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| Her very first photo, taken just minutes after she was born. |
Here's the story: (If you'd rather skip the gory details - actually they're really not that gory, but there are a lot of them, and I understand if talk of dilation and contractions and breaking water, etc, make you squeamish - just jump down to the bottom for more pics! I just wanted to get it all down for my own records, as well as for the benefit / entertainment / information of anyone else who is interested. I know I was addicted to reading birth stories, especially of people I knew, in the last few months of my pregnancy, so I figured I'd pass on the favor.)
It all started on Saturday, June 8th, at about 10:30 am, when I first noticed some mild menstrual-like cramps as I did some cleaning around the house. I was 39 weeks and 5 days, and as of yet had not been dilated and only "maybe 30%" effaced at my previous weekly doctor visits. I wondered if this was "something", since I had read that early labor often started out feeling menstrual-like. As the day went on the pains got a little worse, and by 6:30 pm, while I was acting as accompanist for a baptismal service in our branch, I realized that they were coming and going somewhat regularly. I started watching the clock: 5 minutes apart, 10 minutes apart, 7 minutes apart. They were all over the place, but I could definitely tell that they had a beginning and an end, and I began to wonder if these were really contractions. We went to bed around 10:30 pm or so, but I only slept for about an hour since the pain was coming more quickly and regularly and intensely. I wouldn't necessarily call these pains "intense" at this point, but they were definitely ramping up, keeping me from sleeping or even being able to lie down all night.
Somewhere around 2 am Sunday morning Gregg woke up and we tried timing the pains using his handy iPhone app. The contractions, as I was pretty sure they were by now, were coming every 3-5 minutes and lasting about a minute a piece. By 5:00 am I figured it had to be real, but I was still not totally sure since I'd never done this whole labor thing before. I called the doctor's office where I was connected to the on call doc at the hospital. She said that we should come in and be checked to see if I really was in labor. We arrived at the hospital in Vail at about 6 am, thinking that I probably was in labor, but probably not far enough along for them to keep me there. They hooked me up to monitors for a while and checked me; I was dilated to a 2 and was 100% effaced. Whew! At least something was happening with all those pains I'd been dealing with all night! They said I could stay, so Gregg and I settled in for the long haul. I was able to walk around the room instead of staying in bed the whole time, which was much better in helping me to manage the contractions.
Eventually they let me order some breakfast, but shortly after it came (I only ate about half of my omelet), the doctor came in to do another check. By then I had dilated to a 4 and she said she could break my water to help things along. There was meconium in the amniotic fluid, so the doctor mentioned that they'd have to be sure to suction the baby's mouth out really well so he/she didn't aspirate any into his/her lungs. I never got to finish my breakfast since I had to be back in the bed for a while for monitoring. Gregg and I listened to the MoTab's Music and the Spoken Word and chuckled at the texts we kept getting from branch members wondering if we were having a baby since we weren't at church. Eventually I could get back out of bed and walk around again, but things were definitely getting tougher. Finally I just couldn't handle the contractions anymore and asked for some pain relief. They measured me again and I was at 5 cm. I wasn't quite ready mentally to go for the epidural, thinking that I'd still like to try to deliver the baby "naturally", so I opted for something else that didn't actually take the pain away, but instead made me really fuzzy-headed. I wasn't a fan. And after a while of not feeling like myself but still feeling pain, I asked for the epidural. The anesthesiologist was awesome and made me feel like I was a champion of calmness as he prepped and stuck me, even though I was scared to death. The epidural worked like a charm, though, and soon I was resting easy. I'm a believer in modern medicine! I did have to wear an oxygen mask from that point onward, which drove me crazy, but Baby's heart rate was better when I had the oxygen on, so we left it.
About an hour after the epidural was started, they checked me again. I was up to 6 cm. Progress was happening! And so we just waited. It was so weird to watch the monitor and know that I was having contractions, but not be able to feel them at all. At about 5:00 pm the nurse came in again and checked me. This time I was at a 10! She left to get the doctor, saying it was almost time to push. Gregg and I were getting really excited at this point. The doctor came in, checked me, and said that there was still a tiny lip of cervix, so we needed to wait another half hour for that to go away before pushing. So we waited. And we waited. At 6:00 pm, another nurse hurried in and told me to order something for dinner since the cafeteria would be closing in 15 minutes. I picked chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes and Gregg placed the order. They said I could eat it after the baby was born, which would be pretty soon now. I still hadn't started pushing yet at this point, however.
