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Week by Week

Zachary

The Birth of Zachary Michael 2/24/98

It all started 5am on Saturday February 21, 1998. I was asleep and something trickled out of me, enough that I was a little alarmed. But it wasn't a huge gush so I didn't think much of it. I went to the bathroom and cleaned myself up and went back to bed. The next morning I told my husband, Dan about it. It appeared that I was still trickling some sort of fluid...We decided to wait and see what happened. About 3pm that afternoon I began to experience brown show. Lots of it. This continued throughout the day and night. Later that night I called the doctor on call to explain what I was experiencing. I thought maybe my water had broken very high up and was trickling and washing this show out of me. He said if nothing happened by 7am Sunday morning to call him. Well...5am Sunday morning I felt my first contractions. They were very mild...but noticeable. The doctor asked me to come into the hospital. He said if my water had broken, they would induce me.

At the hospital Sunday morning they checked to see if my water had broken. They did this by using a speculum. OUCH! This was extremely painful. No pregnant woman should ever have to go through this torture treatment. At any rate, my water was still intact. I was contracting every 3-5 minutes. I was 1 cm 50% effaced. I had been the same as at my last internal exam 6 days prior. I was sent home. They said I was in false labor. The contractions continued all day Sunday. That evening they worsened and by the time the X-files were on I was using breathing to get through them. They were every 5 minutes apart. We stayed at home timing them, etc until 3:30am. I couldn't sleep through them at all. We went to the hospital and I was admitted. Upon examination I was 1 cm 50% effaced. I was still having false labor. At 6am they gave me a shot of morphine to sleep. At noon on Monday we checked out of the hospital and went home. The morphine had slowed the contractions and they weren't as strong. We ate lunch and slept more. I woke up at 5pm to really painful contractions. They were 4-5 minutes apart. This time they were back and were more painful. We went to the hospital at 8pm and spent 2 hours in triage...when they finally examined me I was 3-4 cm and 80% effaced. I cried. I was so happy to finally be making some progress. We checked in.

My doctor offered to break my waters to speed things up. I had meconium stained fluid. They told me I would have to be on monitors. I felt discouraged, but tried not to let it get me down. I was in a birthing center that had nice amenities like a Jacuzzi tub...but since I was on monitors I couldn't get in. I asked for the birthing ball that the center had. I sat on it at the side of the bed for awhile. I highly recommend the ball especially for back labor. I did lots of position changes, and slow paced breathing. I was having bad back labor b/c Zack was posterior. By 2 am I was exhausted. The contractions were picking up. The baby's monitor strips were great. He was never in distress the entire labor. The nurses asked my doctor if I could come off the monitors and get into the Jacuzzi tub. He said I could. Boy did that help relax me. I stayed in for about 45 minutes. It really refreshed me. By 4am the contractions were pretty close and I was so tired. I got a shot of Nubain which they injected directly into my vein. (I didn't have an IV). It really helped me relax...I was actually falling asleep between my contractions. Those short minutes of sleep helped rejuvenate me for what was ahead. The Nubain lasted about 2 hours. When it wore off I was well into transition. Contractions were tough. I was hyperventilating. But I knew I was close so I hung in...By 8 am I felt like I was ready to push. I was 9 cm and had an anterior lip. So they told me not to push. The urge wasn't uncontrollable so I was fine. My contractions were spreading apart too. A sign that pushing was near. They offered me more drugs at that point but I declined. I wanted complete control of my pushing. I knew it would only be one or two more contractions and I would be ready to push. I could feel it.

I began pushing about 2 contractions later. I pushed for an hour and 20 minutes. Dan was beside me wiping my face with a cool washcloth. I had a nurse on the other side counting for me. I had a midwife and midwife student coaching me through the pushing and putting warm compresses on my perineum and a cold towel across my chest. The doctor and team of NICU doctors came in on the very last push as his head was on its way out. The doctor even asked me to hold it so he could suit up. Fortunately my contraction was over so that part wasn't too hard. I waited for the next contraction to come and as it peaked I pushed and his head was out. Then they held him in and asked me to pant while they suctioned. He came out, the cord was cut immediately and the NICU doctors whisked him to the side of the room to work on suctioning him further. This is standard procedure for meconium stained fluid. We heard him cry shortly thereafter and they worked on suctioning him while I was being stitched. I had some tears that needed to be repaired. Then they brought him over to us all swaddled up and we met Zachary Michael...7 pounds 11 ounces, born at 9:43am Tuesday Feb 24. The whole experience was amazing. I didn't watch it in a mirror, b/c I was so focused I thought it would be a distraction. Instead I had Dan give me the play by play the following morning. It was a really positive experience for all of us.