03/25/04

Geren's Birth Story

Even before Laura became pregnant, we knew that we wanted to pursue natural childbirth.  Laura's mother is a natural childbirth advocate, so she grew up believing that's the way it should be.  Birth is a natural process, not a medical condition.  In addition, we did a lot of research and found this to be the safest method for both mother and baby.  With that in mind, we elected to take classes on the Bradley method.  We found them to be very helpful in learning not only what to expect in labor and how to manage pain without medication, but also how to best prepare ourselves - mentally and physically - for the experience.  It is very important to know all the "what ifs" beforehand so that you can make informed choices when the time comes.  It is also important to have a doctor who is supportive of natural childbirth, or to use a midwife.  Since this was our first baby and Laura already had a good relationship with her OB/GYN, Dr. Thomas Hyslop, we chose to stick with him.

Geren's official due date was November 23rd, but Laura did not even have any Braxton-Hicks contractions until the 25th.  By her routine check at the doctor on the 30th, she had dilated to 2-3 cm.  The doctor told us at that time that he fully expected us to have the baby within the next week.  Sure enough, Laura went into labor the night of December 1st.  She had been having contractions all evening, but that had been the case for the past couple of days; they usually went away overnight and returned the next afternoon.  By 11:30 that night though, they were coming pretty regularly about ten minutes apart and we decided we had better pay attention to them.  By 12:30 they were between 2 and 5 minutes apart, but only lasting 20-30 seconds.  We called Laura's mom, Sharon, and she and Jim headed up from Huntsville.  We also called the doctor, who was already at the hospital with another patient.  He instructed us to come on in, so we packed up everything and headed into Dallas.  (In retrospect, Laura believes we left too early - she would have preferred to labor at home for a while longer.  But we don't live close to the hospital and we were concerned about leaving too late as well.)  

By the time we got checked in and Laura was examined, it was around 2:45 a.m.  At that point she was 3.5-4 cm dilated, but already at +2 station.  Our nurse was very supportive and had studied our birth plan, although it was obvious that she didn't have much experience with natural childbirth.  She really wanted to give Laura something for the pain, even when she was managing it well.  Jim and Sharon arrived at the hospital around 4:30 a.m., and by that time Laura was having a much harder time dealing with the contractions.  By 5:00 she really felt like they were coming right on top of each other and she began to say she wanted an epidural.  Thankfully, Read had paid attention in class and Sharon, a registered nurse who used to work in labor & delivery, had seen this before - they both recognized that she was in transition, and had the nurse check her.  She had already progressed to 7 cm, and with that encouragement she no longer felt a need for medication.  The real difficulty for her came around 6:00, when she began feeling a strong need to push, but was only at 9 cm.  For 2 hours she struggled to pant and blow through contractions, but at 8 :00 when she was still at 9 cm, the doctor finally allowed her to push while he made sure the cervix did not tear.  By this point she was so tired that it was hard for her to keep up the energy to push. 

Laura eventually found that she had the most success pushing in a squatting position (which by the way she never thought she would use).  Finally, after almost 2 1/2 hours of pushing, he was almost here.  The doctor worked with her to get his head delivered without any tearing, but ended up giving her an episiotomy due to shoulder dystocia.  Geren arrived at 10:25 a.m. December 2nd.  We had chosen not to find out the baby's sex, so we were very excited to learn that we had a son!  Everyone was very surprised to see how big he was - no one (including the doctor) expected him to be that large (which just goes to show you how off their size estimates can be).   All in all it was a pretty good experience, but there were definitely things that could have been better.  We  think that next time we may try for a homebirth.

Everyone at St. Paul was very nice and we did not have any problems keeping Geren with us at all times - he never left our sight.  Mom and baby did great postpartum and went home the next day.    We just praise God that everything went well and that Laura's parents were there to share in his birth!

Here is his original Birth Announcement.