Finally, at about 7:00 pm, the doctor came in again and determined that I was indeed ready to push. The nurse and Gregg coached me through the pushes since I couldn't really feel my contractions or where I should be pushing. With each contraction I did three pushes, each lasting 10 seconds. This went on for an hour or so. The doctor said she could feel the baby's head moving down with each push. I was encouraged that we'd be meeting our little one soon. Another hour passed: still pushing, and the epidural was starting to wear off on my left side, which was both good and bad. Good because I could actually feel where I was supposed to be focusing my pushing power and when I should be pushing. Bad because it hurt! We tried various pushing positions: using the squat bar and a sheet, laying to one side or the other, even squatting over the bar. Still no baby. By the time it reached 3 hours of pushing, the doctor told me that it was getting to the point where we might need to consider a c-section. She said the baby was handling the contractions and pushing fine, but who knew how much longer that would be the case, and who knew how much longer I could keep up my strength, both physically and mentally, to keep pushing. She said she'd be okay with me trying for a half hour longer, so that's what we opted for. I didn't want a c-section, especially after coming this far. We were so close! But I knew that if it was necessary, then I'd do it. I asked Gregg to say a prayer. And I kept pushing. That half hour came and went. The doctor said that I was pushing correctly, but the baby's head just wasn't descending like it should. In fact, we were basically in the same position as when I had started pushing 3+ hours before. When I heard that, I realized that a c-section was inevitable. I was exhausted and I had made no progress for all that effort, so I consented to the surgery.
The room became a flurry of activity then. The nurses were prepping me and the anesthesiologist was back to up the drugs in my epidural. (They also put my now cold dinner away, to be reheated and eaten later the next day by Gregg since I was put on a clear liquid diet following surgery. Mmmm: chicken broth and jello and popsicles!) They wheeled me down the hall to the operating room and Gregg was left alone to change into his blue paper scrubs and mask. They lifted/rolled/scooted me from my bed to the operating table, pulled up a screen to block my view, and a few minutes later they were tugging and pulling out our baby. The first thing I heard after she was born was, "Look at those cheeks!" Then there was one cry and they told Gregg to stand up and see his baby. I waited for some news from him on whether our Toasty was a boy or a girl, but he was quiet. (Later he said that he thought "it's a girl!" in his head but forgot to vocalize his discovery for those of us (i.e. me) who couldn't see.) The anesthesiologist was the one who told me we had a girl. "She really looks like a girl!" he told me. "Some babies you can't really tell, but she definitely looks like a girl."
I saw them take her over to the little warming station to be cleaned up. I remember noticing her long, wrinkly, slightly purple feet. They put a little hat on her and brought her right over to lay on my chest. I was shaking so bad and they put a warm blanket over both of us, which felt awesome, but didn't really stop my shakes. Because she was so close to my face, combined with the bright lights in the OR and the fact that I was so tired, I had a hard time focusing on her very well. I do remember checking her eyebrows to see if she had a unibrow like her parents (the answer is that at least at birth she lucked out and had perfectly penciled brows). She was also blowing lots of bubbles as she laid there, so calm.
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| There are those bubbles. |
Everyone kept asking what her name was. We hadn't decided for sure before-hand, and even though our first choice was Callie June, I was afraid to say so until I was sure that this little bundle on my chest really was Callie June. None of the other names we had thought of even came to mind, so eventually it was decided. Callie June Blanchard. Callie because we both just liked the name, and June after Gregg's grandma and because she was born in June.
They took Callie into the recovery room to weigh her and measure her and get her footprints taken care of. Gregg got to go with her while I got stitched up. Soon I was back in the recovery room where I got to hold her again, and she even breastfed then, too. We finally moved back to our room after and hour or so, to settle in for the night, the three of us, a new little family.
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| Just because she was born via cesarean doesn't mean she escaped free of the cone-head. Three plus hours of pushing will do that to ya. |
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| Weight = 6 lbs, 15 oz. |
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| Head circumference = 13.5 in. |
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| Andrea, the head nurse during the evening shift, was awesome. |
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| Pretty snazzy footprint maker - they pressed her feet against this thin film that had ink on the other side which then was pressed against the paper underneath, leaving Callie's foot totally free of ink! |
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| Snug as a bug. |
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| I'm a Vail Baby. |
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