Birth Stories

This if for the blog carnival over at Maya's Mom.



Mikel-

On March 15th my OB admitted me to the hospital to induce labor. She started by administering cervadil to help my cervix soften. I'd been having tons of contractions, but not dialating AT ALL. After overnight with the cervadil in place and still no dialating the doctor started the pitocin IV. Twelve hours later and I had dialated to a whopping one centimeter. Yipee! My OB was going to leave me overnight and see where we were in the morning. My husband asked if there wasn't anything else we could do to help things along. She looked down at me and said,"let's just go ahead and get you delivered". Great, wonderful, fabulous. Wait a minute. Just how are we going to do that? Ahhhhh, a c-section. Yikes. I freaked out. It wasn't that I was opposed to a c-section, but deathly afraid of it. The anticipation of seeing my baby boy was greater than my fear of the surgery and an hour and a half later there he was. With much pushing on my stomach from my six months pregnant doctor that was on her knees on the operating table. Even with the epidural it was pretty uncomfortable. When the assisting doctor pulled Mikel out everyone in the room said "whoa!" Mikel was 8 lbs. 13oz. He was a big boy. I might also mention that the doctor attempted the inducement at 38 weeks because she was afraid I was going to have a ten pound baby. Not a good thing for a petite lady. Mikel will be 7 years on this March 16th and I still think of him as that tiny little baby they brought to me in the hospital.

Katie-

Katie was a scheduled c-section. With my mom coming from out of town to watch Mikel it just seemed easier to schedule the birth than to take a chance and not have anyone available to watch Mikel. Unlike Mikel's birth, Katie's was a walk in the park. 45 minutes and welcome to the world baby girl! It's a good thing that we had scheduled the c-section. Katie has done things her own way from the start. She was breach and came out feet first. Let me tell you, a kickin' baby and a cervix do not make for a very comfortable mommy. When they brought me back into the room my mom was disgusted. She said there was no way that I had just had a baby. I looked like I had just gone for a walk and came back with a baby. Thank goodness there was none of the uncontrollable shaking and vomiting like after I had Mikel. It was very nice and wonderful experience. We could hear Katie crying all the way in the nursery. Since I had gestational diabetes they had to check her blood sugar. They were trying to get her to take a bottle and she was having none of it. Katie was a breastfeeding baby from the word go. Oh she would drink a bottle. Then throw it right back up. She's not stubborn. She's assertive and very patient. While I really wanted a girl with a strong will, I'm not sure that this was what I meant. Lord have mercy on the man she marries. He better have a good job and the patience of a saint.