A Birth With a Change of Plans

We had our baby at 35 weeks. He is doing well and we're home thankfully. He weighed 5 lbs 14 oz and was 19 1/2 " long. he's a cutie and we love him and are glad that things turned out well. My water broke Saturday morning in a slow trickle, my midwife confirmed that it was amniotic fluid and so we went to Good Samaritan's Hospital in Lafayette. I was really nervous about how they would receive me as a homebirth transfer. But they were extremely respectful.

When I got there they confirmed as well that it was fluid. Did an u/s to confirm baby was head down and then the on call OB talked to us about options. He said that typically they would want to start pitocin to get baby out that babies at 35 weeks fair so well that the risk of infection was greater. That was my gut feeling as well. But he told me that it was my decision ultimately and that I could wait as long as I wanted to and they would just monitor for signs of infection. I told him thanks and that I wanted to hold off on pitocin in order to get things going naturally. He told me about a study that showed that "walking the halls didn't decrease labor time but just helped with pain management." I smiled and said thanks but I felt that I could get things going on my own. I use hypnosis and felt that I could use that to get things going.

So after we got everything settled. Dh ran out to get my Hypnobabies CDs from home, including Baby Come Out and bought me a cute skirt from Motherhood Maternity that I could birth in and my sports bra. I called my family and let them know what was going on and wrapped my head around the fact that this was actually happening then the NICU nurse came in to talk to us. She said that only 10% of babies at 35 weeks need to go to the NICU. After that I felt like I could fully release and let myself go into my birthing time (ie labor).

My midwife went to run errands and let us have some time to ourselves. My dh kept things light which I appreciated, laughing helped. They periodically monitored me (with no belts, just handheld doppler which was great). I hadn't eaten much that morning so I had dh go buy some food and snuck a burger for lunch and then some Subway for dinner :) and some Lara bars, etc for snacks. mmmm, that helped.

By 9 pm I decided to go walk the halls. As soon as I stepped out my pressure waves (ie contractions) started to get more intense. I walked and stopped for about 5 and then went back into the room. They slowed down for a bit at 10 pm, only had 4-5 the whole hour which was a nice break and then at 11 pm I did some belly lifts and got things going in earnest. My goal was to have a 5 hour labor and I made the mental goal to have the baby by 2-3 am. I was receiving antibiotics since the GBS status wasn't back yet and I was fine with that given the break in waters. But I didn't want ds to have too much. I called my midwife at 11:30 pm to come back and gratefully she had been waiting in the lobby and was right there good woman. By 2:15 am I was heading into transition and asked that they call the Dr by 2:30 am and get the team assembled in case ds had any issues. I started to push but held off until everyone got there. The silly nurse wanted to do a cervical check before she called the Dr (the only time I yelled, "Get out!"), baby was starting to crown. My midwife said later she was thinking, "Can you not see her bottom bulging?".

Ds was born at 2:58 am after a few good pushes on my side. The on call OB was great about honoring my impromptu birth plan for all of the natural stuff (let the cord pulse, any position for pushing, etc). My only complaint was a nurse named Shauna who was the NICU nurse (the other one didn't make it initially). She grabbed the baby and started aggressively scrubbing him with a scratchy, awful towel yelling that she needed to make him cry after I told her to be gentle. She calmed down after a few seconds and we got to cuddle. Ds's lungs needed some help so the nicer NICU nurse got to work on him for about 1/2 an hour doing chest percussions and oxygen. Finally he was able to maintain his O2 rate. The next day I spent staving off the recovery nurses from wanting to supplement him by nursing and pumping. He had a sleepy, preemie nursing style of one good nurse to 2-3 lazy non-nursings. So we had to use the SNS feeding tube and syringes a few times to get him back on track but did it with my own milk thankfully.

Then we got to come home Monday afternoon. All in all it was a great birth although unexpected. I feel happy to have been able to utilize my mind-body connection and felt like I was in great hands having my midwife plus a great staff at Good Sam there.