TravelingGal
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Calling all the Pregnant PS''ers
- Thread starter Kaleigh
- Start date
Lauren8211
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ljmorgan
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Blen congrats! I know you gave birth hours ago but.... I want pictures!!
Courtney I can''t believe we''re up next. I just saw your post on the preggo list thread. Yeah my revised date is because of the scheduled C-section. You''re definitely ahead of me as my official due date is May 4. So you may very well be having your baby before me
Courtney I can''t believe we''re up next. I just saw your post on the preggo list thread. Yeah my revised date is because of the scheduled C-section. You''re definitely ahead of me as my official due date is May 4. So you may very well be having your baby before me
Bia
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Blenheim
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Thanks everyone!!
The 5-7 minute apart contractions died down to maybe 15-20 minutes apart and kept picking up a little bit and then dying down again. My midwife came over around lunchtime to check me and the baby out and everything looked good at that point. She told me that the reason for the sporadic contractions might be that the baby was malpositioned and that the contractions were trying to change the position of the baby rather than to dilate my cervix, so she had me spend a while on hands and knees, draped over the exercise ball, and walking around to try to get the baby into a better position. She told me to call her back when the contractions were consistently 4-5 minutes apart, when I felt that I had to spend the time between contractions recovering, or when I just felt like I needed her.
The contractions were getting increasingly intense, but still not particularly close. I was also feeling them in my hips and upper thighs, which was hard. DH and I took a walk around the neighborhood, and some of them were just really bad. I was tired when we got home so we went to take a nap, waking up for contractions. The last 3-4 that I had during the nap were just horrible, and I would just start scooting backwards to get off the bed and away from them (which doesn't work by the way). I was starting to feel really discouraged, because the timing of the contractions didn't even put me in active labor and I couldn't imagine them getting much worse and I wasn't sure that I could take much more than that med-free. I was also starting to feel like I needed to poop, and kept going to the bathroom but nothing really came out. The last time this happened, I reached down to wipe and felt something soft and squishy poking out of my vagina and just panicked - cord prolapse is a risk with a broken bag of waters, and I couldn't think of what else that would be. I immediately got down on the bathroom floor on hands and knees with my chest to the ground (if it's cord prolapse, you're supposed to do that while transfering to a hospital) and yelled at DH that he needed to call the midwife immediately. She told him to have me get on my hands and knees until she got there and she sped on over. It was around 8 pm at this point. (DH had just turned on House before I started screaming at him to call the midwife.) When she got here, she did my first internal exam of the labor. It turns out that despite the sporadic contractions, I was 9 cm dilated with a very bulging bag of waters - it turns out that only the outer bag had broken on Sunday, leaving the inner bag intact, and it was the inner bag that I was feeling sticking out. I felt so much better knowing that the contractions were that intense because I was in freaking transition, not early labor!!
I decided to go ahead and get into the birth pool, which helped some with the pain. The disadvantage was that DH could no longer apply counterpressure to my hips, so I mostly got through contractions in a kneeling position pressing down on my hips myself. My legs started to get really tired, and so I kept trying to switch up positions but ultimately nothing else was feeling as good as kneeling (which isn't saying much, because that sucked too). I had 3 minutes between some contractions and 20 minutes between others, and I was taking cat naps during the longer breaks. After a while my body started to do light involuntary pushes during contractions. My midwife did another quick internal and didn't feel any cervical lip, and told me to go ahead and push with my body's urges. She also said that she felt hair, so either the baby had a very hairy butt or it was a head like we had thought - phew! I finally started really pushing around 11 pm. I was hoping that the baby woulld come before midnight, but mentioned to DH that if it happened today then the baby would at least share a birthdate with his great great grandpa.
I reached up at one point to feel how far down the head was, and there was something squishy by the head so I asked my midwife what that was. She did another internal, said something - I can't remember what - and then she and her apprentice went into the kitchen for a little while to talk. She came back and told me that the baby was breech after all, and that if I wanted to continue to labor at home she wanted to call over the midwife in town who is the breech expert. I decided to go ahead and continue laboring at home, because I had the ideal vaginal breech conditions going for me - term baby, reasonably sized, roomy pelvis, frank breech, and now two attendants with vaginal breech experience. The other midwife drove like a crazy woman to get over to my house and was there before we knew it.
