This is Adam - This post is LONG, but since lots of people have been asking about details, this is the easiest way to deliver. I apologize for the lack of updates over the past two weeks. As you know, it's been rough with limited time and nearly no web access. The following posts will hopefully give you a brief overview of the best and worst week of our lives. While the story has its highs and lows, it has a great happy ending!!
To begin, I'd like to remind you of our intention to have a natural childbirth. Given Elise's experience working with young kids as a Speech Language Pathologist, we both felt that we should make any attempt to "minimize" interventions during labor and delivery. We were both in strong agreement that any plans for a natural childbirth would be superseded if it was in the best interest of the baby or Elise's health. We certainly wouldn't criticize anyone who felt otherwise, and ironically, we had many people react with "are you guys crazy?"
That being said, let's go back to Friday, May 8th. Elise's 31st Birthday! (Please note - since the time Elise told me she was pregnant last September, she mentioned how she would prefer to not have a baby on her birthday). Well, we had handled weeks 37-39 with some restlessness but with relative ease. As Elise was further and further along, we had implemented all of the "old wives tales" methods on how to naturally accelerate labor. For Elise's birthday, we went out to a great dinner followed by one of the best dessert places in town. We got home between 9-10 PM. Elise had felt some "pressure" earlier in the evening, but given the amount of food we ate, this wasn't much of a surprise. In addition, I had been trained to believe that every time Elise said she had "pressure," it usually could be attributed to a full stomach or the baby sitting on her bladder! Shortly after I fell asleep at around 11PM, Elise began having some contractions. As I lay soundless in bed, she stayed awake watching television until she woke me at about 1:40 AM. We sat up and discussed the irony of how her labor apparently started just minutes before her doctor would be off for the weekend and how we would probably be dealing with the only OB-GYN in the practice we had not met over the past nine months - Dr. Weinstein (how bad could he be?). We repacked our suitcases, watched some more television and fell back asleep off and on for the next several hours.
On Saturday we realized Elise was definitely in the early stage of labor, we went for a walk as a means for distraction, but also hoping that it might speed things up. We set-up the Pack 'n Plays and did some last-minute cleaning to take her mind of things. As the day went on, Elise's contractions increased in intensity and we called the "on-call" doctor who advised us to hang out as long we could at home given our intention for a natural labor & delivery. The pain was requiring her to focus on each one and in many instances; she needed some help to get through them. All the while, we couldn't be certain whether or not her water broke as it very rarely happens like you see it in the movies - a mad gush of raging waters in the middle of a sidewalk as if someone had thrown a water balloon from above - didn't happen. By the time the clock hit 11 PM, we started making final preparations to drive to the hospital. After a 20 minute drive, we arrived at Missouri Baptist Medical Center at about 11:45 PM. The place was "weekend evening" quiet and we were greeted by a cheerful older woman at the Labor & Delivery reception desk. Elise was in pain, and this woman was trying hard to lighten the mood by cracking jokes. It got to the point that I had no choice but to turn my a$$hole switch on and "encouraged" her to stop yapping and get Elise into a room. Elise's contractions were sporadic, but ranging from two to eight minutes apart.
After a few minutes in room LD7, we were greeted by a fairly large nurse named Chris who reminded me of a mix between Roseanne Barr and the woman from the Drew Carey Show. She was very nice and had given us the impression she had been doing this for a long time. She immediately hooked up Elise to telemetry to track both the baby's heartbeat and Elise's contractions. Over the course of about four hours, Chris and the "house" doctor performed some standard exams on Elise to determine how far along she was only to tell us that she had no dilation. As a result of the lack of progress, they sent us home at about 4 AM on Sunday (Mother's Day) and gave Elise a sleeping pill to help her deal with her significant sleep deprivation. We returned home at about 4:30 AM and laid down hoping that when we woke up after several hours, Elise would have made some progress and be more rested in preparation for things to come. Unfortunately the sleeping pill did nothing for pain and after the initial hour of sleep, Elise couldn't put together more than 15 minutes of rest without the contractions kicking in. From my perspective, Elise was struggling - she was walking the line between pain and suffering - and regardless of books and classes, I could do nothing for her. It was heartbreaking.
By 11 AM, we had made the determination that there was nothing more that could be done at home in pain; regardless of whatever progress she had made, we needed to go to the hospital. At noon, we arrived at the same reception desk where nearly 12 hours earlier the comedian sat cracking jokes. Fortunately this time, the desk remained empty and we proceed directly to the nurse's station. After about an hour in triage, it was determined that Elise was about 2.5 cm dilated. While we were happy she made some progress, we didn't need to hear the damn number to tell us she was in labor. Given the amount of pain she had been in, we were both hoping that she was further along. Following triage, they moved Elise to LD4 - where we would stay for the next 20 hours or so.
