Sharon's Birth Story

The story actually begins about 3 weeks before Maxine was born. I had started to develop an itchy rash around my belly button area and it just went crazy after that. Before long my body was covered nearly head to foot with a PUPP (sometimes PUPPP) rash, which is common in first time pregnancies and mothers pregnant with multiples. Funny thing is that other mothers I've known in my time have never mentioned this rash. So there was one level of discomfort. Thankfully, it didn't last long. As soon as labor started, the itchiness went away.

The day before I went into labor I developed a soreness in my jaw. I thought that it was do to me clinching my teeth at night or stressing about being passed my due date. Thankfully, it didn't last long. As soon as labor started, the ache in my jaw went away.

Labor started at about midnight on August 31st. I was up for my usual trip to the bathroom, but was feeling some unusual cramping, more than te Braxtons I'd experienced before. I wanted to be sure this was labor so I waited an hour before letting my hubby know. When I woke him with the news he bolted upright and I pushed him down again. I told him to chill out and to get a little more rest before we rustled up the crew. At 2a.m. I was sure it was labor and called the nurse-midwife on-call at the midwifery clinic. She said I should head to the hospital when my contractions were 2-5 minutes apart. They were about a minute or two apart. I tried to eat a banana because I was hungry, couldn't hold it down. Phone calls were made and people started arriving at the house, including the best doula in the woorld, my SIL. Once the car was packed and we were sure about my contractions we headed to the hospital. Thankfully, it didn't take very long to get there. The hospital was only a mile and a half from our house.

My hubby, my SIL and I arrived at Phoenix Baptist Hospital and checked in through the emergency room at around 3 or 4 a.m. We were brought to a triage room where a nuse checked and found I had dilated from 1 to 2 centimeters during the examination. We were admitted to the third floor maternity ward and assigned a laborng room and there we waited for the midwife on-call. We thought it was going to be Lisa but she was just coming off her rotation. Then we were told it was Tiffany but she wasn't scheduled. It turned out to be Lylaine, but she was in a morning meeting until 10a.m., so we wouldn't see her until after that. Thankfully, it didn't make a difference when the midwife arrived. The baby wouldn't be born until nearly 9p.m.

The nurses who attended to me were all right for the most part, many I liked and I am grateful for their attention and support. Others I could have done without, but that's the way the evening went. Some moments were better than others. I was slowly making progress, stalled at around 4 centimeters, but then got stuck again at 6-7 centimeters. During the whole process my SIL/doula and hubby are helping my through everyone one of my contractions. I was blowing rasperries all night long. I got to labor in the whirlpool tub which was nice. Other times I was hanging from my hubby's shoulders, at the counter or on the birthing ball. The whole time trying to concentrate on blowing raspberries which helped process the toughest part of the contractions. But later my lips suffered from all that raspberry blowing. Thankfully, there is chapstick, Burt's Bees in fact. And in the end I have my baby girl.

So while the stalling was happening we had to move onto plan B - induction. I was not looking for to this part. My fear was that things would start to rollercoaster out of control and I would end up in a terrible position that required an emergency C-section. My water bag was broken and it turned out to have Meconium in it. This could spell bad news if Maxine stayed inside too long. I was hopefully then that the process would be over soon. Well, part of my prediction was right. I did end up with an emergency C, but it didn't take a rollercoaster ride to get there. It was more like a wild bumper car ride. The Pitocin made the contractions more intense, sometimes two coming one after the other. At one point I was contracting big time, trying desperately hard to concentrate on blowing raspberries and failing, tossed my cookies and pulled a muscle in my abdomen. After that I threw up my hands and said I'd had enough. I was done. Thankfully, the end was just around the corner and somehow I was laboring for another hour under the Pitocin. I knew things were ending, it was just going to take a bit longer to get there.

