On Labor and Delivery

I started this blog so many years ago to share my experience with other teachers.  I usually share my lesson plans, classroom experiences, and thoughts about games in education.  I’d like to share a rather different story with the same aim; to help folks.

Our labor wasn’t difficult, but it also wasn’t a breeze, and as I encountered each strange term, I googled and read stories from people who had similar experiences. It helped. I understand every labor is different, and as I read the different stories, it just helped me.So here’s ours: 

The Echogenic Bowel Experience (note to self: make suggestion to Disney for theme park ride)

Our baby was diagnosed with an echogenic bowel (pdf here). Echogenic bowel can be a soft marker (pdf here) for all sorts of nasty stuff like downs syndrome and cystic fibrosis.  We had to get some additional genetic tests (which came back negative). We also went for a second opinion - something I have never done in my entire life - and the second doctor agreed - yup, the baby has echogenisis.  The result?  We worried, but we also got ultrasounds and non stress tests every other week.  As we later learned, echogenic bowel can mean induction - our doctors told us babies with echogenic bowels can have slightly higher than average of stillbirth (but the risk is still pretty low).

The Induction

Dagmara was due on April 28th 2009.  The doctor told us she would be scheduled for induction on the 28th.  Along came the 28th, and against the minor objections of my wife, we went to the hospital. My wife’s said “look, if I’m fine, and the baby is fine, why am I going?” The doctor talked about slightly increased risk, and we decided be be careful and go. After admittance, they gave us Cervidil - and we waited.

...and waited…

...and waited…

Three days later and one more cervadil later, my wife was crying asking “why am I here?” I had to agree with her reasoning. She was fine, the baby was fine - let’s go home and wait. The nurses were sympathetic to our cause and somehow the “chief baby guy” (a Romanian) told us we could go home for three days.  So we went home and tried every damned technique on planet earth to induce baby:

Spicy food? Check.
Exercise? Check.
Intimacy?  Check.
Pineapple? Check
Castor oil? No. We didn’t use this one.
Pre-natal yoga? Check.
More exercise? Check.
More pineapple? Check. She ate almost 2 whole pineapples.

Then we went back into the hospital (at 40 weeks, 5 days) and got admitted again. We were getting close to that 41 week period, and we began to accept that the potential risks were growing. This time, we got a small little pill that didn’t work. Finally, we got a foley catheter with a balloon on one end. Basically, the doctors used the catheter to crank open Dagmara’s cervix. They also gave her some pitocin.

About 17 hours later, and with very little pain, the foley catheter kind of came out…this was supposed to happen. They checked Dagmara, and she was 4cm dilated.  An hour later, she was 9.5cm dilated, and about 40 minutes after that, Jana was born.  We didn’t have time for an epidural or other pain medication - Dagmara pushed out the baby without any drugs at all! Very impressive!!