May 17, 2008 – the big day:
It all started out early in the morning when Grace had a bit of blood (bloody show it’s called – but I certainly wouldn’t watch that on TV). She had a bit of cramps but that was common all week. I kind of had a hunch that today was the day because she was so close to her due date and the bloody show and increasing cramping were all good signs. But we decided to continue on with our day rather than sit around waiting for things to happen.
Grace met up with her friend Tamara to go for a walk. I didn’t really want to intrude so I decided to go for my own walk -across a golf course. (I was certainly checking in regularly with Grace throughout the day to make sure that she didn’t go into active labor). The golf game was pretty cool – but that’s not what this story is about.
When I went to go pick up Grace and Tamara I found out that they had walked 6.8km across town, up and down some pretty massive hills stopping by shops etc.. Grace proceeded to tell me that her belly was tightening regularly and at this point we were both quite convinced that tonight was the night. So, rather than go home and wait we went shopping and out for dinner. We picked up some puzzles as these were fun for us to pass time waiting for the baby to come (we still haven’t opened them yet!) and went to the Flying Tiger for dinner.
May 17th was the nicest day of the year so far in Vancouver. It was about 24 C and really sunny. We ate dinner out on the patio but it was during dinner that Grace had a few contractions that were different from what she had been feeling all day – she had to grab my arm throughout, and they lasted about 30 seconds. These contractions came about every 9 minutes but weren’t really regular.
Now we were pretty sure the baby was coming! Rather than rush home we called our doula to give her a heads up and ask her what she thought. I wanted to stop by the grocery store to get some lemons to make ‘labourade’ and some milk. It was now about 7:30 and time to go home. Once we got home we decided to start tracking the ‘contractions’. Of course, neither of us had a watch so I downloaded a program on my computer and used that to track the contractions.
The contractions were pretty random (9 minutes, 14 minutes, 5 minutes, 12 minutes etc.) but they were getting a bit stronger. Because they were so random we really didn’t think much of it. We called our doula again at about 8:45pm and she wanted to come over -we said not yet as things were so inconsistent. We didn’t want her to drive all of the way here only to have to go back home. We decided to call our midwife to let her know what was going on and she said it sounded like we were in the early stages of labour. She was glad to hear that our doula Erica was coming over. At a little past 9:00pm (3 or 4 contractions later) Grace said –“please tell her to come now, I think we need her!”
About 20 minutes later Grace had more blood – enough to scare me. It wasn’t brown or pink – it was red. The blood wasn’t flowing heavy but it was enough to freak me out a bit (of course, I didn’t want Grace to know that I was a bit scared). I immediately called our midwife and she said calmly “’Oh, good! Things are progressing perfectly – this is very normal, nothing to be afraid of’.” Whew! That helped put me at ease…thank god our doula was on the way here.
I look back on all of this and am very happy that I was able to remain calm and didn’t end up freaking out about any of this. I sort of knew my duty and went about trying to comfort Grace as much as possible. I had water for her, and I would talk to her between contractions to try and figure out what positions felt best..it’s like we almost knew what we were doing.
Erica called at a little past 9:40pm and said that she was at our back door. Grace and I had sort of a groove going. Grace would have a contraction and lean on all fours onto a ‘swiss’ ball and I would squeeze her hips together which helped take away some of the pain. Erica said to come and open the door in-between one of the contractions. Well, I guess she had to wait because Grace was having a contraction at about every 3-5 minutes now and 3 minutes had just passed. About 45 seconds later Grace had another contraction and then I ran to open the door to let our doula in to our building. It was pretty amazing – we all just kind of knew what our roles were. About 2 minutes had passed – little time for small talk, and Grace was having another contraction. Erica stayed right beside Grace and I did my usual hip-squeeze thing. It worked out great! Erica was awesome, she stayed right beside Grace the whole time, telling her to breathe deeply, gently massaging her and telling her she was doing a great job…very cool. I am sure we were both more relaxed having Erica here to help us.
