Birth story and early days

We are a bit slow getting the posts, but I guess we should go back to the beginning.

Ada’s birth story according to Dad (Warning: Contains descriptions of totally natural labor/birth phenomena)

Friday, Jan. 18^th 5:40 AM (first couple of paragraphs were written the day of, the rest is from memory; written 1/31/13)

                Contractions started early Thurs. evening (around 5:00). They were not too intense early on, but became more painful as the night progressed. Rachel called me in from the other room at about 4:30 am because she needed some support and some hydration. She was having contractions every 10-30 min. with varying intensity and the longer ones are pretty intense. She was nauseated and threw up a couple of times. The early pain was making Rachel question whether she could do a natural childbirth because she knew it would only get more painful. She was still able to sleep in between contractions, however, as the work was making her extremely tired (she was falling asleep nearly within seconds of the end of a contraction). For the more intense contractions, Rachel found it useful to focus on our LED color change candles. I think it provided a useful distraction to make the contractions seem shorter (most were at least a minute long). I was not really able to rest at all because I was starting to get nervous, and wanted to make sure stuff was ready for the hospital. I thought that this was just an early false labor (I was predicting the 23^rd for the actual delivery).

                It was really hard to watch Rachel suffer and not be able to do much about it. Rachel eventually had a really rough contraction where she threw up A LOT. We called the midwives and talked to Michelle because we were worried about hydration level. She told us to just keep drinking fluids and try to wait for the contractions to get closer (still quite a bit of time between most contractions; ranged from 4-30 minutes between). I ran to the store to grab her some vegetable broth and some more electrolyte pills (that you add to water).

                Rachel felt nauseated again at around 9:15am and had some bleeding that was more serious than previous episodes so we called the midwives again. Sachiko was on call and eventually told us to come to the hospital to get checked out. At this point the contractions were at about 7 min. apart so I thought for sure they would just send us home from the hospital; I didn't even bother bringing in our hospital bags in from the car. Sachiko eventually came, but the initial setup was taken care of by our nurse, Becky. Sachiko came in and checked Rachel’s cervix. With a simple probe, she confidently said: 8 cm dilated, station -1, fully effaced. I didn't know how they checked dilation, so I was shocked at her confidence based on the spread of a couple of fingers…magic caliper fingers (part of me wanted a second opinion).                     

                I think Rachel gained a huge amount of courage from the news that she was that far along and from then on no longer considered needing pain meds. I think we both expected another few hours to days for early labor. They got us all set up in the small hospital room with the private tub, and Rachel took advantage of that pretty quickly. We spent a few hours trying various positions in tub, but Rachel mainly used hands and knees. I was worried that this might eventually put stress on her hips, but she seemed to be able to stay in the position for a long time without pain.

                Active labor probably started somewhere around 1:30-2:00 PM on Friday. She was bleeding a fair amount, which concerned me, but not the nurse and midwife so much. A natural amount for them is very different than a natural amount for a first timer like me. The baby’s heartbeat was great throughout the labor with no real signs of dangerous stress, even during contractions. The contractions became intense enough that I would grab Rachel’s hand, put my head close to hers and try to help her bear down. I kept saying things like “you are doing great”, “almost there”, “that is one more contraction that you don’t have to go through again”, “that gets us closer”,  “BREATHE”, “mind if I go grab some pizza”, and other useless nonsense. She didn't much like me massaging her, but didn't mind touch, so I tried to just rub her back. Even though the pain was pretty intense, she felt close and didn't even mention pain killers once. She was amazing!

                               Rachel, getting a couple of seconds rest between contractions

                At about 2:30 she started to crown. To me it looked like the baby’s head was so flattened that Rachel was delivering a pancake…it seemed way too flat to accommodate a brain. Once the head emerged more, though, I realized that it was just the skin of her head being bunched up into a ridge. She actually had a relatively rounded head peaking out. At this point, Rachel’s water had not even broken, so the head was pushing against the sac outside of Rachel. I was holding Rachel’s leg up (she delivered on her left side) so I had a great view when her “water” broke and gushed out across her lower leg (it easily could have nailed either myself or the midwife, but instead it sprayed down Rachel’s leg. Rachel thought it was pretty cool that we actually got to see it, and she got to feel it. By this time, I was just wondering what we were supposed to be doing to get the baby out safely.

