Claire's Birth Story

I definitely want to record my memories of Claire's birth. It's amazing how a few days and a lot of sleep deprivation will make you start to forget the details of such an important event. Some of the times certain things happened and the order of certain events are a little fuzzy, but I think I've got it pretty close! This post may be full of boring details to most people, but this is really for me to look back on and remember this incredible experience. 

We had to be at the hospital at 6 pm to start the induction. My mom was with me that day and helped me get ready and tied up all the loose ends at home. Cam worked that day, but got off early so that we could eat my last meal and he could finish packing up the car. Even though this was all planned, when I left the house I still had that panicky feeling I imagine most people who go into labor on their own feel. We were scrambling to get out the door and I was such a ball of nerves!

We got to the hospital only a couple minutes late and Cam wheeled me into Labor & Delivery. They took us straight into L&D Room #3. It's weird to think that the next time I left this room, I wasn't pregnant anymore!
The hospital was totally prepared, which was reassuring. I had a team of 3 nurses working to get my IV started, blood drawn, and vitals started. They checked me and there was no change from my appointment the week before, which was a little disappointing. I'd felt like I'd been making progress, and of course, the more progress your body makes before an induction, the easier it will be. They inserted the Cervidil, which softens the cervix. After that, they pretty much left me alone except to check vitals, etc. The Cervidil burned a little, but over time I relaxed and didn't notice it much. 7 pm was shift change, so I got a new nurse named Margaret. Margaret is Jamaican and wonderful. She was my sister's nurse after her c-section a year ago and took such good care of her on a really rough night, so I knew I was in good hands. 

Cam's parents arrived in town from Houston and came to the hospital along with my parents. Everyone was excited and in disbelief that we were already at this point! It was really comforting to have our parents there. After they left, we watched the last 20 minutes of Parenthood (how appropriate, am I right?) and I sobbed like a big pregnant fool, just like every other week when I watch that show. Then we watched Justified, one of Cam's favorite shows. Margaret talked me into an Ambien and thank the Lord for it! Not only did it give me the ability to sleep, it also helped me drift into a really peaceful, contented state before I went to sleep. I was really, really happy! :) I fell asleep and Cam stayed awake late working on a sweet new blog he set up about our baby girl (http://www.claire.camtodd.com/ if you're interested!).

I woke up early in the morning and started to stir. Around 6:30 am, one of my monitors started going off so I sat up in bed and my water broke. What a strange feeling! We were all really excited by this development - things were moving along! Soon after, Dr. Orth came by on her morning rounds. I was around 3-4 centimeters dilated. Margaret left at 7 am, and two other nurses I'd had the night before took over for her. They were Wendy and Kristina. I think Kristina was new to the hospital, so she was training under Wendy. These ladies were amazing and I developed a serious attachment to them that day! Kristina was young and extremely compassionate. She said all the things you'd want someone to say to you while you're in labor and would rub my head when I was in pain. Wendy was also very sweet, but a little more business-like than Kristina. She had tons of experience and it was her troubleshooting that made it possible for me to avoid a c-section, so I'm eternally grateful to her. They started Pitocin and fluids around 7 am. The morning was a bit of a blur. I remember I had the Today show on all morning in the background. I was having contractions that felt like cramps. At a certain point, Cam and I started doing breathing exercises we learned in childbirth class. This is something I probably wouldn't have thought about doing, but Cam came prepared with the handout from the class and everything. Little did we know, we'd be doing these breathing techniques long after my epidural. Once I asked for my epidural, they had to give me a bag of fluids and I remember watching that bag like a hawk, willing it to empty out. At some point before or after the epidural, I think they checked me again and I had progressed to 5 centimeters dilated. Dr. Carroll, the anesthesiologist, came in around 10 or 11 to give me the epidural. I was much less nervous about this whole process than normal, as I'd just had a spinal block three weeks before during my ankle surgery. It's essentially the same procedure, except I was laying down for the spinal instead of sitting up on the side of the bed. We got it all set up, I got my long-awaited catheter, and I felt good to go. The painful contractions went away! Our families came back and visited for awhile and I was feeling very upbeat. We had both our parents, my sister, brother-in-law, and my niece Grace there with us. It was nice to have a cheering squad! Based on stories I'd heard from other women, this is what I hoped the rest of the day would be like until I transitioned into laboring right before delivery. Boy, was I wrong...

