Birth Story

This is how we remember the big day!

Thursday, June 17 Baby seems to have dropped. Mommy can finally after 9 weeks of bed rest get out a bit more!

Saturday, June 19 Signs of labour…could be hours or weeks.

Sunday, June 20 More signs of labour late afternoon. Daddy has instincts and decides to pack the hospital bag after dinner.

19:45 I called Leah to chat…and ask a few questions. Water breaks while on the phone!

We met Leah at the hospital at 20:10, and our midwife arrives shortly after. I get hooked up to an IV with antibiotics since I hadn’t had my group B swab…that was to be done at my 37 week appointment.

20:30 Contractions start. The midwife (Judy) tells me I’ll probably have to go home and return when the contractions are about 5 minutes apart, or at 5:00am to get another dose of antibiotics. I try to convince my midwife to let me stay due to family history of deliveries.

20:45 The midwife starts measuring my contractions and they are about 4 minutes apart. She decides I should probably stay, but that she will assess me in a little bit.

21:20 Leah leaves since she has to work in the morning (hopefully she will be our nurse). Once she leaves, Judy assesses me, and I am already 4cm dilated. Contractions are getting closer and closer. I spend about 30 minutes on my knees over a ball in pain as the contractions begin to get worse.

22:00 We move into a labour and delivery room. I feel the need to start pushing.

22:30ish Assessed again and am close to fully dilated.

23:00ish I start pushing. I takes about 30 minutes to figure out how to correctly push. Right when I figure it out (23:30), the midwife discovers that Meconium (baby poop) is spilling out, but the heart rate is still really good. Judy does a quick exam and realises that baby is an undiagnosed breech! Thea (our friend and L&D nurse) confirms this, and also figures out the gender! Baby is doing well. Meconium is spilling out.

23:30 Judy makes the call to do an emergency C-section..all sorts of people are called in. I am put in a position to stop labour, and told to stop pushing…it’s almost impossible to do!

23:50 The first OB arrives and decides that it is too late for a c-section since she can see the baby bum. I will deliver breech!

Monday June 21 00:05 I am told that I can start pushing again. Instead of the quiet delivery room we had planned (us, midwife and 1 nurse), we have an audience of 2 midwifes, 1 L&D nurse (dear friend Thea), 2 OB’s, 1 paediatrician, 2 NICU nurses, 2 respiratory therapists and me, Dan and Naomi. After about 45 more minutes of pushing, the OB realised she wasn’t going to come out easily. She had to do an episiotomy, and I keep pushing for another 45 minutes (1.5 hours total pushing, plus 30 minutes trying hard not to push) until baby Naomi was born! At the end things got tense. Once Naomi’s bum was fully out, her fetal heart rate started to plummet. They needed to get Naomi out fast. The two observing Dr’s rushed in, and between them all they got her torso and head out in a matter of seconds! She was taken to the back of the room to the NICU and respiratory nurses. That’s when panic kicked in for me! It felt like an eternity until I heard her first cry...although it was probably only about 15 seconds!

Dan was able to go over and give her a kiss right away and start talking to her, then come back to see me deliver the placenta…for some reason I was more afraid of that than delivering Naomi, and I didn’t even realize that I had done it!

We had almost 2 hours with her after the delivery to cuddle, attempt breast feeding and relax as a new family. Dan took her to the NICU at 3:00am while I was moved to my room. We were all settled into our new beds by 3:30am Monday morning.

Apparently only 3% of women can deliver a breech baby vaginally. No meds either!