Hailey’s Grand Entrance

Short Version:

• Contractions through the night.
• Regular and stronger contractions from about 8am.
• Got to the hospital at 10:15am.
• All back labor, no pain meds or epidural.
• Popped out a baby at 1:42pm.

Epic Version:

Dan:

The fun began on the night of Sept 11th. Elaine spent most of the night waking up once or twice every hour. When we woke up for work on the morning of the 12th, Elaine broke the news to me that we probably were not going to work that day.

Still wondering if the contractions were really real, we decided to relax for a little bit longer and catch as much sleep as possible. That lasted all of about 5 minutes. The excitement and anticipation of our baby’s birth was too much to sleep through.

While our morning routine was slightly altered, Eddie’s was not. As anxious as he always is for his morning walk, he waited patiently as we delayed the daily jaunt. At the time, Elaine was feeling something, maybe a contraction, and only in her back. She decided that a walk might be a good thing.

During the walk, around 8am, it became very obvious that this was not back pain, this was not false labor, this was baby day! During the walk, the contractions intensified, quickened and became longer. By the end of our very short walk, Elaine was having contractions every 3 minutes lasting for around 45 seconds each time. We retunred to the house, double checked our list and decided it was time to go to the hospital. We said goodbye to Eddie and headed out the door.

Elaine:

But not without me first insisting we capture the last bump shots for week 40 1/2.

Dan:

On the way to the hospital, I was surprised at how laid back the drive was. I always had this vision of a horn blaring, headlight flashing, passing cars in the ditch, mad dash to the hospital.  Instead, we were just cruising along with the flow of late morning traffic.  On the way, we listened to Allison Kraus to help keep us (Elaine) calm.  While the drive never became tense, it was obvious that something big was going to happen today.

We checked into the hospital around 10am. There was still a small amount of doubt that this was actually it, which was quickly dispelled upon administration of the admitance exam. Nature’s process was well on its way. We settled into the delivery room and called our parents.

Elaine:

I was convinced we were going to get there and they would send us home.  The nurses immediately joked that I had the labor stance down and this was the real thing.  What was really unique about my check-in process is that I was immediately greeted by the nurses that I’ve been working with on the software upgrade I’d been working on.  In fact, had I not been home with early labor, I would have been on the unit managing the software upgrade of the fetal monitoring and documentation system the nurses use on the labor and delivery unit.  I had called my friend and coworker Lori that morning, reporting that I wouldn’t be coming in right away, but that I’d probably see her later because “something was going on down there.”  Sure enough, as we headed to my room, we passed Lori in the hall and she got to wish us good luck.  I was comforted seeing so many familiar and supported faces at the hospital.

Ok, the rest of the story goes pretty quickly from my perspective.  At this point, I was having stronger contractions and could not talk through them at all.  The nurse explained my options about pain meds and an epidural, and she was a bit taken aback that I had no birth plan and just wanted to play it by ear.  She took a peek down below and noted that I was already 6 or 7 centimeters.  Not bad at all!  This little baby started strong, so I took no action with pain meds or an epidural.  I really had hoped I could go natural, but I didn’t know if that was at all realistic given we hadn’t done a class or really talked over how we would manage such an endeavor together.

So the contractions got stronger and I tried some lying down and some standing.  I was still having 100% back labor, so the nurses recommended I tried changing positions a lot to coax Baby Girl to rotate from face-up to face-down.  No luck.  I had some piano music playing to try to help me relax between contractions, and when Pachebel’s Canon came on, I apologized in advance to my nurse and to Dan and put it on repeat.  I am guessing we listened to that song for about 2 hours straight.  But it did the job and helped lull me into a calm here and there.

I also was experimenting with different breathing techniques as things progressed.  Most notable was the “baby” breathing.  I had found that if I really focused on doing what was best for Baby Girl and then holding her in my arms, I could truly manage my contractions. If I just focused on my breathing without that intention, I would make it, but I would be much more tense.  So I starting taking in deep breaths and letting them out with a series of  ba’s: “ba ba ba ba ba ba ba baaaaaaa.”  Dan asked what I was doing and I think I said something like, “B is for baby.  It’s in the book!” Definitely was not in the book.

Dan:

The only person in the room more shocked at Elaine’s sudden decision to go 100% natural than the nurse was me.  We hadn’t really planned for this.  I felt helpless watching her go through the pain of contractions.  Even though what was originally thought to be back pain was actually labor, Elaine’s back was in still in pain.  I did the only thing I could do to help and started giving her a back massage in between contractions.  We also found that it helped ease her pain for me to apply pressure to her back during a contraction.  This left us in an awkward pose, as the best was for me to apply pressure to her back was to approach her from behind, press my body against her’s, hold her tightly against me with one hand and apply directed pressure with the other hand.  In passing, this pose would have looked more like how the baby went in, not how to help get her out.  But, one of the benefits that I soon discovered to accompany the labor and delivery process is that all modesty, shame, humility, restraint and concern for appearances are completely tossed out of the window during this experience.

