Moving and Shaking

Looks like our little boy just couldn't wait to get here. He was born at 6:22 am on Sunday, September 4. Weighing 6 lbs., 2 oz., and measuring 19 inches long.

Quite a surprise! All signs pointed to a late September-early October birth, but he had other plans for us. We went in to our routine midwives appointment on Monday last week, which went well, but at the end they did a "position check" to make sure he was still head-down. Turns out that he had turned head-up, with his feet in a pike position; they call it a "frank breech" position. Our midwife strongly suggested that we schedule an external cephalic version to try and turn him from the outside, a procedure with about a 60% success rate and very minimal risks. We said "yes" and agreed to show up at the hospital the following Saturday. In the meantime, they had us doing all sorts of crazy things to encourage him to turn on his own. Carrie was doing handstands in the swimming pool each night, we were doing moxibustion and exercises each night but no luck! Carrie kept telling him to turn if he could, but if there was some reason that he could not turn that we wouldn't be disappointed...we've heard that there are often reasons babies stay breech for important reasons (cord wrapped around, etc.) which keep them safe.

We arrived at the hospital feeling optimistic. Our doula, Jennifer, came to check out the procedure since she'd never seen it done before. The OB came in and fired up the ultrasound machine to make sure that he hadn't turned head-down since Monday. As he looked around, he quietly said, "Where's all the fluid...?" while moving the wand over Carrie's belly. The more he looked, the more we could tell that something was off. Finally he told us that it didn't look like Carrie had much amniotic fluid, which meant that they couldn't perform the version with much chance of success. Pardon the car analogy, but it's a bit like not having any oil in the engine. No lubrication, no movement. He called in an ultrasound expert to do another check with a much higher resolution machine. She confirmed his suspicions: Carrie's amniotic fluid was WAY too low given where she's at in the pregnancy.

The OB sat down on the hospital bed, looked straight at Carrie, and said, "You need to have this baby today."

Our jaws dropped (figuratively). He went on to explain that there was about a 20% chance that, if we left the hospital and continued the pregnancy without intervention, the baby would die due to cord compression or something similar. But having the baby three weeks early meant that we risked his lungs and "sucking muscles" (for breastfeeding) being underdeveloped. He might have to spend some time in the neonatal intensive care unit after being born. To ice the cake, Carrie would have to have a C-section instead of the vaginal birth she was hoping for. We were distraught, to say the least. Carrie especially. We'd spent so many weeks preparing for a natural birth, and now we were facing what seemed like a lose-lose situation that was completely on the other end of the spectrum of birth experiences.

After much deliberation and running through all of the options, we reluctantly decided to go ahead with the C-section at 6 am the next morning. We thought about staying in the hospital for another week, with Carrie hooked to the monitor, to let him "cook" a little longer and lower the chances of him being born with underdeveloped lungs and such. Turns out insurance is not willing to pay for that when it's not medically necessary, which it wasn't because he was technically "full term" at 37 weeks and could supposedly be delivered without risk. We VERY briefly considered going home and taking our chances, but shot that idea down almost immediately. When it came down to it, we felt that risking him being slightly underdeveloped was far more preferable than taking the chance that he could die if we didn't go through with the C-section.

We freaked out alone for a bit, shed some tears, and then got moving. We called family and gathered our things for a few days in the hospital. Our doula proved invaluable as she talked us through everything and reassured us when we got anxious. Carrie's mom agreed to come up, and we fortunately had our wonderful friends Emilie and Doug to take our dog, Bentley. I finally got back to the hospital at 9 pm or so, and we tried to get to sleep. Sleeping proved very difficult. Carrie was understandably worried that we'd made the wrong decision, and she couldn't settle down. It did not help that she was given massive amounts of IV fluid to prep for the surgery and had to use the bathroom every 30 minutes. So we spent a long night wondering if we were doing the right thing. It was agonizing.

The last pregnancy pic. Eight hours before birth.

Our nurse came at 5:30 to wake us up. It was go time. The anesthesiologist came in and explained that he'd be administering a numbing medication via Carrie's spine (not an epidural, but similar), then they'd set her up for the surgery. They told me to leave, put on a sterile suit, and be ready outside the operating room. At 6:15, they called me in. She was ready, lying on her back with a sheet hung vertically over her abdomen to keep us from seeing the surgery. I sat down and took her hand. She was breathing deeply and looked surprisingly serene. I was a ball of barely contained nervous energy, just holding her hand and not knowing what to do with myself. I heard our doula say, "They're making the incision." We felt Carrie's body move on the other side of the sheet. After what seemed like no more than a minute or two, I heard our midwife on the other side of the sheet say, "Things are going to move very quickly in just a second, folks." The next moment, the OB was yelling, "Dad, get up here and look!" I stood up and looked over the sheet to see my son being pulled, butt first, from Carrie's belly. He was out in a flash, started crying immediately, and was thrust over the now-lowered sheet for Carrie to see him.

They took him to a warmer, where a pediatrician and nursery nurse performed the initial exam. I was numb until our doula pushed me and yelled, "Get over there with him!" I got to watch the initial exam, touch his little arms and legs, and take some pictures. I was delirious...crying and laughing and trying to say things but not making any sense at all. He got a 9 of 10 on his exam, which meant that his lungs were okay after all! They wrapped him up and gave him to me so that I could take him to Carrie. I laid him on her chest, and we just stared and touched him while she was stitched up. Soon after, we all went to the recovery room, where he started to breast feed right away. It was incredible.

We learned that this was the first time our hospital allowed a baby to be put skin-to-skin with a mom right away after a C-section and stay there throughout the recovery. Usually they take the baby to the nursery while mom's being sewed up, but our doula and midwife talked with the OB, pediatrician, and nursery nurse to advocate for us to be able to keep him with Carrie as much as possible.