Saturday Sept. 6 - 39 weeks pregnant- We were sitting eating lunch, about to go up to the school to set up the boys school lunch accounts, then go swimming. Dan started cleaning up lunch while I finished up my plate. I was just sitting there eating when out of nowhere, there was a little trickle of water into my seat. I wondered what in the world was going on, when then another little trickle came out. WHAAAAT? I drew in breath to tell Dan what had happened when a third and rather large gush of water came out. WHAT IN THE WORLD!!! My water has never broken at home and I got really scared because other times when the doctor has broken my water at the hospital, I was pushing a baby out within minutes. Plus, it was a full week before my due date and my babies never come early! I called out to Dan to tell him what happened, and the two of us were hilarious. It was like a movie. He got really wide eyed and went into hyper-speed, running around the house saying "What do we need, what can I do??" I ran to the bathroom to take care of myself and more water came out. I didn't know how much time we had, so I started telling my boys things they could do to help, and everyone was running around trying to get ready to go. I called my friends on my on-call list, told them what happened, and they were ready to take the boys whenever we were. I also sent a message to my midwife so she knew what was going on. We actually got ready to go pretty quickly, but I hadn't had any intense contractions, so I decided to wait a little while to see if things started getting going. We all calmed down a bit, and Dan and I finished some things around the house.
Around dinner time, we decided to take the boys to their friends houses so they could get settled in and go to bed there. That way if we needed to leave in the middle of the night, we could without having to disturb everyone. They were all super excited to go their friends' houses, and we dropped them off all smiles and excitement. My contractions were starting to get more regular, but not more intense. Dan and I had a nice relaxing night, drinking milkshakes, having snacks, and watching TV. I timed my contractions and they were around 3 minutes apart. I had had a few more intense contractions, but not consistently. I didn't want to get to the hospital too soon, so we decided to wait some more. Around 11pm I decided to go to bed to try to get some sleep. Dan was still a little scared that things could change quickly and just reminded me not to try to wait too long to get to the hospital. We went to bed and when I lay down I had several hard contractions and water kept gushing out with each of those contractions. I tried to get some sleep, but those harder contractions were making it really difficult. The contractions were only a few minutes apart, so I decided we should probably head to the hospital since based on previous labors, I could go from those contractions to pushing a baby out within an hour or so. I sent a message to my midwife Charlene telling her we were going to head to the hospital before things got too intense. I did NOT want to be on the road in Doha in active labor. Around 1am we were headed to the hospital!
Sept 7- We arrived at Doha Clinic Hospital about 15 minutes after 1am and headed up to the first floor of the hospital. We had never been there before, so we followed the signs leading to the delivery room. The first door we passed said "staff only" so we kept walking and came to hall that seemed to dead end with a keypad access door. Ok then. So we went back down the hall to see if we had missed anything and double checked to see if we had read the sign correctly. We had and we retraced our steps down the hallway, back to the keypad door. I decided to try that door and it actually opened, so we went through it and it dead ended at another locked door and a green curtain. I peeked behind the curtain and it lead to a hallway blocked by a divider. Sheesh. So I walked up to the divider and as I did, a nurse opened it from the other side and literally just stared at us. I asked if this was the delivery room and she said yes, but you're supposed to enter from the other door. We told her that door said "staff only" and she stared at us again and finally said we could come in. So she walked back to the desk, not saying anything to us, or asking anything about why we might be there or anything. Dan and I looked at each other like "What the heck?" So I just started talking and telling her what happened that afternoon. I was actually starting to wonder if she could understand us, because she was not responding! So finally I just said, "So I'm here to have a baby." She was quiet and finally responded asking if I had a file there. It took me a few times explaining things and a few times of her responding (her accent was hard to decipher!) for us to figure out what in the world we were supposed to do. Anyways, it was the most awkward encounter ever and I was SO RELIEVED when Charlene walked through the door just then. Someone who speaks good English and is on my team! Charlene had worked at that hospital and met that nurse before and kind of knew what to expect and was able to help things get moving.
We finally got settled and the nurse checked me and DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING and left the room. Charlene and I just laughed because it was so ridiculous, and she finally went out in the hall and asked the nurse how many cm dilated I was. I was about a 4 and things actually still hadn't progressed much. That non-communicative nurse was the source of lots of laughs, and I was so glad Charlene was there so I got any information at all. My contractions had basically stopped getting any more intense and I really wasn't making much progress. We were all getting pretty tired and Charlene convinced Dan to go up to the recovery room that had already been assigned to us to get some sleep. They told us a certain room and he went up there and lay down in the bed and fell asleep. Not long after a couple nurses walked into that room and acted very surprised to see him there. Apparently the nurse downstairs had told us the wrong room, and those upstairs nurses were pretty shocked to find a man sleeping in the bed! So they took him to the correct room and he was able to get a little sleep in there. In the end I was up all night with my midwife, I was walking around and bouncing on the birth ball, trying to get anything happening. Around 6am I finally fell asleep for a little while and so did she. I kept apologizing to her for dragging her out of bed. She said I did the right thing based on my history and the water breaking and everything.