At one point, the midwives were using the pronoun "he" while talking about the baby and I asked them if that meant it was a boy. They looked kind of shocked and asked me what else I thought the squishy thing by the butt was. I hadn't been thinking, obviously, but it was his testicles! DH and I both looked at each other in shock that we were having a BOY. We, and the apprentice midwife, mentioned that my midwife had been saying "she" a lot and she said that she's a horrible secret-hider and was probably over-compensating in an effort to not make it obvious to us which it was.
I spent maybe an hour pushing in which his butt would just poke out while pushing but then retract between contractions, which was getting discouraging. It was so painful, too. I was still able to nap between some contractions, which helped some, but I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to get him out. I pushed while kneeling until my knees and legs were burning, and then spent a while pushing half sitting, half reclining to give my legs a break. My back was starting to hurt and gravity can help get babies out, so the midwifes suggested trying to push while kneeling again. DH stayed at the side of the pool and we latched hands, and I would squeeze him and hang on him while pushing, while he pulled back to keep me from toppling over backwards. George kept sliding out and then back in, and I was in so much pain and everything felt like it was burning. They told me that he was making a little bit of progress each time I pushed, but it felt like it was taking forever and he wasn't actually going to come out.
The midwives finally told me that they thought it was time to get out of the pool, and so we relocated to the bedroom. I pushed for a while on my back there, with my midwife holding one of my legs and DH holding the other. They kept telling me that I needed to relax my legs while pushing and put all of my energy into getting George out, which was really hard to do. After a few pushes like this, they had me get on my knees and face DH and hang off of him some while I pushed. I did this once and we got a lot more progress with that one. I was squeezing hubby's chest to death though, and really screaming through it and briefly thought that it was good that we mentioned to the neighbors that we were having a homebirth so that they didn't think that someone was being murdered. For the next contraction, they had me put one knee up ("runner's pose"), and that almost got him out! They had me do that for the next one as well, and I kept pushing through that one for what felt like forever, and then I could feel his body really sliding out. My midwife called to her apprentice to take the time, so I knew that umbilus was out at least which was real progress! I pushed some more, and then there was a ton of pressure and stinging and burning (this was really hard to push through) and I felt even more slip out. They told me that his body was out, and that I just needed to try to push the head out once I felt like I was able. I took a short break to catch my breath and then managed to push the head out, and they passed him up to me between my legs. This was at 12:56 this morning. His apgar was 9 and he was really alert when he came out.
They had me keep him on the bed for a little bit, beneath me, so that he could try to get extra cord blood. I then rolled over onto my back and held him up to my breast and cuddled with him until the placenta was born, which wasn't too much later. DH cut the cord at that point, and George latched on pretty soon after that. We spent about an hour with George in bed just looking at him, and then my midwives asked me if they thought I could try to use the bathroom. One of them walked me in there while hubby held George and the midwives stripped the bed, cleaned up some blood that had seeped through to the mattress, and put fresh sheets on the bed. I wanted to shower, because I was covered in blood and meconium and pee (it's common for breech babies to poop as they're being born because of the way that they're being squeezed, and isn't necessarily a sign of distress, and George pooped at least three times and peed once as he was coming out), and so they had DH stay in the bathroom with me to make sure that I didn't pass out while they started doing the newborn exam in the other room. His testicles were really swollen, which we knew as he was coming out, and both they and his butt were pretty bruised up from his positioning and all of the pushing. That part of him seemed to be in enough pain that they decided that we didn't really need to stretch him out to figure out his length right away, so we're holding off until we go into the ped's office on Thursday to find that out. (He's already come by today and agreed that we can wait on this.) His butt is indeed very hairy, just like his papa's.
Everything else looks great. His hips look good and were not dislocated, which can happen in breech babies. He has a round c-section baby head because that didn't get molded when he was coming out. We took bets on his weight before weighing him. I guessed 8 lbs even and everyone else guessed a few ounces more, and then it turns out that he was 7 lb 15 oz. The midwives thought that I would have been smack on if he hadn't pooped so much. When we finally decided to put a diaper on him, it turned out that some of our newborn covers don't fit because his testicles are so swollen. The apprentice midwife suggested that we give elimination communication a shot for a while! We finally figured out a diaper fold that would fit onto him, and his testicles are fortunately doing better now and we expect this to continue to go down. They gave him his vitamin K shot and then started looking me over. I have a couple of tears, but nothing that would require stitches.
