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Published : March 06, 2009 |
Author : UtterlyBlessed
Category : D. Birth Stories | Total Views
: 373 | Rating :  
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 UtterlyBlessed
Saved by grace, wife to Marcus, momma to Marcus Jr ('03) Eileen ('05) Charles ('07) & James ('09)
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The Birth Story of Marcus John Booker, Jr.
(By Amy Booker)
Tuesday evening, (March 25th) after we got home from Wells Fargo, Marcus started gathering the info he needed to complete the refinance on our mortgage. I made dinner. He was stressed out about a couple collections he had to pay, and was figuring out how much money we had for the next month. I left him alone and used the computer.
I was having some pretty strong contractions, (the strongest I had had yet) but they were about 15-20 minutes apart. (I wasn't timing them.) When Marcus decided to go to bed at about 10:30, he looked very tired, as was I. While I was getting into bed I had another contraction. Marcus noticed I wasn't speaking to him, and wondered if I was mad at him. I couldn't answer him right away, which built up his suspicion even more. When that contraction was over, I told him that I thought I might be in labor. They started coming about every 10 minutes. I had to get up to go to the bathroom after each one. It felt ridiculous, I felt as if I might as well just stay in there, since as soon as I got back in bed I needed to go again. Marcus started timing the contractions, and because of the severity, I was pretty convinced that this was it. I tried to rest, but it was pretty impossible, and we were too excited to sleep.
We got up around 1am and Marcus finished inflating the pool. (We had left it partially inflated for the last several weeks, since the inflator we used won't blow the entire thing up on one charge. He turned the hot water heater up high and started filling the pool by rotating two large pots of water in the bathtub. It was my plan to wait until it was pretty bad before getting in the pool, thinking that it would afford me more relief when I needed it, instead of using it when I could handle it on my own.
While Marcus was dealing with the pool, I puttered around the house straightening it up a little. Afterwards, we sat on the couch and played a few games of Uno. Then we called my mom to tell her that I was in labor, so she could be ready. I wanted to make sure she got some sleep that night. (I later learned that it made them very excited and they didn't sleep well.) I read some Country magazine that I had saved for the occasion. It was getting uncomfortable. Between about 4:30 and 6:30am the contractions were consistently between about 2-6 minutes apart.
I don't remember exactly when I got in the pool. I can't remember if I was in before that, but I do know I was in it around 6:30am. Marcus asked periodically if I wanted him to call my mom, but I said, "Lets wait until 8:00." I wanted them to get as much sleep as possible. At about 9:15 we took my blood pressure. It was fine. We ended up calling my mom at about 10:30, because Marcus wanted some help. I was very surprised at how fast the night seemed to go. Usually when something is happening, like you are sick, the night seems to drag on and it takes forever for it to be morning. I marveled at how fast it seemed to go. I started getting quite uncomfortable during contractions a little before he called my mom. When my mom got there though, I was able to refocus and deal with them better. My dad brought my mom and my sister Sarah, 15. He was going to bring Grace, 11, but she was needed at home to care for my younger sister. I got out of the pool before they got there, and put on a tee-shirt and a robe over it. (I wasn't wearing anything in the pool before.)
They brought the Doppler with them and at around 11:00am we checked the baby's heart rate. It was 161. My mom started to take over recording my contractions at about 11:30am. She recorded the length of a couple too. They were lasting around 1 minute to 1 minute 20 seconds. I was still urinating frequently. I had a lot of apple juice and some tea too. I ate some cream of wheat and later on some canned peach slices. Shortly after my mom and sister got there, I suggested Marcus go take a nap to recharge him since he was so tired and nothing was imminent right away. He slept for a few hours. I was glad for his sake that he was able to rest, but he said he didn't feel a noticeable change in the way he felt when he got up.
It was a relief for me when my mom started timing the contractions, because she could tell when I was having one and when it was over. I would just look at her, (and later on, not even that) and she would write down the time. When Marcus was timing them, a lot of the time, as I was in the middle of a contraction, and couldn't talk, would ask, "Are you having one?" That was a little distracting to me, but he said it was hard sometimes to tell, since I would make noises in between. (For the most part, I don't think I was though. At least not the same kinds of noises as when I was having a contraction.) But it was nice to have a woman around who had been through this before!
In the afternoon, my dad brought Grace and Maranatha, 2, so she could nurse. He also brought my 4 year old brother, Joy. They hung out with us for awhile. I was doing pretty good between contractions. I tried to stay mellow so I didn't scare Maranatha and Joy. I told them that the baby would be coming out of my tummy soon. They have both been excited about it throughout my pregnancy. When my dad left, he took Joy and was going to leave Grace and Maranatha behind for a while longer so she could keep nursing, but when he got up to go, Maranatha started whining and saying that she wanted to go with him. So he just left Grace.