Around 7am at shift change we got some actual human beings for nurses: several sweet Filipino ladies who actually volunteered information and even responded to us! It was refreshing :). My doctor came to visit me about 9am and checked me to see what was going on. I had progressed to a 5, but he said he could feel my water was still intact. HUH?? So I asked what in the world had been leaking out of me all night (because I had lost A LOT of fluid) and he said what had happened was the bag had broken somewhere else, like probably up by my ribs or something, and the fluid was coming out from there. That meant that the risk of infection was still real, as in I still needed to have the baby by 24 hours after the water broke, but because the water hadn't broken near my cervix, it didn't cause the baby to descend and send me into active labor. He decided to break my water at my cervix to see if that would get things going. He was having a hard time breaking my water, but finally he did and there was yet another big GUSH. The plan was that if by about 11am things hadn't gotten moving, he would give me some pitocin to get this baby out. Well, even after he broke my water, there was no change. The doctor had some appointments at his clinic and said he would get back as soon as possible to deliver the baby. So until he got back I was in the hands of the nurses and the on-call doctor at the hospital. At about 10:30 I was still stalled and resigned myself to my pitocin fate. I had been walking and bouncing and all that all morning long, so I lay down to rest before having to deal with the delivery.
The doctor on call came to check me, and she said I was at 6cm and that my water bag was still intact. WHAAAAT??? Dan, Charlene and I laughed at the somehow indestructible water bag. That doctor left without saying anything else and Charlene was really annoyed that she didn't break whatever was left of that membrane. So along came 11am and the nurses came in to administer the pitocin. By 11:30 I had my IV and was ready to be done with this whole business!! Charlene guessed baby would be born by 1:30, Dan guessed 3pm and I sided with Charlene :). By about 12 the contractions started getting more regular and much harder, and I got a lot quieter. I have to insert here that I had been studying some hypnobirthing techniques from this website and I have to say I wish I had gotten into that 5 babies ago! It helped me SO much. I was really able to deal with the contractions so much better than I ever have before. In fact, it was kind of funny because I was able to deal with the contractions so well that I think I threw everyone off and they didn't realize how close I was to delivering. I had just been sitting in bed with the baby monitor on my belly, holding Dan's hand and getting really quiet for each contraction (other than asking Dan to tell me how awesome I was...) as I repeated my hypnobirthing mantras and scenes to myself in my mind. I started breathing harder during contractions, and Charlene was asking if I was feeling the urge to push. Not yet. Suddenly there was a rush of discomfort and I told Dan and Charlene that I needed to move, so they helped me get onto my side and not 5 seconds later I felt a huge surge, let out a good yell and baby started to come out!! The nurses were AWESOME and swooped in and got to work delivering that baby, as neither my doctor nor the doctor on call made it in time. Within about 60 seconds, baby girl was out!! And she was actually a girl!!!
They placed her on my belly and I absolutely could not hold back the tears. That was probably one of the most emotional moments of my entire life. I had harbored so much fear during this pregnancy: fears of the all the unknowns about giving birth on the other side of the planet, fears of things going wrong during the delivery, fears of something happening to the baby, and they all melted away. I was so overcome by emotion to have my little girl, my last baby, my little Pearl. The tears flowed as I could not contain the sheer joy of the moment. Happy, happy, happy tears.
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Now, I probably should end the story there, and I wish it had ended on such a high note, but the next few minutes I kind of wish I could erase from my little story.... This is a little TMI, so skip over the next paragraph if you don't want too many details...
Since my doctor had missed the delivery, the on-call doctor came in at this point to finish things up. She was a small Arab woman, maybe 5 feet tall, with a headscarf and little round glasses. She didn't say much to me at all, but proceeded to deliver the placenta and start cleaning me up. I am not sure if she thought I had had an epidural, or if she was just a terrible human being, but she had no regard for the fact that I could feel everything she was doing!! I won't go into too much detail, but let's just say she was not gentle while trying to see if I had torn and then did not wait for the lidocaine to kick in before stitching me up! YOWCH!! My doctor came in the room just as she was sewing me up (I only had one tiny tear) and he, my midwife, and I were all imploring her to be more gentle to me. She paid no attention to any of us, so my doctor actually gave me some laughing gas so I could stand what she was doing. Way to kill the moment, woman... Finally she finished and left the room (good riddance!) and I was able to go back to my happy place and hold my beautiful baby girl :).
