Charlie's Birth Story

Our baby boy came early.  We're not sure why but Monday morning, around 4am, my water broke.  I was admitted to the hospital and met with the on-call doctor.  She said she wanted me on hospital bed rest and wanted to try to see if I could make it another 2 days to a week.  As I started to prepare myself for that, shift change happened and a new doctor came on-call.  She said that due to the increased risk of infection, she would prefer we let nature take its course and get me delivered since the chances of infection increase as time passes.  She also made it clear that if labor didn't kick in naturally, she wanted to start pitocin.  Throughout my pregnancy, I was adamant about not getting pitocin.  I'd heard horror stories about it and wanted to avoid it.  While talking to the nurses, they said that pitocin can be used in very small doses to kick start labor and it does not necessarily have to be an evil thing.  So, I was feeling more confident that if pitocin was needed, it would be OK.  Andy and I discussed transferring to a larger hospital with a Level 3 NICU (Corvallis has a Level 2).  Part of us thought we were crazy not to.  Charlie might need lots of assistance with his breathing since he would be born at 34 weeks and 4 days.  We went back and forth and struggled to make the "right" decision.  Finally, Andy said he really could go either way so I told him my gut said to stay - stay close to home, with hospital staff we trusted.  So we stayed.

While all that was going on, labor started.  I walked the halls and sat on the birthing ball, soaked in the jacuzzi and kept breathing.  By the time I was 7 centimeters, I had an epidural and finally relaxed.  Andy napped.  I cracked jokes with the nurses.  Things were good.

Right as I was reaching 10 centimeters, while I was having a contraction, Charlie's heart rate dropped and then the monitors lost his heartbeat.  Two nurses tried to find it but couldn't.  I heard nurses saying things like, "make sure the doctor is on her way" and "is there anyone else that can put in an internal monitor?"  I was terrified.  The hospital had an on-call midwife who was at the hospital and rushed in and placed an internal monitor on Charlie.  His heartbeat wasn't sounding normal.  It would beat twice and then there would be a long pause.  The nurses wanted to try another monitor, saying that sometimes, the monitor wires are defective.  The second monitor picked up a beautiful, strong heartbeat.

As the doctor arrived and I was ready to deliver, a set of twins were also on their way and the pediatric team of a NICU doctor and nurse and respiratory therapist were tied up with them.  The doctor waited for the nurses to get the room set up for delivery and joked that she was stalling so the team could get over to our room.  I told her I was happy to wait until Charlie's team was standing by - the epidural came in handy.  After 45 minutes, Charlie was born and other than one good cry, was either squeaky or quiet.  He was taken straight to the warming table and the team worked to help him breathe.  Before knowing how he was doing, they took him to the NICU to work on him some more.  Andy looked at me and I knew he was looking for confirmation that what I'd told him throughout my pregnancy was still true - that if the baby was taken out of the room for any reason, he was to go with him. I was fine but I didn't know about Charlie.  I wanted Andy to be there with him.  The doctor and nurses cleaned me up and updated me on Charlie when they found out something new.  The updates were brief and not with the detail I wanted.  My amazing nurse went down to the NICU for me and took a few photos and soaked up all the information she could for me.  He was doing OK, on CPAP and oxygen to help him with his breathing, but otherwise doing well. He weighed an even 6 pounds and I could see him holding Andy's finger in a photo that the nurse took for me.

 After 2 hours, I was moved to the postpartum area of the floor.  On the way, I was able to stop and see and hold Charlie.  By that time, he was off his CPAP and oxygen.  He was squished and red and had a huge cone head and was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen.

After two days in the hospital, things were looking good.  We had learned to how to "finger feed" Charlie using a tube, syringe and our finger and his weight was doing well.  He passed his car seat test and hearing screening, and was negative for jaundice and infection.  We were schooled on a detailed feeding plan that involved supplementing with high calorie formula and fortifiers for my breast milk.  While in the hospital, we met with a lactation consultant several times.  She thought that due to Charlie's prematurity, he didn't yet know how to suck and swallow and would need to "train" in order to do this well and that it might take until his due date for him to be able to nurse without help.  I've been able to provide Charlie with 100% fortified breast milk for a few days now which thrills me even though it's a long process to be able to do that.  Three years to the day after Andy proposed, we took our little boy home.

At his check up the next day, we found out his bilirubin and it was too high  and Charlie needed to be re-admitted to the hospital for light therapy.  He spent around 12 hours resting comfortably in what the nurses called his "space suit".  He was finally released from the hospital yesterday after a very frustrating day of doctors seeming to contradict each other and themselves and sending us very confusing messages.

We are ridiculously smitten with our little peanut and cannot believe he is here and doing so well.  More soon.