Cyprian’s Birth Story
For comparison’s sake: Teresa was born the day before her due date. I delivered her naturally without pain medication after about 9 hours of labor and 3 hours of pushing.
Cyprian’s due date was May 14, 2011 – he was born 3 days early.
I’d been feeling Braxton-Hicks (BH) contractions (a mild tension/tightening in my belly that lasted maybe half a minute each time) fairly regularly on Tuesday, May 10th. In the afternoon I timed them at about 6 minutes apart, then they spaced out again. I suspected I might deliver the next day, so I continued to tackle items on my “to do” list. I went to bed around 10 p.m. and noted that the contractions were starting to hurt a little at the end. I found it very difficult to sleep; I just dozed and woke, dozed and woke until a huge thunderstorm rumbled in around 1 am and kept both David and I up. It was very interesting to hear the rain pouring and thunder booming outside while the contractions intensified within me.
Around 2:30 a.m. I told David that I was definitely in labor and he got up and started to put together a few things. By 3 a.m. I could no longer relax through contractions lying down on the bed, so I asked David to give the tub a quick scrub and then fill it up. Sitting in the tub was the most comfortable way to get through contractions, which came at irregular intervals – sometimes 5 minutes apart, sometimes 10. David wanted to call someone to come and be ready to stay with Teresa, but I thought we still had a lot of time and didn’t want to wake someone just to have them sit around and wonder about me laboring. So we waited.
I went through a lot of contractions on my own because David was off doing things: making phone calls, shaving, packing the car, etc. He encouraged me whenever he was in the bedroom, got what I asked for, and coached me through many contractions with visualizations for relaxation and back rubs. Partly because I was not communicating much, neither of us had a good sense of how quickly my labor was progressing. I got out of the tub and all of a sudden my contractions were coming less than 3 minutes apart.
Around 5 a.m. I said we needed to go to the hospital soon. David called our “Plan A Teresa Watchers” several times, and finally learned that they were not able to come. Our Plan B and Plan C Teresa Watchers lived 20 and 40 minutes away, and we realized we could not wait that long. So David made the executive decision to wake Teresa up and bring her with us to the hospital, calling his mom and the Schumachers on the way to ask them to meet us there.
As David prepared Teresa for the trip, I rocked on my ball through several intense contractions. The pressure in my lower back was increasing and I began to feel the urge to bear down during contractions. Yikes! I made it out to the car and tried my best to breathe deeply through some of the contractions and hold off on pushing during the 20 minute ride. It was very difficult, especially with Teresa in the back of the car demanding “More somefing eat!” repeatedly.
When we pulled up to the CMC-Pineville Maternity Center (around 6 a.m.) and someone opened my door I did not want to get out. But whoever was standing there with a wheelchair said something like, “Come on, Princess” in a sweet voice and I got into the chair for another pushing contraction. They wheeled me to triage and got me up on the bed. With contractions coming so quickly and intensely, it was difficult for me to comply with their requests while they tried to find the baby’s heartbeat. Someone said, “We’re going to need to get 20 minutes of monitoring through contractions” and I thought, “Ha ha, I am not going to be in here 20 minutes!” The baby was so low that they could not get a good read on the heartbeat with me scrunched up. David helped me lie back even though I dreaded the thought of enduring contractions in that position. They were able to find the heartbeat; it decelerated during the contractions…and didn’t speed back up quickly enough. Someone said the late decelerations were probably happening because I was very close to delivering. They were just waiting for the midwife on duty to come and examine me. She arrived and determined that I was “complete” – fully dilated and ready to deliver. At some point everyone left the room and, between contractions, I noticed Teresa sitting on a chair off to the side, eating animal cookies and watching me quietly. “What’s wrong, Mama?” she asked. “The baby’s going to come out soon,” I told her.
The nurses had me get up on my hands and knees (with my head down on the bed) to slow the contractions. There was some debate about how to get me from triage to a room, as I was beyond being able to walk. They draped me in sheets and wheeled me down the hallway. That was an interesting ride! In my room I was able to transfer to the delivery bed fairly easily (since I was on my hands and knees). But when they told me I needed to turn over and push the baby out, I hesitated. I didn’t want to leave my “comfortable” position or face the daunting task of real pushing. David helped me sit down. They put an oxygen mask on me to help get more oxygen to the baby – I was breathing too quickly and screaming at the peaks of contractions. At first the mask made me feel like I was suffocating, but then I got the extra oxygen and was able to relax a bit more.
I “sat” scrunched up against the fully elevated back of the bed while David and two nurses held up my legs. The midwife used a pricker to break my water. A really sweet nurse on my left side coached me through the pushing. She told me I was putting too much energy against the back of the bed; I needed to come forward fully and put all my efforts downward. With each contraction (which were maybe 3 minutes apart) I pushed hard twice. After about the 5th round Cyprian’s head emerged and someone said that the umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck twice. They told me to push again immediately as (I was told later) they pulled. One of his shoulders gave some resistance and caused much tearing when they tugged it out. But as soon as Cyprian’s whole body was free, they removed the cord and he breathed immediately. Time of delivery: 6:40 a.m. (so, about 20 minutes of pushing).
They had David cut the cord and then they put Cyprian on my chest. He had a bit of bruising on his face (mostly around his nose and mouth) because of the speed of the delivery (the bruising disappeared within 3 days). But he was perfectly beautiful and we could already tell he looked just like David. Cyprian’s Apgar scores were 9 and 9. They let me keep him on me for a long time…it was a while before we even learned that he was 8 lb 4 oz and 19.5 inches long.
They administered Pitocin through my IV to help with uterine contraction and decrease blood loss. I asked to see the placenta this time, which the nurse found amusing. I thought it was pretty neat. The midwife told me I sustained significant second-degree tearing inside and out. The numbing shots were very painful and it took her some time to stitch me up. I whined, but I knew it was important.
Some time after the delivery I learned that Teresa had come into the room with us and, shortly after I began pushing, my mother-in-law arrived to take her out. I was oblivious to all of this; in hindsight, I am so grateful that Teresa was quiet and well-behaved during everything and that she didn’t seem to be traumatized by any of it. When I was all patched up David brought in his mom, Teresa, and our dear friends, the Schumachers, to meet Cyprian. Teresa was interested in and sweet with her new baby brother.
When everyone left I ordered a pancake breakfast – yum! At first I was relieved to be in the hospital, where a wonderful nurse named Manuela took care of everything I needed. I had Cyprian with me in the room always, with the exception of a few visits to the nursery for evaluations and his circumcision (done 24 hours after his birth). But David went home to be with Teresa and get rest in the afternoon and again for the night, and it wasn’t so fun being in the hospital alone. I was definitely ready to leave when we were discharged before noon on Friday, May 13th. We packed our family of four into our Honda Civic and drove to Adoration at St. Gabriel’s to thank God for the blessing of our precious little boy before heading home.