**********************
I was pretty much on the verge of tears the whole rest of that day. So indescribably happy I could hardly contain myself. I just couldn't believe that my baby GIRL was here and that for the most part things went really well. I feel like she is the most loved little person on the planet, with her 5 big brothers and two adoring parents. We are all so in love.
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Around dinner time, we decided to take the boys to their friends houses so they could get settled in and go to bed there. That way if we needed to leave in the middle of the night, we could without having to disturb everyone. They were all super excited to go their friends' houses, and we dropped them off all smiles and excitement. My contractions were starting to get more regular, but not more intense. Dan and I had a nice relaxing night, drinking milkshakes, having snacks, and watching TV. I timed my contractions and they were around 3 minutes apart. I had had a few more intense contractions, but not consistently. I didn't want to get to the hospital too soon, so we decided to wait some more. Around 11pm I decided to go to bed to try to get some sleep. Dan was still a little scared that things could change quickly and just reminded me not to try to wait too long to get to the hospital. We went to bed and when I lay down I had several hard contractions and water kept gushing out with each of those contractions. I tried to get some sleep, but those harder contractions were making it really difficult. The contractions were only a few minutes apart, so I decided we should probably head to the hospital since based on previous labors, I could go from those contractions to pushing a baby out within an hour or so. I sent a message to my midwife Charlene telling her we were going to head to the hospital before things got too intense. I did NOT want to be on the road in Doha in active labor. Around 1am we were headed to the hospital!
Sept 7- We arrived at Doha Clinic Hospital about 15 minutes after 1am and headed up to the first floor of the hospital. We had never been there before, so we followed the signs leading to the delivery room. The first door we passed said "staff only" so we kept walking and came to hall that seemed to dead end with a keypad access door. Ok then. So we went back down the hall to see if we had missed anything and double checked to see if we had read the sign correctly. We had and we retraced our steps down the hallway, back to the keypad door. I decided to try that door and it actually opened, so we went through it and it dead ended at another locked door and a green curtain. I peeked behind the curtain and it lead to a hallway blocked by a divider. Sheesh. So I walked up to the divider and as I did, a nurse opened it from the other side and literally just stared at us. I asked if this was the delivery room and she said yes, but you're supposed to enter from the other door. We told her that door said "staff only" and she stared at us again and finally said we could come in. So she walked back to the desk, not saying anything to us, or asking anything about why we might be there or anything. Dan and I looked at each other like "What the heck?" So I just started talking and telling her what happened that afternoon. I was actually starting to wonder if she could understand us, because she was not responding! So finally I just said, "So I'm here to have a baby." She was quiet and finally responded asking if I had a file there. It took me a few times explaining things and a few times of her responding (her accent was hard to decipher!) for us to figure out what in the world we were supposed to do. Anyways, it was the most awkward encounter ever and I was SO RELIEVED when Charlene walked through the door just then. Someone who speaks good English and is on my team! Charlene had worked at that hospital and met that nurse before and kind of knew what to expect and was able to help things get moving.
We finally got settled and the nurse checked me and DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING and left the room. Charlene and I just laughed because it was so ridiculous, and she finally went out in the hall and asked the nurse how many cm dilated I was. I was about a 4 and things actually still hadn't progressed much. That non-communicative nurse was the source of lots of laughs, and I was so glad Charlene was there so I got any information at all. My contractions had basically stopped getting any more intense and I really wasn't making much progress. We were all getting pretty tired and Charlene convinced Dan to go up to the recovery room that had already been assigned to us to get some sleep. They told us a certain room and he went up there and lay down in the bed and fell asleep. Not long after a couple nurses walked into that room and acted very surprised to see him there. Apparently the nurse downstairs had told us the wrong room, and those upstairs nurses were pretty shocked to find a man sleeping in the bed! So they took him to the correct room and he was able to get a little sleep in there. In the end I was up all night with my midwife, I was walking around and bouncing on the birth ball, trying to get anything happening. Around 6am I finally fell asleep for a little while and so did she. I kept apologizing to her for dragging her out of bed. She said I did the right thing based on my history and the water breaking and everything.
