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Sophia Ann Campione's Birth

Thursday night, the night before I went it to labor, my husband, Richard, and I went to bed at midnight. We stayed up late celebrating the recent completion of his project. At 5:30 in the morning on Friday, I awoke to fitful dreams. I distinctly remembering having thoughts like "I can't have this baby today, I haven't done the dishes" and "we're not ready for this baby yet, we don't have a crib." and "Yikes, I haven't packed my hospital bag yet". When I finally became somewhat more awake, the source of these dreams was quite apparent. I was having contractions! Even though Sophie was born on her exact due date...we weren't prepared. We were expecting (actually hoping) to be a week late.

I lay awake but resting for the next hour timing contractions. They were quite random lasting anywhere from 30 seconds to one minute and ranging from four to seven minutes apart. At 6:30 I heard my husband stir and I woke him up the rest of the way to describe my contractions to him. We decided that we probably didn't need to rush so he went back to sleep. I couldn't sleep so I got up and did the laundry, the dishes, the bills and other mail, and straightened the house (I hate coming home to a trashed house).

When my husband got up around 8:30, we began packing our bags and the car and we showered. This took an amazingly long time. Meanwhile, the contractions remained about the same--lasting between 30 seconds and a minute and ranged between four and seven minutes apart. I could walk and talk through contractions. We got in the car and went to our favorite breakfast place, and, because all of our preparations had taken so long, we had lunch.

We were anticipating a long drive to the hospital and we didn't want to get sent home. (We had to drive from our house in Mountain View to UCSF in the middle of San Francisco. Under the best of circumstances this drive takes about an hour. Under the worse it can take as long as two hours. And, the day I went into labor was the Friday of Memorial day weekend.) So, after lunch we went back home to wait it out.

We called my parents and my husband's parents. My mother-in-law kind of freaked...not because anything was wrong...but because we were being rather nonchalant about the whole thing. She wanted us to rush off to the hospital. We compromised and told her that we would call our labor coach, Annette. That made her somewhat happier.

The labor coach was more calm than my mother-in-law and didn't think we needed to go to the hospital just yet. So, I spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening walking around and talking with my husband. The contractions remained about the same (randomly spaced, randomly long, and tolerable) until early evening, around 5 PM. However, the contractions were substantially more uncomfortable when I tried to lay down, so the attempt at an afternoon nap failed.

At around 5, I had a weird contraction that was a very sharp pinpoint pain in the left side of my lower back. It made me feel nauseous, so I headed for the bathroom. The next contraction was the same and I threw up. I had a third one which also made me throw up. Then the contractions reverted to their original randomness. From then on, every hour or so I had another set of these "triplet contractions" that would cause me to throw up. After each set, I would try to eat something and drink something to keep up my strength.

We called the labor coach again around 5:30 to update her that there had been no appreciable progress but that I had had those weird contractions which were now gone. She asked to come over (which turned out to be great!)

Around 10 PM, we decided we were in for the long haul. So we all tried to go to bed. Again I couldn't lay down. if I did the contractions came tumbling one on top of the other and were excruciating. So I got up and sat on the sofa in the living room and read and watched TV and such. I took a very hot bath--the way I like them--and risked a glass of red wine. The labor coach and my husband napped.

A couple weeks prior to all of this I had read the book Spiritual Midwifery. It's a collection of birth stories from a commune in the 60's. One of the theories that kept coming up in this book was that women who weren't emotionally prepared for their babies or were too afraid of childbirth or who had unfinished business in their relationships or other sorts of emotional baggage had long labors. So, I began to mentally talk to the baby and tell her that I was happy she was coming and that I was looking forward to meeting her and so on. I guess labor makes people do weird things. But, it worked! While I was thinking these positive thoughts I was propped up on the sofa and I ended up falling asleep for about an hour.

