Birth Story

Here it is Wednesday and already a little more than a week since I gave birth to a miracle baby, little Kira Dawn.

Since Tom posted when I was unable, I thought it would be helpful to relate the story of her birth. On Tuesday morning at 4AM, I woke up out of a sound sleep and just felt "off." So I decided to take a bath and see if that would help me go back to sleep. While I was relaxing in the bathtub, I started feeling weird sensations in my abdomen that radiated to my back. They didn't really hurt but they felt different from the contractions I had experienced up until this point. So I decided to start timing them and by 6:30AM, they were consistently 5 minutes apart. So Tom called his mom (who had promised to be my coach for the birth) and she promptly jumped in her car and drove over.

When she got to our house, we decided to drive over to my OBGYN office and have them check me to see if I was really in labor. So we got there and met with my OBGYN and she checked me (I was about 3 centimeters). Then she sat down and said the funniest thing...she said, "I can tell just by looking at you that you are not in labor." I guess she thought I was too calm to be in real labor since I wasn't wincing in pain or anything. But she agreed to hook me up to the monitor to see if I was really having contractions. This she did and left for 15 minutes during which time, my mother-in-law and I watched the very real contractions show up on the monitor. When my OBGYN came back, she was very surprised to see that I was actually in labor and told me I should start making my way to the hospital. I think we got to the hospital around 11AM. I spent most of my time in the tub in the hospital since it made me most comfortable. Unfortunately, my uterus didn't seem to be working very well as the nurse told me afterwards that my contractions were about a minute apart for hours. As the hours went by, I became more and more exhausted, especially with my contractions being so close together, I never had a chance to catch my breath before the next one was on me. Tom and my mother-in-law and the nurse sat by, Tom holding my hand and encouraging me.

After what seemed like forever, I finally reached 9 centimeters so they had me get out of the tub to complete the last little bit in my room. However, my cervix seemed to stall at 9 centimeters and Kira was also posterior so my midwife had me lay on my left side and push very lightly to see if we could get her to turn and help my cervix past that 1 centimeter so I could really push. Thankfully, laying on my left side worked because soon I was ready to push. I pushed hard for 45 minutes and she was born at 6:51PM! She came out with her hand on top of her head and gave me what we later found out was a severe internal laceration in my cervix. For 2 hours after her birth, I was running on adrenaline, and there are pictures of me smiling and holding her. However, as time went on, I began feeling worse and worse.

The reason for this was that my uterus became atopic. That is, it worked so hard during the labor, that as soon as I gave birth to her, it stopped contracting. So I was hooked up to pitocin to try to help my uterus expel the placenta and afterbirth. The nurse kept coming in and pressing on my fundus to get it to contract and every time she did, I would loose a huge blood clot. Finally, they were able to get the placenta expelled but I continued to bleed and nothing they gave me seemed to stop or slow the bleeding. My blood pressure began rapidly dropping and it was soon decided that the only way to stop the bleeding would be to operate. I was rushed to the operating room and thankfully, they stopped the bleeding, found the internal laceration and stitched me up. I required 2 blood transfusions and 4 IV bags to bring me to the point where I was well enough to be discharged from the hospital on Friday night.

But it wasn't all bad! I was able to make it through the birth of Kira without the need of any drugs, which was one of my goals....and the nurses and lactation consultants at the hospital were so helpful and kind during my stay, I was able to get a good handle on breastfeeding so I felt very confident when I left that I could do it. And Kira is such a blessing...every day, I feel more and more love for her. Of course I think she is the most beautiful baby and I feel so blessed to have her in my life!