Immediately following her arrival in LD4, Elise tried different positions to alleviate pain with no success. There was a point where she actually ripped off the telemetry units and jumped into the shower. About two minutes later the nurse comes in ready to kill Elise - not the way to get started with a nurse we'd be dealing with for the next several hours. I did my best to negotiate a truce and as a result of my people skills, Dawn turned out to be one of our favorite nurses. It was just prior to 3 PM that Dr. Weinstein had arrived and performed an examination and ultrasound. He made the determination that Elise’s water probably broke around noon, and there was the slight presence of meconium in the amniotic fluid. Meconium is essentially a bowel movement which is a sign of some sort of stress to the baby (not distress, but something to pay attention to). By now, it became apparent that Elise had crossed the line of pain and was now clearly suffering. As a result, we discussed options with the doctor and nurses and decided to get an epidural. After 40 hours of labor without any intervention, I believe this was one of the best decisions she could make. Shortly after, the pain of the contractions began to subside. Unfortunately, all of the previous pain had she had been feeling had not signaled any additional progress as Elise was still lingering around 2.5 cm. I should also mention that just prior to the epidural, Elise’s mom Sharry arrived from Florida. Her timing ended up being perfect despite us thinking that the baby would have been delivered hours prior to her arrival.
With the pain having turned into pressure, Elise was able to relax and take brief naps over the next several hours. After a couple of hours it was determined that she was still not making enough progress, so they decided to administer Oxytocin to help make her contractions "more productive." It was around this time that we were told that the baby was in good position, but that its head was slightly tilted causing Elise’s slow dilation. After three increases to her dosage of Oxytocin, by 8 PM Elise had dilated to 4 cm. Now that the weekend was nearly over, Elise’s original doctor was back on the case and calling the shots. While Dr. Weinstein had been helpful, Elise and I were happy to be back with Dr. Smith. Over the next couple of hours, Elise developed a low fever which was quickly handled by antibiotics and Tylenol. After attempting different positions (albeit limited positions given the epidural) and aided by pillows and leg placement, Elise progressed to 5 cm. Despite her request, we convinced Dr. Smith to hold off on the placement of an internal pressure monitor since Elise was making progress. She slept for a couple of hours and by around 4:30 AM, the nurses told us that Elise had dilated between 9-9.5 cm!! Elise decided to rest for a couple of hours before the pushing began which allowed her to fully dilate to 10 cm.
At around 6:30 AM, Elise worked with the nurse to position herself for pushing. Sharry and I organized our stuff in the room, and I set up our cameras to capture the special moments. (At the suggestion of a co-worker, I set up our video camera in a G-rated location behind Elise’s shoulder. Although it didn’t catch visuals from the action, it did record audio from the moments prior to and just following delivery including the first shots of Kelsey.) At this time, the nurse was in contact with Dr. Smith and helping Elise make her initial attempts at pushing. It was shortly after that I caught my first glimpse of the baby’s head and her curly dark hair! With every push, we caught a better glimpse of the baby’s head – only for her to disappear when the pushing was over. Elise was pushing at the height of each contraction and after a little over an hour, the baby began to “crown” and the nurse called Dr. Smith to the hospital. About twenty minutes later, the doctor arrived and shortly after the room began to fill with people. The earlier signs of meconium in the amniotic fluid along with Elise’s fever had required the presence of a pediatrician and special care nurses to be on hand during delivery as a precautionary measure.
The rest of the delivery happened pretty fast. Elise was directed to push every two minutes or so. We kicked Sharry out of the room, and Elise asked the Dr. how many more contractions before the baby would arrive. The doctor replied with, “about five” and Elise responded with, “how about one?” Turns out, Elise was right. After over 58 hours of labor, the baby’s head came out first in the face-up position (also called sunny-side up – the cause for Elise’s intense back pain), and then her tiny body. At 8:40 AM, Kelsey Brooke Jacobs made her debut. Her first order of business was to spit out all of the amniotic fluid and scream, followed immediately by pooping on mom. I cut the umbilical cord and after spending some time on Elise’s chest, Kelsey was brought to a warming table where she was weighed and measured. As a precautionary measure, the pediatrician took a blood sample – but she was awake and alert the entire time. She weighed in at 6 lbs. 14 oz. at a length of 21 inches. She had an ENORMOUS cone head. As one nurse joked, “She’ll probably lose an inch or two in length when that head gets back to normal.”
While I was following Kelsey to the warming table, the doctor remained with Elise for delivery of the placenta. After her first meal courtesy of Mommy, the nurses gave Kelsey her first bath, made ink footprints and administered all of the standard medicines, etc. We were about to move into a normal room, when Elise decided to pass out for a minute – crazy. Here I am thinking my wife is having some massive medical issue and the nurse is simply smiling and wiping her head with a cold towel. Anyway, Elise “woke up” and we moved to room 371 where we spent the rest of the day resting as a family allowing Elise and I to get to know our new beautiful daughter Kelsey!
