Aurelia Marie

It has taken way to long for me to get this posted! At the request of those in far away places, such as China and Illinois, who were not around to experience the retelling… The Birth Story.

Warning – this may be a little graphic for those with no experience with childbirth! For others it may just be TMI – but I’ve tried to be discreet :).

June 24th, 8pm
After having sets of steady contractions off and on all day, I determined that my 10-minute-apart contractions were hard enough and steady enough that this was the real deal! I called the doula to check-in and tried to go to bed. The contractions continued through the night, and I didn’t get much of any sleep. Took and shower and packed my bag…

5:00am, June 25th
Called the doula (Melanie) back, and she made her way to our apartment. I woke up Marcus to tell him she was coming. He got up and ate some breakfast, then got his overnight goodies together for the hospital. We started working through contractions together. With my arms around his neck for support, I tried to relax and swayed my hips to let it all loosen up. This would be our activity every few minutes for the next several hours…

7:30am – check in to the hospital. My doctor saw me briefly before she went off duty. She wanted to go ahead and break my water right away, but I decided to wait. Once the water breaks, I would have been on a set deadline for having the baby before they would have pushed me into surgery – so we decided to see what would happen.
I was equipped with a wireless monitoring belt, and we began to walk the halls to keep my contractions progressing. Although the contractions and my dilation were coming along, it was very slow-going.

~3pm – Melanie and my nurse determine that the baby is posterior (positioned spine-towards-spine with me), which is not the ideal position for delivery. The encourage me to lean over a ball and to get on all-fours during contractions in the hopes that gravity will help to roll her back over. This part was frustrating for me , since she had been in such great position all along – she wasn’t posterior in the ultrasound on Friday… stubborn kid! Anyway, more slow progress. Sometime along here, I had a liquid lunch and dinner and spent some time in the bathtub to relax – the belt was waterproof, too!

~6pm – The doctor on-call visited and broke my water to get things going. We had attempted some different positions and some pushing to break my water, to no avail. I was starting to get impatient with the slow progress. Once the water was broken, my contractions really took off in frequency/intensity. I was only 6 cm when he broke my water, which had taken about 10 hours. Aurelia still hadn’t turned back over, so the nurse (a new one by now) and Melanie started to turn her manually. The contractions were more painful, anyway, since she was now pressing more directly on my cervix, and the squeezing was directly on the baby instead of agains the bag of water… Anyway, the turning was truly awful. I was on my side in the bed with both women pressing and rubbing and squeezing me with each contraction. This went on for a loooong time – probaby an hour or so.

I had already been in labor for many hours at this time, and I was getting exhausted and frustrated. I was starting to loose my “control” of the contractions – that is – I couldn’t get my breath behind them and stay under control with my shaking. So, I decided to get an injection of Staydol. The medicine kicked-in quickly, and I sort of half-slept through the next 30 minutes of contractions while the turning continued and transition got under-way. By the time I was coming out of the effect, the nurse was telling me to push to get her through the cervix. I was only 9cm, but fully effaced, and the baby was descending well, so we went for it. The nurse called for another nurse, and they set up the delivery cart!

June 25th – some time before 10:40pm – Time to push!
Once the transition was over, I suddenly felt a lot of relief. Shortly, thereafter, though, I started feeling the pressure that meant that the baby was coming soon. The doctor was on his way, so the nurses went ahead and got me started with pushing. I have no sense of time at this point – Marcus might possibly know, but I think that I pushed for something like an hour all together. When the doc arrived, he came running in saying, “Wait until I get my gloves on!” It didn’t really happen that fast. The sensations were not quite what I expected. The urge really didn’t feel like much of an urge, but not pushing was suddenly more painful than pushing. I started-out exhaling with each push so as not to keep too much pressure in my face. After a while, the doc said to hold my breath each time, since I was close to the end. This really did work! (I ended up with a broken capillary in my eye from this.)

The baby started to crown, and the nurse first showed Marcus and then took my hand so that I could feel her head. I was so exhausted, I was starting to disbelieve that were actually having a baby. It really felt more like a weird dream that wouldn’t end at this point. I must have still been a little delirious. So, a few more pushes that each felt like they surely must have been enough, and the head was out. The doctor told me to stop so that he could assess the situation.

