The Birth Experience

What a wild ride! Labor unfortunately did not at all go the way we expected. Just about everything that could've gone wrong went wrong! That being said, we are oddly not disappointed since Zola Snow came out perfectly healthy, and is doing very well with breastfeeding.

Pre-Labor
We were getting fairly stressed out as it became later and later after the due date. On Thursday, March 24, Jenevra had a "balloon catheter" put in her uterus to attempt to start labor, or at least soften the uterus. It seemed to work at first, as she started having legitimate contractions as evidenced by this photo:

Jenevra's balloon catheter contractions

Unfortunately, about an hour after the contractions began, she gave birth to the balloon catheter and the contractions eased to mild ones. Over the next few days, she tried feverishly to reintensify labor by walking, climbing lots of stairs, talking to Zola, eating spicy food, another balloon catheter, and acupuncture and acupressure. The acupuncture was about 10 hours before the water broke, so maybe that did it?

Natural Labor
Jenevra's water broke at 2am Tuesday morning, awaking her out of a dead sleep. Unfortunately, it was two hours too late to allow us to give birth at the birth center. We "risked out" of the birth center at midnight Monday night because that was two weeks after the due date. Still, two midwives would accompany us to Providence Hospital to assist us along with the nurses and doctors during the labor.

We arrived at Providence around 4am (two hours after the water broke), after stopping by the Birth Center and doing a quick checkup there. We had been staying the night in town at Jenevra's mom's place so that we didn't have to drive all the way in from Girdwood.

Jenevra early on at the hospital

The contractions were going really strong by about 6am (four hours after the water broke). Jenevra labored without any drugs for 19 hours after the water broke. Her favorite positions...not shown in pictures :)...were in the shower on the birth ball, and on the toilet. The shower at Providence Hospital was super annoying, as the birth ball in the shower plugged up the drain so that she had to stand up every 10 minutes. Jenevra was in her own world, her eyes closed and only occasionally responding to questions in the short time between contractions. There was super loud construction going on right outside the labor room, which I thought would annoy Jenevra, but she didn't seem to notice.

After 19 hours, Jenevra was still only about 5cm dilated, but had not changed for several hours. She was getting exhausted, especially considering the labor began in the middle of the night after only three hours of sleep. So, unfortunately, it was time for an epidural to save up some energy for later.

Intervention

Intervention began with an epidural, which we had wanted to avoid at all costs. Along with the epidural came continuous monitoring.

One of our midwives Sara helping with Jenevra's heavy monitoring

Right after the epidural came some panic. At the moment, I didn't know exactly what was going on, but basically the baby's heart rate dropped and Jenevra's blood pressure went way down. They had Jenevra somersaulting into different positions to try to help the baby. Meanwhile, they were trying to get an IV into Jenevra, which was going horribly, as it ended up taking them about 10 tries to get a good poke. Jenevra's arm still looks like a rotten banana.

Eventually, things stabilized, and then they introduced pitocin since still no progress was being made. Then we noticed the baby's heart rate dropping after the stronger contractions, so the pitocin was eased. Amnioinfusion was also used to try to get the baby out, but that didn't work either. 

About 12 hours after the epidural, Jenevra had the urge to push. Unfortunately, the push came with Zola still not far enough down. This, along with the fact that Zola's heart rate was dropping after each contraction, made them give Jenevra some drugs to get rid of the pushing urge. 

Finally, after trying everything, a c-section was the only option left.

Right before the c-section

Jenevra saying goodbye to Zola in her belly with her hands shaped like a heart

C-Section

I was allowed to sit by Jenevra's head during the c-section. There was a big blue curtain blocking us from all the doctors/nurses doing the procedure. The first thing we noticed was the burning smell. Yes, that was them cutting through Jenevra's skin. Then, there was a bunch of pulling and tugging. I thought Jenevra was in pain at the time, but afterwards, she said she felt it, but it didn't really hurt. It took longer than it was supposed to to get Zola out, because she was stuck really good! They had to use forceps to yank her out, leading to additional bruising on her head on top of the typical bruising from labor. Zola also had a nice conehead. They carried her over to a table to weigh her...

