Labor and Delivery

Siri is now five days old, and I am finally able to spend some time sitting upright at the computer. These past five days have been exciting, surreal and a blur -- all at the same time. Siri is a very cute baby, and of course we think so because we're her parents. As I look at her I think about my own labor and her eventual delivery into this world. It was an amazing experience and one that will be forever etched in my memory...

October 10th -- We had a doctor's appointment with my ob and she informed us that the baby was really, really low and that my bag of waters was stretched really tight. She warned us that she expects me to deliver within the week and that my water will probably break first before the onset of contractions. She also suggested inducing by October 19th if my body did not want to release the baby by then.

Jeff and I decide to make a trip to the grocery store and buy cinnamon and basil -- two things that I avoided during pregnancy because they're known uterine stimulants. We made wassail and left the basil for the next day. I probably drank half of the pot of wassail by myself and hoped that my uterus would start contracting soon.

I went to bed around 11pm, after listening to a couple of hypnobabies scripts, and Jeff stayed up until 1am to finish his readings for class...

October 11th -- I woke up for the second time at 3am to use the restroom and couldn't fall back asleep (the usual case after the second nightly bathroom trip). I started thinking about and picturing having true contractions and how those may differ from braxton-hicks. I became more and more anxious about labor and delivery and the possibility of induction and decided to settle down by listening to a hypnobabies script: fear release. I successfully released my fears by the end of the script and turned my ipod to shuffle and listened to random music while feeling the baby move about. I started feeling more relaxed to the song, "Heart of Glass" and knowing that she was safe inside me. Suddenly, I felt a really strong kick followed by a gush of water. My water had broken.

It was now about 4am and I woke Jeff to let him know my water had broken. Jeff called our doula and she said to wait until my contractions began to touch base; my contractions started about an hour later. The next few hours consisted of me laboring at home, in various rooms and trying different positions and Jeff accommodating my every need. My mom made me some breakfast and I ate that knowing I had a long day ahead of me. Finally, around 11am I told Jeff we needed to go to the hospital right away. I had no real reason for it; I guess you could call it intuition.

I labored in the backseat of the car the entire drive to the hospital, doing pelvic tilts and listening to hypnobabies on my ipod. My contractions were stronger and longer and I could careless that I didn't have a seatbelt on or that I was on all fours. In retrospect, I wonder what driversby thought...

We arrived at the hospital and headed straight for labor and delivery. After assessing that my bag of waters had indeed broken and I was in legitimate labor, I was admitted into a L&D room with a nurse named Mona who was completely sympathetic to my birth plan.

The next few hours are a blur, but I do remember moments of pain/pressure and discomfort (if one could call it that). My doula arrived and together with Mona, she and Jeff encouraged me every step of the way. Since UCI medical center is a teaching hospital, residents, interns and students came in and out of my room introducing themselves and checking on me for the next five hours.

I know I was really irritable and snapped at Jeff a couple of times. The resident kept asking me to rate my pain on a scale of 1-10, and I kept saying "8." From what I had read, active contractions are awful so I figured that the pain would gradually get worse. I focused on my hypnobabies, listening to the script "pushing baby out" over and over, again and again. The resident doctor checked on me several times and through what I could make out between his conversations with the nurse and my doula, I was about ready to deliver.

At some point, my L&D room was full of people and I lost all modesty. I demanded that I be stripped of my robe; I just remember it being really hot and I no longer wanted to wear ANY clothes. Jeff and our doula complied and I began to feel the urge to push.

I pushed for about 45 minutes and at 3:55pm, little Jia-Xiu Siriana was born. As soon as the nurse placed her on my chest, I felt an overwhelming mixture of emotions: relief, love, anxiety, love, gratitude, love. I remember her being a huge baby with spots of vernix clinging onto different parts of her body. Her eyes were open and she was actively looking around, but mostly focusing on Jeff and me. It was absolutely incredible.

The rest of the story is not as exciting. I was stuck in the labor bed for about two hours and then I fainted because of the massive amount of blood loss. The hospital staff was amazed that I pushed out a 10 lb baby without the use of any drugs -- I'm thinking I may now become the new poster child for natural hospital deliveries :)

I do have to say though I couldn't have done it without support and pure luck. Our nurse and the resident doctor were both very amenable to our birth plan: luck. Jeff and our doula were wonderful and supportive, and the doula and the nurse tag-teamed really well to ensure that I had a timely birth: support.

Little Siri is waking up now, so I must go feed her. This was an absolutely amazing experience despite labor pains, soreness, etc. I look forward to our continued adventures with our new daughter and will update the blog frequently.