Today is Esme's original due date. She is finally 40 weeks! (but actually just shy of 4 weeks). What better time to finally write about her birth.
I still can't believe that after such a weird, dramatic pregnancy, it actually all came to an end in the hospital lobby. I sat in a hospital bed for
two months, and I still managed to deliver
not in a hospital bed! It has taken me a while to process the whole experience. It feels like it happened to someone else. Actually, my memory may not be the most reliable. I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how it all happened and what I could have done differently. But as is the case with this entire pregnancy, it was another example of the best possible outcome emerging from an awful situation. I will try to leave out some gory details that I prefer not to publish in the cyberworld but it
is a birth story...so you've been warned.
As I had mentioned in earlier posts, my mother-in-law was staying with us during the weekdays and generously took on the role of being my babysitter in case of any emergency. However, I really wanted to give her a little break and I convinced her to go back home to Cleveland on Thursday for a long 4 day weekend. To make this work, I scheduled a number of friends to help watch the boys throughout the day so I wouldn't be alone with them and always had backup. Thursday night, Andrew was on-call so the boys and I went to spend the night at Andrew's brother's house which is in a neighboring town, about 25-30 minutes away from the hospital (when traffic is considered).
Honestly, it seemed a little silly for all three of us to go all the way to their house to spend the night. I had gone over 3 weeks without any issues, so I almost thought of canceling and staying at home. But luckily I didn't. We watched, "The Social Network" and then I went to bed in their basement at 10:30 pm. Just after midnight I started having mild pain but this has been pretty common in this pregnancy. I've had many episodes of cramping and contractions associated with the placental abruption. Pain was something I was used to. Also, I was having these weird dreams about Facebook
and somehow managed to incorporate the pain into my dream so it never fully woke me up. Weird, I know. Wish I could remember the dream.
Around 2 or so, I finally woke up enough to realize that I was actually having real pain and should probably start paying attention. I wasn't totally convinced that it was contraction pain at that point. It wasn't bad enough to need pain medicine or anything. A half hour later, I felt like the pain was increasing and coming in intervals so I started timing it. I called Andrew at the hospital just to give him a heads up (when he is on-call he is usually up all night seeing patients). Then, at 2:43am, I used the contraction calculator on my phone to start keeping track. See Exhibit A:
Just to give you a point of reference, Esme was born at 3:42am. After a few contractions, I called triage around 3am and told them I wasn't sure if this was real labor because I had so many incidents of false labor. Even having contractions 3-4 minutes apart was not unusual. They told me to come in anyway. I called Andrew to tell him to meet me up at triage. Then I went to the bathroom. Honestly, everything changed within a minute or two. I went from having an uncomfortable contraction to all of the sudden feeling my body start to push and I could hardly breath. It was that fast. I realized that I couldn't carry my bag up the stairs and, in fact, I wasn't even sure if I could make it up the stairs at all. My kids were sleeping in the next room and I had this horror come over me that I might deliver a baby all by myself in a guest bathroom with my kids sleeping next door.
That thought was not only terrifying, but made me really mad. What about my epidural? I wasn't going to give birth on a bathroom floor! So I used every ounce of willpower to crawl up the stairs and tell my sister-in-law, Kali, that we had to go to the hospital NOW. She woke up quickly and we got in the car. I had her so freaked out that she backed up into our car (which was my fault for parking in a bad spot). She was concerned but I didn't care AT ALL! I told her it didn't even matter and she just needed to drive as fast as she could (although I probably could have shown a little concern for
her car, but it ended up being fine). At that point it was probably about 3:25 or 3:30. Keep in mind they live about 25 minutes from the hospital when there is normal traffic.
In my defense of the next 10 minutes, I was not thinking rationally. I only had one thought: I am not going to deliver my premature baby in a minivan. I wasn't concerned about who was with me or my choice of words. I do sincerely feel bad for anyone that has to be around me when I'm in labor. This is why I get an epidural, so I can be a nice person when I deliver a baby. I don't know how to do natural childbirth with all the breathing techniques, etc. It has never been an aspiration of mine. Anyway, bless Kali's heart for trying to keep it together over the next 10 minutes. She stopped for a few red lights (and at 3am there weren't many cars out), so I told her strongly that she
could not stop at red lights. I knew that we wouldn't make it if she did that. What I didn't tell her was that with each contraction I could feel my body pushing out the baby and I was trying my hardest to keep her in.