The midwives then helped us get settled back into bed while they cleaned up, started laundry, and emptied the birth pool. They left around 4 am, and we finally got to sleep for the night. My midwife and my ped have both been by the house today already and everything's looking good.
Here's baby George:
The 5-7 minute apart contractions died down to maybe 15-20 minutes apart and kept picking up a little bit and then dying down again. My midwife came over around lunchtime to check me and the baby out and everything looked good at that point. She told me that the reason for the sporadic contractions might be that the baby was malpositioned and that the contractions were trying to change the position of the baby rather than to dilate my cervix, so she had me spend a while on hands and knees, draped over the exercise ball, and walking around to try to get the baby into a better position. She told me to call her back when the contractions were consistently 4-5 minutes apart, when I felt that I had to spend the time between contractions recovering, or when I just felt like I needed her.
The contractions were getting increasingly intense, but still not particularly close. I was also feeling them in my hips and upper thighs, which was hard. DH and I took a walk around the neighborhood, and some of them were just really bad. I was tired when we got home so we went to take a nap, waking up for contractions. The last 3-4 that I had during the nap were just horrible, and I would just start scooting backwards to get off the bed and away from them (which doesn't work by the way). I was starting to feel really discouraged, because the timing of the contractions didn't even put me in active labor and I couldn't imagine them getting much worse and I wasn't sure that I could take much more than that med-free. I was also starting to feel like I needed to poop, and kept going to the bathroom but nothing really came out. The last time this happened, I reached down to wipe and felt something soft and squishy poking out of my vagina and just panicked - cord prolapse is a risk with a broken bag of waters, and I couldn't think of what else that would be. I immediately got down on the bathroom floor on hands and knees with my chest to the ground (if it's cord prolapse, you're supposed to do that while transfering to a hospital) and yelled at DH that he needed to call the midwife immediately. She told him to have me get on my hands and knees until she got there and she sped on over. It was around 8 pm at this point. (DH had just turned on House before I started screaming at him to call the midwife.) When she got here, she did my first internal exam of the labor. It turns out that despite the sporadic contractions, I was 9 cm dilated with a very bulging bag of waters - it turns out that only the outer bag had broken on Sunday, leaving the inner bag intact, and it was the inner bag that I was feeling sticking out. I felt so much better knowing that the contractions were that intense because I was in freaking transition, not early labor!!
I decided to go ahead and get into the birth pool, which helped some with the pain. The disadvantage was that DH could no longer apply counterpressure to my hips, so I mostly got through contractions in a kneeling position pressing down on my hips myself. My legs started to get really tired, and so I kept trying to switch up positions but ultimately nothing else was feeling as good as kneeling (which isn't saying much, because that sucked too). I had 3 minutes between some contractions and 20 minutes between others, and I was taking cat naps during the longer breaks. After a while my body started to do light involuntary pushes during contractions. My midwife did another quick internal and didn't feel any cervical lip, and told me to go ahead and push with my body's urges. She also said that she felt hair, so either the baby had a very hairy butt or it was a head like we had thought - phew! I finally started really pushing around 11 pm. I was hoping that the baby woulld come before midnight, but mentioned to DH that if it happened today then the baby would at least share a birthdate with his great great grandpa.
I reached up at one point to feel how far down the head was, and there was something squishy by the head so I asked my midwife what that was. She did another internal, said something - I can't remember what - and then she and her apprentice went into the kitchen for a little while to talk. She came back and told me that the baby was breech after all, and that if I wanted to continue to labor at home she wanted to call over the midwife in town who is the breech expert. I decided to go ahead and continue laboring at home, because I had the ideal vaginal breech conditions going for me - term baby, reasonably sized, roomy pelvis, frank breech, and now two attendants with vaginal breech experience. The other midwife drove like a crazy woman to get over to my house and was there before we knew it.