A Pitocin blocker was administered and I was getting prepped for a C-section. The surgeon and the midwife commented on how odd my belly looked, when Maxine was doing her peanut-yoga move and they didn't know what that meant. When I saw I was in the process of getting the C-section, I was less scared of that than I was of anything else. I felt like the end was finally near and I would have my baby soon. Sure, the deliver process wasn't what I had planned, but as long as Maxine was born and all right, that's all I cared about. The midwife stayed with me the whole time. The anesthesiologist was the best and when he gave me the spinal tap to numb me from the waist down, it was a breeze. Once the curtain was drapped before me, I was comfortable and somehow feel asleep. The next thing I remember was waking to see my husband in his surgical bunny suit taking pictures and video of the baby being born and the sounds of my daughter crying. She's got such as beautiful cry. My hubby got to videotape her being cleaned and her sinuses and lungs being cleared of the meconium. You could see in the video her color change from bluish to pink as she cries through the procedures (which I will post soon). When she was cleaned they brought her to me so I could give her a kiss and then she and my hubby went to the nursery for Maxine to get some more cleaning and attention. Thankfully, my hubby got to experience a lot of firsts with Maxine. He is very proud of this fact.

It took an hour after I was wheeled into the recovery room before I could see my daughter. I wanted to breast feed her right away but there a couple of complications. 1. The nursery nuse tried the football hold to feed Maxine from the left side and it just wasn't happening. So her first feeding was with her daddy and a bottle of premixed formula. 2. Both Maxine and I were tired. Thankfully, this gave me a chance to rest, but I so wanted to be the first to nurse her. I still get to and have been which has been a joy and definitely an experience that I know I'll never forget. Then something returned that I thought I'd gotten rid of or was gone for good, my tooth ache. Yeah, it returned. I thought again I was pressing my jaw at nght and creating the ache. No, it turned into a legitimate tooth ache. I needed to see a dentist as soon as I was released from the hospital. Everyone was making phone calls to different dental office to see if I could be seen right away. We found a clinic close to home, Encanto Dentistry, who could see me right after I was released from the hospital. They allowed me to nurse while waiting in the chair until it was time to get x-rays. X-rays showed that I had an abscess that needed immediate attention so they planned a root canal, but in the process they discovered there was no way to save the tooth and it would have been best to just extract it. Now mind you, I just had a baby, I was operated on, my hormones were crazy unbalanced and I was in pain from the tooth ache - queue to emotional breakdown. I just cried. But once the tooth was extracted I felt relief right away. Still, this just peaked all my stressors for the last few weeks. I'd honestly had enough and I was done. Thankfully, I was finally done. With the tooth out I could go home, relax, nurse and be with my new family.

It was an ordeal towards the end, crazy as could get and definitely not serene or how I had hoped or planned, but it is done. In the end, I have a beautiful baby girl who is loved by many and spoiled by all. I have a kind and wonderful husband who is attentive, funny and adores his little girl. I have a supportive and fun SIL/doula who I wouldn't trade for the world. I have family and friends who have helped us out beyond compare - we thank you!

*Aside from Tiffany - Turns out Sharon had a heart-shaped uterus! *

Chelsea's Birth Story

When my husband and I went to bed on Sunday night July, 11th and I was 2 days passed my due date, we were both discouraged we had to start another week without our baby. When I got up in the middle of the night for a routine bathroom break, I got back into bed and while trying to get comfortable felt a tug in my belly. It was the strangest sensation, almost like someone plucked a guitar cord inside me. Though not painful at all, the feeling was so strong I could almost hear it. I thought nothing of it, but was putting myself back to sleep thinking about labor for the millionth time and when it happened again, my water broke about 1.5 seconds later. I had heard it could be a gush or a trickle and in my case, a “gush” was an understatement. I hopped right up and yelled to my husband “it’s happening it’s happening!”.

After getting up and washing a load of sheets, we started getting ourselves and our things ready to go. My contractions started about a half hour later and didn’t feel any different than the ones I had been having on and off for the previous couple of weeks. The only difference this time was that they were consistently coming about seven to eight minutes apart. They started getting a little bit stronger right away too. We left our house and headed to the hospital about an hour after my water broke and did a little bit of waiting there. By the time we got into our room at around 6am, I needed my husband’s help through each contraction. Lisa checked me I was only dilated to 3 ½. I thought (I was hoping) I would for sure be at least 5cm. Nope. But, I kept laboring and taking each contraction one at a time. I got in the tub right away and that felt great!! Believe it or not, sitting in the squat position over the toilet felt really relieving too. So for the next few hours I went back and forth between the two. After having the urge to push Lisa checked me again and she said I was 7-8cm now. It was about 9:30am and we realized labor was moving along fairly quickly for me! That was such an encouraging place to be. Knowing that I had done the work and gotten that far, made me feel like I could do it the rest of the way. About an hour and a half after that the urge to push was coming a little bit more frequently. Tiffany was taking care of me at this point and she decided to check and I was dilated to 9cm! That was awesome! At that point different people started coming in and getting the room ready for delivery. I started thinking, “I’m so going to be holding this baby by noon, and you’re practically done!”

