A's Birth Story

About 24-hours old at the hospital

On March 14th, we added an additional member to our family - Allen Henry. I know, I know - I hadn't even mentioned the pregnancy here. I guess life got in the way of blogging.

His entrance was pretty much the exact opposite of M's. I had about a month of mild contractions; it was also a month where I had a lot going on, so I just tried to slow down. But nothing in terms of progress on the labor front.

On his due date, I woke up around 3am 'real' contractions and a tiny bit of show. Anticipating a long haul labor like M's, I took a Tylenol PM and went back to bed. Then I got up like a regular day and went to M's school to work on a Solar System project. I had a handful of pretty serious contractions while there, but nothing in a regular pattern. I left M's school at noon, stopped by my favorite local burger joint, and on the way home realized the contractions were starting to come in a regular pattern around 9 minutes apart. So, I called J and asked him to call at 3pm after his class rather than run some errands. Then I went home and talked with a contractor who had been in and out of our home for the greater part of a month to gauge whether he was really finishing up that day (he said tomorrow for sure). I wandered around the house packing a bag for the hospital and listening to NPR.

When J called to check in at 3, contractions were closer to 6 minutes apart. But, more importantly, I was uncomfortable enough to not want to drive to pick up M. So, J came home and I emailed our sitter a heads up to maybe stay the night at our house; I was anticipating needing to leave for the hospital in the wee morning hours. By 3:45pm J had left again for M, the contractor had left, and I took the dog out for a quick potty walk around the block. This was enough to suddenly move things to 3 minutes apart and a hot bath did not slow things down at all. By 5pm I was almost panicked; J and M had stopped to get pizza since I had not anticipated things going so fast. I called my sitter and asked for her to come soon.

Everyone arrived at the house some time between 5:30 and 6. By 6:30, we were out the door. (With M being so brave at staying home even though he totally didn't want to.) We walked in the hospital door around 7pm.

And then they told me I was not quite 4 cm dilated. And I wanted to cry. I had arrived at the hospital with M at around that stage... and didn't have a baby in arms for another 18+ hours. The contraction pattern was much more intense (although not as painful since it wasn't back labor) than M's and the contractions were coming every 3 minutes. How was it possible I was only at 3?

But, given the speed of the contracts, they admitted me, got the tub filling, and started in on the never-ending admittance questions. (Why is it that there are that many questions even when you pre-register, have a birth plan, and belong to an HMO where all records are electronic?) By 8pm I was in the tub. Most of the next hour was spent answering more questions for intake and for the anesthesiologist I was pretty sure I wouldn't need. He finally left.

By about 9, I was feeling almost pushy and scared. It had been less than 2 hours, and I was feeling like I was reaching my pain limit. I needed to know if I was making any progress or if I should just call it and get some meds. At about 9:10pm, the midwife came into check and said I was 7cm with bulging waters - and that if I thought pushing would feel good, I should BUT they needed me out of the tub. Well, I've never seen a tub drain so slowly in my life. The midwife was a good sport - she said if I had to push, I had to push but to please let her know if I felt him moving down because she would need to jump in!

Lucky her, the tub did drain and sometime around 9:20 I got out of the tub. I didn't make it more than 2 feet before I was pushing this guy out in earnest. The midwife and nurse were great - grabbing towels to dry me and the floor off so they could lay down and accommodate my standing. Somewhere around 9:30 my water broke and by 9:37 he was out.

All, in all, Allen weighed in at 7lbs, 13oz and was about 21.75" in length. He was a bit smaller than M by about 1/2lb, but he was born with a nuchal hand presentation, so he felt just as big. Regardless, he came out screaming mad. Due to a pretty short cord, J cut it fairly quickly. Even though I (amazingly) had no tearing, there was a bit more bleeding than they wanted to see; so I tried pretty hard to get him to nurse right away - but he was mostly just mad. Eventually we all settled down - him to nurse, me to eat. Around midnight, we transferred to our next room and by 2am, we were all trying to sleep the best we could with the comings and goings of nurses.

M came early the next day to meet his baby brother. M instantly fell in love and has been so kind to A. I stayed one more night and then (thankfully) headed home with much less prodding.

M meeting little brother for the first time.

Our transition over the past 2 weeks has gone pretty well. I have an oversupply of milk again - so A is sputtering and coughing through feedings and pretty gassy. He is starting to wake up from that sleepy brand-new baby phase but I see that I have no good pictures of him with his (already looking blue) eyes open! His days and nights are still mixed up, so we are all a bit sleep deprived. We've also been slogging through end-of-term grading to try and finish up our winter term - thank goodness that is done because J and I decided reading undergrad papers while sleep deprived is no fun.

J calls this his 'pondering' pose.

We had our 2-week checkup today. A now weighs 8lbs 1oz - so he is growing as he should. And we are all settling in and enjoying our spring break as a family of 4.

Taken before leaving for his 2-week appointment