Kellan's birth story

It was my pregnancy and birth of Kellan that taught me how much an individuals personality is present, even in that dependent infancy before they even leave the womb. I was 41 weeks, 3 days pregnant and was understandably anxious wondering when he was going to make his debut. A few days before this, I had experienced some beginning labor contractions, but they never changed into active labor. I tried so many natural remedies to encourage things to move along, and it never did. I had my mom watch Maren while James and I spent the Saturday before just walking and walking everywhere. As long as I walked, I contracted hard every so often. When we rested, it stopped. And I still had lingering fear of the birth experience that I had with Maren, so that night I made a decision, and called my CNM (certified nurse midwife) to talk about induction. We scheduled it for the morning on the following Monday. But before that arrived, I had one last day to soak in being a family of just three, and it was also Mother's Day. That Sunday night after we got home from my mom's house from a family dinner, I packed my hospital bag with everything that I wanted/needed, and then wrote in a journal I had started for Kellan. I told him about my anxiety of it all, and wasn't sure if he was ready, but I wanted to express my feelings about wanting him in my arms so basically I could stop worrying about all of the things I was afraid of. I apologized to him for being so scared, and I prayed that he would be more brave than I was. As I woke up that Monday morning, I had more of the contractions that I had on Saturday, and I prayed that they would progress, so that I wouldn't live to regret asking to be induced. But they didn't. We had an appointment to be at the hospital at 7 AM that day, after my mom arrived to be with Maren, we left. James and I prayed before we went into the hospital, but my nerves never stopped trembling. I had a little bit more confidence in myself with this birth, and I knew that James would fight harder for my voice to be heard as my advocate, and I went into the situation like a person with their eyes closed, just wanting to open them when I was done. After all of the paperwork, the initial exams (I was dilated to a 2 cm upon arriving), the waiting, the set up, 3 hours later they had finally set up an IV drip of pitocin, watched the monitor as things progressed, and left James and me in the room together in quiet to labor. I had my hypnobirthing tapes in my walkman, I layed on my side listening to them, and James watched the monitor as each contraction swelled and eased, rubbing my back in the way that I had asked to create a natural endorphin for pain relief. Nurses came in and checked periodically, but for 2 hours James would put his hand up as if to say "Stop, not now." And would motion for them to remain quiet. They would look at the monitor, see a contraction coming, and would ask me questions anyway DURING the contraction about how I was doing and if I needed anything. James kept reminding them, patiently, that I would let him know and he would let them in turn know. After 2 hours of the pitocin keeping contractions about every 4-5 minutes, my water had broke. My CNM came into the room when we requested, they assisted me to the bathroom with my IV drip in tow to get a dry gown, shower off a little, and they put dry dressings back on the bed. My midwife had checked my cervix and said I was dilated to a 4 cm, then was very discouraging when she said "It's going to be a long day of this. You're not moving along very fast." I cried. And nurses immediately came in and said "You don't have to be so brave, it's ok to get an epidural, you need to rest honey." Not a single person in the room told me that I was doing fantastic, and that I had strength within me. James stood by my side and held me as I felt afraid and tense to the first contraction that came after my water had broke. It was more intense. But they didn't want to turn down the pitocin drip for protocol to prevent stalling labor. And I began to regret my decision to request aggressive intervention in the first place. As I got to the bed again, and experienced 2 or 3 more contractions closer together than before, I looked at James and said "I can't do it like this. " I was crawling out of my skin in pain. It was torture. When I tell about my birth experience with Kellan, I say that I had pitocin to induce me but didn't have an epidural- that's the short version. I didn't like answering a lot of questions about it all. I want to clarify about it- I did ask for an epidural at this point in the labor. The anesthesiologist came into the room, and he was the first person who would wait for me to be done contracting before he would ask me any questions. James helped me to sit up, and he sat in front of me holding my shoulders forward and my arms tight so that I could remain as still as possible while they inserted the needle in my spine. My contractions continued to hammer with excruciating pain, and my body was telling me to kneel down and arch my back like a cat. But I had to remain curled in a ball for THEM. My body wanted to stretch after the contraction because my upper back was in pain, but I had to remain curled over for THEM. Then I had to lay on my side, when all I wanted to do was walk. The anesthesiologist remained in the room to complete his chart, and monitored the drip and the contractions while asking me in between if my pain level was decreasing. It wasn't. And they kept telling me to lay in that position that was causing me excruciating pain going so hard against what my body was asking me to do. The catheter ended up not being in the needed position, and the medicine only numbed down my right leg. He readjusted the catheter, again telling me to curl in a ball and don't move. Then they pushed a button for "quick increase" that couldn't be pushed for 20 more minutes. But the adjustment didn't change the epidural's affect, and I was experiencing one pounding contraction after another. Still with the pitocin turned up. I was fearfully waiting wondering if my uterus would rupture with the intensity. As he still waited in the room and watched the levels of everything, James stepped out for a minute to call both of our moms and give them an update. I asked him as he was leaving the room to have the CNM come back in and check me, I felt such intense pressure bearing down and feared I was going to rupture or something. She came back in and said "I don't want you to get discouraged, we just checked you an hour and a half ago, the change isn't going to be what you want it to be." But to her surprise, Kellan was crowning, and I was telling her that I needed to push. Still, no effect of the epidural ever occurred for the labor. That's why I said I didn't have an epidural for pain relief. To this development so quickly after the last exam, the staff wasn't ready with their