the jellyball family blog

It was February 22nd that we went to see our obstetrician for what would be our last prenatal appointment. The prior week, she had told me that it would be any day now, so when we showed up that day, I told her, "Me again. I'm still pregnant!"

The ongoing joke with Dr. Attie was that I was a high-maintenance patient; our previous pregnancy with Caleb had been uneventful, as was this one. She joked that she would have to start earning her pay with me pretty soon, and as she left the room, she told me that she was the on-call doctor for patients giving birth this upcoming Monday. Or, she said, she'd see me next Thursday for our usual check-up, if I was still pregnant. "So I'll see you Monday or Thursday!" she said with a grin.

We spent the weekend doing some errands, doing things like stocking up on groceries, having exhausted our previous supply of items we'd stocked up on since our various episodes of false labour. On Sunday night, I worked on a web project that had been hanging over my head for some time - knowing that if I'd delayed working on it any more, I would have to ask my client to delay several months until after things with the baby had being manageable. I went to bed feeling relieved that the project was complete. As luck would have it, I finished that project just in the nick of time.

Our plans for Monday were to go to Luc's parents' place in the morning, as his grandmother's funeral was that day. We had planned that I would stay back at his parents' place with Caleb and the rest of the family would go to the funeral, since it was around Caleb's lunch and nap time. Monday was really the only day we didn't want to go into labour, because we didn't want Luc's mom to remember that Noah was born on the same day as she buried her mother, but as luck would have it - this was the day. Luc's mom would later tell us that she actually thought it was the bright note in what would have otherwise been a very sad day, and that it was a day for one chapter to end and another to begin.

With Caleb's pregnancy, my water never broke on its own so I hadn't known what to expect in that department. And it surely doesn't happen like in the movies where there's a big woosh and your labour starts with a definitive "Oh my! My water has just broken! Let's head to the hospital!"

It was about 5am on Monday, February 26th when I woke up thinking that I had just peed in my pants a little bit. I was a little confused, but thought - who knows, maybe I'd just had a big water-filled dream and didn't remember. I got up, went to the washroom, changed my underwear and before I could even get out of the bathroom, it happened again.

This time I was a little more confused because not only was I awake, but I had JUST gone to the washroom and I was 100% sure that I hadn't lost control of my faculties. I sat back down on the toilet and was in the middle of telling Luc, who had just woken up to the sound of Caleb crying, that I thought perhaps my water might have broken. Just as I said that, I heard a woosh and sure enough, we heard another trickle hit the water in the toilet.

We spun into action, knowing that since my water had broken, I would have to give birth within the next 24 hours. (Once your water breaks - or in medical terms - your membranes have ruptured, the baby's protection against infection is gone.)

Luc got up to give Caleb his early-morning formula while I called my parents and the hospital's triage unit. The nurse told me to come in immediately but that I could take a shower if I was "soaked". Luc put Caleb back to bed, my parents came over, and we took the next 45 minutes or so to get organized and pack up the car. We were at the hospital by 6am. By then, I started having a few contractions, but nothing excruciating.

Luc and I marveled at how different this drive to the hospital was compared to when we had Caleb. We were calm, making jokes, and I wasn't in pain.

Once we hit triage, they determined that I was only 2cm dilated but that they would admit me regardless, as soon as a room became available. The nurse strapped a couple of monitors onto my belly to monitor my contractions and the baby's heartbeat. We were told that it would be a crazy day - the computers were being upgraded to some new system so they would be down for twelve hours, not to mention that it was a particularly busy day with births. This made me feel extremely nervous, but there wasn't much we could do either way.

It was about 8am when we made it to the room where we'd give birth. The nurse who brought us to the room called it "The Suite", as it was the largest delivery room, complete with a jacuzzi tub. By that time, my contractions had more or less slowed down. We called home to check up on Caleb, who hadn't even woken up yet, but would wake up ready to party as soon as my mom hung up the phone.

Luc ran out to get us breakfast from the cafeteria while I paced around the room in an attempt to get the contractions going again. This proved to be somewhat impractical, as I had been leaking amniotic fluid since my water had broken. So every couple of minutes, there would be a small woosh and I'd feel like calling out "Clean up on aisle five please!"

Doctor Attie came by around 9:30am and was happy to see us. We discussed the options - she told us that we could wait for the contractions to pick up on their own, in which case we could be waiting for who knows how long. Or, we could speed things up using oxytocin - something the body produces naturally during labour, but that they could give me through an IV to regulate and speed up my contractions. This had been required with Caleb's birth as well - after thirty-some hours and little progress, they'd put me on oxytocin to get things moving. Luc and I hardly had to discuss anything - now that we had Caleb, we didn't have the luxury of taking our time.

We didn't get the oxytocin until about noon since it was only then that a nurse was freed up to come by and stay with us. Because the computers were down, a nurse would need to be present in the room to monitor me for the length of time I was on the oxytocin, as they would not be able to do so remotely from the nurses' station. Tina, a hilarious nurse from Newfoundland, stayed with us almost the entire time until the baby was born, taking a break only for lunch. We chatted with Tina for a few hours while the oxytocin did its thing, while Tina kept an eye on the monitor to watch my contractions, my blood pressure, and the baby's vitals.

The contractions started becoming more regular, then more painful, but it wasn't until a few hours after the oxytocin started that things really kicked into gear. I remember Tina going for lunch and another nurse coming in to replace her, and it was with this second nurse that I would have to periodically stop talking, shut my eyes and breathe through each contraction.

