birth story: vincent james

I’m still in bed, half asleep at 6:30 AM on Tuesday, September 4^th as Chris kisses me before leaving for work. At 7:00 AM I finally accept that I’m not going to get any more sleep and I start thinking about breakfast. I remember that we’re out of eggs and I’ll have to go to the store before I can make anything, the thought of which is a bit frustrating since I barely fit into any of my clothes at this point.

At 7:15 AM I roll Kramer over to the inside of the bed so I can get up to pee. As soon as I stand up, my water breaks. For those of you who’ve never had the experience (apparently only 10% of women do) it’s a lot like you see in the movies – only worse! It gushes over and over again and just when you think there can’t be any more it starts all over. I just stood there at the side of the bed, completely soaked, not really sure what to do. Poor Kramer wasn’t sure what to do either. He just stared at me with a confused and concerned look. Finally there was a short break between gushes and I tip toed to the bathroom, trying not to slip on the now soaked hardwood floor. I can’t imagine how embarrassed I would have been had I actually made it to the store!! Seriously, I think it was like a gallon of water.

After drying off and cleaning up the hardwood floor (it took two huge bath towels) I called the hospital. They told me to come in within the next hour or so – no big rush since I hadn’t started having contractions yet. So I called Chris, who had just barely arrived at work, and had him drive back home to get me. I was showered and pretty much ready to go by the time he arrived.

Once in the car the contractions started. They weren’t too bad at first and didn’t really pick up until we were settled into the room around 8:30 AM. Around 10:30 AM the doc came in to check on my progress and the contractions were every 3-5 minutes and intense. Unfortunately I was only dilated to a 3 at that point and the baby still hadn’t dropped, but fortunately the doc said any time I was ready for the epidural was fine. About 5 minutes after he left I said, “I’m ready!” Really, what is the point of all that pain? And after the epidural I was really asking myself that question! The epidural is the best thing ever. Once it was done I was ready to have a party in the room. Ok, not quite, but I was fine with people hanging out (my mom and Chris’s parents were all there with us). Around 12:00 PM I was dilated to a 4 and by 5:00 there was no further change and the baby still hadn’t dropped.

The doc gave us the option of waiting a few more hours but since there was no further progression he said the chances of dilating any further were extremely slim. He recommended we prepare for a caesarian delivery but said if we wanted to wait it out a bit longer we were welcome to do so.

Honestly, I was disappointed. Although I wasn’t excited to experience hours and hours of contractions, I was looking forward to the experience of a vaginal birth. And this just wasn’t part of my birth plan (which was 4 pages long and very detailed – I put a lot of work into that thing!) Once we accepted that this was going to be a caesarian birth, the birth plan pretty much went out the window and I immediately felt guilty that I hadn’t read more on the subject.

At 5:50 PM the anesthesiologist came in a changed the epidural drugs which sent me from feeling ice cold to being on fire (although I kind of wonder if it had something to do with me being nervous). By 6:00 PM Chris and I were in the operating room and the delivery began. Shockingly enough it was a mere 7 minutes later that our precious little Vincent was born. The nurse lifted the little window so that we could see him. My first thought was, “ Are you sure that’s my baby? He doesn’t look like either of us!!”

Just a few minutes later he was in Chris’s arms and then for a few seconds in mine. It was awkward laying on a super skinny table and trying to hold a newborn. With Chris following closely behind, the nurses took Vincent again and cleaned him up a bit more along with all the other things that I wanted to wait a few hours for (the Vitamin K shot, the eye ointment, etc). But even more shocking than the speed at which he was delivered was that by 6:45 PM we were back in the room, breastfeeding and snuggling with little Vincent. So although I was disappointed about the caesarian, I was thrilled that it happened so quickly and that I was able to breastfeed and bond with Vincent within the first hour – not to mention we had a healthy baby boy!!

The first two days were far better than I had expected after a caesarian. Vincent slept in the bed snuggled up to me. The nurses called a mother’s breasts “the happiest place in the world” and for Vincent this proved to be true – if he wasn’t feeding he was holding onto them like life preservers.

Lucky Chris got to change all the diapers since I was still unable to get out of bed. He did a fabulous job, not just with the diapers but in soothing Vincent and learning how to swaddle him. He too got lots of bonding time in and was very attentive to us both. I’m so grateful to him for all his support.

Our room seemed to have a revolving door from then on, with lactation nurses coming to check on us, nurses checking both our temperatures, nurses checking Vincent’s vision and hearing, friends and family coming to meet him.

On day 3 in the hospital, 2 days after Vincent was born and just as we were preparing to pack up and head home, Vincent had a temperature of 100.4 and the doc said we needed to stay so he could be monitored for another 48 hours. Of course we were completely freaked out. I wasn’t even fully discharged yet and the nurse still had to remove the staples so I had to stay in the room while Chris went with Vincent up to the Pediatric wing where we would spend the next 2 days. I was in tears. I didn’t want to be separated from Vincent and I was so worried about him. The nurse who removed my staples was great though. She did her best to distract me with a million questions and tons of information, most of which I promptly forgot.

The doc had to put and IV in Vincent’s arm and do a spinal. Chris was there for the IV, but neither of us thought we could handle watching the spinal so we waited in our new room. I didn’t stop crying the entire time and then cried even more when they brought him back into the room with the IV in his arm and the monitors on his chest. It was so sad to see him like that. He was sound asleep though which the doc said was from the sugar water they gave him which supposedly works as a sedative on babies … but I was sure he had withdrawn from the trauma of the spinal which only made me cry harder. My eyes were huge and puffy and I looked like a mess most of the 2 days we spent there.

The doc was reassuring though (not that it made much of a difference at that point) and thankfully Vincent’s temperature went down right away. Over the next 2 days all his tests came back normal. We were so happy to finally be heading home on day 5, 4 days after Vincent was born, with a clean bill of health!