Weighing Zola

...and then they took Zola next to Jenevra's head before taking Jenevra away to recovery.

Jenevra saying hi to Zola for the first time

I was afraid that the c-section wouldn't be "magical", but I still felt the magic, and we both cried when Zola came out.

What Went Wrong that Lead to a C-Section

The doctors, nurses, and midwives did absolutely everything possible to prevent a c-section, but it was meant to be. Zola basically was slightly sideways and ended up getting stuck at the cervix with her head lodged into the side and Jenevra dilated to 9.5cm (fully dilated is 10cm). No matter what we tried, Zola was not budging any further. Also, the cord was wrapped around her shoulder, which explains why Zola's heart rate would drop after most contractions. Also, the doctor mentioned it was possible that Jenevra's pelvis wasn't wide enough. We thought that was just a myth, but he said it could've been a contributing factor. Even if the water had broken two hours earlier and we could've used the birth center, we still would've ended up transferring to the hospital.

A Very Interesting Twist

Zola was more likely a 40-weeker or maybe even 38 weeks, not 42 weeks and two days! This can be discerned by skin quality, the size of the baby (Zola was 7 lb 5 oz), and some other things. But they are almost certain that the due date was off by at least two weeks. Yikes!

Immediately After Birth
For most of the first two hours after birth I just cuddled skin-to-skin with Zola while Jenevra was in recovery. Zola basically slept the whole time. We opted not to give Zola a bath soon after birth because we didn't want to wash off the vernix, a waxy white cheesy substance all over her skin which helps moisturize the skin and improve skin quality.

Me with Zola right after the birth

Finally, after two hours, they brought Jenevra up to a hospital room where we were waiting. Typically, for the first three or so hours after birth, babies are relatively alert, maybe trying out breastfeeding briefly and getting some colostrum, then they take a long nap. However, we were forced to keep Zola awake for about nine hours. This was because it's hospital protocol to check blood sugar for any babies over two weeks overdue. Again, Zola on paper was over two weeks overdue, but it was immediately obvious she wasn't. So, Zola just barely failed the first blood sugar test, so we had to stuff her with colostrum and sugar water for several hours, while all three of us were ready to sleep. Finally, after roughly nine hours, her blood sugar "passed", and we were allowed to doze for the first time in a few days.

The First Few Days (in the Hospital)

We stayed in the hospital after the birth for several days. It was mainly to check on Jenevra's slow healing from the C-section, though there was a lot of testing on the baby too. Zola was doing quite well and was healthy by all signs, though Jenevra needed extensive help just getting up and moving around (she's still pretty sore and will be for a few weeks). We only got a little sleep at the hospital, not necessarily because we had a new beautiful baby, but because the nurses came in all the time to check on us! But it was nice in a way to have the attention, and the room service meals for several days. We also got visited by several friends.

Happy family in the hospital bed

The hospital room was awfully small, but at least it was away from the loud construction that was present next to our labor room. The nurses were pretty nice, though something really funny/scary happened one morning. The nurse accidentally hit the "code blue" button, which means someone isn't breathing. And then it took her a minute or two to find the "cancel" button. People came running frantically into our room from everywhere! Jenevra started crying because she realized how freaked out most of the nurses/doctors in the building would be hearing something like that from the mother/baby unit. Our doctor who did the c-section came in and talked with us to make sure we were okay, followed by the spiritual advisor who made sure we weren't traumatized! But mostly, we thought it was funny.

Another funny thing happened on our departure day. Apparently, we were released around 11am, but we had not been told we could go. So, six hours later at 5pm, someone finally asks when we would be leaving! We had been twiddling our thumbs assuming that they were putting together paperwork for us to be officially released!

I'll end this post with a video of me teaching Zola about meteorology. Her middle name is "Snow", and interestingly, after a snow drought it finally snowed a few inches right after Zola was born.