                During the active labor, the midwife and nurse were very sparing with instructions on what to do. We even had to ask if we should push now that the water had broken and the head was emerging. The attendants just seemed to think everything was going fine, so why worry about letting us know what we were supposed to do next. Rachel said it felt very strange to let the head emerge during a strong push, but have to let it retreat afterwards. I could see that she was making slow progress with each push, but wanted to end them as soon as possible for her sake. When the baby’s head was about a quarter of the way out, for some reason both the nurse and midwife had to go out of the room to take a call or check on something else. This left me holding up Rachel’s leg during a contraction where I could see the head move almost halfway out, wondering what I was supposed to do once the baby shot out of Rachel. Luckily, we made it through that contraction and everyone came back in the room in time (I am sure in my mind the head was much further out than it really was when they all took a break).

                After a few more good contractions, Rachel finally pushed the baby out. I expected that the baby would get stuck after the head, and require some help with turning, or additional pushing, but she just slid right out and flipped over into the midwife’s arms. She looked so much better than some of the crazy babies (with super elongated skulls) that we had seen in movies during the Lamaze class. She had pooped in the womb, though, so there was some concern about her early breathing. Luckily, she started crying and breathing really quickly, and everything seemed fine. I got to cut the cord and then we put the baby right on Rachel’s chest for some good skin to skin time. We wanted delayed cord clamping, and the nurse had to stop Suchiko from cutting immediately (because we also wanted to try cord blood donation). Unfortunately, with the delayed clamping, I don’t think they got enough to be usable.

                Rachel just cuddled the baby or awhile, then tried to breast feed. She struggled a bit with that because her nipples were pretty flat. The nurse (and lactation consultant) gave us a nipple shield to use for the first little while to train the baby and to train the nipples. The hospital was pretty good about letting us just have the initial time with the new baby before coming in for all the measurements. We still had not decided on a name yet, but we had slowly been pushed towards Ada (Mae for the middle name was already decided). We eventually had to fill out forms, and so we just went for it with Ada even though I was not as confident as Rachel.  Ada Mae Goodman; 6 lb 5 oz.; 18.5 inches; 2:58 PM January 18^th 2013.

               I wish I could say that I felt a surge of love and amazement at seeing my first daughter for the first time, but I just felt numb from the whole experience. It also seemed a little unreal even for the first couple of days, like someone was letting us babysit their tiny newborn and would come pick her up at any time. She seemed incredibly tiny, but it had been a while since I had seen a newborn. She apparently got her Mother’s nose and piano playing fingers (long and slender), but not much showing up from Dad, yet.

                                   Here's Dad, trying to be useful, giving Ada her first bath

                I called my parents and they immediately got on a flight to Seattle. They got in after visiting hours on Fri. so they had to wait until Sat. to come up and hang out with us at the hospital. We relaxed there until about 2:00 and then started checkout procedures. The hospital was a little swamped so we didn't get out until about 7:00. Ada passed all her checkout tests, even though I had a hard time with the heel prick for the PKU test (she was so fragile). The sleeper we brought to the hospital was way too big for her and she looked tiny in her carseat.

                 It was great to have my parents out for the first couple of nights because we were exhausted and needed to hand her off to Grandma when we felt like we couldn't stand up any longer. Breastfeeding was very difficult early on, but Rachel fought through with the help of the nipple shield. Grandma got a lot of baby time in, which was great even though it was during sleep deprived stretches in the early morning. Grandpa even got a couple of shifts in. We just relaxed in a haze for the first couple of days, fighting to feed Ada, letting her sleep a ton while we watched Murder She Wrote on Netflix.

                                Grandma and Grandpa Goodman enjoying time with Ada

                All in all, we couldn't have asked for much more (considering the rough deliveries some of our friends and family have had)…other than breastfeeding coming a little more easily (this is supposed to be natural?). I think we are finally settling in a bit and starting to be able to enjoy a couple of moments with Ada in between the work of it all. We are still not caught up on sleep though, so I think once that occurs (when she is around 2-3 years old) it will finally sink in that I am a father.