| First Baby, Big Baby - Natural childbirth I was three weeks overdue with my first child, after being told for several months that my due date must be MUCH sooner because the baby was too big to be due when I thought it was due. Good thing I didn't listen to them, they might have tried to induce me and I'd have had a premature baby on my hands. I was mildly dilated, slightly effaced with no end in sight - and a kindly OB who had 40 years of experience delivering babies stripped my membranes. He said it was the 'mildest' forms of induction, and that with someone as 'ripe' as I was, it usually worked pretty well. Sure enough, within 24 hours my labor started. Because I'd been dribbling a little bit of amniotic fluid, they insisted that I remain laying down the entire labor (this was in 1988� thank goodness doctors have since changed their mind a bit about this). I also had back labor. Both laying down a lot and back labor is supposed to cause labor to go longer than it normally would. Which means that the 12 hours I was in labor really wasn't all that bad. I did ask for an epidural after about four hours, but was told that it wouldn't do much for the back labor� too bad, I've heard since that it might have at least lightened it a bit, even if it wouldn't have eliminated it. But, the good news is that if you're back is hurting that much - that the labor pains are next to nothing - I barely felt them. I spent the last three hours stuck at 7 cm dilated. At that point, Adam (my son) started to go into distress. They decided that we needed to have an emergency c-section and within three minutes I was on a cart being escorted to surgery. HOWEVER, since putting me on the cart actually allowed me to MOVE, by the time I was on the surgery table, the baby was already crowning. They YELLED down the hall to get the OB to race to me - he was in the middle of prepping for the surgery that was now cancelled. He caught the baby within two pushes (less than two minutes after entering the room) - and the nurse by his side had to catch the placenta that was on the baby's stomach� it had separated early which is what was causing the baby distress. For only two pushes, I had an arm load of baby - 9 lbs 9 1/2 oz and 24 inches long. Afterwards, my OB was performing his rounds at the hospital where my sister was working and she caught him 'bragging' about the easy delivery of such a large baby from such a small mom (I was 5'4", 110 pounds pre-pregnancy). I always thought the bragging rights should have been mine - lol! This story was written by Penny |
| Adam's Birth Story |