After about 40 minutes Grace asked if it was time for us to call the midwife. The contractions were coming on stronger now and were still a bit random, some were as short as 1 minute and some were 5. But we both kept saying, what about the ‘4-1-1’ rule. For those that don’t know, you are supposed to go to the hospital after your contractions are 4 minutes apart for about 1 minute in length and for 1 hour. We had none of that! Our doula said that this would be a good time to call our midwife. We said,”let’s wait a few more contractions.” Her contractions were getting stronger now and Grace was having more trouble through them – and less time to recover.
Grace turned to me at one point and said ‘honey, I think I need to get an epidural’. It broke my heart to see her in pain but I had to tell her that you can’t get an epidural until you get to the hospital. I kept telling her that she could do it. Grace was starting to get scared because she was worried that labor sometimes lasts for 20 or more hours – we had just been through about 3 and she was really finding it quite painful. A few more contractions later and we called our midwife.
Lisa (our midwife) wanted to listen to Grace through a couple of contractions over the phone and concluded that she would come over now. She said she would be in her car in about 5 minutes. I gave her some final directions and proceeded to help Grace with the contractions. At a little past 11:00 Grace turned to me and said ‘we need to go to the hospital now!’ but our midwife would be here any minute, I thought. But knowing that you must always listen to a woman in labor and to trust her body I called the midwife to let her know we were leaving and that she could meet us at the hospital. Right after I left a message on her pager our midwife arrived…thank God!
Lisa watched Grace though a few contractions and proceeded to check on the baby’s condition. She listed to his heartbeat and everything was great! Then she went ahead to check how far dilated she was……and to the surprise of Grace and I – she was already 7 cm dilated. We couldn’t believe it, we thought labor usually progressed gradually…the best bit of news we could have hoped for at this time. Lisa said it would be a great time to go to the hospital. She said she was going to call ahead and let the hospital know we were on the way.
Lisa came back a few minutes later and said that St. Paul’s hospital was on diversion and that they weren’t taking any more patients. Yikes!! Grace got a bit freaked out because everything was planned for us to go to St. Paul’s. I tried to relax her by telling her that everything happens for the best and to not worry. Actually, at this point I wasn’t worried at all – I even remember thinking; well we could just have the baby here! Of course, I kept my mouth shut and kept that thought to myself.
We weren’t too freaked out because we found out that we could always go to BC women’s hospital for the delivery which wasn’t too far away. A few more phone calls later and we find out that our midwife isn’t registered to deliver at that hospital and that she would have to find a replacement. She said that no matter what she was going to stay with us for the whole evening even with our replacement….what a trooper!
At this point I decided to get ready for the hospital and put on a shirt and some pants (I was wearing shorts and a tank top, not naked like you might be thinking). We had our suitcase packed so I closed it up, double checked for our camera and our cell phones and took it down to the car. I brought the car around and parked in front of our apartment (illegally parked with the flashers on) and returned to help bring Grace down.
Once I got back to the apartment our midwife Lisa said that she was still working on finding someone to help deliver the baby. My thought was ‘she better work fast – this baby’s coming!’ Of course, from my years of blurting out whatever I thought, I’ve learned better and kept my mouth shut again. We arrived at the car and placed the garbage bag and blankets underneath Grace (we planned ahead and thought that if her water broke in the car, it would never smell the same again – so we wanted to protect the car).
Once we all got settled in the car I asked the midwife what was going on with the plans for delivery and she said – ‘a couple more minutes’. About five minutes later she came back and said "We’re going to St. Paul’s!" I was kind of shocked but I later learned that they can’t turn away a pregnant women in labor at 8 cm. Whew!!
So now all I had to do was to drive to the hospital. I wasn’t too worried as I’ve been driving for years and I knew the way. It usually takes around 25 minutes with traffic for us to get to the hospital but it was 11:45pm now so it would be pretty quick. Grace and Erica sat in the back and our midwife Lisa drove her own car. I managed to keep my cool – I never felt in a rush or anything. My only concern was whenever Grace had a contraction. Thank goodness that Erica was there to help Grace.
I drove as quickly and carefully as I could -at one point I saw a police car with his lights on ahead of us and it crossed my mind that maybe he might give me a ticket as I might have been going a bit too fast down the hill. My only thought was "just try and give me a ticket buddy!"
