Baby Cameron

Ami & Joel Birth Story
My due date was September 23, 2007. The week before, I started really feeling the need to have the baby as soon as was natural. I did everything I could think of, including walking up 12 flights of stairs, taking brisk walks, having my membranes stripped, making and eating the parmesan eggplant, pretty much everything I had ever read about. But on the night of the 21st when I went to bed, I had no signs of increased surges or progress toward my baby’s birth. I felt disappointed that all my efforts were in vain.
After having to get up several times that night to use the bathroom, I had just laid back down when I felt a tiny amount of wetness at 4:50 am, Saturday the 22nd. It was an unusual feeling, which made me wonder if perhaps my water had broken, but it was neither a huge gush nor a steady trickle. I didn’t think it was significant enough to wake my husband up, but I did anyway because he’d been wanting me to keep him updated on what was going on.
At 8:00, I called the midwife on call. I had decided earlier that out of the four midwives at New Beginnings, I would be happy with three of them, and I would simply tolerate the fourth. Well, of course the one I wasn’t too crazy about was the one on call. I told her what I had felt, and she said, “If there’s any question your water broke, you need to get to the hospital.” I really wasn’t sure if my water had broken, plus I had remembered learning that your water breaking wasn’t really as urgent as people wanted you to think, so I took my time eating breakfast and getting dressed. Joel was nervous and tense. He kept feeling a little agitated, thinking he was waiting for me to get ready so we could go. When he realized that I was all ready and he hadn’t even put on a shirt, he realized how nervous he really was.
By 9:30, Joel has put a shirt on, and we are on our way. Since we live in Sandy but were having the baby at Orem Community Hospital, we had a bit of a drive. At 9:45, our cell phone rings; it is the midwife calling from the hospital, wondering where we are. I felt rather sheepish that she got there before we did, but I told her we were on our way.
At 10:00, we are in the Orem Community Hospital exam room, getting our vitals checked. The midwife confirms that my water had broken. The baby’s heart rate kept dropping unless I was laying a certain way, so they attached an internal monitor. At this point, my water really breaks the rest of the way, and the great gushing happens. That was a weird feeling. I figure out that if I stay on my left side, the baby’s heart rate goes back up. The midwife says she needs to see peaks and valleys in the heart rate to see that the baby has enough strength to make it through labor or “we may start thinking c-section.” I really didn’t want this, but I knew that the baby would be strong enough. She also felt around and estimated that the baby would be 8½ to 9 pounds. That worried me a little, since I am a small person, but the midwife said she’s been anywhere from right on to two pounds off, so I didn’t think too much about it.
At 10:30, I am checked into the delivery room. The midwife said she’d check back in two hours. Surges were about five minutes apart, but really tame. They were no big deal at all.
At 12:30, I am dilated to 4 cm. The surges feel more intense, so I used the birthing ball. Because I had the internal monitor and I had an IV, going to the bathroom was a big pain. I wished I could just pee in the bed, so Joel tries to figure out a way we could make that work, but I am grossed out, so we just continue making the trek to the bathroom.
At 2:30, Jill, the RN, sees me curled up on my side and says “Looks like things are really starting to happen.” I’m still at 4 cm, and the midwife says that’s not enough progress. I am in disbelief because things definitely feel like they are progressing. Then the midwife orders Pitocin, and alarm bells go off in my head. From my understanding, Pitocin just makes the surges stronger, which I really didn’t think I needed. The surges are already causing pain, so Pitocin was not a happy prospect. I start to think that maybe I can’t do this naturally, and I am scared. I tell Jill that I am nervous, and she explains that Pitocin isn’t scary; it only stays in your system for 1 minute. That comforted me, although now that I think about it, I’m not sure why, because I was still in pain.
At 3:00, the Pitocin begins, and the surges are very strong. I feel the baby bearing down, but when they check, I am only at 6 cm. The nurses and the midwife warn me not to push because it might lacerate the cervix. This makes me angry and scared. I am scared because I cannot stop the baby’s progression, and if it is bearing down, there is no stopping it. I am angry because, if they didn’t want the baby to progress that far, why the heck did they put me on Pitocin? This was the worst moment, feeling the fear that I can stop the baby from coming and that my cervix might lacerate as a result of the medical staff’s impatience.