At one point, the midwives were using the pronoun "he" while talking about the baby and I asked them if that meant it was a boy. They looked kind of shocked and asked me what else I thought the squishy thing by the butt was. I hadn't been thinking, obviously, but it was his testicles! DH and I both looked at each other in shock that we were having a BOY. We, and the apprentice midwife, mentioned that my midwife had been saying "she" a lot and she said that she's a horrible secret-hider and was probably over-compensating in an effort to not make it obvious to us which it was.
I spent maybe an hour pushing in which his butt would just poke out while pushing but then retract between contractions, which was getting discouraging. It was so painful, too. I was still able to nap between some contractions, which helped some, but I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to get him out. I pushed while kneeling until my knees and legs were burning, and then spent a while pushing half sitting, half reclining to give my legs a break. My back was starting to hurt and gravity can help get babies out, so the midwifes suggested trying to push while kneeling again. DH stayed at the side of the pool and we latched hands, and I would squeeze him and hang on him while pushing, while he pulled back to keep me from toppling over backwards. George kept sliding out and then back in, and I was in so much pain and everything felt like it was burning. They told me that he was making a little bit of progress each time I pushed, but it felt like it was taking forever and he wasn't actually going to come out.
The midwives finally told me that they thought it was time to get out of the pool, and so we relocated to the bedroom. I pushed for a while on my back there, with my midwife holding one of my legs and DH holding the other. They kept telling me that I needed to relax my legs while pushing and put all of my energy into getting George out, which was really hard to do. After a few pushes like this, they had me get on my knees and face DH and hang off of him some while I pushed. I did this once and we got a lot more progress with that one. I was squeezing hubby's chest to death though, and really screaming through it and briefly thought that it was good that we mentioned to the neighbors that we were having a homebirth so that they didn't think that someone was being murdered. For the next contraction, they had me put one knee up ("runner's pose"), and that almost got him out! They had me do that for the next one as well, and I kept pushing through that one for what felt like forever, and then I could feel his body really sliding out. My midwife called to her apprentice to take the time, so I knew that umbilus was out at least which was real progress! I pushed some more, and then there was a ton of pressure and stinging and burning (this was really hard to push through) and I felt even more slip out. They told me that his body was out, and that I just needed to try to push the head out once I felt like I was able. I took a short break to catch my breath and then managed to push the head out, and they passed him up to me between my legs. This was at 12:56 this morning. His apgar was 9 and he was really alert when he came out.
They had me keep him on the bed for a little bit, beneath me, so that he could try to get extra cord blood. I then rolled over onto my back and held him up to my breast and cuddled with him until the placenta was born, which wasn't too much later. DH cut the cord at that point, and George latched on pretty soon after that. We spent about an hour with George in bed just looking at him, and then my midwives asked me if they thought I could try to use the bathroom. One of them walked me in there while hubby held George and the midwives stripped the bed, cleaned up some blood that had seeped through to the mattress, and put fresh sheets on the bed. I wanted to shower, because I was covered in blood and meconium and pee (it's common for breech babies to poop as they're being born because of the way that they're being squeezed, and isn't necessarily a sign of distress, and George pooped at least three times and peed once as he was coming out), and so they had DH stay in the bathroom with me to make sure that I didn't pass out while they started doing the newborn exam in the other room. His testicles were really swollen, which we knew as he was coming out, and both they and his butt were pretty bruised up from his positioning and all of the pushing. That part of him seemed to be in enough pain that they decided that we didn't really need to stretch him out to figure out his length right away, so we're holding off until we go into the ped's office on Thursday to find that out. (He's already come by today and agreed that we can wait on this.) His butt is indeed very hairy, just like his papa's.
The midwives then helped us get settled back into bed while they cleaned up, started laundry, and emptied the birth pool. They left around 4 am, and we finally got to sleep for the night. My midwife and my ped have both been by the house today already and everything's looking good.
Here's baby George:
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fieryred33143
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Oh.
My.
God.
Blen, you are a CHAMP! I cannot believe you delivered George Frank Breech! Labour Idol indeed! yYou are a friggin inspiration. That was an unbelievable story and I cannot believe you were able to write it all so quickly. THANK YOU!!!!! I've been obsessivly refreshing this thread in selfish hopes of an update. You did that and more!
Question. I can only IMAGINE how painful that was. Whoa. Do you think the outcome would have been different had you have been in an hospital setting? i.e. Do you think you would have accepted pain meds, or even opted for a Cesarean birth? I'm just curious.