One of our biggest concerns with having the birth at St Paul’s hospital was the parking situation. They have an underground parking structure but during regular business hours it’s completely packed -no chance of parking there. Grace and I tried really hard to figure out how we would have dealt with a situation of arriving at St. Paul’s hospital at 4:00 pm on a weekday. It would have been absolute chaos as there would be rush hour traffic, no left hand turns anywhere or anywhere to park. Even though we knew about this possible problem we never bothered to figure out a solution. We just crossed our fingers that Grace would go to the hospital on the weekend or in the evening…..well, she did both!
We arrived in the parking structure of St. Paul’s and Grace asked to be dropped off (of course). There was a parking spot about 10 feet away so I was able to catch up quickly. Because Erica works at St. Paul’s hospital she had a pass to let us into the elevator. Normally after 8:00 pm the parking elevator entrance is locked…yet another reason to be thankful for our doula.
In our tour of the hospital a few weeks ago they told us to check in with Emergency before heading to the maternity ward if we arrived past regular business hours. As we had just taken the elevator we were able to bypass the emergency check-in.
I have to be honest here. I had no idea where I was once we arrived at the main level…should we go to emergency to meet our midwife or head to the maternity level immediately. I also was having a hard time remembering how to get to the maternity section…this is where I felt a bit out of control. So, I remembered from our tour to check in at emergency first so we headed that way. The only problem was, where was our midwife going to meet us? So, I paged her and she said to come directly to the maternity section immediately.
Now things were starting to get pretty hard for Grace. In all honesty I think it took us about 15 minutes from the time we arrived in the garage to get to the maternity section. We were moving pretty slow……..but finally we arrived and they had a room all ready for us.
I remember entering the room. We all looked around at each other – kind of like, what next? It felt a bit awkward. What position do we go in? Do we get on the bed? I think I walked in circles a few times. Erica went and got a swiss ball and we sort of all got down on all fours and tried to pretend we were still at home. It’s kind of weird but I think we needed to adjust to the room and get comfortable. This was something that I hadn’t planned for.
One of the nurses sounded over the intercom and asked for ‘daddy’ to come fill out some paperwork. So, I left Grace with Erica and the midwife and proceeded to do the paperwork. I had Grace’s health card in hand and took care of business. I remember thinking to myself at this point – when do I get to pee? I didn’t want anyone to think I was running away, so this was the perfect time to sneak a pee.
I returned to the nurses, filled out the paperwork and headed back to Grace’s room. Things were progressing nicely but it was time to get down to business. First things first – Lisa wanted to check on the baby again and listen to his heartbeat, and how he was reacting to the labor. (We already knew that Grace was doing as well as any woman could at this point). Then it was time to check how far along Grace was. I am a little bit confused about the timing of this but I think it was somewhere around 1:00 am. Lisa examined Grace and said "Wow! Things are progressing nicely! You are now 9.5 cm dilated -just a bit further to go."
In our classes before the birth we learned that most moms forget to eat or snack on food during the contractions and can end up losing energy. I remember packing a big bag of our home toasted almonds. I tried to offer them to Grace but she had no interest in eating….so I just stuffed my own mouth full with almonds and put them back. I was getting really hungry.
Erica started a warm bath for Grace. This is one of the cool things with St. Paul’s hospital – everyone get a private room with your own bathtub. You give birth and stay in the same room the whole time – as long as there are no complications you and the baby never need to leave. As the hospital was on diversion we figured it was pointless to ask for the ‘Princess’ suite. This is the corner room with full windows and is much larger than all of the other rooms. Actually, almost all of the rooms have windows….all of them except ours. Who cared at this point – at least we had a room at the hospital.
Once the bath was ready – Grace was going to go in and relax and have a few contractions to see if she could get that last .5 cm dilated. After a bit they took some blood from Grace – I left the room conveniently to go get some cold water for Grace as I didn’t want to watch them take blood. A few minutes later Grace asked Lisa if she could get an epidural. Nobody wanted to deny Grace the option of taking away the pain. Lisa said that it was never too late to get an epidural but at this point it would probably only interfere with the labor. It takes a while to get an epidural because they need to draw blood – examine it, setup an IV and then administer the epidural. Lisa was trying to tell Grace that by the time the epidural would set in – she would almost be done with the labor. It really was too late .
