Laney's Birthstory

with the nurse Sommer


A bit of a long post about Laney's debut.

Monday evening we all went to my parent's house for dinner, headed home and did the regular bedtime routine for Owen. I got up to use the bathroom around midnight and then around 1:20 A.M. I got up again. Derek always asks me where I'm going when I get up at night (while pregnant) and reminds me to be careful. I remember saying to Derek "I think I'm going to pee." but thinking in my head "I think my water just broke." And it had. So by 1:30 we were calling my parents to come over, packing a few last minute things, and getting dressed to go to the hospital. We left the house at 2:16 A.M. and arrived at L & D. around ten to three. They assigned us a room (#3) and we got settled in. It was very quiet in the wing with maybe 2-3 other rooms occupied as far as I could tell. The night nurse came in and hooked up the heplock with lots of twisty tubing all over the place. At least she did it up on the forearm this time and not on the top of my hand like last time. A Dr. Teal came in. She looked about 23; young, fresh and maybe a resident? She didn't check me until about 5:30 A.M. due to the PROM (pre-term rupture of membranes) (i.e. when the water breaks before labor has actively started) and she said I was effaced 60-70% and dilated to about 3 cm. Around 6 she came back and said they wanted to induce and start pitocin to get things started. Derek and I looked at each other. We had really wanted to avoid inducing this time, in order to help me better reach my goal of not using pain meds or an epidural. We said we wanted to wait, as I was having some contractions. She said her advising physician Dr. Mann was recommending starting the pit due to risk of infection after PROM. We said we'd wait a while longer. As soon as she left the room I grabbed my iphone and looked it up and decided to stick to my guns, that labor would progress on its own, and not to let the "pressure" of what big medicine wanted get to me. Pretty soon the night nurse came in carrying two IV bags. I asked what was in them and she said, "The pitocin the dr. ordered." I said, "No, we decided to wait on that." So she left it hanging on the cupboard and soon (luckily) both the nurse and the doctors changed shifts. Whew!

My day shift nurse was Sommer. She was amazing. She came on at 7:30 am for 12 hours and I was fairly confident I would deliver while she was my nurse. The first thing she did was remove the twisty tubing of the original heplock and put in a very simple straightforward one. Loved it. She reviewed my birth plan, sat down, and talked about the possibilities. She said that when the midwife came on at 9 we could probably see about delaying the induction, as midwives are often more laid back than the physicians. Then she explained all the options for laboring if we started the pit. I would have to be on the monitors continuously, but I could still use the rocking chair, the yoga ball, etc. near the bed. In the meantime, she would have me on the monitors for 20 minutes, and then take me off for 30 so I could move around the room, walk the halls, etc. As I knew, she explained that movement would really help with trying to move into active labor.

I heard the midwife talking in the hall before she came in the room and recognized the voice as Rosemary, the same midwife who had delivered Owen. She came in and we all hugged. She had been working with the prenatal group appointments since July also, (TIP-Thriving in Pregnancy) so we had been seen by her a few times during the pregnancy. She agreed to wait until noon to see if I was progressing.

She came to check me a little before one pm and I was only at 4 cm but since I was having stronger contractions and as Sommer said "I see a change in her demeanor," they didn't mention the pitocin again. Around this time, she said she had to keep me on the monitors and things moved fast from there. I basically went from 4 -10 cm. between 1 and 3 pm and started pushing around 3. Pushing took a bit of work since Laney was posterior (sunny-side up) with her face looking up toward my abdomen instead of down toward my back. They had to work on rotating her a bit for the delivery. Sommer kept saying "Let's have a birthday party" and at 3:26, we did! Daddy cut the cord after it finished pulsating and Laney spent the first hour skin to skin on me and nursing. They didn't even take her to weigh her until after that. Then daddy got to hold her. She had a head full of dark dark curly hair (which straightened out once it dried), dark blue eyes, and weighed 8 lbs. 20 1/4 inches. Welcome Laney!

I told Derek I really couldn't believe we had achieved the birth we had hope for without induction, pain meds, epidural, or complications. Her APGAR scores were 9 at both 1 min. and 5 min. We are beyond thrilled and sitting on cloud 9 with our little family of four!

Our first picture as a family four (nevermind that Laney is trying to hide-she's actually sucking her thumb)