The Babies Journey

It's been quite the adventure. Krystal started contractions at about 6:30am on Wednesday. We stayed home and our midwife stopped by and checked her out a few times. Then we went in at about 2:00pm to the clinic only to be turned away because she was not dilated enough. Understandable. Tried to get some rest that evening and finally went back in to the clinic at about 3:00am Thursday. Krystal labored for a while and still wasn't dilated a lot so we left, got some breakfast (just a smoothie for Krystal) and stopped at home to let the dogs out of the kitchen. We went back to the clinic at about 2:00pm that afternoon where things just kept on not progressing. Krystal finally got almost fully dilated but couldn't really push. So there was a whole lot more laboring and she sat in the tub and they broke her water manually which made her cervix go back down to 6 cm. So we watched TV and tried to nap and eventually Krystal got back up to almost 10 cm at like 5:00am today (Friday) but still couldn't push. Remember that there has been virtually no real sleep and no food since early Wednesday. Now our midwife is suggesting that Krystal get back in the tub but I can tell that the poor girl doesn't have anything left in her. And Krystal finally gives in and asks to be taken to the hospital. The place we didn't want to go but by this point I just want the baby to be born healthy. I don't care how anymore.

So about 6:30am friday we go over to Legacy Emanuel and get admitted there. We get a new midwife from the hospital and a nurse and they give Krystal a mild painkiller just to get her relaxed. Then after talking with the midwife about our options with epidurals and pitocin, we decide to give Krystal and epidural and just let her get some sleep. which she does and it seems to help out tremendously. So after a tiny amount of pitocin and some laboring she is finally fully dilated and she starts pushing. To make a long story short, after 4 hours of intense pushing, the midwife and nurse come to the conclusion that the baby is not going to make it naturally. The midwife said she's never seen anyone push so well and there should be some progress but there just isn't. It's literally the story of the baby's life. So they bring in a doctor as a second option and he agrees that a c-section is the only way to go. Krystal is disappointed but after over 2 days of solid labor (contractions every 5 minutes sometimes 2-3 minutes the whole time) and 4 hours of pushing, there's not much else she can do.

Within 15 minutes we were in the c-section room and they had me sit next to Krystal's head, I couldn't see the operation due to the blue curtain. Finally they held up a wrinkly, blueish baby boy... Boy? Apparently the doctor was wrong about the sex, which we weren't completely surprised about. So I got to go around and I took some pictures and some video as the nurse cleaned him up and printed his feet and he peed on some of the nurses (which I got on video) and then I got to hold him and bring him over to Krystal. And nurses just assume that guys don't know how to hold a baby, I got lots of compliments on my baby holding skills. I've been around a baby or two in my day. Then they stapled Krystal back up and we went back to the room where she breastfed him and he did great at latching. Then Krystal took a nap and I just held him in my arm for the longest time. He would just look up at me with these pretty blueish/ grayish eyes.

No I'm back home letting our dogs out of the kitchen they'd been locked in for 21 hours. I'll probably watch some TV and just pet them for a bit so I don't feel like they're being neglected and then go back to the hospital. Krystal will have to be there until at least Monday. My sister is coming down tomorrow.

I will say this from our experience. Whoever made the movie "The Business of Being Born" has never been to Legacy Emanuel. And since that is my only point of reference, in my opinion, that movie is 100% false about hospitals. At least based on that one. I know there are some terrible hospitals out there, but if you look into it, you can find a good hospital that uses midwifes and will respect your wishes in a lot of areas. I think also that movie came out just before the hospital birthing industry changed so now it's not quite as accurate. Having the parents in control of the labor is a growing trend in hospitals. Not that our original midwives did anything wrong. After the c-section the nurses told me there was no way that baby would have ever came out naturally, he was just jammed in there weird. And I trust that they are right. There's nothing our first midwifes could have done about that. But honestly, we don't plan on having another baby, but if it did happen I wouldn't go anywhere else to have it. That hospital was fantastic. I recommend it to anyone especially anyone who is interested in having, or at least trying to have a natural birth. Or anyone afraid of having drugs pushed on them. They used the epidural and pitocin perfectly to help along an already troubled labor. And any time they thought they could back off the pitocin they would or occasionally turned it off. There was no pressure to use more and it was always up to us. And to us, eventually you have to start picking your battles differently. having the baby became much more important than any ideal we had about how the labor would go.

But I'm glad our baby boy is out and healthy. And Krystal did an amazing job that I don't think anyone else in the world could have done. She deserves her beautiful son she worked so hard to bring into the world. So ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Elliott Action O'Neal...