Luba and Adrian

My water broke on Monday, January 17th, at 3:35 am, which woke me up. The amount of water wasn’t very significant, but I was sure it wasn’t something else. I went to the bathroom where I had my “bloody show”.

I paged both my midwife and my doula to inform them, and went back to bed per my midwife’s suggestion. Falling back to sleep wasn’t very easy because I was so excited, I could feel my knees shaking 🙂 I decided to try using my slow breathing techniques from Hypnobirthing to calm myself down and try to get some rest.

About an hour later, in my sleep, I felt the baby move and next thing I knew, there was a gush of water rushing out of me. It felt like there was nothing stopping it! 🙂 The amount of water released this time was shockingly large – my clothes were soaking wet and so was my blankets and sheets. I cleaned up and went back to bed.

I continued to release water (though in much smaller amounts) as well as blood throughout the day. Knowing that labor doesn’t always start right away, I continued with my day as if nothing happened. I started doing house chores – vacuuming, doing laundry, etc., and then went for a 2 mile walk with my husband and the dog. I then talked to my midwife and gave her a status update on where I was at, and subsequently kept in touch with my doula providing her with quick updates on my progress.

Around 3 pm that day, I started to have some mild contractions and around 4 pm, I thought it was time to give my husband’s contraction tracker application a try and started tracking my contractions using his Windows Mobile 7 phone. I also started to practice my hypnobirthing breathing as I knew the earlier I started, the better chances I would have coming in and out of my hypnosis later on, when the pain became severe.

I continued to do house chores while tracking my contractions and also communicating with my family in Russia as well as my friends here.
I kept updating my doula on my progress, and finally around 10:30pm when my contractions became 3.5 minutes apart and lasting 1 minute long, we agreed that she should come over. I continued to do my hypnobreathing and listening to my meditation music with candle lights around, which was very relaxing. I also started to have lower back pain so my doula kept giving me hot compresses which helped relieve the pain. The one thing I did not know would happen is that I would continue to have bleeding (clot kind) throughout the entire process, so I was a little surprised, but the doula told me that was normal and was a sign of dilation.

Pretty soon, the contractions got a lot stronger and I actually started to feel sick to my stomach. We paged my midwife to prepare to go to the birthing center. By the time we ended up leaving the house which was around 2:30am, I was vomiting pretty frequentl as well as trembling. At the same time, I began to feel somewhat excited though, thinking all of that could be signs of transition, hopefully! 🙂

We got to the birthing center which is 2 blocks away from my house (thank God:-)), they checked me there and to my surprise, I was only 4cm dilated! I was shocked.

I got into the bath tub which felt like a heaven-sent after all those hours, and helped me get back to my hypnobirthing techniques and actually get into a deeper relaxation. I tried various positions in the tub, got out and relaxed on the birthing ball, did cat and cow and other “all four” poses, and eventually got back into the tab. After several hours of doing all that, the contractions became unbearable and I started to lose my focus and could no longer control pain with hypnobirthing techniques. At the same time, I became very dehydrated – I couldn’t keep anything down, and every time I would get out of the tub (they told me to try to go to the bathroom), I would be shaking uncontrollably so I wanted to go back in immediately.

When they checked me again, they told me I was only 6cm, which was discouraging to hear after all those efforts, and as a result made me want to get transferred to the hospital for pain relieve with epiderral or have a C section, I don’t think I careed at that point! 🙂 The midwives tried to talk me out of it, of course, and told me I was so dehydrated, it would be best to put me on IV right away, and hopefully see how things go afterwards. I insisted they start the transfer process but agreed to get an IV and “stick around” for a couple hours, as it was going to take time to get transferred anyway (find a doctor, an available room, etc.). They didn’t want me to get back into the tub and wanted me to move around instead, but I was shaking so much, I just had to be in warm water, so as a compromise, they had me take a hot shower. That was such a relief and actually made me come to my senses (I literally couldn’t see straight up until that point), so I told myself I would give it another try and attempt to deliver as originally planned. A few hours later, they checked me again, and I was STILL at 6 cm! I said to myself “that’s it, it’s time to go”. It turned out I had also developed a fever, so at that stage everyone agreed a hospital transfer was the right decision after all.

We arrived at the hospital at 10:30 am on Tuesday, there I received an epidural as well as pitosin, since apparently my contractions hadn’t been strong enough and they needed to be, in order for me to make any progress. The epidural worked well and I was able to get some sleep. Hours later, around 3-3:30 pm, they checked me again, and (guess what), I was still at 6 cm…

The doctor said I was 100% efaced, -2 station, but the baby was ROP (Right Octiput Posterior) and facing up. Also, because he was a good size baby, the chances of him turning at that point were very slim. Because of that and because I had made absolutely no progress after so many hourse, the decision was to do a Cesarean…

I took me a few minutes to try to “digest” what I had just heard and attempt to keep my composure but unfortunately I wasn’t very successful at that. But then my logical side of me kicked in and I started analysing the whole situation, and there I knew that I had tried everything I could have, and given all the facts, surgery was the only way to go.

Additionally, they were concerned that my water had been broken for so long and that I was feverish; I myself finally started to feel pressure from the fever in my eyes, so I knew it was time to do what I originally dreaded the most.

They took me to the OR about 20-30 minutes later, and at 4:21pm, little Adrian finally made his appearance. 8.8 lbs and 21.25 inches long. Poor thing had a cone head from trying to get out somehow but it was just not meant to be. The surgeon also said he was too high up in my pelvis after all.

We stayed at the hospital for 3 days and went home on Friday morning.

I must say the whole labor experience as well as the surgery was quite something, but at the end of the day, when I look at this tiny little guy, it somehow makes it all worth it 🙂