Now, the urge to push was coming every couple of contractions and there is no way you cannot bear down when your body is doing what mine was doing. Tiffany checked me again and this time the news was much less encouraging. I could see the look on her face and as I was laying there in the tub she said “Well, you’re still a 9…and since you’re not fully dilated and you’re having the urge to push, your cervix is swelling”. That was a blow I was not prepared for. I had gotten so far and in my mind I was so close to the finish line!! At that point Tiffany was suggesting that I get an epidural and pretty much the only way to avoid doing it, would be to resist the urge to push and lay down on my side until the swelling went down…how ever long that would take. My contractions at this point in labor were really interesting. I was having several that I could sit and breathe through and then one or two that were really intense and gave me the urge to push. My husband asked Tiffany to go out and talk and when he came back he and I talked and we agreed that the epidural was what needed to happen. The anesthesiologist was called but I gave myself a mental pep talk and thought, “Okay, it was mental you can get through them, don’t push! If you can go without pushing until she gets here then you don’t need the epidural!” Right then I was having several less intense contractions that I was able to relax and breathe through. Then, as the anesthesiologist walked in I remember bearing down yelling “I have to push”. That was just confirmation that we were doing the right thing. So, I got the epidural and laid on my side for three hours switching from side to side every half hour.

Sure enough, the epidural did what it needed to do and the swelling went down and my cervix completely dilated. Yay! At this point the baby was at a +1 station and they decided that they wanted him to come down just a little bit further before I began pushing. I really wasn’t able to feel hardly a thing with the epidural so it was fine with me to wait. After another two hours the baby hadn’t come down any further so one of the nurses came in and we started pushing. Pushing with the epidural was a lot different than I was expecting. The nurse told me I was doing great, but I wasn’t able to feel like I could get a good grip since my legs were dead weight and I was numb everywhere. At first the nurse’s input was really encouraging and she kept saying what a great job I was doing, but the pushing seemed to be getting longer and longer and longer and her responses started to change a little bit. After an hour and a half Tiffany came back in and wanted to “observe” my pushing and I knew something was up. We tried some different positions and she told me my pushing was great. That was a relief to hear. Then she checked me and told me that the baby was transverse so every time I pushed he would hit my pelvis and turtle his way back up. That was causing his poor little head to swell and although it wasn’t harmful to him at this point, she could only let me go for another half hour before he needed to be out.

When she informed me of this, I knew I was in for a c-section. I remember looking at her and saying “just tell me”. And, she did. She told me I was doing a great job, but that she was out of tricks and techniques and there was just no way the baby going to make it out vaginally. I instantly felt disappointed in myself and like a failure. My husband asked to have another word with Tiffany and she explained it all to him. After my husband came back and we had a few minutes to ourselves to talk and accept what needed to happen, we surrendered to the c-section. Tiffany came back in she reassured me of how great I did laboring and that we weren’t giving up, we were just doing what needed to happen now.Still pretty disappointed we prepared for the c-section and my 8 pound 14.2 ounce, lopsided-cone headed; baby boy was born at 8:46pm that evening. Hearing his cry was a miracle. He was healthy and finally here.

I didn’t get the experience that I had wanted going into labor, but my experience was amazing nonetheless. I’m so grateful that I was able to experience labor without drugs up to 9cm and even after having an epidural I was still able to experience what pushing was like too. That being said, one of the most important things that I learned throughout this process was how important it is to be able to trust your caregiver. Tiffany wanted me to be able to deliver my baby just as naturally as my husband and I did. She did everything she knew how to do to get us there, but thankfully; she was wise and experienced enough to know when it just wasn’t going to happen. Her goals were my goals and because we did everything that we could physically do to reach them, we didn’t give up and I didn’t fail. For that, I am grateful that Dr. Martin was able to perform a c-section to deliver my beautiful son, Noah. He didn’t come the way that we had hoped, but he came the way he needed to. It would have been nice to have a natural childbirth experience, but I wouldn’t change the experience that I had for anything. I learned so much about myself throughout the entire process. Labor and delivery is an amazing experience no matter what, but thankfully, Bethany’s does VBAC’s and I’ll get to try it all again next time! I’m anxious and looking forward to it already