She had to face the pain ‘au natural’. It was now about 1:45 – Grace asked when she should start pushing. Lisa answered “you will know – it is very natural, you can’t help but push.” And in the very next contraction Grace started pushing. I don’t know if Grace just wanted the baby out or if she knew she was really close to the pushing stage but regardless Lisa wanted Grace out of the bath to examine her again.
Lisa concluded that Grace was almost there – just a few more contractions and to hold off on the pushing a bit longer. Lisa was going to help Grace with a few more contractions. A few contractions later and it was time to start pushing. I remember Lisa mentioning that the pushing stage started at 2:00 am.
Grace was really finding the contractions difficult and in tears she turned to Lisa and said "I can’t do this anymore – I don’t think I can do it!". This broke my heart. It was hard enough for me to watch my little sweetie in so much pain, but to see her tearfully asking for help just tore me up inside. I felt very emotional – I wanted to shout out in frustration because there really was nothing I could do. I was holding Grace through each contraction and trying to help her position herself in the best way possible but that was about it. In all honesty, as a guy you kind of feel useless in this situation. I wanted to help Grace through the contractions – help her get through it, help her push etc..
Now as the pushing increased Grace really started vocalizing more. She was really starting to let out some screams. I think she even turned to Lisa after a contraction and said "I hope we have no neighbors". I’ve never heard Grace scream so loud. It was now time to figure out what is the best position to be in. I think one of the first things we tried was to get Grace on her back and angle her at 45 degrees and put her feet up on the squatting bar and push through the contractions. Lisa was doing some doctor like things inside Grace to help the baby’s head get in the right position…I really didn’t want to know what she was doing. Grace was pushing really hard and was certainly not holding back.
We were taught at our pregnancy class to give the mom and sip of water after every contraction. We were doing this all night. In all honesty, I was drinking quite a bit of water myself. The problem was that I had to pee again. I didn’t want to ask for permission to go pee but I also didn’t want Grace to feel abandoned. What to do…. I started telling Grace to close her eyes in between contractions and try to catch her breath. When I felt like she had that down, I ducked out to pee and made it back before the next contraction…phew!
Lisa was trying to teach Grace ‘how to push’. She was trying to tell her to push down low and to stop vocalizing so much – use the energy to push. The whole time Lisa is looking up at Grace telling her how good of a job she was doing. It really was a learning process.
The pushing seemed to continue forever. I think it had more to do with the fact that I hated seeing Grace in pain. It almost seemed like she wanted to give up after every contraction. The whole pushing stage lasted an hour and 37 minutes but it seemed so much longer.
I was kind of shocked that the first position Grace started the pushing stage with was on her back. In our classes I had learned that giving birth on your back was not good. Maybe Grace just needed a chance to relax or rest more between contractions and by being on her back this helped give her a rest. Regardless, whatever she did worked. I would guess that she spent about 15-20 minutes on her back at first before Lisa suggested that she try a new position. She really wanted to mix things up to see what worked best.
Grace now got on all fours on the bed to try some contractions this way. She was facing the head of the bed on all fours. Lisa wanted to examine Grace again to see how far along she was and to see how far the baby had progressed. A couple of contractions later and voila, water! This seemed quite late for the water to break but baby was on his way – no turning back now.
But there was still a lot of work to do before baby was going to arrive. It was time to try a new position. Erica went out to get a squatting bar to attach to the end of the bed. It started out with Grace squatting on the bed and then we switched it up so she was squatting on the floor. Anything to help get this baby out!
We even tried a few positions of me holding Grace while she was squatting. I was in absolute awe at the power of Grace. She would squat and I was holding her up and I could barely make it through a contraction. I remember thinking to myself if I was getting tired supporting my wife – how the heck is she going to get through this?
Lisa was still trying to teach Grace ‘how to push’ and where to channel the energy. She was able to tell how well Grace was pushing based on how much the baby’s head was moving. It took a while but Grace had mastered the pushing stage.
Now it was just a matter of getting that baby out. We switched from squatting to me holding to back on the bed. We tried putting Grace on her side. As we switched things up our midwife kept checking on the baby’s heartbeat. Things were going great until Grace was lying on her right side. When Lisa checked out the baby’s heart rate it had dropped quite a bit. She said to flip over and try the other side. Bingo! The heartbeat bounced right back up to normal.
