jonathanhickman.com

Day Five

Well, we have a plan.

I’m too tired to think too clearly, so forgive me for not being at my best. Here’s how it went down:

Yesterday morning (Sunday, right?) Katie started going into good, strong labor again. She’d been mostly in labor since Thursday morning, with the brief exception of some time off Friday afternoon when the doctors had her knocked out. For a while after Friday, though, the contractions were mostly irregular. That changed yesterday morning, as they started coming on strong every three minutes. They were so regular you could pretty much set your watch by them. And here’s something I hadn’t before thought about: since the contractions were coming every three minutes, and they were lasting 60-90 seconds each, Katie was literally having a contraction a little less than half of the day yesterday. Whew!

Anyway, we called the midwives, and yesterday afternoon we went in to be checked. Hoping for good news, we got nada. Just as she’d labored all day Thursday with no progress, she had now labored Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and part of Sunday without accomplishing anything more than exhaustion. A new plan was formed: go home, get something to eat, take walks around the neighborhood and baths in the tub. Try different positions and see what happens.

We met back at the birthing center at 10 Sunday night, hoping the contractions had accomplished something and that we’d be there to stay until the baby was born.

Once again, we were disappointed. Absolutely no progress had been made. And Katie was exhausted beyond words and nearly completely demoralized. Our midwife agreed that it was time to be more aggressive with little Charlotte. We were off to the hospital.

We got here last night around 11 with the idea that by 12 they would get her stuff that would get things rolling. Again, things didn’t go according to plan. They needed a good measure of Charlotte’s heart rate before they could start any drugs, and damn if my daughter isn’t such a wiggle worm that it took till nearly 2 in the morning to get ten minutes of recorded heart beats.

So at 2, I crashed on the couch as Katie’s work got harder. I woke up at 7:30 this morning after getting roughly five hours of fitful sleep (ie being woken up every 15-30 minutes), but Katie hadn’t slept in nearly 24 hours. We were eager to get tested for progress this morning, but it was nearly 9 before we were able to do so. At this point, Katie had been laboring Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and the first nine hours of Monday. And what did the midwife say when she checked her?

No progress. None.

Another new plan was formed. The nurses gave Katie more drugs, and we’d regroup at 2 to check on the progress. The drug they were giving her - I’m not going into specifics - usually takes several doses to work, so I was optimistic we’d hear good news at 2.

We didn’t.

It was time for another new plan, but we were running out of options. Katie hadn’t slept in roughly 30 hours, and she hadn’t eaten since the night before. She was exhausted physically and mentally, and the complete lack of any positive news was devastating.

We floundered for a new plan for a solid hour or more. I think everyone was so demoralized that it took us a while to get our bearings so we could move forward again.

And this is our new plan: Katie now hasn’t eaten in 24 hours and hasn’t slept in longer. We’re trying a different drug for the labor, which still hasn’t abated. And now Katie is happily drugged with an epidural. We’re going to regroup this time in twelve hours, at which point we’ll either have made some progress or we’ll schedule Charlotte’s arrival for 7:30 am. It sounds like my little girl with have a July 31 birthday!

This isn’t exactly how we’d hoped for this birth to go. We were going to do a natural birth in the water. We were not going to have an epidural, and I can’t even believe that a c-section is our plan B. Really, we aren’t even “supposed” to be doing this yet. But Katie’s body appears to be ready to give birth, and now it’s time for convincing Charlotte of that fact.

Ten hours.