To begin, I'd like to remind you of our intention to have a natural childbirth. Given Elise's experience working with young kids as a Speech Language Pathologist, we both felt that we should make any attempt to "minimize" interventions during labor and delivery. We were both in strong agreement that any plans for a natural childbirth would be superseded if it was in the best interest of the baby or Elise's health. We certainly wouldn't criticize anyone who felt otherwise, and ironically, we had many people react with "are you guys crazy?"
That being said, let's go back to Friday, May 8th. Elise's 31st Birthday! (Please note - since the time Elise told me she was pregnant last September, she mentioned how she would prefer to not have a baby on her birthday). Well, we had handled weeks 37-39 with some restlessness but with relative ease. As Elise was further and further along, we had implemented all of the "old wives tales" methods on how to naturally accelerate labor. For Elise's birthday, we went out to a great dinner followed by one of the best dessert places in town. We got home between 9-10 PM. Elise had felt some "pressure" earlier in the evening, but given the amount of food we ate, this wasn't much of a surprise. In addition, I had been trained to believe that every time Elise said she had "pressure," it usually could be attributed to a full stomach or the baby sitting on her bladder! Shortly after I fell asleep at around 11PM, Elise began having some contractions. As I lay soundless in bed, she stayed awake watching television until she woke me at about 1:40 AM. We sat up and discussed the irony of how her labor apparently started just minutes before her doctor would be off for the weekend and how we would probably be dealing with the only OB-GYN in the practice we had not met over the past nine months - Dr. Weinstein (how bad could he be?). We repacked our suitcases, watched some more television and fell back asleep off and on for the next several hours.
On Saturday we realized Elise was definitely in the early stage of labor, we went for a walk as a means for distraction, but also hoping that it might speed things up. We set-up the Pack 'n Plays and did some last-minute cleaning to take her mind of things. As the day went on, Elise's contractions increased in intensity and we called the "on-call" doctor who advised us to hang out as long we could at home given our intention for a natural labor & delivery. The pain was requiring her to focus on each one and in many instances; she needed some help to get through them. All the while, we couldn't be certain whether or not her water broke as it very rarely happens like you see it in the movies - a mad gush of raging waters in the middle of a sidewalk as if someone had thrown a water balloon from above - didn't happen. By the time the clock hit 11 PM, we started making final preparations to drive to the hospital. After a 20 minute drive, we arrived at Missouri Baptist Medical Center at about 11:45 PM. The place was "weekend evening" quiet and we were greeted by a cheerful older woman at the Labor & Delivery reception desk. Elise was in pain, and this woman was trying hard to lighten the mood by cracking jokes. It got to the point that I had no choice but to turn my a$$hole switch on and "encouraged" her to stop yapping and get Elise into a room. Elise's contractions were sporadic, but ranging from two to eight minutes apart.
After a few minutes in room LD7, we were greeted by a fairly large nurse named Chris who reminded me of a mix between Roseanne Barr and the woman from the Drew Carey Show. She was very nice and had given us the impression she had been doing this for a long time. She immediately hooked up Elise to telemetry to track both the baby's heartbeat and Elise's contractions. Over the course of about four hours, Chris and the "house" doctor performed some standard exams on Elise to determine how far along she was only to tell us that she had no dilation. As a result of the lack of progress, they sent us home at about 4 AM on Sunday (Mother's Day) and gave Elise a sleeping pill to help her deal with her significant sleep deprivation. We returned home at about 4:30 AM and laid down hoping that when we woke up after several hours, Elise would have made some progress and be more rested in preparation for things to come. Unfortunately the sleeping pill did nothing for pain and after the initial hour of sleep, Elise couldn't put together more than 15 minutes of rest without the contractions kicking in. From my perspective, Elise was struggling - she was walking the line between pain and suffering - and regardless of books and classes, I could do nothing for her. It was heartbreaking.
By 11 AM, we had made the determination that there was nothing more that could be done at home in pain; regardless of whatever progress she had made, we needed to go to the hospital. At noon, we arrived at the same reception desk where nearly 12 hours earlier the comedian sat cracking jokes. Fortunately this time, the desk remained empty and we proceed directly to the nurse's station. After about an hour in triage, it was determined that Elise was about 2.5 cm dilated. While we were happy she made some progress, we didn't need to hear the damn number to tell us she was in labor. Given the amount of pain she had been in, we were both hoping that she was further along. Following triage, they moved Elise to LD4 - where we would stay for the next 20 hours or so.