Kali called 911 while she was driving (she was really freaked out at this point) and they told her to pull over and wait for an ambulance. I said
strongly that she could not listen to them because they were wrong! "Just keep driving! You're almost there! Just GO!". That's all I said over and over. I can imagine now that I put her in a really difficult situation. But the ambulance probably wouldn't have made it in time and I didn't trust ambulance workers with this "high-risk" situation. Plus, we were so close. Luckily when we got downtown, we had yellow flashing lights instead of red lights, so that helped.
About a block away from the hospital, I called triage (luckily they were on speed dial) and told them to send someone down to the lobby right away. Kali told me to call Andrew too but I was in too much pain to make another phone call. We pulled up to the drop off zone, I got out and they had a wheelchair ready for me. But on the way to the elevators I could feel the baby's head come out. So the midwife had me stand up and she delivered her right there in the lobby (or 'caught her' to be more accurate). Suddenly the pain was over. I am SO GRATEFUL that it was 3 in the morning and the only people in the lobby were a few hospital employees. I'm sure this happens all the time and they're used to it, right :)? But amazingly, I didn't care at all. I was just so relieved that she was out and that I was in a hospital.
They put her on my lap (in the wheelchair) and said, "he looks great" which told me that they must not have looked very closely since the baby was definitely a girl. I said, "Wait, it's a girl right?" But they continued on with their reassuring talk while wheeling me towards the elevators. I feel bad because I couldn't look at her. I was in too much shock. I could not process thoughts. I only knew that she wasn't crying and so I asked the midwife about it but she just kept saying everything looked great (they always know how to speak so calmly in medicine so I wasn't sure if I should believe her). We went upstairs to a triage room where Andrew was waiting and he cut the umbilical cord (those things are actually pretty long in case you were wondering). Then I just laid in the bed and tried to believe what had just happened. The worst pregnancy ever was finally over. I just couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it happened so fast. I did need some stitches (probably from holding her in). Once the placenta was out, I was so relieved to have such a huge burden off my shoulders. I did need a shot to help stop the bleeding but other than that everything was fine. Meanwhile, there was just one person over with the baby which told me that she was doing great.
I feel bad that I was so emotionless right after giving birth. It wasn't that I didn't care, I just couldn't actually believe what was happening. I always thought that when she was finally born I would cry. Instead I was closest to laughing. Partly because the experience was so ridiculous and partly because that's what I do when I'm not sure how to feel about something. But after 10 minutes or so I snapped out of it and started being more aware of the baby. Then I felt the waves of happiness and so much gratitude that she was healthy and made it through such a huge ordeal. It felt like she was meant to be in our family and we had been missing her without even knowing it.
I asked Andrew if he was sad that he missed the birth and he said something along the lines of, "hmmm, you giving natural childbirth in a lobby... no I'm not really sad that I missed that" which made me laugh out loud because he is SO right! I will admit that I did feel great afterwards and it was nice to not have that drugged up feeling. If I knew that labor would only be an hour, I would definitely do it natural again. However, there wasn't a significant enough difference for me to truly endorse natural childbirth. I still think, all things considered, epidurals are the way to go for me personally. Otherwise, I have to apologize to people afterward :).
Andrew just commented that it has taken me longer to write about the birth story than it actually took to have the baby. So true! Amazingly, Esme is perfectly healthy. Premature babies tend to not nurse well and she has fit into that category a little. But we are working on it and meanwhile she is taking breastmilk from a bottle. Last week she weighed 6 pounds 15 ounces so she is growing like a weed. She is such a beautiful baby and was so worth all those frustrating months in the hospital. In fact, miraculously, I have already forgotten all the pain and stress of that situation. I guess I still remember it, but now it feels so minute when compared with the joy this little person has brought to our lives.
I can't really explain how we came up with her name other than to say that it is definitely her name. Maybe I'll explain more in another post. Simply put, one day it came to me and I told Andrew about how I couldn't shake it from my mind. For months we tried convincing ourselves of other names, but she is definitely Esme Jane (she is also called Ezzie, Ez, or Meme).
Her name means "beloved". That she definitely is.
