The Birth

Nathan James

October 12, 2010

7lbs 8oz

22 inches

The date on the camera is a lie

I had gestational diabetes while pregnant and was scheduled to be induced on Monday the 11th of October. When I went in for the induction they checked how far along I was, the doctor was disappointed that I hadn’t progressed at all since he’d stripped my membranes a few days before hand. I was sitting at 1 ½ cm and 50% effaced. He decided to let me labor slowly while they ripened my cervix and start the pitocin the next day.

And… then my labs came back. I was spilling proteins and had high blood pressure. Hello pre-eclampsia! Since the only cure for pre-eclampsia is to get the baby out, they abandoned the plan to let me labor slowly and started the pitocin at 7 a.m.

At 10 a.m. the doctor came back in and inserted a folly bulb to help me get to 3 cm. He stripped my membranes again and inserted the bulb. Not five minutes later I felt it fall out. The doctor had just left the room and the nurse didn’t believe that it had worked so fast. They did a cervical check and sure enough I was at 3! We figured I’d have my boy by dinner.

At 1 p.m. they started the magnesium sulfate to prevent seizures. This is when they started restricting my fluids to half a cup of ice chips ever few hours. To anyone who hasn’t had mag sulfate it’s awful! It makes you hot – we had to turn the room temperature down to 55 and I was still burning up. It makes you thirsty and gives you cotton mouth. But, a side effect is that it causes your cells to hold on to fluids which means you can literally drown if you take in too much fluid so no water!

By dinner time I was only at 4. Around 8 the epidural wore off. I felt horrible pressure and I was really hoping it was time to push. I was still at 4. The anesthesiologist came in after an hour and gave me a few boosts to the epidural and I was pain free until midnight when it wore off again. I had made it to six centimeters around 10 and the pitocin was at 40 (maximum dose) and I figured I was on my way to a c-section. When they checked because of the pain I was at 9 ½. They had me wait a half an hour and checked again. I still had a lip to my cervix so we waiting another half an hour.

I was very nearly at 10. They gave me the option of pushing or waiting another half an hour. At this point the pain was so bad I asked to start pushing. They wouldn’t boost the epidural because they wanted me to feel where to push. And boy did I feel it! After two hours of pushing I was begging for the vacuum. The pain between contractions was so intense I couldn’t tell when I was contracting and when I wasn’t.

The baby was finally far enough down to suck out at around 4 a.m.


 Nathan James was born at 4:29 a.m. on October 12^th. He had the cord wrapped around his neck which is why it took him so long to make his way out in the world. He had low blood sugar at birth which was fixed with a bottle and became severely jaundiced at two days.

Recovery was rough on me. My blood pressure stayed elevated as did my liver enzymes. Nate and I were in the hospital until Saturday (a five day post partum stay) when things finally normalized for both of us.

I was scared I wouldn't like being a mom, or that I wouldn’t love him right away. Those fears went away as soon as I held him for the first time.  He’s a very calm little guy, exactly like he was while I was pregnant. We've had to give up on breastfeeding. We had to introduce formula so early to keep him healthy he completely lost interest in the breast. Added to that my milk never fully came in and now I have a formula fed baby that gets supplemented with breastmilk as often as I can give it to him. I guess that was the first lesson that things don’t always go the way you want them too.