Hank's birth story: Part II

The car ride wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected. Yes, I was uncomfortable, but it felt good to sit and recline a little since I had been bending over practically the entire day. About halfway there, I started tensing up like crazy during the peak of a contraction even though I had gotten pretty good at relaxing through each one. John gently tried to soothe me and tell me to release the tension in my body to which I replied, “But I feel like I have to push!” So John drove a little faster.

We arrived at the Best Start birth center at 4:15PM, walked into my first choice birthing room (no one else was there that day) and Ashley, the midwife, took one look at me and said, “Okay, let’s have this baby!” I immediately stepped into the bath she had prepared and it felt heavenly. I still felt like I had to push, but not as badly as I did in the car, so I got checked by Ashley and she said I was at 9 cm and had to wait a little before I could do any pushing. So instead of pushing through the contraction (like I wanted) she said to blow air out through each contraction… which was hell. It wasn’t too hard at first, but after a few contractions it got harder and harder to keep from pushing. Finally, I abandoned all pretenses of blowing through my lips and just pushed long and hard. Somewhere in there I said I wanted to get into a squat position, so John and the team helped me up so I could hold onto a bar and still be in the tub. After a few good hard pushes, I could actually feel the baby’s head with my fingers! Of course, at the time I felt like I had been working forever and said, “That’s as far as we are?” The next thing I knew, the head was crowning and I was told to stop pushing for a little bit and breathe out in short breaths so that I could give my tissues time to stretch. At the time I felt like I wasn’t doing it well, but I was reassured later that I did a great job pausing when I was supposed to. One big push and the head was out, so I reached down and felt my baby’s face, which was incredible. Then I was told to give one more big push so the rest of the body could come out, so I did… but nothing happened. That’s when I felt the midwife turning the baby a little more to get the shoulders out because the shoulders were really wide. After that, the baby slid out and was handed to me between my legs and I pulled him out of the water and onto my chest. I was helped back into a lying position on my back (still in the tub) and I just admired my little baby boy with John.

Henry “Hank” Robert Durso arrived at 4:58PM, about 45 minutes after I walked into the birth center at 9cm dilated. He weighed 9lbs, 4oz. and measured 21.5 inches long. Quite a big boy! Despite his size, I didn't tear a single millimeter and have only been slightly sore, compared to last time (which probably has more to do with it being my second time) and I experienced "birth euphoria" for more than 24 hours afterward. Right when I got out of the bath I was all smiles and completely high, which lasted until the next evening. It was an incredible feeling to have brought my child into the world naturally.

John was an amazing birth coach, doing all the right things so I never had to instruct him or snap at him; while I was pushing, he was encouraging me and never took a hand off me, making sure I always knew he was there. And now, he's being a great dad of 2, which enormous help from my fantastic mother-in-law, but that's a different post for a different day. 


Thanks to everyone for all of their well wishes on facebook, email, phone, and texts! 


Now here's Hank!

Hank's birth story

Considering how short the whole birth thing really was, I wrote a really long story to publish... because it was an incredible experience. So, I'm going to take a page out of my sister-in-law Lisa's, book blog and publish in two parts. That way it won't be so boring. :)

Well, my labor probably began at about 3AM on Friday morning, when I continually woke up with back pain that felt like menstrual cramps. The cramps continued all morning, but I was pretty convinced that it was just “false labor” since I had been told by many a mother to expect many false starts. So I just ignored it.

 Johnny and I went on a one-mile walk with a friend of mine in the morning and I figured that since the cramps weren’t slowing me down, I was definitely not in labor… but then I had trouble keeping up with Johnny when he was running around the playground. So we went home and I called my doula to let her know what I was feeling, but this definitely couldn’t be labor because I was only feeling pain below my navel and in my back. I remembered having contractions that were much more violent and covered the entire abdomen when I was induced with Johnny. She said to keep her updated, which I promised to do.