Suddenly, he looks to the nurse and tells her to hit the call button. “Shoulders!” was all that I heard him say, specifically. They also called for the respiratory specialist to come so that he could check the baby. It seemed that as soon as the nurse had said that I might need to ride out a couple of contractions before pushing again, everyone in the room started yelling at me to push immediately. I wasn’t sure what was happening, and I was between contractions. The said to push anyway, so I tried. I couldn’t really figure out how to push hard without a contraction, so I started to wait a few seconds. The commands to push were more intense this time – “Push, your baby need you!” I wasn’t sure what was going on, but the doctor said to take a deep breath and try to get her out in one big push. So, I gave it all I had, and she slid on out.

Then we found out that she was a girl! Marcus went with her to the warmer to be with her during her assessment. Her shoulders had gotten stuck on the way out, which resulted in an episiotomy for me and a rougher arrival for her. The first APGAR score was low, but she improved quickly. The doc said she was pretty limp when she came out. Luckily, she didn’t have any serious trauma. (This issue can result in a broken collar bone.) Apparently, the doc had her turned just right, but I had to keep pushing so that she could clear my pelvic bones to get free. Midwives tend to have women turn over onto their all-fours for pushing when this happens, but I couldn’t do that in a half-bed in the hospital. Meanwhile, Aurelia was checked, cleaned and started getting more color, and I got several stitches. I was just ready to relax and then see my baby! My arms were so tired, I was nervous about holding her, and I was shaking all over. I was tired and sore in places that I didn’t even know that I had muscles!

She was so sweet when I finally saw her! I couldn’t believe that something that big had come out of me! The nurses had guessed her weight as she crowned, and one of them had it within an ounce – pretty impressive.

Overall, I was so happy that I went through the whole experience of birth – pain and all. The contractions and even the pushing weren’t so bad, and I think that I could have gone the whole distance without any drugs if it hadn’t been for turning her over. I am hoping that I can accomplish it in less than 26 hours next time!!

I haven’t gotten a hatted photo taken yet, but it is coming soon. There were requests from family to continue with the hats. I guess you can consider the idea officially stolen, Sonya!

Anyway, we had the 2-month check up today. Aurelia is healthy and growing, which we already knew, but here are the numbers… 12 lbs, 4 oz and 24 inches long. The NP seemed to think that we had an inaccurate measurement last month rather than assuming that she didn’t grow any in length. (Our pediatrician is on maternity leave right now.) She has certainly outgrown all of the footed sleepers in the newborn size – that happened about 2 weeks ago. It is no small feat to measure a wiggly and scrunchy baby, so I suppose discrepancies among length measures are to be expected.

In other news, Aurelia has taken to sucking on her fists. She doesn’t actually put them all the way into her mouth, and she doesn’t really go for the thumb or fingers, just noisily sucks on her fist while holding one hand over the other, bringing both hands to her mouth. This behavior can be observed when she is hungry, sleepy, or bored (?) . Perhaps this is yet another of her sleep fighting tactics along with fussy nursing, extreme squirming, and screaming. We have quite the stubborn little girl when it comes to sleep. Fortunately, our techniques for getting her to sleep have also evolved. I climb into bed with her for her last nursing of the evening, and then we both fall asleep. After about an hour, she can be moved to her own bed for the night. Any attempts to move her before she is really soundly asleep will result in a long walk outside to put her back to sleep – and she usually ends up on our bed for the night afterward. I certainly hope putting her in bed gets better!

Classes have started again, and we are getting the hand-off schedule worked out. Three days a week, we have a sitter who comes for an hour or two while our classes/travel time from campus overlaps. I really dove in with starting an experiment, 2 classes, and one lab each week. Marcus has 3 classes, and he is finished at noon each day, which frees me up to do research activities in the afternoon. Aurie is still not taking her bottle, I have to check-in every few hours to feed her. This hasn’t been too big of an issue, but there have been times when staying at work would been more convenient, and I could get done for the evening a little sooner without the interruption. I do miss her when I’m away, and it has been challenging to come to grips with wearing so many hats (student, researcher and Mommy). C’est la vie.

Tired, but happy momma – signing off…

These pictures were taken as she had finally calmed down a bit after a crying spell. I think she wanted Mommy and Mommy was not at home. I distracted her with her favorite distraction…and then the last picture I could take should tell you what happened next…

Although she uses her fist instead of her fingers, Aurie is learning to type already. She even figured out how to insert the date into Notepad. I don’t even know how to do that! Seriously though, although I’m holding her up, she began reaching for the keyboard of her on volition. I was trying to get her to calm down and she motioned to the keyboard and when I held her to it, she started punching keys and looking at the movement on the screen. Aurie’s gonna be a computer whiz!!!