Around 7am at shift change we got some actual human beings for nurses: several sweet Filipino ladies who actually volunteered information and even responded to us! It was refreshing :). My doctor came to visit me about 9am and checked me to see what was going on. I had progressed to a 5, but he said he could feel my water was still intact. HUH?? So I asked what in the world had been leaking out of me all night (because I had lost A LOT of fluid) and he said what had happened was the bag had broken somewhere else, like probably up by my ribs or something, and the fluid was coming out from there. That meant that the risk of infection was still real, as in I still needed to have the baby by 24 hours after the water broke, but because the water hadn't broken near my cervix, it didn't cause the baby to descend and send me into active labor. He decided to break my water at my cervix to see if that would get things going. He was having a hard time breaking my water, but finally he did and there was yet another big GUSH. The plan was that if by about 11am things hadn't gotten moving, he would give me some pitocin to get this baby out. Well, even after he broke my water, there was no change. The doctor had some appointments at his clinic and said he would get back as soon as possible to deliver the baby. So until he got back I was in the hands of the nurses and the on-call doctor at the hospital. At about 10:30 I was still stalled and resigned myself to my pitocin fate. I had been walking and bouncing and all that all morning long, so I lay down to rest before having to deal with the delivery.
The doctor on call came to check me, and she said I was at 6cm and that my water bag was still intact. WHAAAAT??? Dan, Charlene and I laughed at the somehow indestructible water bag. That doctor left without saying anything else and Charlene was really annoyed that she didn't break whatever was left of that membrane. So along came 11am and the nurses came in to administer the pitocin. By 11:30 I had my IV and was ready to be done with this whole business!! Charlene guessed baby would be born by 1:30, Dan guessed 3pm and I sided with Charlene :). By about 12 the contractions started getting more regular and much harder, and I got a lot quieter. I have to insert here that I had been studying some hypnobirthing techniques from this website and I have to say I wish I had gotten into that 5 babies ago! It helped me SO much. I was really able to deal with the contractions so much better than I ever have before. In fact, it was kind of funny because I was able to deal with the contractions so well that I think I threw everyone off and they didn't realize how close I was to delivering. I had just been sitting in bed with the baby monitor on my belly, holding Dan's hand and getting really quiet for each contraction (other than asking Dan to tell me how awesome I was...) as I repeated my hypnobirthing mantras and scenes to myself in my mind. I started breathing harder during contractions, and Charlene was asking if I was feeling the urge to push. Not yet. Suddenly there was a rush of discomfort and I told Dan and Charlene that I needed to move, so they helped me get onto my side and not 5 seconds later I felt a huge surge, let out a good yell and baby started to come out!! The nurses were AWESOME and swooped in and got to work delivering that baby, as neither my doctor nor the doctor on call made it in time. Within about 60 seconds, baby girl was out!! And she was actually a girl!!!
They placed her on my belly and I absolutely could not hold back the tears. That was probably one of the most emotional moments of my entire life. I had harbored so much fear during this pregnancy: fears of the all the unknowns about giving birth on the other side of the planet, fears of things going wrong during the delivery, fears of something happening to the baby, and they all melted away. I was so overcome by emotion to have my little girl, my last baby, my little Pearl. The tears flowed as I could not contain the sheer joy of the moment. Happy, happy, happy tears.
*********************
Now, I probably should end the story there, and I wish it had ended on such a high note, but the next few minutes I kind of wish I could erase from my little story.... This is a little TMI, so skip over the next paragraph if you don't want too many details...
Since my doctor had missed the delivery, the on-call doctor came in at this point to finish things up. She was a small Arab woman, maybe 5 feet tall, with a headscarf and little round glasses. She didn't say much to me at all, but proceeded to deliver the placenta and start cleaning me up. I am not sure if she thought I had had an epidural, or if she was just a terrible human being, but she had no regard for the fact that I could feel everything she was doing!! I won't go into too much detail, but let's just say she was not gentle while trying to see if I had torn and then did not wait for the lidocaine to kick in before stitching me up! YOWCH!! My doctor came in the room just as she was sewing me up (I only had one tiny tear) and he, my midwife, and I were all imploring her to be more gentle to me. She paid no attention to any of us, so my doctor actually gave me some laughing gas so I could stand what she was doing. Way to kill the moment, woman... Finally she finished and left the room (good riddance!) and I was able to go back to my happy place and hold my beautiful baby girl :).
**********************
I was pretty much on the verge of tears the whole rest of that day. So indescribably happy I could hardly contain myself. I just couldn't believe that my baby GIRL was here and that for the most part things went really well. I feel like she is the most loved little person on the planet, with her 5 big brothers and two adoring parents. We are all so in love.
My beautiful Pearl....
and her adoring brothers.
Happy, happy, happy.
What an adventure! I'm glad everything worked out and you're all well and happy. Such a cute little one!!
ReplyDeleteI love reading birthing stories! Thanks for posting your and I am so happy that it turned out well! She is beautiful!
ReplyDeleteWhat an incredible story! I have some choice words for the dr who stitched you up but I won't share them :)
ReplyDelete