Then sometime around 12PM I decided to time these “cramps” which turned out to be lasting about a minute and coming about 3 to 4 minutes apart… but I was still sure this was a just a false start, so I waited until later to call anyone. Luckily, my mom had come over for a planned playtime with Johnny, so I got to take a warm shower and walk around to distract myself from the pain. Finally, I called John around 2PM and asked if he could come home a little earlier than usual just in case. He asked if I had called the midwife yet and suggested I should just to give her a heads up. The midwife on call, Ashley, spent a few minutes asking me some questions about the contractions and timing and all of that. I had a few contractions while we were talking, so she got to hear my lovely vocalizations and she convinced me that I was in labor. She told me to give her a call when I was ready to come in because I wanted to stay at home as long as possible. About fifteen minutes later, things got much more intense and I called John to tell him to come home ASAP.

During the next half hour, I labored on my own using low vocalizations and counting in my head.  I spent most of my time lying on my side or on my hands and knees to keep the baby from turning to a posterior position and thus, avoid back labor. John got home a little after 3PM and helped me through a couple of contractions before I told him he should pack up and get us moving. It’s amazing how much having him around helped me get through each contraction, he followed my instructions well and never took a hand off me unless I told him to get lost… and then he took those instructions well too.

While John packed the car I labored on the birth ball and called the doula to let her know we were leaving for the birth center. She was a little skeptical, considering I had called her a few hours earlier saying I wasn’t in labor, but she said she’d finish up the placenta she was preparing for encapsulation and head on down. Meanwhile, the contractions are getting closer together and more intense and I started crying at the peaks and in between for no reason. I had been hoping to go through transition after the car ride, but it looked like I would be transitioning in the car. John managed to pack me into the car, with a few intense contractions on the way from the house, and then on to the birth center. 

We'll finish up tomorrow with the grand finale and some pictures! 

He's here!

Allow me to introduce Henry "Hank" Robert Durso! He joined us on Friday, June 17th at 9 pounds 4 ounces and 21.5 inches. I'll post the whole story later, but it turned out to be the greatest birth experience I could ask for, going quickly and smoothly without pain medication or any medical intervention. Hank and I (and John and Johnny!) are doing just fine with the help of lots of family and friends.

About to have a baby!!!

This is a pre-written post to let everyone know that we are on our way to the birth center. All details of labor and delivery (including the gender of baby #2!) will be posted later. Send good vibes our way!!!

Oops...

... my due date was two days ago and I didn't post a picture! So John took a picture of me last night (only one day overdue) and I have now posted it for your enjoyment. John also took a picture of the measuring tape around my belly, but I don't really want to post a close up of my belly button right now. I know pregnancy is beautiful, but up close it can be a little freaky. I'll just tell you that the measurement is at 44.5 inches. Unfortunately, I have nothing to compare that to since I rarely measure my waist, though I do remember that Scarlett O'Hara had an 18-inch waist... which means that I can't compare myself to a fictional character.

Anyway! No new developments on Baby #2. I had a great burst of energy on Monday and Tuesday where I actually did things during Johnny's nap time and then paid for it yesterday when I just could not get enough sleep. The fact that Johnny fought his nap tooth and nail yesterday may have had something to do with it. Maybe.

I'm still hanging in there and just playing the waiting game. Whoo-hoo!

40 weeks... and doing okay

I really thought that by this point in my pregnancy I'd be ready to pull the baby out through any orifice just to not be pregnant anymore... but I actually feel good. Surprisingly good. Considering how awful I felt at 36 weeks, 40 weeks is pretty great. The baby has dropped considerably, so I no longer have excruciating rib pain (which I may not have complained about before, but believe me, it was quite uncomfortable). My back pain has been replaced with pelvic pain, which I actually don't mind. It doesn't wake me up at night, at least. I still get the restless legs thing every once in awhile and after trying a few things, it seems that bananas + nettle tea = best results. That doesn't mean it works every time, but I tend to have less intense restless feelings if I have that combo of potassium and iron before bed.

So... yeah. That's it. We were really hoping for a baby today (the 13th), but it is now 2PM, so I don't think that will be happening. Bummer. Now I'm just hoping for a baby before June 27th! Preferably without induction, of course. I'll keep you all posted on the baby watch!

