General family Info
Pregnancy information
Birth & nursery preparation
Coping with a brand new baby
Birth Story Cecilia
I had been planning a hospital VBAC with my family
practice doctor. She ended up being out of town this week and had,
much to my annoyance, assigned a resident who seemed very clueless to
be her "on call" person for the week.
I had my 41 week appointment
with Clueless and at that point panicked because dealing with this
woman for the birth would not work. I finally had decided that if I
went into labor before my doc came back that I'd see whether one of
the hospital MWs could attend the birth instead of calling Clueless.
On Friday 6/20 I had an appointment for a non-stress test and AFI
check since I was over 41 weeks. That morning I woke up with crampy
contractions every 10-15 mins apart starting around 5 AM but since
they seemed to be going nowhere fast we figured we ought to keep the
appointment.
The NST looked great but they were only able to detect
one small pocket of amniotic fluid, which concerned everyone. Lots of
phone calls to OB and Family Practice later and they sent us straight
over to Labor and Delivery and basically said that we needed to have
the baby in a timely manner. There was lots of talk of induction, risk
of uterine rupture etc etc. Not fun.
As it turns out the family practice doc who was on call that day was
*GREAT*. (Maybe even better than my own FP doc) He checked me around
2:00 when we got to L&D and were trying to figure out our plan - at
that point I was around 3-4 cm and 75% effaced. My contractions very
quickly picked up to every 3-6 minutes and it seemed like things might
just go on their own.
We agreed that I'd stick with the family
practice folks as my primary doctors and have the OB folks keep an eye
on the baby. (At that point my main concern was to make sure they left
me alone if everything looked good and to quickly identify and respond
to any real problems).
So we headed into our room and had a great nurse who was extremely
helpful. Because the telemered system for the fetal monitoring was
broken and
they were worried about the baby I wasn't able to use the nice tub
they had.
I ended up sitting on the birth ball with my mom rubbing my
back and coaching me for almost the entire time we were there. The
agreement we had was that as long as I continued to progress and the
baby looked good they would leave me alone. Fortunately everything
seemed to work out well.
I got to be around 8 cm at 10 or 11 PM and at
that point told them to go ahead and break my membranes to see if we
could speed things along. No meconium, which kept everyone happy, so
they let me continue. It took *forever* to go from 8 to complete - at
around 1:30 AM I still had a rim of cervix that was too thick to push
out of the way, and that's about the time the OB folks kicked me off
the ball because they were having trouble seeing the baby's tracing.
So I labored the rest of the time on the bed and tried to rest between
contractions (I was getting really tired).
Around 2:30 the OB folks started to get concerned that the baby's
heartrate wasn't looking so good and suggested we put in an internal
monitor. I suggested that they check me again since I was feeling like
I could push - still had a small lip but it was small enough that it
could get pushed out of the way.
They agreed to skip the internal
monitor but basically told me I needed to push the kid out in a timely
manner since they were still concerned. They were great about standing
back and letting me push without any coaching and Claire was born 1 hour later.
I can honestly say that that was the hardest thing I've done in my
entire life - and worth every minute of it. We should be proud of what
amazing strong women we are!
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A Recipe for Sanity: The Working
Mother's Survival Guide
What every working mother needs is a fairy godmother -- someone who will arrive on the scene, wave her magic wand, and make all the work.
A Recipe for Sanity: The Working
Mother's Survival Guide
What every working mother needs is a fairy godmother -- someone who will arrive on the scene, wave her magic wand, and make all the work.