supplies for the birth. She angled the hospital bed at a decline to put my heart lower, and told me not to push. That's like telling someone not to breath, the body just wants to do it. As each contraction came and I wanted to push, my CNM was pushing down on my shoulders keeping me flat, and pushing upward from the bottom of my belly, keeping the baby in. All while the nurses were getting ready. James came back into the room and the CNM said "Well Dad, we're about to have a baby." And he asks "Yeah, what is it looking like? Another few hours?" And she said "No, right now." He was shocked. He came by my side to see how I was doing, the CNM had moved out of his way to be there, and I just leaned up and pushed with the contraction anyway. She again asked me not to push. With the next contraction, Kellan had straightened his legs, and I felt like his feet were up into my chest, it was so uncomfortable being in the hospital birthing position, I instinctively wanted to stand up straight, and squat with my pelvis, but I was numb in one leg and hooked up with so many wires and machines. And with the next contraction it felt like Kellan saying to me "I know you're struggling, I got this mom." And he kept his little legs straight during the contraction, which as the muscles tightened, it pushed him out without any effort for me for it. After the CNM had assisted in his shoulders delivering, she told James to reach down and take him out. He was so surprised, wasn't planning for that at all and worried that he didn't have any gloves on. She assured him it was fine and told him to go ahead. He had such a connection at that moment, bringing his son into the world with me. Kellan was born on May 9th, 2005 at 2:40 PM. His cord was short, so all James could do was lay him in my abdomen. I leaned up so I could see him, and I wanted to hold him so badly, but the nurses were wiping and suctioning and dressing and wrapping him as I stayed basically as a table for the baby to lay on while they managed everything. The placenta delivered after a few minutes, and they then turned down the pitocin on the machine, switching the drip to saline and pitocin combo to try to manage possible hemorrhaging. Protocol. James got to cut Kellan's cord, and I got to finally hold him near my face and kiss his face. His eyes were open and he was calm, then the nurse took him from me so that they could do all of their procedures first, before I got to do what nature was urging me to do first. While they did everything with Kellan, James stayed by our son's side the entire time. The CNM was stitching me from the tears which were from my previous childbirth, not new tearing. And she then admitted to me that she wasn't going to stitch as many as last time, it was "possible that she did it too tightly" despite when I had gone back to her and told her about how uncomfortable and painful it still was months after the first birth. I was so mad. She felt it the right moment for a confessional I guess. About an hour after the birth, they handed me my baby all bundled and covered, tagged, and smeared with goo on his face, then transported my bed up to the postpartum floor. Every hour a nurse was coming in to check my temp, check my bleeding, give me meds, or take a blood test. And every opposite hour a nurse was coming in to check Kellan's temp, check his blood sugar, or check his vitals. I just wanted to sleep that night. James was exhausted too, and left late that night to go be with Maren so I could rest without his snoring too. At one point in the night, a nurse came in telling me that an alert had gone off in their system about Kellan's ankle tag, but he was right there with me, he wasn't being taken out of the building, just a glitch. Another hour or so later in the night, another nurse came in telling me she was the new one on shift and needed to check his temperature. She couldn't get a good reading under his arm, and said "Let me steal him for just a sec so I can take him to the nursery, I'll do a rectal temperature." After the glitch with the computer, and this nurse saying "let me steal him" I panicked. I wished James was there with me to go with Kellan, and I couldn't do anything. My leg was in pain, my body was abused and through the ringer, and I couldn't go with her. I handed her my baby praying the entire time that she was who she said she was, and that she would be bringing me my baby back. Thankfully, it was fine. I've watched way too many Lifetime movies. As per their protocol, every two hours they would wake me up and remind me to try nursing Kellan. I would do everything that I could to wake him up, but he never would stay awake long enough. And they told me that I couldn't go home at my requested 24 hour release until he had nursed 4 times. So I lied to them and said that he had nursed 20 minutes on each side every time. Kellan worked just as hard as I did during that labor, and this wasn't my first rodeo. I knew he was exhausted, and would wake up to nurse when he was hungry. Tell me what baby doesn't cry when they're hungry? Before James came back to bring me home, a pediatrician came into the room and said since I had declined the vitamin k shot, he was nervous to let us be released without knowing that I was going straight to our pediatrician for an oral vitamin k supplement. I wanted to tell him that the baby would have gotten vitamin k in the colostrum if they had let me nurse right after birth, and that I wasn't worried about the blown out of proportion scare tactic anyway, but I lied to him too and said that we had an appointment already scheduled, not wanting a confrontation or a challenge because I felt so hormonal, so insecure, and so ignored through the entire process. When we left, and I was finally home with our new baby, I sat in his room with him that we had prepared, with a recliner in there for nursing. He was alert and awake as we got there, and I again attempted nursing him, which he took right to doing, and I never had a single issue with learning the latch or the process with him. I'm thankful for that, because of the interventions and the delayed moment to instill that reflex in newborns, it could have been the opposite for our nursing experience. I felt the need to apologize to him for being weak, and seeking out the intervention that I felt like took away from the experience as his mother I was meant to advocate, and I thanked him for being strong enough to push his own way into the world when everyone was managing me and telling me what to do. And that is Kellan's personality. He is tender when I am not feeling well, he his helpful when I tell him sincerely that I'm having a hard day, and he just wants to be my little man, taking care of me already. He is amazing, and being his mother has given me opportunity to learn so much more about the intelligence we all have even from the beginning of our creation. It comes from our divine Creator in the first place.