Mina: A Birth Story - Part III

My daugther, Mina, was born happy and healthy on March 10, 2017. She's a 7 lb, 3oz, 20 inch ball of wonderment with large feet. This is the story of how she got here.

Part III: Deliverance

Adventist Medical Center in Southeast Portland is a funny little hospital. It's very small, old-fashioned, and low-key. When we toured it a few weeks before, the nurses kept apologizing for the mid-90s decor and the tiny tube televisions in every room. Although we didn't exactly plan it this way, (our insurance made the decision, thanks Boehner) this hospital seemed to fit our sensibilities perfectly.

When we arrived, the kindly intake nurse took Adair into a room to check her dilation, and immediately eased our anxieties by letting us know that we would not be sent home, we had come to the hospital at the right time! They went ahead and checked us into the room in which Adair would deliver our daughter, and where we would be staying for at least the next few days.

There was a flurry of nurse activity to start, and lots of information to go over and forms to sign. Our "birth plan" was hardly set in stone (we are a "roll with the punches" sort of couple), but it mostly went something like this:  Adair would have a go at natural childbirth without pain medication, but we would keep that epidural in our back pockets just in case shit got real. The nurses were very supportive of the idea of natural childbirth, which we both appreciated; and we also got the reassuring feeling that they really knew what they were doing as labor and maternity nurses. These aren't overworked emergency room nurses (who are saints in their own right), but rather nurses who obviously had training not only in medical issues that might arise in childbirth, but also in calming the fears and anxieties of expectant mothers and fathers. All around, it was a very positive beginning for what would turn out to be an incredibly intense experience. So, for a while we passed the time with back massages, small walks around the hospital, and texting family to let them start making a plan for when they might head to the hospital.

As dark began to fall, however, things started getting a little bit rougher. Any time Adair tried to sit, she would feel intense pressure in her lower back and in her butt. She was spending long periods of time on her feet, bent over an exercise ball that was propped up on the bed, but even that was starting to become less effective at relieving the pain. It seemed like all of a sudden, the contractions that one hour before had been generally pretty easy to make it through had become all-encompassing hellish nightmares with no end in sight.

At that point, one of the nurses suggested that we give the jacuzzi tub a try, which Adair thought was a fantastic idea! Another great thing about this hospital: full jacuzzi tubs in every single delivery room. Weirdly though, I almost feel like the relaxation provided by the tub in this situation turned out to be a little too effective. While it definitely relieved Adair's terrible back pain, it also seemed to practically eliminate her contractions completely. She essentially stopped feeling them for the duration of her time in there...which meant the labor stopped progressing. On a more fun note though, it was clear that our baby was loooooving the warm calm of the water and jets. The head nurse actually came in and took the fetal heartrate monitor off of Adair about halfway through, because the baby kept getting excited and setting false alarms off at the nurses' station.

Unfortunately for Adair though, she couldn't remain in the tub forever, so after a little over an hour, the nurses suggested she hop out so that they could see how she was progressing. That, of course, turned out to be bad news too...she had only progressed another half centimeter or so since her last check a few hours before. She was sort of stuck at 7 cm, and moving slowly. My dream of having a baby on an odd numbered date was slipping away from me in front of my eyes!

At that point, things went from bad, to: worse worse worst oh god this hurts so bad what the fuck is happening to me. Adair's awful back labor returned, this time with a vengeance, essentially as soon as she got out of the tub. She tried standing, she tried walking, she tried laying on one side, then the other, then the other, then the other, and shit just was not working. She lost all the color in her face, and she already looked exhausted. I was definitely ready for the epidural, and after about another hour or two more of that shit, so was she!

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The anesthesiologist on call was a tall lanky dude with a fantastic mustache. He was awkward, but I attributed this to his being an unrelated male in a delivery room where he very clearly didn't want to see anything that he shouldn't. He basically did everything short of putting his hand up to the side of his face as he walked around the end of the bed. I liked him though. I imagined the odd life of this man, spending 24 hours at a time in a quiet room in a maternity ward, getting called out every once in a while to make a screaming woman feel better, then head back to your movies/books/sleeping or whatever else you do with your time. Honestly, sounds kind of awesome.

Again, as with all elements of Adair's pregnancy, her epidural was fuckin' weird and atypical. The doctor took quite a long time trying to find the area beneath her spine where he would inject the IV for the pain medicine, and once he got it, he was acting like he was not at all sure if he had hit the right spot. He actually asked Adair if she had scoliosis or something like that (don't worry Doc, that's not at all an unnerving question). Adair was so excited to get some relief on the horizon though, she didn't seem to mind any of this. Nor did she at all mind the massive needle that he shoved into her back! Seriously, I was holding her hand when it happened. The biggest reaction that she had was a hilarious hiccup, that actually scared the shit out of the anesthesiologist. I'm pretty sure he thought he accidentally stabbed through to her stomach. After that though, he ran a few tests to make sure that he hadn't accidentally put something in a vein back there, and almost seemed surprised when everything came up good.

So, the Doc peaced out, and Adair started feeling that sweeeeeeet sweet flow of Fentanyl in her body. Her color returned, and I quickly called all of our visiting friends and relatives in to see her. Everyone was obviously worried and just generally uncomfortable with the image of our kind and gentle Adair being in such excruciating pain, so I think it was good for all of them to see her feeling good and energized for the night to come.

Then though, shit went sideways again. After all our loved ones had gotten a chance to say hey and shuffle back to the waiting room, Adair started to ask questions like: "Should I be able to move my legs this much after an epidural?" and "Is the tingling feeling supposed to go away like this?" It was becoming clear, at least to me, that somehow this epidural was wearing off...and that was baaaad fuckin news. First of all, I was worried that since the doctor had had so much trouble the first time, would he even be able to give it another go? Worst case scenario would be him walking back in and saying, "I think you are going to have to do this without pain medication." Even short of that though, there is just the general awfulness that Adair would finally get some relief from her awful back pains, only to have it return about 40 minutes later! The unfairness of it was just too much. So, we pushed the nurses to call the anesthesiologist back in to check things out.

Back in the room, the doctor upped Adair's dose...and nothing happened. I don't know where all this crazy pain medication was going in her body, but it obviously wasn't going to the right place. Luckily though, he decided he just needed to re-do the procedure. Again, Adair soldiered through with the promise of relief on the other end, and finally, a seeming eternity later, she started to feel those telltale tingles again. Phew, the second epidural was working, and Adair could focus on getting this little miracle delivered.