At 3:05, they check me again, and I am praying that I have opened up sufficiently. I had, and intense relief washed over me. They started prepping the room for the birth.
At this point, our sense of time gets a little sketchy, but here are our estimations:
At about 3:30, they put down a lot of sheets and things. The uppermost layer of all their preparations looks like a kiddie pool, and I wonder how many layers of stuff do they need? I’m annoyed by the nurses (except for Jill, whom I loved) who have come to assist. They’re just chatting about shopping they’ve been doing. I realize that, while this is such a momentous experience for me, it is simply routine for the nurses, and I am annoyed that they treat it so lightly. Then, the midwife asks someone to pull her cell phone out of her pocket to call her student. The student doesn’t answer, so Jill leaves a message telling her not to come to the hospital because things are progressing much faster than the midwife anticipated. This annoys me again because I clearly didn’t need the Pitocin. A few minutes later, the student calls back, asking “Did someone just call me from this number?” This annoys both Joel and I to no end. That is what voicemail is for, and our birth experience kept getting interrupted by inane chatter.
At 3:45, the baby is in place to finish its journey out. I remember thinking that what I was feeling was big and intense. I felt like Hypnobirthing expected me to be silent, but it felt better to make some noise. Not screaming or anything, but some noise anyway. The midwife instructed me to keep my voice low so I wouldn’t lose my voice. This is probably good advice, but at the time, I thought, “Who cares?”
By 3:50, my instinct is to arch back, but the midwife said to lean forward to wrap around the baby, which I was able to do. I felt proud that I was doing it right. The “pushing” was painful, but it felt good to know that it was accomplishing something. I didn’t really feel like I was pushing, but just letting the baby do what it was going to do. It wasn’t quite as easy as birth breathing, but it wasn’t forceful pushing, either. Joel says he could see my stomach ball up and rise with each surge as the baby moved downward. He really felt like it was something you couldn’t will your body to do, that the “pushing” was inevitable. I just followed my body’s lead, and Joel says I did it well.
At 4:15, Joel sees the baby’s head. If not for hair, it would look like brain, with the scalp all wrinkled together. The baby seemed to be rocking forward and back with each surge. I was scared of how painful it would be to have a whole human come out, but I also wanted things to just keep progressing. Joel could see the stomach bunch together and travel down; it was amazing to see. As the head pressed forward, the midwife said an episiotomy would be necessary. The head pushed against the tissue to hard that she couldn’t get her fingers in; she had to wait for the surge to end before she could cut. Even though the birth plan said I didn’t want an episiotomy, at that point, I didn’t care. The midwife seemed concerned and said “Maybe he’s gonna make himself a little episiotomy.” She was putting KY on the opening, but everything seemed to be stretched as far as it could go. Joel says it was like a button that is too big for a buttonhole. Joel had to look away when the midwife finally made the cut. I heard the snip and felt a sting, but it really didn’t matter in the context of everything else.
At 4:25, the baby’s head emerges, covered in vernix. Joel remembers hair, eyes closed, and a wrinkled forehead. The head faced toward Ami’s right. The midwife had told Joel how to deliver the baby, but she found the umbilical cord around its neck. She tried to pull it over his head from back to front, but it wouldn’t come. She says, “I’m going to have to clamp it now.” Joel was brave and said, “Are you sure?” She said yes, clamped it, cut it, and pulled the baby out. It was blue and not breathing. She took the baby straight to the respiratory therapist. Joel was terrified for a few seconds, but then we heard its first cry. Joel stayed with me, but I told her to get some pictures. Joel took pictures while they worked on it. After a couple of minutes, I ask, “What is it?” Joel was confused, so I asked again. Joel says, “Oh!…It’s a boy!”
He was born on September 22, 2007, at 4:27 pm. He was 7 lbs. 14 oz., and was 20.5 inches long.
I couldn’t hold him for a while because I needed stitches. The midwife didn’t seem very confident about the stitches. They ended up being loose, and they got infected, prolonging my recovery.
But I finally got to hold my baby boy, and I thought he was beautiful. We named him Dane Hiro Frost, and he has brought so much joy into our lives. We are grateful he is with us. Even though the birth didn’t go exactly according to plan, it was overall a good experience. In the future, I will be more insistent about refusing Pitocin, and I will probably use a different midwife. But we loved Orem Community Hospital. We will probably go there again.