I woke up about 2 am. When I awoke, the contractions were different. They were 3 minutes apart like clock work and 45 seconds to 1 minute apart. I timed them for about 1/2 hour before I woke up the labor coach and my husband. When I finally woke them up we had a long conversation about whether we should go to the hospital or not. I was still able to talk and walk through the contractions. Richard and the labor coach weren't sure that I had made any progress because "it hadn't been hard enough". They were afraid that I would arrive at the hospital and be 1 cm. But at this point I had been in labor for almost 24 hours and the contractions were definitely more regular and predictable. So I said that I was willing to take that chance and insisted that we go. We packed up the car and left.

The drive was a nightmare. Between contractions, my husband sped along at about 90 miles per hour. During contractions, he turned on the flashers and dropped his speed to 20. Every bump was awful...the labor coach thinks that I was in transition in the car. I don't know. I just know that this was the worse part of the whole thing and prefer not to think about it anymore.

We arrived at the hospital at about 5 or 5:30 and they did a vaginal exam. My first since the one when I first got pregnant. The nurse said "Hm. I don't feel anything, maybe just a little lip." I panicked and got very upset. I started panicking and shouting "What do you mean? I'm not dilated yet? I've been in labor for 24 hours and I've made no progress!" But Richard had correctly interpreted her words...What she meant was that she couldn't feel any of the cervix...I was almost completely dilated at 8 cm! Richard had to hold my arms and stare me down and explain it to me. When I heard that I was 8cm I was psyched and very smiley. The nurses commented that most laboring women don't smile so much. Throughout my stay at the hospital other nurses kept coming into my room and saying "So you're the first time mom who showed up at 8 cm?"

I was somewhat dehydrated from all the throwing up. They suggested an IV but I promised to drink a lot of water instead. That satisfied them. Then they walked me to the LDR room. It was stunning (but at the time I didn't notice.) The birthing center at UCSF is on the 15th floor of the hospital. Our room was on the corner of the building with wall to wall windows. We had a 180 degree view of San Francisco complete with the Golden Gate Bridge and Golden Gate park and the bay. It was beautiful and the sun was just coming up! What a way to come into the world.

Anyway, the doctor (Dr. Bourgault, who was awesome) came in and checked me and asked me if I wanted her to push back the rest of the cervix. That seemed like a fine idea (I was getting tired...) So on the next contraction she had me push while she pushed the cervix over the baby's head. It worked. I was now completely dilated. After a time (I don't really know how much time elapsed) I felt the urge to push.

The nurses did a bunch of stuff like having me go to the bathroom and trying various positions. I really wanted them to just leave me alone. In fact, during one pushing contraction I was half on the bed and half off. Finally I got into a comfortable position. I was lying down between contractions and in a partial squat-like position during contractions. I vaguely remember one or two contractions at the end when the doctor had me push lightly. The other ones I pushed with all the strength I could muster. And I swore a lot. After 35 minutes of pushing, at 8:30 on the morning of her due date, Sophia Ann Campione was born. She weighed 7 lb. 14 oz.

It was a compound delivery...the baby's left hand was over her head. Shortly thereafter the placenta came out. That hurt! No one warned me about that!

I felt great about the birth and still do. It was an amazingly empowering experience for me.

However, after the birth, all of our problems began. I hemorrhaged and lost about 1 pint of blood. I didn't really know what was going on but Richard saw the blood and saw the whole tenor of the room change. He got scared. The nurses got into gear, we heard lots of "stats". I was still nursing the baby and was basically oblivious to the goings on. They gave me an IV of pitocin to close down the uterus and help stop the bleeding. They put in glucose to replenish the loss of fluids. Also, because of the compound delivery I had a second degree tear and had to be stitched up.

If that wasn't enough, a couple of hours after the baby's blood tests came back, we found out that she had a dangerously high hematocrit. They whisked her away to remove some of her blood. This was not the mushy bonding scene I had expected and wanted. But it was better than we would have gotten without a birth plan.

The nurses obviously disagreed with our birth plan, but they strictly followed it anyway. They objected to our request not to suction the baby and they objected to our request to do the Vitamin K stuff orally. However, they went out of their way to keep the baby with us as long as possible rather than sending it off quickly for more blood tests, due solely to our birth plan. I was really impressed at how seriously they took it. Also Dr. Bourgault was reading the birth plan to refresh her memory while I was pushing and about 5 minutes away from delivery just to be sure they followed our wishes. We were totally impressed! Especially after all horror stories we heard in our Bradley course.

