Warren Lee's Birth Story

I was anxious about having Warren come close to the time that my mom, Nana, came into town because I was nervous that I wouldn’t be able to handle lack of sleep and three children on my own. Sometimes I still wonder if I can… My mom flew in on Easter Sunday, April 8^th, 2012. We left church early and picked her up at the airport and went home and had Easter Egg hunts and food and just a nice relaxing day. I remember Dallin and Tristan did not want to go to bed that night and I was afraid that my mom would think that I was raising little hellions. Eventually though they did calm down and go to bed and so did the adults.

At about 10:30 p.m., about 15 minutes after we had gotten into bed, Dallin woke up complaining about growing pains. I pushed Chris out of bed to go check on him and Chris didn’t know what Dallin wanted. So I was called in and I immediately knew what Dallin wanted. He wanted the “comfy oil”, some massage oil I got for the hospital, and a massage from Mommy. So I sent Chris back to bed and I got some oil and as I started rubbing Dallin’s leg I felt my water slowly start to break and leak down my leg. I didn’t remember it feeling so gross when my water broke with Dallin but it was!

So I go clean up and call the hospital and my midwife was on call until 8 the next morning and I was hoping she would be able to deliver me again. No such luck. She told me to wait until the contractions were regular before I come in. And if the happened to stop I would need to come in to the hospital in the morning. I figured I would have contractions for quite a few hours and then go in and have Warren, easy peasy, just like when I had Tristan. No such luck.

I had contractions from 11 p.m. until about 4 a.m. That was the last time I had looked at the time before I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until 5:29 a.m. when Dallin and Tristan both started to cry. I quickly realized that I wasn’t having contractions anymore. I didn’t expect that. So I called the hospital and talked to Kay again and she said eat breakfast and get ready and then come in. By the time we got there she was going off duty so a different midwife was going to deliver me when the time finally came.

We got settled in and I changed and eventually the midwife came in and had me sign the consent to treatment form and immediately I realized that I didn’t like her much. She was kind of a downer. And my nurse was too bubbly for my taste as well. I didn’t want someone who wanted to talk to me the whole time I was in labor. I was nervous though because it had been a few hours since I had last felt a contraction. We told the nurse we were going to walk around and she said great and so we walked and walked. Mary Beth, the midwife, wanted me to start the pitocin at 10 a.m. because that was about the 12-hour mark from when my water had broken and she wanted to get things going. I understood that but at the same time she hadn’t given me any time really to get my body going, trying to start contractions. So I declined and she didn’t seem happy with my answer. I understood that I needed to have Warren come out but I wanted to have the birth go my way as much as possible. I didn’t like being pushed in the doctors direction when I had Dallin, I didn’t get a chance to let my body work on its own and I didn’t want to do that again because I felt pretty unfulfilled after Dallin was born but I felt great and empowered after Tristan was born. I knew what I wanted and the midwife wasn’t listening. Phooey on her.

So I declined the Pitocin and Chris and I started to walk and walk and walk. Lots of walking. We even did stairs at one point. But the stairwell was like 15 degrees hotter than the rest of the hospital and we couldn’t handle it so we went back to walking the halls. At this point the maternity ward was getting busy and when we walked back into our room I heard them telling a woman in labor (early labor) to go back to the waiting room and just try to relax, put her feet up and they would come get her when they had a spot for her. I would not want to have been her!

I forgot to mention earlier that since my water had broken the midwife didn’t want to check me. So when I got there she didn’t check me and the nurse wasn’t allowed to check me and Mary Beth didn’t want to check me until I said I had to push. I didn’t like her… Anyway, so Chris and I walked and walked and nothing was happening. Nada. Nilch. No contractions. So at 12 o’clock I had to be monitored again and Warren was doing great and I said that 2 hours of walking was enough, start me on pitocin. After about an hour my nurse got the go-ahead to start me on it and Mary Beth finally checked me and I was at a grand total of 1½cm dilated and 70% effaced and at a -3. Which meant that I had not progressed at all in the last week. So Chris and I walked a bit more after the pitocin was started but it was so hard because the monitors on my belly were just such a pain. Eventually we just ended up back in our room and I just lay in bed. Waiting for things to progress.

But nothing happened. At 5 I was starting to feel uncomfortable so I got the epidural, which I didn’t want to do. I hate the feeling of not feeling. I like to be able to move and feel when someone is touching my legs and most importantly I like to be able to push in any position, but that wasn’t going to happen with an epidural. It was a slight blow to moral but honestly the bigger blow was just having to get the pitocin. So after 15 minutes I couldn’t feel anything and was stuck in bed and bored. I had a book and I read some of that and Chris pulled out his laptop and we watched Heavyweights, a movie from both our childhoods that we wanted to watch again. I was bored and I couldn’t move. So I was kind of grumpy. But it was nice to spend the time with Chris, who knew how bummed I was that nothing was going my way. We were alone a lot because Mary Beth was in with another patient delivering (it took like 2 hours of pushing, that is just crazy to me) and my nurse was in with someone who was actually progressing and then delivering so we just got stuck on the back burner.