I started to feel a spot on my right upper abdomen that wasn't numb. It wasn't a huge deal, but I could still feel the contractions in that area. I kept pressing the little refresh button on the epidural but it didn't do much. Wendy had me roll onto my right side to get the epidural to filter down onto that side more and hopefully be more effective. At first I couldn't handle this, as I felt this intense pressure when I rolled onto my right side. Eventually I did and it helped. Several times when I'd move from side to side, they'd lose track of the baby on the monitor, so they were constantly having to readjust it. They tried attaching an internal monitor to the baby's head because of a concern about her heart rate when I had contractions, but it didn't stay attached either. Claire liked being off the grid - ha! They were able to determine that the heart rate was nothing to worry about though, which was a relief! It was around this time though, that I started to feel things down below in the vaginal area. It was like the epidural would work for a bit, then stop...this pattern continued throughout the day. I spent a lot of time rolling from side to side and writhing around in pain. My mom came in and I told her I couldn't do this. She gave me one of those pep talks that only a mother can. 

Wendy and Kristina went to lunch and another nurse from the day before, Lauren, came in to check on me. I told her I felt a little bit of pressure, kind of like I needed to push. She checked me and said I was 8-9 centimeters! Holy moly...this was progressing quick! I was so excited that I wasn't going to have some crazy long labor and that all the pain I'd been feeling for the last couple hours was signalling actual progress! Lauren said when she touched my cervix, I jumped...she immediately knew something needed to be adjusted with my epidural. She called Dr. Carroll in for a last delivery dose of the epidural. This did help and gave me some temporary relief...but as before, it went away pretty quickly. Dr. Orth came by around 1:30 and checked me. I was 10 centimeters! It was crazy how fast this had all progressed! Everybody swung into action and we got ready to start pushing. I couldn't believe we were going to have our baby before 2 pm! We pushed for a bit, but Dr. Orth decided to have me stop. Baby Claire was a little tilted...not completely sunny side up, but enough to make pushing extremely drawn out. She said rather than have me push for 2 hours to fix this little issue, she would have me lay in bed and switch sides every 15 minutes to give Claire an opportunity to turn on her own. We did this for awhile and got nothing. Things down below were painful and I kept feeling the baby moving down and needing to push. Cam and I kept doing the breathing exercises and it really helped. At the very least, it gave me something to do to fight through the pain. At some point in the midst of all this, Dr. Carroll came back to give me a second delivery dose, since the last one hadn't stuck and we hadn't delivered earlier as planned. He was extremely sweet and sympathetic. When I told him that I honestly felt like the epidural worked, but always seemed to wear off at each new stage, he told me that some of this was probably Pitocin. Pitocin contractions are extremely strong and intense, so it's hard to completely take that pain away. The switching sides technique ultimately led to no change. This was really frustrating. I was starting to worry about a c-section. Part of me just wanted the baby out, but another part of me was so annoyed that after all that work and getting to 10 centimeters, I might have to have a c-section.

This is when things got really surreal. Wendy told us we were going to try a different technique. If this didn't work, there was no way this baby was coming out vaginally. She took a long hospital bedsheet, gave me one end of it, and had me lay on my left side. She had Cam stand a few feet from the end of the bed and hold the other end of the sheet. Then we had a tug of war! When a contraction came on, I'd take a breath, hold it in, and we'd tug to a count of ten. Then we'd do this two more times for each contraction. This was really weird and really cool. After all of the medicines and modern techniques, it came down to me and my husband helping our baby along on our own. To look back on it, it was a really amazing experience. Cam was his usual badass self. It's really unusual that a dad gets to take such an active role in labor, and he handled it in his typical awesome fashion. While this was going on, I still had the threat of a c-section in the back of my mind. But all of a sudden, something changed and everyone jumped into "This is happening, let's get ready" mode and they started prepping everything for delivery. I was so relieved! We started to push and at a certain point, Dr. Orth had me start holding the bed rails instead of the sheet. Cam came up to the bed and we got going. I didn't realize there would be all these additional people in the room, but we ended up having one additional nurse for the baby and a tech that helps Dr. Orth with her deliveries. It seems like we pushed and pushed. As expected, her head was huge! It was hard having all these people standing there encouraging you and feeling like it was all on you to make it happen. Dr. Orth told me I made better progress when she yelled at me...so that's what she did - ha! Cam's voice was my true north star though. Only he knew how I really felt at that moment, because he felt the same way too. When he would get really excited and say something while I pushed, I knew I was really making progress.