Before he got here, I was sitting in the glider rocker, but when I got up my contractions got closer together, so they encouraged me to walk. (I wanted to, but I was so tired!) So I ambled around in a loop through the house, pacing through the kitchen, living room and bedroom. Our house never seemed so small. I think the contractions were about 5 minutes apart while I was walking. Throughout my labor, the contractions weren't very consistent. There was a time around 4:00am that the contractions were about every 2-3 minutes. Then around 2:00 in the afternoon, they were about 7-8 minutes. They fluctuated a lot until the very end when they were 1-3 minutes apart.
The time kind of got jumbled up for me, the last thing I know is that it was the afternoon, and then the next thing its around 10pm and the baby is out. I don't know where the evening and early night went. I was in and out of the pool a few times during the day, but I found that I did better with the labor on dry land, for the most part. Also, I was cold because of my wet shirt whenever I got out, so I mostly stayed out. (I think next time, if the water is warmer I would want to labor in it more. I think the temperature had something to do with why I didn't like laboring in it much. That was somewhat of a disappointment to me, but I did okay on dry land.)
We did some more fetal heart monitoring and it was around 150 - 165. The highest it got was 172, which did make me a little worried. We checked around 6:00 to make sure that the baby was still head down. (He was.) Sometime (I guess it was probably around 8:00 or so) I suggested that Marcus take another nap. He did, and while he was laying in the bedroom, I tried to rest on the couch. I would be in a semi-sitting position, mostly sitting up, and laying my head on the back of the couch.
My contractions started coming about every 4 minutes. Every time I had one, I would have to get up and go on my hands and knees beside the couch while my mom pushed on my back. (My back hurt so bad during contractions.) That was the only way it felt comfortable. It was excruciating if I tried to stay in my position on the couch through a contraction. I had a hot water bottle that I had wedged up against the small of my back while I was on the couch. It felt good. Usually when I have menstrual cramps it feels good to have a hot water bottle on my tummy, but that just didn't feel good while I was in labor. (Funny thing is though, afterwards, when I would nurse and get afterpains, a hot water bottle felt good.) I felt very sorry for my mom, because it seemed as if as soon as I would get settled down on the couch, another contraction would come and then I would do the whole hands-and-knees / press on back thing again, and I knew she must have gotten worn out doing it so often.
After some time of that, I asked her to wake Marcus up and get the pool ready because I wanted to get in. (The water had cooled down significantly that afternoon while I wasn't in it. I think next time we should keep the water temperature up the whole time, even when I'm not in it, because it takes too long to get it back up to temperature from being so cool.)
When the pool was ready, I got in, but it was too cold for me. The hot water heater was out of water, so there was no way to correct it. (Boiling water just seemed impractical, because it would take too long.) Even though I wanted a waterbirth very badly, I seriously considered getting out at this point, because I wasn't very comfortable, and I also worried that the water was too cold for the baby and might trigger him to breathe. (It was between 91-95 degrees, but just wasn't warm enough for me.) (I didn't tell anyone I was contemplating this.) Finally, I asked Marcus to warm the pool up, the hot water heater pulled through for us, and I was much more comfortable.
The contractions were getting more painful and frequent. If I had know then that I was in transition, it would have helped me, but as it was, I thought there was a long way yet to go. I was getting very depressed because I was so exhausted, I really just wanted everything to be over so I could go to sleep. I kept feeling, and didn't feel any head engaged, (we never did any internal checks) so I thought it was going to be a long time. I broke down and cried about 3 times during labor, the last being now, and Marcus was such a good support to me. I think it helped relieve some of my tension, but I also realized that I needed to conserve my energy for the birth and not waste it on crying, so they were all very short crying spells. (Not longer than 2 minutes.)
I was getting to the point where I wasn't sure if I would be able to make it. I never did say the classic, "I can't do this!!", but I did say, "I don't know if I can do this!" Marcus helped me by telling me to take the contractions one at a time, and not to think about the next one. It seems so simple, but that advice really helped me. It wasn't so much being able to get through the contractions better, but I was able to utilize the rests in between better without thinking about the next contraction that I knew was coming.
When I first got in the pool, I was laying down, with my head propped up on one side, and then I would kind of roll over onto my side or float on my tummy for the contractions. Then I realized that I wanted gravity to help, so I got onto my knees. I had been contemplating birthing on my hands and knees, (which position really helped with labor) but I also knew that I wanted to support my perineum, which I couldn't do in that position. So I labored on my knees, leaning my head on the side of the pool between contractions and resting. The side of the pool had a few drops of water that were cold on it, which really bothered me. (You hear of things being annoying to laboring women, like someone touching them, but that was the only irrational thing during my labor that irritated me.) I asked for a towel and someone laid it on the side so I could rest my head on it.
