early - we were still able to have a natural birth experience and close skin to skin time right after her birth which were the most important elements to me. Actually, the most important was our sweet, healthy baby girl. No matter the manner - the fact that she is healthy and thriving still remains the greatest gift to our little family. She is a joy in every sense of the word and has made us complete.
 |
| Our little triangle family. |
No comments:
Post a Comment