ETA: Poor George and his testes!!
OMG Blen. Congrats. DEEP Warm FULL congrats. You must be brimming with pride right now!!!!!!!!!
My.
God.
Blen, you are a CHAMP! I cannot believe you delivered George Frank Breech! Labour Idol indeed! yYou are a friggin inspiration. That was an unbelievable story and I cannot believe you were able to write it all so quickly. THANK YOU!!!!! I've been obsessivly refreshing this thread in selfish hopes of an update. You did that and more!
Question. I can only IMAGINE how painful that was. Whoa. Do you think the outcome would have been different had you have been in an hospital setting? i.e. Do you think you would have accepted pain meds, or even opted for a Cesarean birth? I'm just curious.
ETA: Poor George and his testes!!
OMG Blen. Congrats. DEEP Warm FULL congrats. You must be brimming with pride right now!!!!!!!!!
Courtneylub
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so cal girl
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Blen!!!! Awesome story! How funny that the "or his butt is really hairy" comment turned out not to be a joke! And what a beautiful, beautiful boy!
Argh, I caught my 21 mo. old nephew''s cold. I am not happy to be sick on my spring break with all the stuff I have to grade. Better than being sick at school, yes, but I''d rather have a nice break. And the list of meds that my dr.''s office said I can take includes Sudafed and Robitussin, which are both category C; SafeFetus says there is more risk taking both in the first trimester. (What''s up doctor''s office?) So I''m not taking anything except a little tylenol for the sore throat and my usual claritin. I also have a neti-pot though it doesn''t seem to be doing much.
I just found out a friend who doesn''t believe in medicine is pregnant. They don''t know the due date or anything because she isn''t going to the doctor, having U/Ss, etc. I don''t want to start a debate or be judgmental or anything, but I just can''t imagine that. I mean, on one hand, it''s probably better not to be taking tylenol and zofran and claritin if you can help it, but on the other hand, there are so many things they can check for and help/prevent if they''re checking for it. I know women have made it for all of human history without modern medicine (but lots also died of totally preventable things like puerperal fever or couldn''t keep the baby alive because of hyperemesis gravidarum), but I sure am glad to have it! I also don''t know where you draw the line when it comes to homepathic remedies or the help of a midwife versus the help of a doctor . . . what really distinguishes that from medicine?
To each her own, I guess. I mean, Blen just had an wonderfully successful home birth experience, and I imagine my friend''s will be very similar. Although her husband is not of the same beliefs, he must be ok with it, and I guess that''s what matters.
Argh, I caught my 21 mo. old nephew''s cold. I am not happy to be sick on my spring break with all the stuff I have to grade. Better than being sick at school, yes, but I''d rather have a nice break. And the list of meds that my dr.''s office said I can take includes Sudafed and Robitussin, which are both category C; SafeFetus says there is more risk taking both in the first trimester. (What''s up doctor''s office?) So I''m not taking anything except a little tylenol for the sore throat and my usual claritin. I also have a neti-pot though it doesn''t seem to be doing much.
I just found out a friend who doesn''t believe in medicine is pregnant. They don''t know the due date or anything because she isn''t going to the doctor, having U/Ss, etc. I don''t want to start a debate or be judgmental or anything, but I just can''t imagine that. I mean, on one hand, it''s probably better not to be taking tylenol and zofran and claritin if you can help it, but on the other hand, there are so many things they can check for and help/prevent if they''re checking for it. I know women have made it for all of human history without modern medicine (but lots also died of totally preventable things like puerperal fever or couldn''t keep the baby alive because of hyperemesis gravidarum), but I sure am glad to have it! I also don''t know where you draw the line when it comes to homepathic remedies or the help of a midwife versus the help of a doctor . . . what really distinguishes that from medicine?
To each her own, I guess. I mean, Blen just had an wonderfully successful home birth experience, and I imagine my friend''s will be very similar. Although her husband is not of the same beliefs, he must be ok with it, and I guess that''s what matters.
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Blen, George is beautiful. What an amazing birth story! You should be so proud of yourself! What a fascinating home birth. I'm amazed that you delivered your son natural in breech position and that you wrote your birth story so soon after. I think it's wonderful that you got to spend so much quality time with him right after delivery. Enjoy your time with George!
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