I was also holding Marcus' hand and when I was having a contraction, we would both squeeze hard. It felt very good to have his hand there to squeeze, and also when he squeezed my hand. (I had a washcloth and was supporting my perineum with the other hand.) I was making more noise during this time, but my mom reassured me that I was handling it well and reminded me to breathe. (I had a kind of phobia of being too noisy or screaming. My mom is a very quiet birther.) At one point I absent-mindedly bit Marcus' finger while having a contraction. He later said, "I knew you were having a strong one!" I made some kind of wise-crack remark around this time too, but I don't remember what it was. I just remember it sticking out in my mind, because I didn't think I would be making any kind of jokes when I'm about to give birth.
One thing that made me disheartened in my labor was that I hadn't passed any of my mucous plug. I thought that was strange, and deep inside harbored a fear that maybe these contractions weren't doing any good and it would be a long time before they would start to actually open my cervix. But a little while after getting in the water the mucous plug started coming out on the washcloth I was holding down there. I felt very relieved at that point. I was also wondering when my water would break; hoping that it would because then I would have the baby soon, and dreading it in one sense because I've heard that it makes the contractions so much more intense, and they were already about what I could handle.
At one point, my mom asked if I had any urge to push. I said, "I don't know, I don't know anything!" But when the urge came, there was no mistaking it. After the contraction I yelled, "I pushed, I pushed!" At first I was relieved, because I knew it would be soon now that I had started pushing. But as soon as that thought came, I remembered reading about women who had pushed for four hours, so that kind of deflated me. People had described pushing as being like having a bowel movement, and although it felt slightly similar, it was a whole different kind of feeling. It was very unique. After a couple more contractions, I could feel something about the size of a nickel bulging out, and thought it was the water sac. I leaned back in a crab-like position while my mom shined a flashlight on my perineum so they could see. They said they could see the head. (Which they later described as fluctuating between the size of about a quarter and a dime.) When I felt the sac bulging, I asked Marcus to break it for me, because I had heard that babies born in the water sac were much more painful to push out because you're not just pushing the head out, but all that water too. (We're not superstitious, so we didn't care about that aspect, either.)
He wouldn't break the water though. I don't really know what was going on at that time, or if he even heard me, all I know is that he never did. (I later asked him about it, and he said that he had explained to me the reason that he didn't do it, but I guess I wasn't paying much attention by that time.) With one of my pushes, I felt the head coming out big time, and thought that maybe that was it, but when that contraction started dying down, I knew it would be coming out with the next one. (Which it did.) While pushing I was making a kind of deep inside gutteral, animalistic growling-like sound. I found that it really helped me. It seemed to help open me up more, and even if I had been able to do it, I don't think that doing it silently would have been good. (I don't think it was extremely loud, though.) With the last couple of contractions while pushing the head out, I was in a different realm. It felt very odd. It was almost as if I wasn't really there, or that it wasn't me. I could hear myself making noise, and felt the extreme pressure, but I almost felt as if I was just there while it all took place instead of actually being the one doing it. I tried to describe it later to my husband, but not very successfully. Later my dad asked me if I had gone into an altered state of consciousness while pushing the head out, as he had seen my mom do, and I thought, "Bingo!" that's exactly what happened.
Marcus and my mom weren't ready for the baby to be born so quickly. They were taken aback when they saw that he was out. I pushed the head out and then his body just came shooting out. It wasn't like, "Okay, now the head's out. Rest. Check for the cord around his neck. Push a little to get the shoulders out. Okay, now he's born." He was just in one minute and completely out the next. I don't think I pushed the body out at all, but it all happened so quickly, I don't remember. I just remember pushing the head. They were thinking that it would still be awhile, since they had just looked at the crowning and saw that you could only see about a quarter-sized piece of the baby's head. They were used to it gradually coming out, and going back in, and getting to the point where you could see a lot of the head before it actually crowned. The baby just kind of floated in the pool water for a second when he first came out, and then I lifted him out of the water and laid him on the side of the pool. Someone had brought receiving blankets and we all wrapped him up in them and tried to keep him dry and warm. The cord was wrapped around his neck, which I undid. Then Marcus attempted to suction his nose and mouth out with the bulb syringe, but was all thumbs, so my mom took it from him and did the suctioning.
Marcus was so happy! I just said, "My baby! My baby! I have a baby!" It was amazing. It took a couple minutes for him to start breathing. I was kind of worried. It seemed like forever, but it wasn't very long. I rubbed his feet (which, I noticed, were very long) and talked to him. We brought the oxygen in and waved the mask near his face. He pinked right up and when he did start breathing, did very well. He had his eyes open and alert right from the start.
