Austin's Birth Story

On Wednesday the 10th of June, we went to our regular doctor’s appointment. I weighed 173 lbs! I was so swollen with fluid and my blood pressure had been kind of high for that whole week prior. So because of that and my very swollen ankles, legs and knees, and the fact that the baby hadn’t been moving as much Dr. Arndall sent me to the hospital to the OB dept. and ran a non-stress test on me and the baby. He was doing fine, but since I was so miserable she said we could go ahead and induce. With that we started pitocin at 11:30 in the morning. It really didn’t have any affect on me. I noticed more Braxton hicks’ type of contractions, but none that hurt. They had to keep turning down the pitocin though, because I was contracting every minute and the baby wasn’t getting enough rest in between. They said I had a hypersensitive uterus. Great! One more thing to add to the list! So by 5:00pm she came and checked me and I was still only 1 cm dilated and my cervix was “rock hard” as she put it. So we decided to stop the pitocin and to insert the cervadil and I would stay at the hospital overnight and she would take it out 12 hours later at 5’oclock the next morning and check my progress. Joey went and got me some subway and my grandma went home and made me a smoothie because I was starving since they don’t let you eat at all when your on pitocin. It was delicious! Then Joey went home to get some sleep and they gave me a sleeping pill to help me sleep. So about 9:00pm I woke up with the worst cramps and paged the nurse. She told me that was a contraction and hooked me up to the contraction monitor and monitored the baby’s heartbeat and I was having some pretty good contractions. So they offered me some morphine to help ease the pain and help me sleep. It was great! Took away the pain and made me sleep. Throughout the night the nurse would come in and check my contractions and his heartbeat and give me another shot of morphine. I slept pretty good but I was still tired just from the contractions all night. The next morning they took out the cervadil and the doctor came and checked me at about 9:00am and I was only dilated to 2 cm but my cervix was nice and soft. So she said we could start pitocin again or we could insert the folly ball catheter. I chose the folly ball. She inserted the folly ball and filled it up until it was 4 cm and she said when it fell out that I would be 4 cm dilated. Almost immediately I started having painful contractions so the nurse came in and offered some more morphine to help me take a nap because I would need my strength. I slept for about an hour and woke up to a huge contraction. I was focusing on breathing through it and all of a sudden the folly ball came out and I paged the nurse because I thought maybe it had broke. But nope, I was already dilated to a 4. I was pretty happy. Then my grandma, who is an OB nurse, suggested that we go walk some and get things going. So we walked the halls and when I had a contraction I would just pause and breathe through it. The breathing really does help. It made them seem bearable, whereas if I didn’t breathe properly through them they were so painful I just wanted to cry. So after a walking for a while we went back to the room and decided to sit on the labor ball. It was much more comfortable then sitting in the bed. Around 1:00pm the doctor came and checked me and I was an 8! I was so proud of myself for doing it without an epidural. She decided to break my water and check the position of the head. She broke my water and couldn’t believe how much fluid I had. She just kept pushing on my belly trying to get it all out. Then she decided to check how low his head was and as she was doing this she got this look on her face. She told us something was wrong. She didn’t know what she was feeling but it definitely wasn’t his head and ordered and ultrasound right away. Meanwhile I’m trying to stay calm and breathe through the contractions that were coming every minute and a half. The ultrasound machine came in right away but she couldn’t tell anything because he was down so low already. So she ordered the radiology dept to come over with their machine and their tech to check me. He came rushing in and couldn’t tell anything either. So then he did an internal ultrasound and we saw what the problem was. Instead of him being head down he was face down. So instead of her fingers feeling his head, she was actually putting her fingers in his mouth and feeling his nose! She said she felt so much better because she was wondering why my baby’s head had a hole in it and she was so glad it was his mouth instead. So then we had a dilemma. Delivering a face first baby is very rare. He wasn’t “sunny side up” like most people think when you say face first, he was literally his mouth and nose first and his head was completed tilted back. My grandma in all of her 39 years of being an OB nurse had never seen a baby presenting face first. So at that point I was really falling apart and the doctor suggested I get the epidural and when I was numb she would come back and try to tilt his head down. I got the epidural and it was heaven!! I loved it!! About an hour later the doctor came back in to try to tilt his head down the way it should be but every time she would get it down and move her hand he would move it right back. So basically his neck was tilted back as far as he could get it. So we had two options either would could try to deliver, but there was a high probability that he would get stuck and we would have to do an emergency c-section and if he didn’t get stuck his entire face would be black and blue from being pushed out first and there was a high possibility that he would break his neck. So I said no, absolutely not, we are doing the c-section. Everyone agreed that was the best thing to do since it was such a rare thing. So they got me to the operating room and the anthesiologist decided to do a spinal block and take out my epidural because since I had only had it for about an hour, he wasn’t sure if I was numb from his initial shot or numb because the epidural was placed correctly. So he did a spinal block, which was supposed to numb me from the chest down, but he did it to high and I was numb from the neck down. He kept apologizing and checking on me because it made it very hard to breathe since I was so numb. He was absolutely amazing and did a great job keeping me calm. So Joey got in their and my grandma was there to help too, and Joey watched him be born and as soon as I heard his little cry I just started crying too. It was amazing!! They held him over the curtain and I just couldn’t believe how small he was. The doctor was estimating him to be at least 8 lbs. but he was 6 lbs 14 ounces and perfect. He didn’t have any of the vernix left and my grandma said he was even a little water logged so he was definitely ready to come out. Austin Joseph West was born on June 11th at 4:37 pm and he weighed 6 lbs 14 ounces and was 19 inches long. I am just so in love and would do it all over again in a heartbeat. So with all that I was induced, experienced hard labor to 9 cm and then had to have a c-section. The good news is that the next baby I will be able to pick the birth date and we will just go right in for our c-section and be done with it. Thanks for reading my birth story. Being a mom is the best thing in the world and Joey is such a great dad, I am so proud he is my husband and our son’s father. I really feel like my life is fulfilled and I can’t believe it could get any better then this.