Baby #2 update

I'm still pregnant. Just wanted to throw that out there.

I'm one week away from my "official" due date, and I'm hoping the baby will come this week. Or at least I'm hoping I don't have to do the whole overdue waiting thing. If I go too far past my due date, then I risk out of the birth center and have to go to the hospital. I've been induced before. It blows.

John thinks the baby will come on the 13th, thus adding another 13th birthday to our list (John, Johnny and I were all born on the 13th day of different months). My dad and brother are hoping the baby will come tomorrow, June 8th, since that's their birthday... Personally, either day is fine with me, as long as it's before I'm 41 weeks.

Send labor vibes my way people!

38 weeks and still incubating

Nothing particularly exciting going on at 38 weeks. Lots of Braxton-Hicks contractions, but that's it. I've actually been gaining weight (yay!) thanks to cookies from Sprouts and a switch from skim to 2% milk... I know I'm supposed to be gaining weight by eating healthier foods than cookies, but hey, I've been eating healthy for the last 38 weeks and look where it's gotten me. :)

The most obnoxious thing going on (besides the usual body pain associated with growing a baby) is restless legs. Holy crap, does it suck! I'm tired all day and so ready to lie down for a (mostly) restful night's sleep, but when I get all comfortable in bed with all sorts of pillows tucked in all sorts of places... it strikes. The very unnecessary need to move my legs. At first I'll try to ignore it, but the restless feeling only gets worse and worse until I finally get up and start walking around the house or the cul-de-sac or do some yoga flows or lunges or squats or go up and down the stairs multiple times. Does the exercise help? Not really. It just makes me tired enough to finally ignore my legs and pass out. It's a relatively new development, so I haven't brought it up with my midwife, but I will definitely be asking for some help on Monday. For now, I just do some exercises and get John to rub my legs before I go to bed. But if anyone has any experience with this and wants to share what helped them, I'm all ears!

I'm still tired, but managing to make it through the week due to help from family and friends coming over for a couple of hours each day to watch Johnny so I can lie down. Being able to lie down while they are here and then during Johnny's nap time makes a big difference in how I feel. I can actually make it through the day and then make dinner... usually. So thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who has volunteered to hang out with my maniac of a toddler while I give my body a rest.

Johnny has been a big help by taking a nap every day (::crosses fingers::) and entertaining himself for about fifteen minutes or so at a time. HOWEVER, he is, as John says, a Nazi about letting me (or anyone) lie down while I'm in his presence. If I lie down on the sofa in the play room, he comes over from wherever he is and pulls on my head while saying "nonononononono." Ah, well, at least he's cute.

36 weeks... and over it.

Well, I've hit that point. That point where I'm longing to be over and done with pregnancy. When I was pregnant with Johnny I never got to this point, probably because I was so freaked out about having a child (not the delivery part, the taking care of a newborn part). The killer is, since I've done this before, I know that in about three months I'll be wishing I had a nice round belly to sport instead of a squishy one. Alas.

Last time around was so easy! I ate whenever I needed to, exercised when I wanted, laid down when I felt like it... this time? Not so much. Eating isn't going so well considering I lost weight at my last appointment; this tends to be pretty normal in the first trimester, but kind of problematic in the third. Go figure. The problem? I have trouble finding time to eat. When I'm not chasing Johnny, fixing food for Johnny, putting Johnny down for a nap or playing with Johnny, I'm sitting or lying down because I'm so. freaking. tired. Not so much mentally, but definitely physically. I know this fatigue probably has a lot to do with not taking in enough calories, so I should fix that. And I'm working on it. My midwife told me not to even wait until I'm hungry and just eat every two hours. Set a phone alarm if necessary. High-protein snacks are the name of the game. Add that to all of the water I should be consuming, the milk I should be drinking, and the iron I need.

Otherwise, life is going pretty well. Johnny is being great for me by taking a nap every day and having a little independent play time in the morning and afternoon. Thank goodness he has so many toy trucks to occupy him. He's starting to be a little freaked out by my belly. Every time I lift up my shirt to expose it, he looks at it once then starts shaking his head and saying "nononononono". But he thinks my belly button is pretty awesome. As evidenced by him sticking his finger halfway into it in the picture below.