Mary Beth was supposed to come in at 10 p.m. and check me because that was the 24 hour mark from when my water broke. She was an hour late because another mother was delivering (that one took an hour of pushing, still crazy to me). When she finally got in to me she checked me and gave me an update of how I was progressing… I was at a 4. A big whopping 4. Can we say depressed? Because at this point if I had had an O.B. they would have started prepping me for a c-section. Since I had a midwife she told me that I had two options. I could go ahead and have a c-section while we knew both Warren and I were healthy, or we could wait until either I spiked a fever (my temp had started rising and I was at 99.1 at that point) and hit 100 degrees and have a c-section or if Warren started to show signs of distress I would have a c-section. I didn’t want the c-section so we chose to wait until the fever or fetal distress. They started me on triple antibiotics since that is routine procedure for someone who has had their water ruptured for 24 hours.

At this point we were feeling pretty certain that we were looking at a c-section and I was emotional, to say the least. I called Carolyn and my mom and Becca since I had been talking to them all earlier. I cried like a baby because I just didn’t know what was going to happen at this point and I really didn’t want to have a c-section for two reasons. 1- the recovery time is longer and my mom could only stay so long before I had to take care of all 3 boys on my own and 2-Warren would have to go to the NICU immediately and they weren’t certain if he would be accepted there because it would be full. If that happened Warren and Chris would be transported to the Johns-Hopkins hospital in Baltimore and I would be alone at the hospital until my mom could come keep me company. I really really didn’t want that to happen. To not have Chris by my side would be bad enough but to not even be able to see my brand new baby and not take him home for a few days would have been a killer.

There was lots of crying and praying at this point and eventually we decided to try to get some sleep. The nurses kept coming in to check my temperature and see if I needed anything. I was so scared of what was going to happen. I knew that in the end what was most important was to have a healthy me and a healthy Warren but I didn’t know how we were going to get there. Sometimes I wonder if it was the Lord’s way of letting me know that he is in charge of things… having everything go wrong, or at least differently from how I had imagined things going. I was leaning very heavily on him at this point and just wanted Warren to come and to not have a c-section even though with each visit from a nurse or Mary Beth it didn’t seem likely.

So at about 2:30 a.m. my nurse came in and kept telling me that I needed to get off my back and onto one of my sides. Not an easy feat to do when your lower extremities are numb. I kept telling her that I didn’t want to because it hurt to be on my sides. She told me to press the epidural release button and I kept saying I had and that it wasn’t working and that it still hurt. I figured that since this birth was not going in any way shape or form how I wanted that I was going to at least lay on my back. She didn’t like that response so she moved my legs and rolled me onto my back. I didn’t like that nurse… I told her almost immediately that it hurt though and that I didn’t want to lay on my side. She left and came back a few minutes later with another nurse and they were going to check my epidural to make sure it was working properly. But she decided that she would go ahead and check me. I was surprised by this because Mary Beth had said she didn’t want anyone checking me except her and even then it was going to be infrequent. So I say whatever and she checks me. And says to me, “Well that is why you are so uncomfortable, he is right there, you are ready to push!” I say what? And she repeated that I was ready to push and at a 10. In 4 hours I had dilated 6 cm. In the previous 10 hours I had only dilated 2 ½ cm. It was totally unexpected. So I threw a pillow at Chris and was crying and said “I’m at a 10! I get to push!” I was soooo sooo happy!

So at that point it was 3 a.m., 29 hours after my water had ruptured. And then it took the next half hour for her to set up the room for the delivery. If I had not had the epidural she would not have kept me waiting for a half hour. I should have just started pushing without their consent… Anyway, she sets everything up and then wants to see me push before she calls Mary Beth. So I push and with one push she could see his head and she told me to stop and she called Mary Beth, who showed up and wanted to see me push before she got ready. So I pushed and she could see his head and so she got ready. Why she couldn’t just get ready before that is beyond me. I did not like Mary Beth. Or my nurse. But whatever. So she gets ready and tells me I can finally start pushing, so I do. Then she tells me to stop and she told Chris to lower the bed. The I could push again, then she told Chris to lower the bed again. I think she did it one more time and I wanted to kill her. After the second push Warren’s head was out I believe and I just wanted to meet him and hold him after the emotionally trying day I had had. So finally she said I could push him all the way out and she handed him up to me and I was just bawling. It was such a great moment. I enjoyed getting to hold Dallin and Tristan for the first time but this time around I had been waiting and so scared about how it was all going to happen that the emotional relief from being able to have a vaginal delivery and finally getting to hold him was so great. I don’t think I cried with my other boys but this was a very emotional birth for me and I was just so happy that things had worked out how they had in the end. I would have preferred a birth like Tristan’s but to not have a c-section was pretty awesome!

So now Warren is 3 weeks old and I feel so grateful that we have this little boy in our house. Dallin and Tristan love him so much already and they love to hold him and kiss him and touch him. Right this moment Dallin is telling me that Warren likes him and he likes to play games with Warren and he loves him.  It still seems so new to me that he is here and it still doesn’t feel like Warren has always been here but we will get there and I am just so glad for my health and Warren’s health and for my wonderful family.