Dominic Ross (baby #5)

This is most likely the boring-est of all my 5 birth stories. Sorry, not sorry to be writing it. Across the board, writing out each child’s birth story is the only thing I’ve done consistently. I don’t keep a baby journal (I guess the blog kind of counts?), and my photo documentary quality has drastically improved since Lexington was born, so much that it’s unfair.

PROOF:

BIRTH STORY.

I have become aware as I birth each baby that my body loves something called Prodromal Labor. It wasn’t until this time around that I realized a likely reason for that. Both Collin and Jude came out sideways, but I figured that was normal, or whatever. Here I am, 5 babies later, and still learning.

I reached 40 weeks pregnant.

Aside from fixing a borderline severe anemia issue, and the frustration of contractions that were fizzling out just when I started to think they were getting exciting, I was extraordinarily comfortable. Never has a pregnancy been so cozy for me. No back pain, no lightning bolt strikes of sciatic pain, or cervical stretching, nothing. PLUS, I enjoyed 40 weeks medication-free, and symptom-free from my autoimmune disease. Barring 1st trimester nausea, I had energy!

Dominic was measuring biggie. I never do kick-counts, but I noticed that his movement was significantly less. There was one moment in the middle of the night where, after repeated efforts, he did not wiggle in response and I panicked and my pregnant brain vividly imagined all the terrible scenarios that could possibly exist.

My midwife and I checked his heartbeat, and without looking, I could hear it was much lower than normal. We ran a non stress test, which the midwife lengthened a bit and he seemed to finally perk up and his heart rate went back to normal. We discussed coming back in a week for an ultrasound and another NST, but then my midwife asked how I felt about an induction.

–Let’s pause so that everyone understands my birthing history. Feel free to click the links and read my embarrassing tale-telling from many years ago, but to save time, here are the summaries:

Lexington:
42 weeks.
Epidural, no complications.
No awareness of anything whatsoever besides the names of my nurse and anesthesiologist.

Emmett:
40 weeks exactly.
Epidural, which didn’t take.
Blood pressure dropped, I blacked out.
OB cut Emmett’s head with instrument as he broke my water.

Collin:
40 weeks + a few days.
No meds.
Stuck cervical lip which OB manually pushed back.
Circus act. (I thought I had “felt everything” since Emmett’s epidural didn’t take properly and therefore going natural wouldn’t make much of a difference– HA. A symphony of lies. )

Jude:
40 weeks + a few more days.
No meds.
More stuck cervical lip. More manual cervical pushing.
I bit Craig a few times.
Broken blood vessels in my face.
7 day headache.

It was during the first trimester with Dominic that I started having nightly PTSD attacks and I laid there feeling like I needed a bag to breathe into to calm down. (I’m fully aware that these births are kitten fluff compared to so many women with much more traumatic births, but my experience is my own etc.)

I’ve watched The Business of Being Born, I’ve read the birthing books. I have become a lot more aware of my body, and the birth process and all that jazz. I’m aware of the potential unwanted interventions that come with getting an epidural, and I was afraid that I’d end up with a birth like Emmett’s or much more intervention-y if I chose to be induced. I knew that once they put a needle in my arm, it’d probably be the domino effect to all the other things. I HATE feeling not in control, and being put on a clock, and having medical professionals come in tapping their watches while they brandish scalpels and bright lights.

BUT.

I knew I’d experience a cervical lip refusing to fully retract at 9 cm like it had in the births of yore. The sensation of having someone stretch the cervix against it’s will while battling the uncontrollable urge to push is what I believe having someone smash a searing whitehot blade into a bundle of exposed nerves might feel like.

I says to myself: YOU’RE ALLOWED TO GET AN EPIDURAL, THE NATURAL BIRTH POLICE AREN’T GONNA GET YOU.
I allowed myself to not feel …what, guilt? for settling on mental peace. I’m 9 years older than I was from my first birthing experience, and this was going to be better, even if there were medical interventions, because, frankly, I’m not so much of an airhead anymore, and I have a much deepened sense of body-awareness, medical goings-on, and of trust in the Lord’s plan for me.
I told my midwives there was a 99.999% chance I’d be getting an epidural. I told them my previous experiences, my fears, and my hopes, and they honored them.

My delivering midwife told me that in her years of experience, a veteran mother knows how her body births, and when she says she usually goes from 4cm to 9cm in 20 minutes and then gets a stuck cervical lip for a couple hours, she believes it without question. This is why I’ll pick a female midwife or OB for the rest of my days.
And would you know it, that’s what happened.

To my disbelief, I scheduled an induction at 7am on the 14th of December. My contractions had puttered out once again the morning of the induction. My mom came at 6am to stay with the boys. Craig and I ran through Starbucks for a *super nutritious* breakfast sandwich, and at 6:45am, we bounced into the waiting room/reception with a ridiculous song stuck in our heads. I almost never get songs stuck in my head. I consider it mental clutter because I’m a strange bird; yet, for my births, e v e r y time.

There we were, 7am, sitting in the room we would meet our Dominic, whose name we’d settled on merely 12 hours before.