Why I'm going to a birth center

Just in case you didn't know, I'm not giving birth at a hospital this time around. Well, at least I'm not intending to give birth at a hospital; an induction like last time would mean a hospital birth, but I'm doing things to prevent that this time around.

Do I feel like I had a bad experience last time? No, Sharp Mary Birch is an excellent hospital and worked out well for my first birth.

However, the more moms I talk to about their birth stories, the more I realize how lucky I was that I didn't end up with a Cesarean. It seems that a good chunk of the moms I've talked to have had a C-section and went into the whole birth experience intending to go as naturally as possible (like me) and then ended up giving birth as unnaturally as possible. Yes, there are a lot of reasons why the C-section rate in the US was up to 32% in 2007 (according to this data from the CDC) including increased use of drugs, women having children later in life, medical doctors fearing being sued, but I think the biggest problem is a lack of education on the part of the parents. So many pregnant women I knew wanted to give birth "naturally" but I didn't talk to a single one taking a Bradley class, Birthing from Within workshop, Brio Birth course, etc. Everyone I knew (myself included) intended to take the quick six-week course from the hospital. That's where the problem lies.

A hospital is a business. If they don't make money, then they can't stay open. I don't think this is a bad thing since they provide a service, they should be compensated fairly. The service they provide is a medical one; they have all of the technology necessary to make a high-risk pregnancy turn out well and that's great. But what about low-risk patients like me? I didn't have gestational diabetes, I gained the recommended 30-35 pounds, my blood pressure was excellent, I ate well and I exercised. Despite all of this, I was still treated like I was high-risk because that's what hospitals specialize in. I didn't realize it at the time, but looking back I can see that's what was happening. My water broke ten days before my due date and we were instructed to go straight to the hospital to lower the risk of infection. Doesn't make any sense, right? Go to the hospital, with all of those strangers and all of those germs to decrease the risk of infection...

This time around I have done my homework. John and I have taken a Bradley Method course (which is a 12-week, 2 hour per class course) and even though we have been through a childbirth class and a birth of our own, we still learned LOTS of valuable information. We've decided to go to a birth center with a group of midwives and that experience has been a huge difference from my experience with my previous OB. I did like my OB, but there's something nice about being in the care of a woman whose only job is to birth babies.

So, my three main reasons for going to a birth center (in no particular order):

1. I want to give birth naturally. A hospital is not the best place for that because that's not their specialty. As my husband says, "You don't go into a Chinese food place and demand lasagna." A birth center is much more conducive to natural birth and the midwife has already talked to me about different ways to induce labor at home in case my water breaks and contractions don't start again.

2. The birth center is a nice mix of nature and technology. While a home birth would be cool, I'm still a little nervous about committing to one, probably due some lingering fears of childbirth. The birth center has some neonatal tools to help any babies who are struggling with the transition from womb to outside world. They also have a variety of drugs (no pain meds, though) in case something unexpected happens to me (like too much bleeding after birth).

3. Being the capitalists that we are, John and I are voting with our dollar. We don't agree with the high C-section rate of hospitals, nor with how pushy they are about drugs (any drug, not just pain medications), so we're doing something different than the norm.

And... that's all I have to say about that. :)

The impossibility of my pregnancy diet

 When you grow a human there are all kinds of things that you should be eating to help this human to grow and to keep you (the host) healthy. I'm finding that all of these "regulations" on my diet are impossible to meet every day because there are so many! See below:

1. Okay, as a pregnant woman in my 3rd trimester, I am supposed to be taking in at least 2600 calories a day. Which doesn't seem like a ridiculous amount of calories, but having an active toddler to look after and feed makes it difficult for me to feed myself that many calories in one day... that come from nutritious foods.