At 3:44 pm, Claire was born. I will never forget that moment. It was so amazing to see my little girl after so many months and such a crazy day of labor! She was absolutely beautiful. Everyone kept talking about how big she was! They put her on my chest and Cam and I were just in amazement! I don't really have words for that feeling because it was so surreal. Nothing compares to it. The physical feeling when she came out was pretty incredible. Since I could feel quite a bit, I felt the biggest sense of physical relief ever...exactly how you'd expect it to feel if someone removed almost 10 lbs from your body in one fell swoop. They put her on the scale: 8 lbs, 11 oz and 19 3/4 in. Such a big girl! They put her under the warmer and started taking vitals and doing their thing...Cam stood over her and took pictures, all the while falling more and more in love!

While Claire was being checked out, Dr. Orth finished fixing me up. It's so unfair that after giving birth, you have to do all this other stuff! The joke of the day was that Claire had been quite stubborn making her exit and everything else followed suit. Even the placenta didn't want to come out! What's pretty crazy is that when it did come out, they said it was almost the size of a twin placenta! No wonder Claire was so big! Sorry I know some of this is gross, but I think that's pretty cool. Then I got stitched up. An episiotomy sucks. I had a second degree laceration and a small abrasion. Thanks to my disappearing epidural, I felt the stitching and it hurt so bad! They kept telling me to turn and look at the baby to distract me and I did that, but it was hard to ignore the pain. At this point, I just wanted people to leave my body alone. I wanted all the wires and monitors to be gone and I didn't want anyone else touching me! I made a comment about the epidural not really taking and Wendy told me it definitely took and that I would have been in much worse pain had it not. But given what I've heard other women say, it definitely didn't work as well as it could have. Oh well, maybe next time I'll get to be completely numb! The pain was all worth it though! I'd do it a thousand times over for my Claire. The day went from being the hardest day to the best day the minute she was born!

Once everything was finished, I got to hold my girl skin-to-skin. It was wonderful! At some point, Cam got to go announce to the family that Claire was here. This was a moment Cam had been excited about for months! Everything had gotten so drawn out and our family had gotten pretty worried in the waiting room, since Cam hadn't been able to update them for awhile with everything going on. Claire had her first feeding and it went really well! I got to drink a juice cocktail and eat some animal crackers, and they were scrumptious! It was the first thing I'd eaten in almost 24 hours, so I'm pretty sure they could have fed me cardboard and I'd have loved it. Cam went with Claire to the nursery to be bathed. Our family was waiting in the hall outside my room to see Claire as they wheeled her down to the nursery - what a sweet introduction! Then everyone came to visit me. Everyone was on cloud 9! It was so good to see everyone after such a long few hours! They helped us move everything to my postpartum room and my mom helped me get into my wheelchair so I could head down there shortly after. I hugged Kristina and Wendy when they moved me to postpartum. It's so weird to not see someone again after the play such a big role in the most important day of your life. Bizarrely enough, my postpartum nurse for the first hour after I moved was my 7th grade math teacher. Isn't that crazy? 

The first night I was so full of happiness and adrenaline that I stayed up most of the night. I just wanted to be with Claire and enjoy my little family. We stayed in the hospital until Friday and now we're home getting settled into a routine. The last week has been lovely and full of so many sweet moments. My heart is so full. We are so very blessed to have Claire Campbell in our arms and in our hearts. We can't imagine life without her. 

Thanks for reading this long post! Cam is doing a similar post on his blog if you want to check it out at http://www.claire.camtodd.com/. We aren't reading each other's birth story posts until we publish our own, so as not to influence each other's memories of the big day. It will be neat to read about it from the male perspective! At some point, I'm going to come back and add pictures to this post, but for now...publish or perish! :)