After the baby was breathing, I got very cold and started shaking uncontrollably. My mom took one look at me and knew we needed to get me out of the pool. I got up and they threw some towels on me and both helped me walk into the livingroom where the couch had been made up with some plastic on it. I was worried I might drop the baby because I was shaking so hard. I was dripping blood and water and made a trail across the rug laid in the diningroom. My mom felt very bad about that afterwards, but Marcus assured her it was okay, and that it was stained already. (It was a white rug.)
Next time, we would do two things differently. One is cover the floor, and the other is make sure the pool is closer to the bed/couch or whatever we're going to use. It was just too far away and too taxing on me to walk so far right after giving birth. When I got to the couch, I asked for a lot of blankets, and also for our little space heater to be turned on. I also asked for a cup of tea. My mom offered to heat some soup up for me. (Which my dad had brought over earlier while I was in the pool.) I was very cold. When I got into the pool for the last time, I decided to change out of the tee-shirt into a sports bra, because the shirt was just too cold when it got wet. I took my bra off and tried nursing. (Next time, I'm not going to bother with wearing anything if I birth in the pool again. I just didn't want to be like a hippy, but it was more of a bother than it was worth. I didn't care about clothing, my mind was on something else, anyways.)
The contractions to get the placenta out were much more painful than I had anticipated. I wasn't ready for it. I had always heard that "some mothers don't even notice" the third stage because they're wrapped up with their babies, but it was quite painful. We still had not checked to see the gender of the baby, so we unwrapped him and my mom said, "It's a little Junior!" (because that's what we had been calling him all along while he was still in utero.) Marcus and I were both so happy. We had been hoping for a son.
My mom clamped and cut the cord after it stopped pulsating. Marcus offered for my sisters to do it, but they were nervous and didn't want to. Marcus went in the other room to clean up some, I don't know exactly what he was doing. I was so tired. I felt terrible, because I was just too tired to have much interest in the baby, something I wasn't counting on happening. Pushing the placenta out wasn't hard. I'm not even sure if I pushed; it just plopped out. There was a bowl to catch it in on the floor at my feet, and I thought my mom was going to catch it, but it ended up just flopping on the floor (on a chux pad) while I looked hopelessly at the bowl. My mom checked me: no tears! I was very happy about that. Before the birth, I was concerned about tearing, trying to think of everything I could do to minimize the risk. I contemplated not pushing, and just letting the baby be born, but once birth was imminent, all that went out the window; I just wanted that baby out, and out now!
After the placenta came out, my mom moved me over to the other side of the couch, since the side I had been sitting on was all messy now. After moving, I felt faint and said, "I'm going to faint." I remember Marcus sitting beside me at this point, and my head flopped over on him, as I started going out, and then I jerked it back up once before fainting. The next thing I remember is it being dark, and my blood pressure being taken. I could hear Marcus and my mom talking to me, telling me to "come back" etc. I could hear the distress in their voices and wanted desperately to let them know I was okay, but I couldn't talk or move.
Gradually I was able to make a moaning sound and I heard Marcus say, "The color's coming back in her lips." They were administering oxygen to me and after the color started coming back, I heard Marcus say to put the mask down by my face. I wanted it still, but it was strange to not be able to communicate that need. Finally my vision came back. My feet were feeling strange, so my mom rubbed them. They had elevated my feet and were treating me for shock. When I had come back to, I again asked for my tea and soup. Someone had taken the baby and one of my sisters was holding it. When I was feeling better, Marcus broke down and cried. I just kept saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." I felt very bad for him, he must have been very scared. I can only imagine the thoughts racing through his head, wondering how he's going to take care of a newborn if I were to die. As bad as his tears made me feel, I also felt extremely blessed to have a husband who loves me so much.
When that excitement died down, Marcus made some phone calls to announce the birth. (His mother had called a couple of times that day and knew I was in labor. I made her a grandmother for the first time, and she was very excited.) My dad came over, and Sarah dished up ice cream and we all celebrated. Then he took "the womenfolk" home except for Sarah, who he left overnight so she could help Marcus the next day with household tasks and help care for the baby so I could rest. (She stayed for a couple nights.) I just slept on the couch that night so I didn't have to get up, and Marcus used a sleeping bag on the floor by the couch, Sarah had our bed, and Junior slept on the couch with me. (We took the back couch cushion off to make it wider and he slept beside me.) It felt so good to have it all finally over with, to have my baby beside me, and to be able to go to SLEEP! |
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 Comments and Discussion Wall |
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 Posted by UtterlyBlessed on March 07, 2009 |
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Tiffany,
Thank you for reading! I will write an article for clarification on the reasons I chose to UC. Thanks for suggesting that!
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| Posted by Tiffany on March 06, 2009 |
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That was a great birth story! I love how you gave so many details. maybe you can write an article on how you came to the decision to UC, and obviously your family (mom, dad, etc.) had something to do with it. I would love to hear more.
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