Our strategy was the same as with our previous pregnancy - get through as much of it as we could without the epidural and see how things would go. Having actually had the epidural before, I knew its effects (and its effectiveness!) and that if I couldn't handle the pain, there was no need to be a hero about it. With everyone telling me that labour is always shorter with second babies, my secret fear was that I would wait too long before getting the epidural. The oxytocin was a wild card that made it hard to know how fast my labour would progress as well.

The later parts of the labour progressed quicker than I anticipated. The pain was accelerating at a pace faster than I was able to adapt to, and my strategy of "just get through one more and we'll see about the epidural" - in retrospect - led me a little further than I probably should have gone. By the time I told Luc that I wanted the epidural, the contractions had gotten so painful that I felt unable to deal with them, like I was losing control of my ability to cope. (It's a strange psychological game - you want to feel as though you are letting the pain run its course and you're in control, but there came a point where I didn't feel like I was in control anymore.)

I didn't know it at the time, but I was more or less fully dilated at this point - probably around 3pm. The nurse asked me if I wanted her to do an internal check to see where I was at, but that I didn't have to if it wouldn't change my opinion about the epidural either way. I told her I wanted it regardless, so she called for the anesthesiologist. The next few minutes were pure chaos. I had this strong desire to go for a pee so they had to unstrap me from the monitoring equipment, and Luc had to help me to the bathroom while rolling along the IV equipment, all while having contractions that were making me go crazy. The anesthesiologist arrived as I was hunched over the bed dealing with a contraction on my way back from the bathroom. In the midst of the chaos, he had misheard something about my not wanting it anymore, to which I yelled out "Please don't go! I still want the epidural!"

Our nurse Tina came back from lunch at this point. She'd left me in calm and high spirits only to come back to find me in a teary-eyed, epidural-wanting, panicked state. Once the epidural had been administered, she did an exam and told me I was fully dilated! She asked if I had the urge to push. I asked her what that urge was supposed to feel like, and once she explained it to me, I responded with "Well, then, yes, I'm feeling the urge!"

The epidural barely kicked in by this point, but I was more than glad that I'd had it because while I still felt some pain and plenty of sensations, it took the edge off the pain which allowed me to refocus on the labour and the pushing stage. They called for the doctor immediately and the entire pushing stage probably around 10 minutes. I only remember that there were about 6-7 contractions.

Looking back, I probably would have been able to make it to the end without the epidural, but only if I'd known how close I was to the end. There was no telling how much longer the labour or pushing stage would have gone, so I'm still really glad I took it when I did because, as the nurse put it, my memory of the final stages of labour were much more pleasant.

When Noah emerged, Doctor Attie put him right onto me so I could see him while they did the initial cleanup and checks. He was truly beautiful, despite being a little bruised from the quick delivery and covered in gook! Luc hadn't cut the cord with Caleb's birth (it seemed a little too much like a medical procedure rather than emotional milestone in our opinion) and told the staff he didn't need to cut the cord, but Doctor Attie egged him on and said "Oh, come on, of course you can!"

So he did. Luc later told me that he had to support his trembling hand in this picture because it was shaking so much.

They put this cute knitted hat on Noah. Turns out that hospital volunteers knit the hats as a gift to new babies! Tina took this family picture of us not long after the birth.

The recovery unit was still packed with moms and babies from all the previous busy days, so we waited in a makeshift recovery room with another family until a room became available. It was there that Noah got his first bath. The nurse who gave Noah the bath worked in the labour and delivery unit, and she said it was a real treat to get to bathe a baby since it's usually the nurses in the recovery unit that get all the fun. We didn't get into our room until around 10pm.

Noah was doing great - he had breastfed a few times but was mostly sleeping, as all babies do during the first 24 hours. My recovery was going well also, for the most part. (There were a few hours during the very early morning where it seemed like I was losing too much blood but thankfully everything worked out fine.) Luc left to go home during the wee hours of the morning and managed to get a few hours of sleep in before Caleb woke up. He stayed around for Caleb's breakfast and came in to see Noah and I later in the morning. He stayed until the late evening, when I sent him home to get some rest as he was starting to feel sick.

Noah didn't sleep much that night. I walked the halls with him in my arms, and remember feeling really bad about his crying possibly waking up the other mom and baby with whom we were sharing our room. (Later in the morning, the mom told me she hadn't heard a thing - she was a mother of four boys, so she'd gotten used to sleeping no matter what was going on!) Noah finally fell asleep at around 2am and slept for about two hours. In the morning, when the nurse asked me how I was doing, I told her I had slept for two wonderful hours and felt like a million dollars. (Funny, but I really did.)

The pediatrician came by in the morning to do a final check on Noah and gave us the thumbs-up to be discharged. We were so anxious to leave - I hadn't seen Caleb in two days and was eager to get home. We weren't slated to be discharged until 48 hours from the birth, but we requested to be discharged early. The nurse who came in to help us with the discharge was none other than Linda, the same nurse who had taken care of us when we were in the hospital with Caleb. She even remembered us, and we proudly showed her pictures of Caleb that we had still stored in our digital camera.

It was Wednesday, February 28th at around 10am when we came home to a house full of family. I tackled Caleb at the front door and gave him a huge, long hug. Amazingly enough, in the two short days I Was gone, he had grown - his hair was longer and he seemed bigger to me. Both sets of grandparents were on hand to greet Noah.

It was a truly great day.