Grace turned to the midwife (in tears again) saying that she didnt’ think she could do it. Lisa replied that she could feel the baby’s head – we were almost there.
As St. Paul’s hospital was on diversion they didn’t have enough nurses to take care of all of the patients. We had a nurse come in and check on us once or twice. I heard Lisa whisper to the nurse on one occasion for her to tell Grace how good of a job she was doing. It was a bit of positive reinforcement which worked wonders.
Many months ago Grace made me promise to not ‘watch’ the event but to rather stay up with her at her head. I made a promise so I couldn’t go down to check on things. I did peak a few times and I could see the top of the baby’s head coming…wow! I couldn’t believe we were almost there.
Things started to heat up now. The nurse came back in the room and started to prepare a needle. The plan was to give Grace a shot of Oxytocin immediately after the baby was born. This was to help her deliver the placenta quicker which would help stop the bleeding.
We were now at a very important stage. The midwife was certainly talking louder now, telling Grace to only push when she said. She kept telling Grace to stop pushing….wait, wait, wait….push. In all honesty it was a bit hard to hear her through all of Grace’s grunting so I would repeat what the midwife was saying right into Grace’s ear. It was like a musical cannon -actually, that just sounds cheesy. Whatever, it worked!
Then, it seemed like it all happened in a split second. The midwife said, "Here’s your baby!" and she handed the baby to Grace. This moment is very hard to describe. I felt a rush of emotions – I felt a few tears of joy coming on, I felt like jumping up and down, I didn’t know what to do, and I wanted to laugh all at the same time. I guess I can understand why some people faint in the delivery room but I was steady on my feet – there was no way I was going to miss any of this.
I remember hearing Ryan’s first cry. It was kind of hard to believe that we now had a baby. Grace and I were staring at our baby with our eyes wide open. We were both examining him to make sure everything was fine. He looked beautiful! His head was cone shaped but that’s pretty normal and I knew to expect that ahead of time. What I didn’t expect was for him to look so perfect, it was truly amazing.
We had planned for me to cut the cord but to wait until the cord had stopped pulsing before cutting. After a few minutes Lisa clamped the cord and asked me to come over and cut it. Ok…I was a bit nervous because, well, that’s just not something you do everyday. She handed me the dullest pair of scissors I’ve ever seen and it took me about 2 cuts before he was free!
I remember the midwife saying she was a bit concerned with his breathing sounds and got the nurse to suction a bit of fluid out of his mouth. I was a bit shocked at this because I thought with natural births this was unnecessary but they took a bit of fluid from his mouth to make things a bit easier for him. I followed him as they took him from mommy to the other side of the room where they had the baby care unit setup for him.
The whole baby care unit is quite something. Wow! Are the lights ever bright. The nurse suctioned out some liquid or whatever and said it was time to weigh and measure the baby. That was on the other side of the room so again I followed the baby. (I am making our room seem really big but they just had things setup this way so that everyone had plenty of room to get around Grace during the delivery).
It was time to weigh Ryan – everyone took a guess, most of us thought 7 1/2 lbs. We were quite shocked to find out that he was 8 lbs 4 oz. They measured him to be 21 inches but a day later they re-measured him to find out that he was actually 23 inches long when he was all stretched out! Way to go big boy! (his body was also quite long)…
You can’t expect me to pass up on a joke about him being a big boy now do you?
In looking back on all of this I am in utter shock at how fast Grace’s labor was, and how well she handled everything. She truly was amazing. Not only did she do a fantastic job – she did it all drug free!
This whole birth experience is the most amazing thing ever and I feel so lucky to have such a wonderful wife and such a special boy. Hopefully, we will grow to figure out the whole parenting stuff. I am sure it can only get easier once you leave the hospital.
….
In all honesty the whole meconium mess that comes out of a baby is one of the cruelest jokes mother nature could have ever played on new parents. It is the messiest, never ending stuff I have ever seen. To top it all off -St. Paul’s hospital expects you to change your own diapers from day one. They use cloth diapers with pins!! Yikes..what a wakeup call to parenthood.
I’ll let you know how the whole parenting thing goes in a quarter of a century.