ariastory

The birth story of Aria (jeff's version)

First off, let me offer my apologies to Aria, what with suffering from second child syndrome and all (and having to read junk like this from her father the rest of her life). See, with Kai, we went all out, from planning his conception down to the day, going to the bookstore the moment we knew we were pregnant to start studying (I think we had about 20 by the time he was born), not finding out his sex so it would be a surprise, taking Bradley birth classes and going to a midwife practice to have the most natural birth we could, having his room and our hospital bag done months before, to staying at home as long as we could (arrived to hospital with 1:15 to spare) and having our birth class teacher there for support. With Aria, it was pretty much, "What? You're pregnant!?", and skipped to "Hey, your due date is in a few days, should we pack a bag and put the crib up?" Granted, it wasn't that bad, but close.

First off, we couldn't use the Georgetown Hospital midwife practice again. Earlier in the year they had decided to close it down. It wasn't making enough money for them, what with the midwives actually spending time with the mothers instead of throwing them on an assembly line and treating them like it was an illness and only talking to them for a minute like the doctors do. Kara even went over and protested with the other alt-mom, breastfeeding in public, hippie wannabes. It rained though, so they packed up their Birkenstocks and recycled poster boards and went home. We did end up checking out a couple different practices and ended up with a combination midwife/doctor group at Virginia Hospital Center.

And on to the last few weeks.

On May 12 we went in for a check up, and while listening to the midwife talk, Kara had to stop her to say "excuse me, but did you just say that I was 2 cm dilated?" We knew she could be at this stage for weeks, but with Kai she wasn't even dilated the day before, and he was 10 days late. Now, first of all, Kara was defending her dissertation proposal the next day, Kai's birthday was on the 18th, and the birthday party on the 21st, so Kara just said Aria needed to wait until her due date of June 1, that was the schedule. Well, we made it through the due date and even had her membranes stripped on June 1. The hospital's policy said we had to induce on June 9, so we started to worry. We wanted Aria to come her own way. With Kai we had jumped started it with castor oil before we had to be induced, and we considered doing it again to avoid the Pitocin, but we figured that it mostly would have been for selfish motives, and to just let her go until the hospital said it was time to go get her. So we waited.

On June 3, we went out to eat at the Austin Grill like we did the night before Kai's birth. We even saw an article on George Steffenopolis saying they had eaten there the nights before the births of their children. Didn't work. On June 6, Kara went in for a check up, and the monitor showed that she was having very slight contractions. This got her a little excited. She had been feeling them since 3a.m., but we knew she could do this all week and she would still need to be induced. She called me later around 3p.m. but I was in a meeting. The person that answered the phone asked if she NEEDED to talk to me, Kara said she didn't. She called back around 4p.m. as I was getting out of the meeting. Here is our conversation:
Me: So, has it started?
Kara: Maybe, just a little.
M: Just a little huh?
K: Ya, I'm still feeling those little cramps, so something is definitely going on.
M: Are they still sporadic, or are they getting regular.
K: They're getting regular, definitely not sporadic.
M: Like how regular?
K: Like 6-8 minutes apart.
M: 6-8 minutes apart. Have you called the midwives? They said to call when you were under 10 minutes.
K: Well, Karen said not until 5 minutes.
M: Diane said 10, so you're only listening to the one you want to?
K: Yes.
M: Guess I should be heading home now, huh?
K: No, I'm going to take a walk and then go get Kai and go to the store.
M: Well, then I guess I'll see you later.
K: OK, bye.

Obviously, she wasn't worried about having Aria in the car, so I finished up my work and prepared being away the rest of the week. I did leave a few minutes early just in case she decided she was really in labor or I had to ride my bike to meet her on IH-66 to deliver a baby in the backseat. I got home and she and Kai walked in the door shortly after. We had a normal evening together and put Kai to bed at 8 as usual. Kara was still having her contractions every 6 or so minutes, but they weren't painful, just a tightening. We then made sure our bag and supplies were packed, called our friend Maite who was coming over to watch Kai for us to let her know to expect a call later, and settled in on the couch and watched a movie. Every few minutes Kara would close her eyes and physically relax while a contraction came on while outside a summer thunderstorm rolled in with lots of lightning and thunder. Gradually the contractions became more intense (read painful) and longer in duration. By 10:30pm they had started being a minute in length and about 3 minutes apart. At 11:45 they were about 70 seconds long, but jumping from 2 min. to 6 minutes in between. Throughout, Kara was in a great mood in between, and a relaxed calm during the contractions. We kept laughing about how intense and painful it was with Kai. But that was the castor oil, and Kara was actually enjoying it this way. Around midnight the contractions started getting intense and Kara wanted to go to the hospital, so we called Maite to come over and paged our midwife Karen. We left around 1:10am and got to the hospital about 1:20.

All the way over Kara kept saying she hoped we weren't going too early. Even though the contractions had intensified, they were still nothing compared to what she experienced with Kai, and with him we got to the hospital when she was 8cm dilated with about an hour to go. As we pulled up, she told me to go ahead and park in the parking lot (instead of the pull up area close to the door for expectant mothers) and that we would walk, hopefully speeding up things. The contractions had slowed up a bit in between, but were still intense when they came on. We walked up to Labor & Delivery and checked in. We got settled into our delivery room and were still joking with Karen about being there too early. She said it was fine and that we would just see how things progress. She started to examine Kara and discovered that she was indeed dilated to 8cm! That made Kara happy. It also made her laugh cause she was feeling so great compared to Kai's birth. Karen suggested walking around and if nothing happened by 3a.m., she would break Kara's bag of waters. So we started walking, and joking, and taking pictures along the hallways. Every time we walked down a hallway, we would hear a woman screaming somewhere in labor. They were extremely busy that night. At least 8 women came and went before we had Aria. Each we got to listen to while walking the halls. Each had their own birthing method. Each involved a lot of screaming. We kept wondering when it would be Kara's turn.

Karen checked Kara out again and she still hadn't progressed any further and recommended a bit of Pitocin to see if that would push her over the edge. Kara fought it for a long time, but finally realized that she had been in labor for over 24 hours, and if we just waited for Aria to come out on her own, she might be too exhausted to push. She went with a little Pitocin at 6a.m. Over the next hour and a half, the contractions kept getting stronger and closer together, and finally, at 7:25am, after 28 hours of contractions, but only 10 minutes of pushing and NO PAIN MEDICATION, Aria came into the world. They both came through in perfect shape. We even came home after only one day since Kara was feeling so good. Kai and I now have two wonderful women in our lives. How could we get so lucky?