Elaine:

At some point I asked how the water was going to break and the nurse said I would eventually have a contraction that would be strong enough to break it. It must have been just one or two contractions later that I thought, “Wow–this could be that contraction,” and sure enough, our ears were met with the sound of a water balloon that had been launched from across the street slamming into the ground and bursting.  I never expected it to be so obvious or such a gush since you always hear about people thinking their water broke but being wrong.  In this case, I asked Dan if he heard what I heard and he reassured me that the nurse two doors down would have heard it too.

Now we started moving along even faster.  Contractions were more painful and I soon started feeling the urge to push.  I told the nurse and she seemed to thing we still had some time as I wasn’t even due for a check for a half hour.  I think I insisted on her checking me then, but I’m not really sure.  This must be where the hormones and stuff started skewing my memory.  I know she checked me then and I was at 9 centimeters, and she got serious about getting a doctor in the room.  I had to resist pushing through about 3 or 4 contractions, and just remember the nurse saying, “Elaine, do your breathing,” while they all got staged for the fun part.

As soon as the doc walked in, it was go time.  She coached me on how to push and was really all about getting the job done as quickly as possible.  It wasn’t long before I realized I was severe pain down there between contractions and asked what was going on.  Doc had decided to spin Baby Girl around, telling me I could have 4 hours of pushing a face-up baby or 20 minutes of pushing a face-down baby and reassuring me that we were on the same team.  I was really uncertain about the effectiveness of my pushing, and Doc reassured me that we were close.  A full head of hair was visible and she could in fact style a mohawk.  We were almost there.

Dan and I think I pushed through 5 or 6 contractions, and out came our healthy baby girl, Hailey Lorraine Hart.

Dan:

When Hailey was finally born, they placed her directly on Elaine’s chest.  This is called Kangaroo Care, which is thought to promote mother/daughter bonding.  It was all I could do not to jump up on the table with these two beautiful ladies.  Seeing Hailey for the first time, hearing her first cry, seeing her little arms and legs move and watching eyes open prompted what was the most powerful emotional response I’ve ever had to an event in my life.  It was just overwhelming to see our child for the first time.  I paused for a second, not knowing how fragile she might be, before I even touched her.  As soon as I placed my finger (I believe it was my pinky) near her tiny little hand, she instantly wrapped her impossibly small fingers around it and held tight.  There is no better moment than that.

Elaine:

Everything felt very chaotic to me after that.  It wasn’t the serene Dan-me-and-Hailey moment I had anticipated.  I was getting stitched up down there since Hailey decided to come up with a hand on her cheek that caused some extra damage–the nurses joked her hand was already reaching for the credit card.  I had nurses fussing around me to take vitals and set up some routine post-delivery IVs.

So this hour in the delivery room flew by and before I knew it we were headed up to the mother/baby unit for the next two nights.   We enjoyed wheeling past all my coworkers and showing off little Hailey and then spotting a friend’s family oogling their new little one in the nursery.  The Mother/Baby unit brought a sense of calm and relief and we were able to really enjoy our little daughter.

 

 

 

Elaine:

A final word on looking back to the labor process….So much of it is a blur now, so all the women of the world that preceded me in child birthing were right.  The hormones really do their job.  While I would agree this was my most painful experience, the tough part was so brief that it’s hard for me to describe what it felt like.  But I do know this: I could not have done the natural birth if I hadn’t spent so much of the last few years running.

Running gave me an outlook that I could apply to laboring and birthing.  I must thank my dear friend Laurel for sharing with me some advice on how to manage contractions:  just focus on getting through the next three or five contractions the way you would focus on just getting to that third driveway or the next mailbox while running.  I definitely applied this mentality.

I also coached Hailey along and promised her that we would finish this race together just like we crossed the finish line in our first and second trimester races.  I thought of her as my partner in this endeavor and knew that we could do it together.

Finally, when it came to pushing, I knew that I had to sprint out the final stretch and just get to finish line rather than slow and have to push through additional contractions.  For that lesson, I thank Anna for getting me into the half marathon business and making me push at the end.  I also equated this to the first really long training run and I knew that if I could just run the extra mile now, I wouldn’t have to do it all over again to reach my goal distance. In other words, if you’ve already made it to mile 7 of 8, giving up means you need to do the first 7 miles again when you try to get to mile 8 the next time.  When I knew pushing was going to cause crazy pain, I conjured up this motivation, prayed to God for strength, and gave it all I had.  And sure enough, we crossed the finish line.

And though I’ve never had a coach during my running, I suspect the perfect running coach would parallel Dan as the perfect labor coach/support person.  Thank  you, Dan, for being the Dad that didn’t need any special classes or prep to just know what to do.  Couldn’t have done this without you–though I suppose I wouldn’t have had to 🙂