Immediately following her arrival in LD4, Elise tried different positions to alleviate pain with no success. There was a point where she actually ripped off the telemetry units and jumped into the shower. About two minutes later the nurse comes in ready to kill Elise - not the way to get started with a nurse we'd be dealing with for the next several hours. I did my best to negotiate a truce and as a result of my people skills, Dawn turned out to be one of our favorite nurses. It was just prior to 3 PM that Dr. Weinstein had arrived and performed an examination and ultrasound. He made the determination that Elise’s water probably broke around noon, and there was the slight presence of meconium in the amniotic fluid. Meconium is essentially a bowel movement which is a sign of some sort of stress to the baby (not distress, but something to pay attention to). By now, it became apparent that Elise had crossed the line of pain and was now clearly suffering. As a result, we discussed options with the doctor and nurses and decided to get an epidural. After 40 hours of labor without any intervention, I believe this was one of the best decisions she could make. Shortly after, the pain of the contractions began to subside. Unfortunately, all of the previous pain had she had been feeling had not signaled any additional progress as Elise was still lingering around 2.5 cm. I should also mention that just prior to the epidural, Elise’s mom Sharry arrived from Florida. Her timing ended up being perfect despite us thinking that the baby would have been delivered hours prior to her arrival.
With the pain having turned into pressure, Elise was able to relax and take brief naps over the next several hours. After a couple of hours it was determined that she was still not making enough progress, so they decided to administer Oxytocin to help make her contractions "more productive." It was around this time that we were told that the baby was in good position, but that its head was slightly tilted causing Elise’s slow dilation. After three increases to her dosage of Oxytocin, by 8 PM Elise had dilated to 4 cm. Now that the weekend was nearly over, Elise’s original doctor was back on the case and calling the shots. While Dr. Weinstein had been helpful, Elise and I were happy to be back with Dr. Smith. Over the next couple of hours, Elise developed a low fever which was quickly handled by antibiotics and Tylenol. After attempting different positions (albeit limited positions given the epidural) and aided by pillows and leg placement, Elise progressed to 5 cm. Despite her request, we convinced Dr. Smith to hold off on the placement of an internal pressure monitor since Elise was making progress. She slept for a couple of hours and by around 4:30 AM, the nurses told us that Elise had dilated between 9-9.5 cm!! Elise decided to rest for a couple of hours before the pushing began which allowed her to fully dilate to 10 cm.
At around 6:30 AM, Elise worked with the nurse to position herself for pushing. Sharry and I organized our stuff in the room, and I set up our cameras to capture the special moments. (At the suggestion of a co-worker, I set up our video camera in a G-rated location behind Elise’s shoulder. Although it didn’t catch visuals from the action, it did record audio from the moments prior to and just following delivery including the first shots of Kelsey.) At this time, the nurse was in contact with Dr. Smith and helping Elise make her initial attempts at pushing. It was shortly after that I caught my first glimpse of the baby’s head and her curly dark hair! With every push, we caught a better glimpse of the baby’s head – only for her to disappear when the pushing was over. Elise was pushing at the height of each contraction and after a little over an hour, the baby began to “crown” and the nurse called Dr. Smith to the hospital. About twenty minutes later, the doctor arrived and shortly after the room began to fill with people. The earlier signs of meconium in the amniotic fluid along with Elise’s fever had required the presence of a pediatrician and special care nurses to be on hand during delivery as a precautionary measure.
The rest of the delivery happened pretty fast. Elise was directed to push every two minutes or so. We kicked Sharry out of the room, and Elise asked the Dr. how many more contractions before the baby would arrive. The doctor replied with, “about five” and Elise responded with, “how about one?” Turns out, Elise was right. After over 58 hours of labor, the baby’s head came out first in the face-up position (also called sunny-side up – the cause for Elise’s intense back pain), and then her tiny body. At 8:40 AM, Kelsey Brooke Jacobs made her debut. Her first order of business was to spit out all of the amniotic fluid and scream, followed immediately by pooping on mom. I cut the umbilical cord and after spending some time on Elise’s chest, Kelsey was brought to a warming table where she was weighed and measured. As a precautionary measure, the pediatrician took a blood sample – but she was awake and alert the entire time. She weighed in at 6 lbs. 14 oz. at a length of 21 inches. She had an ENORMOUS cone head. As one nurse joked, “She’ll probably lose an inch or two in length when that head gets back to normal.”
While I was following Kelsey to the warming table, the doctor remained with Elise for delivery of the placenta. After her first meal courtesy of Mommy, the nurses gave Kelsey her first bath, made ink footprints and administered all of the standard medicines, etc. We were about to move into a normal room, when Elise decided to pass out for a minute – crazy. Here I am thinking my wife is having some massive medical issue and the nurse is simply smiling and wiping her head with a cold towel. Anyway, Elise “woke up” and we moved to room 371 where we spent the rest of the day resting as a family allowing Elise and I to get to know our new beautiful daughter Kelsey!
No comments:
Post a Comment