Brooke asked me to put this story up that I wrote about Noels birth. No pressure to read it! A laborious story: Brookes due date was 11/02/13, but we found out that the national average for first time moms is that they are 9 days overdue with their first delivery. In other countries, the due dates are 1 week later. I guess the medical industry just wants an easy way to justify profitable c-sections on “overdue” moms. Brookes sister Sara is living with us for an internship this fall, and her other sister Lisa came to visit the weekend after the due date to try to be here for the birth experience. Lisa arrived on Thursday night (11/07) and Brooke started having some contractions. We stayed in a cycle of Brooke having a contraction, then another one 10 minutes later, then nothing for an hour, then another one, then repeating the cycle. Lisa and Sara attempted some intense accupressure on Saturday night. They pressed so hard and for so long that Brooke actually had bruising and scabbing on her ankle and lower back the next day. Brooke quietly endured. On Sunday night, after Lisa left, Brooke started having intense contractions in her upper legs. She described it as a charlie-horse in her thighs that lasted for 1-2 minutes every 5-10 minutes for several hours. I knew she was in pain because I could see her shaking as she waited through the contractions. Sometimes if I was sitting next for her I could feel waves of tension moving in her body. I cant really describe it. It felt like being in water and feeling water pulsing far away. I called the on-call doctor at 9pm and told him about what she was experiencing. He said that we should wait until the contractions were 4 minutes apart and stayed a minute or more long for about an hour. We tried a couple of warms baths, and some massage, but Brooke just continued to stoically endure. I fell asleep between contractions, and Brooke kept timing them. She let me sleep for over an hour, graciously, and she woke me to tell me the moment she met the guidelines the Doc laid out. We called him again and he said to come to the hospital. I woke up Sara at 4:30 am, brewed a mug of coffee, and loaded our bags into the car for the ride to the hospital. As a courtesy, Sara texted her supervisor (for her unpaid internship) and told her that we were heading into the hospital and that Brooke was in labor. Her supervisor texted back that Sara needed to be on time to work. The Bentleys are all remarkably committed to finishing the things they undertake and they dont seem to cut corners. For me, I would have just gone and tried to fix it up later. But I can think of several instances were Brookes family follows through on obligations even when theyre painful, annoying, inconvenient, or intrusive. I think thats called character, or maybe discipline. Maybe I can learn how to be that way. Anyways, she didnt come with us but dutifully went to work her unpaid shift and tried to be nice to her boss. Just before we loaded Brooke into the car, she said “I feel like I need to start pushing.” I said “It is not time to push.” She seemed to take it well, but only later did I learn that she was just silently fighting the urge to push the baby out the entire car ride to the hospital. Our chosen hospital was about 25 minutes away. We had to drive that far because the hospitals closer to us are little c-section factories. First they get you to take an epidural. Then your contractions slow down. Then they give you pitocin, (an artificial version of the hormone oxytocin that drives contractions amongst other things). Then your contractions get painful because pitocin causes intense contractions. Then they turn your epidural up, then more pitocin... Eventually, all these interventions lead to a lengthy labor procedure, and the pitocin can cause fluctuations in the heart rate of the fetus. At which point the doctors and nurses will start pressuring you to have a c-section to save the life of your baby, the one that ironically theyve put in jeopardy through their efforts to intervene and assist your labor process. We got to the hospital at about 5:15 am. As I pulled up to the main entrance Brooke exclaimed “take me to the side entrance! Its closer to the birth center and I cant walk this far!” It was a good idea, I suddenly was realizing how intense her labor was. I just hadnt realized because she was just breathing heavily and sitting in such a relaxed manner. We pulled up to the side door, and I helped Brooke go just a few steps inside and to the elevator. The elevator took us up to the third floor and in a few steps we were in the birth center trying to check in at the desk. Brooke had a contraction and her water broke while we were standing there. They just put us in a room and said theyd do the paperwork later. The nurse was calmly setting up the room and Brooke has sitting on the bed breathing heavily. The nurse said she like to see if Brooke was dilated and how far along the process was so far. She checked and announced that Brooke was fully dilated and shed be having the baby soon. Another nurse checked and confirmed the same finding. I got pretty excited that things were so far along, but I was ready to wait another hour and do some serious coaching for the pushing the baby out stage. We got a squatting bar attached to the bed and the nurses called the doctor. He came in the room and said to call him when we were ready to push the baby out. He calmly left and the nurses went about prepping the room for delivery. They encouraged Brooke to push a bit on her next contraction. She pushed twice during that next contraction and the baby crowned. She rested quietly, after breathing heavily through the contraction. She looked a little more tense than normal, but I thought she was doing great and seemed very relaxed given the situation. The nurses called the doctor back since the baby was so close. He took a few minutes and came back in. He was discussing the impending delivery with the nurses when Brooke started breathing heavily again. Suddenly, the entire baby popped out! She was there in a instant. No one caught her, she just laid out on the table. The nurses grabbed her up, and Brooke was holding the baby at 5:55 am. It happened so fast, and Brooke never raised he voice above a grunt! She said after that she felt like she was screaming, and expressing herself loudly. Everyone present agreed that she seemed very calm, and the actual moment of birth was a surprise to everyone in the room. The doctor later said that if Brooke hadnt been so stoic, he might have been able to help her birth with less of an injury to herself. As it was, Brooke needed stitches, and Brooke passed out briefly from blood loss a few minutes after birth. That was really the scariest moment for me We stayed in the hospital for 2 nights. Brooke had some stitches, and they ran all of their blood-work tests on Brooke and Noel. I read about some of these tests, and they are really beneficial. One frustrating part of this experience was the amount of compulsory medical interventions following the birth of the baby. They pushed painkillers, anti-inflammatory, antibiotics, immunization against an STD (Hep B) for the baby, and others. I guess its all good for society on a public health level, but it is frustrating on a personal level! It should be like a restaurant with a menu, but I guess that implies that people will do their homework, think carefully, and act wisely and according to good values. Which is the lesser of two evils: an organization dictating healthy behavior on a societal level, or leaving people to their own virtues or follies?
Posted on: Mon, 18 Nov 2013 21:56:17 +0000
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