2. I should be consuming 2 eggs a day, which seems pretty easy, but unfortunately I can't handle the smell of cooking eggs. One of those pregnancy things. The only way I've been meeting this regulation is by making a bunch of deviled eggs and eating them throughout the week for breakfast. If I run out and don't get a chance to make more... well, I try to get a breakfast burrito or something but I just can't physically choke down scrambled eggs.

3. I am also supposed to be taking in 80 - 100 grams of protein a day. Granted, a lot of the things I like have protein, but they also require some preparation... which requires time which happens to be in short supply.

4. My midwife said that I'm slightly low on iron and need to up my iron intake, so I take an iron supplement in the morning and in the evening. She also told me to eat more iron-rich foods and to pair them with foods rich in vitamin C... not an easy thing to accomplish, actually. I do make a smoothie in the afternoon that contains oranges and spinach (among other things), I get in the occasional cup of nettle tea, and we've been trying to eat steak twice a week, which all sound great, right? Unfortunately, I have difficulty doing them every day, mostly because of regulation #5.

5. To make sure I'm providing enough calcium for my skeleton and my baby's, I have to drink at least three glasses of milk. Normally, this would be easy because I can drink milk like water, but guess what? Calcium inhibits iron absorption. So all of that iron I'm supposed to be having can't be consumed around the same time as my milk drinking.

Basically, it's impossible for me to make sure that I'm eating/drinking everything I should be to provide the best nutrition for myself and my baby (and to keep from risking out of birthing at my birth center). But I am trying! I get points for that, right?

From my perspective

This is what I see when I look down. And yes, those are boobs, but I was smart enough to throw on a bra before taking the picture. I keep getting comments about how small my belly is and how I don't look 7 months pregnant, but really, I think I look every week of it from this perspective. There are feet down there somewhere. And I am actually wearing pants, but you wouldn't know it from looking would you? People keep asking me if I feel like I'm carrying differently from the last time around and I don't feel like I am. The only difference is in the belly button. See that little bump on top of the mountain? I'm pretty sure I didn't have a popped out belly button last time... or if I did it wasn't until way later. Otherwise, everything seems pretty much the same, to which everyone replies: "Oh! Then you're having a boy!" I guess we'll see in two months...

2 down, one to go.

And I've reached the 28th week of pregnancy. I've finished the nausea of the first trimester, the hormonal high of the second trimester and am plummeting headfirst into the physical discomfort of the third trimester. I'm not feeling physically uncomfortable yet, which I will enjoy every minute of because I know what's waiting for me. It is nice to actually have a belly that looks pregnant instead of just fat or like a potbelly. At least, that's what I think:

I thought it'd be appropriate to take this week's belly picture in my exercise clothes since that's what I wear 60% of the day. Johnny and I go for a walk every morning and then I don't get to change until he goes down for a nap around 1pm-ish. So I do errands, go to playdates and various appointments while dressed in sweaty workout clothes. I think I might have cared about this sometime before I had a child, but now I'm just stoked that I don't smell like spoiled breastmilk. Win! Oh, wait, you mean that will be happening all over again in just three months? Damn.

Baby #2 pictures

I finally got around to scanning the ultrasound pictures of the next baby and thought I should post them in an attempt to give Johnny and the next child a similar amount of exposure... key word: attempt.

Side profile. S/he was all snuggled up the placenta (on the left) so the face is a little smushed.

Ultrasounds aren't the most exciting pictures in the world, I know, but hey, it's what I have to work with.

The Halfway Point

Remember when I said I was pregnant with the next baby? Yeah, well, I'm HALFWAY THERE! Holy-freaking-moly. 20 weeks along and 20 more to go. 20 more weeks and I'll be a mother of 2. How is that possible?!

I had the "big" ultrasound last week, where John and I got to see the baby and I have to say it was unreal. I don't feel particularly pregnant and it's weird that I'll be having another child when I already have one at home... weird. We aren't finding out the sex this time, just so everyone knows. We enjoyed it being a last-minute surprise with Johnny, so we're looking forward to it again with this baby. Sorry, no buying gender-specific baby clothes before the big event! Or maybe you can just get girl clothes since we have PLENTY of boy clothes between Lisa's baby and Johnny. :)