Since his due date was originally near the feast of St. Ambrose, I’d been angling for Gabriel Ambrose, wanting to call him Bram, pronounced “Brah-m”.

Craig had been pulling for Dominic Gabriel, which I acquiesced to because I love the name too, and Dom is equivalent to the sound of Bram so there you go. But after realizing we’d scheduled an induction on the feast of St. John of the Cross, I wanted to incorporate his name. No offense to all the Johns of the world, (you’re great.) just plain “John” wasn’t blowing our hair back. After some thinking, we came up with Ross as a middle name. Dominic ends with a “c” + Ross = Cross. Maybe that’s a stretch, but we love it and there was no looking back after Ross entered the subject.

(There may or may not have been a text conversation between Craig and I involving this GIF, after settling on the name.)

Back to 7am… The nurse blew out a vein in my arm, and I almost passed out. A different nurse, the other arm, a cool washcloth on my neck, and a few mouthfuls of hospital ice later, we were up and running with a working IV and fluids. Commence pitocin at the lowest dose, and a bit of knitting.

Pitocin dosage was increased every few hours, and honestly, my contractions were utter nonsense. Hallie Lord had been my birth texting sister in the weeks approaching once we realized we might overlap in due dates, and having given birth just a few days prior, she reminded me to ask for anti nausea meds. EXCELLENT idea, especially since I barely made it past a heplock placement.

At some point I asked for the epidural, not because the contractions were bad, they were totally pitiful. I just wanted to nap. I can’t remember if it was noon or later –oh wait, Craig remembers it was 12:40– but we got it done, and I could tell it was working, and working the way it should have. I took naps and naps, and Craig ran out for snacks. I snuck two soft pretzel sticks which were so wonderful because I was starving.

The afternoon passed and I stayed at 3 cm until 5:00 ish. In came everyone and their ticking clocks, asking me what we wanted to do. Actually, I misrepresent my midwife: she did ask me what I wanted to do: Increase Pit drip to 7-8 and wait a bit longer, break water, or do nothing, and she made it clear I was under no time pressures. BUT, I still felt the ticking anyway.

I’d told her that once I reached 4cm things would be over within a few hours, so we decided to up the pitocin and break my water once I reached 4cm.

6pm came, I’d reached 4 cm. They gently broke my water, and by 7pm, I was feeling some discomfort.

From the experience of my previous births, I recognized this pain, albeit very dull, and very not real life. I was entering transition. I could actually feel the urge to push, and as each contraction came like a (generally painless) wave, I breathed through as if I were laboring without medication. I began a few “practice” pushes without telling anyone because I knew it wasn’t time for knees to chest yet. But all of the sudden, it was time!

So here’s where during the hour and a half that I pushed, and they kept giving me oxygen, and the baby was S T U C K on my pubic bone, and my cervical lip yet again had to be pulled back by my midwife, I had a hallucination that I was no longer giving birth in a room, but up in fluffy, white clouds, with a bright blue sky, surrounded by angels who were watching and praying to our Creator for me and for baby, and waiting, waiting, waiting with such joy and excitement. Such a vivid hallucination that I wonder if that’s what actually happens for each birth that has ever and will ever take place. It makes sense if one understands the love God has for each life he creates.
Can you imagine the angels standing watch over your birth, your neighbor’s birth?

It was a few hours later as I sat nursing Dominic in the night that I realized I’d never left the hospital room at all. I looked around myself thinking, where did the bright sky go? All those clouds… did I get wheeled into a different part of the hospital at some point???” Kind of a Spare Oom Wardrobe experience. If hospitals could market a “let us take your birth experience to new heights” campaign, I bet they would.

Yes, I reached a hopeless point of frustration during pushing… I have grown accustomed to pushing for 20 minutes and having a baby in my arms right quick. So after 45 minutes I remember being so terribly frustrated. “Well, his hair is birthed,” someone said. I laughed and then cried at the report of “lots of dark hair.” I always push laying on my back, and this time, as Dominic’s head finally made it past my pubic bone, you know what that child did? HE LITERALLY STRETCHED HIS LEGS OUT IN THE WOMB.

À la:

I legitimately had to press my hand into my stomach to serve as a spring board for him to stretch his little feet into WHILE I WAS ALSO PUSHING. Craig, meanwhile, had been helping me curl up around my stomach and hold that position while pushing; a job I would have not been able to do at that point because I was exhausted.

Then, my midwife said “okay, this is the one, let’s do it with this push” and I thought she was just saying that to give me a last bit of oomf behind my push, but I looked down and saw Dominic’s little scrunchy face come right out from between my legs, and all the nurses and midwife exclaimed “a total OP!” Which means occiput posterior, which means completely sunny-side up, which explains why he was so stuck. (Look all that up on Spinningbabies.com , I ain’t explaining any mo’)

And now, after all that drivel, I hope the birth announcement I made a month later, while sitting in bed at night with a snuggly fat hobbit, makes a bit of sense.

The end.

{P.S. If there’s any takeaway I want it to be this: SKIP HOSPITAL FOOD COMPLETELY and get your husband to run to your favorite places for takeout and eat like kings and queens for the next 24. You’ll pat yourself on the belly back.)