We left the hospital the next day. Although I felt awful. The sleep deprivation started the morning I went into labor and hasn't subsided since!

At home, nursing seemed to be going very well. Sophia latched on well and sucked away. After a few days I found I could express a few drops of milk from my breasts. But something was terribly wrong with the baby. She had three states: Sleeping, feeding, and screaming. We couldn't figure out why she was crying all the time. We were having a heat wave at the time so we thought she might be thirsty or dehydrated. We called the pediatrician. No...he reassured me that babies in the tropics do just fine on breast milk. We thought she might not be getting enough to eat. We called the pediatrician. She was having ~1 bm/day and 8+ wet diapers, which the doctor assured us correlated with enough to eat and drink.

At the 2 week doctors visit, we discovered that rather than returning to her birth weight of 7-14, she had fallen to 7-0. I was devastated. What kind of mother would let her baby starve for two weeks?

The baby's weight loss scared the doctor and we all finally realized that there must be a supply problem and that was why the baby was screaming. All babies cry, yes, but hungry babies really cry!

We spent the next two weeks pumping and breast feeding religiously every two hours. I started using a Supplemental Nursing System (SNS) while feeding the baby to make sure that she was getting food. (The SNS is a bottle which you hang from your neck and has two tubes that you tape to your nipples (ouch!). You fill the bottle with formula and the baby sucks formula from the tube at the same time she sucks on the nipple.

She began to gain weight and to cry less....clearly progress was being made on that front. However, I was on a religious 2 hour schedule of feeding and pumping day and night. Each feeding/pumping cycle took about 1.25 hours leaving only 12- thirty minute time periods for rest of life. (It would take about 45 minutes to feed the baby. Another 15 minutes or so pumping and 15 minutes to clean everything.) So I had about 45 minutes free out of every two hours. This was clearly not sustainable for any of us. I was exhausted.

All the lactation consultants said it was also very important for me to eat and rest. I kept wanting to know "when/how?" They also said, don't worry about dishes, or laundry...but well, in not very much time, you have nothing clean...you have no option but to worry about dishes and laundry!

This whole experience was very hard for me emotionally and physically. I was very committed to breast feeding and had never really considered the possibility that I might not be able to. I felt like a rotten mother and terrible human being for not having enough milk. Also, I was worried that if I couldn't breast feed her then I wouldn't be "any different than anybody else". I mourned and grieved about not being able to feed her like other moms. I also spent some time loathing formula...and cursed putting those chemicals into my baby.

After two weeks of this round the clock feeding and pumping and a river of tears, my husband and I decided that we couldn't live like this indefinitely, and we had had no substantial impact on my milk supply. It had some impact, but I still needed to supplement with formula. The lactation consultant finally told us that I would probably never be able to solely breast feed her without supplemental formula, so we decided to continue breast feeding the baby with the SNS most of the time but to use a bottle a couple of times a day. This gave me a break from the SNS and a little bit more freedom (the SNS is high maintenance and too darn embarrassing to use in public).

Anyway, I never would have made it through that first month without my husband, and I would not be breast feeding my baby now if he hadn't been so supportive and helpful during that hellacious time. Sophia is now 5 months old and we're still breast feeding using the SNS. I can even nurse her without it when she just wants comfort and isn't interested in food. (My husband disagrees here...he thinks I have more milk than I think. I do "feed" her in bed in the morning without the SNS and it ties her over for a couple of hours.)

Now that we're past that hard time, I have been able to come back down to earth and really enjoy this child of ours.

After first hard weeks Sophie became a happy and delightful baby. And after the first 4 weeks, we figured out a life style that worked for us. People are always commenting on how smiley Sophie is and her big eyes and her attentiveness. Motherhood is more of a joy than I ever imagined!

Please write to me if you have any questions or comments