It started like any other Tuesday had in the past couple months. It was October 24, the due date. I went to work, Amy was at home and we planned to go to our church small group that evening before watching the Tigers and Cardinals in the World Series.
But when I got home, things started to change. Amy wasn’t feeling all that great, so we opted out of small group. We ate dinner, and just hung out for a bit. Seven o’clock came, that’s when they started – the contractions.
At first, about 15-20 minutes apart, stronger than any Amy had experienced before, but only a small dose of what was to come. We watched the first seven innings, occasionally taking breaks to walk around the house, trying to make it through what we were realizing was the start of labor.
Amy went to bed before the game ended, she was pretty tired already. I followed her shortly after the Tigers had lost. Neither of us slept more than 2 minutes in a row for the next many hours.
For most of the night, they were averaging 12 minutes apart. Amy never slept, I managed to doze for a couple minutes between a few of the contractions. A couple times the intervals were less than 5-6 minutes, and they were getting stronger.
By the morning, we were dead tired. Our friend Jessica came over in the morning, and I took a short nap while she helped Amy through contractions. By 10 a.m., 15 hours into labor, the contractions were averaging around 4-8 minutes apart, most were at least a minute long and they were really strong. Amy had to work really hard to get through them. For some reason the only position she was able to use during the contractions was leaning over a chair in our living room, resting her entire body weight on her wrists. Many times she was up on her tip toes throughout the contraction. So much for the Lamaze techniques and the nice relaxing positions we practiced.
At noon, we called the doctor’s office. They suggested we come in to their office first so they could make the decision to admit us. A little after 1 p.m. we were leaving our house for the last time married, without children.
We got to the doctor’s office and she was immediately checked. At 1:30 p.m. she was 4 cm and 90%, a pretty good start. The doctor told her to head to the hospital. At 2 p.m. we were checked into the Family Birth Center at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor. Jessica walked Amy into the hospital and I unloaded our bags and parked the car.
We had called our friends Amy and Ronni, who had agreed to be with us during labor and delivery along with Jessica. A really cool God thing was that our midwife, Hellen, had the day off, but agreed to come in anyways and be with us during the day. She wasn’t supposed to be able to stay because she had a bible study meeting at her house that evening, but she went home to let everyone in to her home and came BACK to the hospital to be with us through the duration of the birth. It was amazing having Hellen, Jessica, Amy W, and Ronni with us – something we will never be able to repay and will never forget. It was the perfect combination of people – we prayed a lot, everyone encouraged Amy in their own way and from their own experience and wisdom – God really did have the perfect team assembled for Jack’s birth.
By the time I got into the hospital, Jessica and Amy were just starting to walk to our room. Amy’s contractions were still coming strong, getting longer and coming closer together. I don’t know about Amy, but in my eyes things were moving really fast, and I had my sights set on a quick delivery. I figured by that evening, we’d have our Jack in our arms. Time would prove me to be very wrong.
Nothing of much significance happened in the next few hours. No major developments, just lots of contractions and Amy in a lot of pain. She was working so hard, and it was so hard for me to see her in that much pain. By 5 p.m., however, we hadn’t progressed very much. In fact, she was still only at 4 cm. Hellen suggested breaking the water, and this intervention basically started the road to all of the interventions we had been so hoping to avoid. We had done a lot of research on natural un-medicated childbirth and were really committed to trying that. We had agreed on a 24 hour time limit without pain meds before we would consider epidural – we knew by that amount of time with no sleep the epidural would allow sleep and rest. We went into the hospital with a “birth plan” and Hellen joked the following day that we basically went line by line and did everything we said we wanted to avoid – in the end all that mattered to us was a healthy baby and mama.
After the water was broken the contractions were coming hard and fast, which is what we wanted, but Amy was not coping well with them – she had been standing through one contraction after another for almost 24 hours and was tired and frustrated. At about 23 hours Hellen suggested we think about pain meds – as soon as we decided to go ahead with the epidural it couldn’t come fast enough – Amy was really scared (anyone who knows her knows she HATES needles of any kind) of the procedure since it involved an IV and a needle in her spine – but at that point it was worth it to get it over with. They also started pitocin in her IV to make her contractions stronger and more regular – it was amazing watching the huge contractions happening on the screen and her not able to feel a thing.
As soon as the epidural took effect things were completely different. Amy was able to lay down and talk with the rest of us, we had the Pistons game on, Amy would say it was actually even fun for a few minutes – getting to see and talk to everyone. I called the Vanbemmelens because the hospital cafeteria was closed and I knew they would bring me some dinner. Katie dropped it off and Amy wanted to see her so she came to visit for a few minuts. Amy was able to sleep a little and in typical Amy fashion was saying funny things that didn’t make any sense in her sleep/drug state.
Transition came, a period when you are almost ready to start pushing, contractions coming hard and close together – even though Amy couldn’t feel the contractions she was experiencing all the other side effects of transition – chills, nausea, uncontrollable shaking even with warm blankets – it wasn’t very fun. At 11:00 pm there still wasn’t much progress, but by 12:00 AM she was at a 9, almost ready to go – Hellen was worried that she wasn’t going to progress past that so decided to try a few “pushing contractions”.
That was the start of the pushing which lasted over 3 hours. The three girls and I were surrounding Amy, offering lots of support and encouragement during each contraction – but after 2+ hours Amy was getting really discouraged. We could see Jack’s head but she couldn’t feel any progress so was starting to want to give up. A few mentions of forceps or a vacuum on Jack’s tiny head and she was pushing her hardest again. At one point I felt like I needed to sit down, and so I walked over to a chair- that was probably the one point where Amy really yelled at me – she couldn’t believe I was sitting down needing to “rest” while she was working so hard! Hellen said that an episiotomy was needed to get Jack’s head out – even though that was something we didn’t want, Amy quickly agreed, wanting to avoid a c-section.
When Jack finally came out they put him on Amy’s stomach but she couldn’t really concentrate on him because Hellen was busy starting to stitch her up. Because of the epidural Amy had spiked an “epidural fever”, so when Jack came out he had a fever too and had to be immediately tended to by pediatricians who took him away to the NICU to get antibiotics for the fever. Jessica and Ronni managed to get a few pictures of Jack before they took him away, and were showing Amy during her stitches. I went with Jack to the NICU and the 3 girls stayed with Amy, who would probably say that the next 30 minutes were the worst of her labor. She was upset that they had taken Jack away and she hadn’t really seen him, and also was able to feel all the stitches.
Jack and I were in the NICU for about 2 hours before we could get back to see Amy, who was by this time alone in the birthing room and feeling really depressed and overwhelmed, tired and in pain. Once I gave Jack to her she cheered up and we wheeled over to the mother and baby unit where we would spend the next three days.
After his bath, mom and Jack had some bonding time.
Then pappa got to fill him in on the finer points of nap-taking, since pappa had just practiced for about 45 minutes in the recliner.
Jack also took his first trip in his swing this weekend. Luckily the Lions weren't on so he doesn't have to suffer through that until next weekend. The next couple days should be just us hanging out at home and getting used to being a family.
