Lucia's Birth Story

 Our little Lucia certainly took her time in coming, but when she was ready…oh baby look out! I was a week overdue and feeling a mixture of emotions. A big part of me didn’t want it to happen because I remembered the pain of bringing Callie into the world and all the stress and problems we had once we were home with her. But another part of me was just so dang tired of being pregnant. Luckily this time around I was a good 15 pounds lighter than I was with Callie so the joint pain was nowhere near as bad. 

On March 13^th I had an appointment with Lin to talk about induction. We scheduled it for the evening of March 14^th. Partially because I figured “hey, what’s one more day?” And because Bill and I had one last date night scheduled. Silly, I know but we had wanted to see Hugo for quite some time, so that’s what we did. 

After my appointment with Lin (and my cervix check) I had been feeling a little “off”. Not what I would consider contractions or crampy but just kind of icky. We went to the movie and about 20 minutes in my contractions started. They weren’t bad, not too much worse than my Braxton Hicks so I stayed. About half way through the movie, Bill looked over at me and realized what was happening and started holding my hand. They still weren’t too strong, so we stayed. By the time the movie ended they were getting stronger so home we went. There was one particularly bad one that hit right at the moment Bill went over the giant speed bump by our house. I’m pretty sure I will never look at the speed bump the same ever again.

We went inside the house and told my mom, who had been watching Callie, that Callie should probably go home with her tonight. That was our plan for the hospital stay. Her bag had been packed and at Grandma Tere’s house for weeks at this point. Just before she got ready to go with Grandma, the little bugger put her fingers into the Vicks Vapo Steam reservoir in her humidifier and of course, put her fingers in her mouth while my back was turned to get her blanket and stuffed animals to go to Grandma’s house. I turned around because she was screaming with her mouth open. For a second I couldn’t figure out what had happened but then I caught a whiff of that unmistakable smell of Vicks. We tried to get her to drink some water to flush it out, but she refused. She did take some milk though. In the meantime, I was weathering the contractions  that were coming about 8 minutes apart and Bill was researching camphor poisioning to make sure both Callie and I  didn’t both need to go to the hospital. Luckily she hadn’t consumed enough for it be a problem so off to grandma’s she went after we watched her for a half hour or so to make sure she was ok.

We called Tara, our doula to let her know what was happening. By this point it was about 10:30pm and the contractions were coming fast, about 6 minutes apart. I got in bed since that was where I had labored for quite some time with Callie so that I could rest in between the contractions. Then the contractions were coming harder and harder. We called Tara again and told her we needed her to come. On our last phone call she had told us that even though it was the second baby, we had time but at any time if I wanted her there she would be there. On this phone call I told her I needed her. I was so happy to see her walk in the house. Bill was keeping me hydrated and held my hand through the contractions. We moved to the bathroom, the toilet, even though its not glamorous is the best place for me to labor. It takes some of the pressure of my joints and supports my back a bit. By this point I was pretty much in agony and didn’t know how much more I could take. This labor was so very different from Callie. Callie’s labor was so long and took a while to ramp up while this one came up so fast and hard it was difficult to deal with. Tara helped me with my breathing and massaged me to relax me in between contractions. After a few contractions in the bathroom my back started hurting pretty badly, so we thought that maybe she had turned posterior, the way Callie was. Tara told me we were going to walk to the bedroom and she would rock my pelvis to get her to turn. But the minute I stood up I knew it was too late. I told her I couldn’t. She checked me and said “Ok, time to go. Let’s get in the car.” It suddenly became almost impossible not to push. Tara gave me some breathing techniques to keep from pushing in the car. I was sitting on a pillow in the car when we got going. By this time it was about 1:20 am or so. Bill drove like a bat outta hell to the hospital and thank god he did. Again, totally opposite of Callie’s birth! A few minutes into the drive I was working so hard at not pushing with every ounce of strength in me when I felt something come out. I was terrified it was the baby. I told Bill “Something just came out and I don’t know what it is. And I don’t want to look.” But I reached down to touch whatever it was and it felt a bit like a sticky balloon. When I looked at my hands there was no blood so I figured and hoped to heaven that it wasn’t the baby. We found out later it was my bag of membranes fully in tact. Which apparently doesn’t happen all that often.

We got to the hospital in record time since Bill was driving around 90mph and running red lights.  Luckily we were driving at 1am not at rush hour! We parked and the nurse asked if I could walk to the ER entrance. Uhh. That’s a no. I didn’t even know how I was going to get from the car seat to the wheelchair. They lifted me into the wheelchair and the nurse ran us down the longest hallway known to man. The baby was crowning in the wheelchair. Again I was bearing down so hard to keep the baby in. We got to the room and I opened my eyes and I saw Bethany Monte! She was the midwife who had delivered Callie. She had since left the practice and was a nurse. I couldn’t believe she was there. I was so happy to see her. I almost started crying.

That look right there? That is "Oh, thank god we didn't have the baby in the car, or the parking lot, or the wheelchair, or the hallway..."

 They lifted me out of the wheelchair, my water broke, got me onto the bed, 2 pushes and out she came. There was a point after the first push when Bethany told me “Maria. Stop! Look at me! Look at me!” I stopped and she reminded me “Short pushes.” I must have been tearing pretty strongly and she knew there was no time for cutting.  Thinking about it later, I am pretty sure that her voice was the only voice that would have made me stop. We were probably in the labor and delivery room less than 5 minutes before Lucia was out!

I was so glad she wasn’t born in the car or the hallway and it is crazy to think just how close we came to that! She was born at 1:39am. So we drove from San Jose to Los Gatos and gave birth in the space of 20 minutes!

After she was out they put her on my chest immediately to get my uterus to contract because I had quite a bit of bleeding, just like with Callie. It was nice this time to have her on me the whole time, unlike with Callie because she had meconium and they had to make sure her lungs were clear. Bill got to cut the cord this time too. They stitched me up and got Lucia latched, bathed and weighed. She weighed  7 pounds 14 ounces. Much different than the 8 pounds 6 ounces they were predicting!

Bill got to cut the cord this time!

I did have some trouble with how much blood I had lost. When they helped me to the bathroom some time later I fainted. Out cold for a good minute or so. I awoke to smelling salts and room full of nurses. Talk about a confusing moment! One of my nurses later in our hospital stay summed up smelling salts quite perfectly. “ They wake you up, but they wake you up fighting.” So true! Its basically ammonia and it does wake you up that is for sure! I continued to have trouble with fainting for another day or so, but we finally got it under control with lots of fluids and food.

Second time around, everything is so different. It is nice to be in a place in my head to know what to do, to not be so overwhelmed with a baby. Nursing has gone so much better this time around. I am healing so much faster as well. I don’t know if it’s the fact that I gained less weight, or that my body just knows what to do this time around or the fact that my labor was so much shorter so my body wasn’t as exhausted or maybe it is just a combination of them all.

Baby toes!

Bath time

Callie meets Cia for the first time

All of our nurses were phenomenal. We only had one problem and that was with the pediatrician who came to check on Lucia. He was worried about her weight loss. We were still way under the 10% weight loss that is considered acceptable but he thought she was dehydrated. He seemed to confuse 10 ounces with 10% weight loss which is obviously a huge difference! He advised us to supplement nursing with pedialyte!? Pedialyte, the stuff I don’t even like giving my almost two year old unless she really really needs it. Luckily one of our nurses overheard what he was saying and clearly didn’t agree since I had so much colostrum coming in, it wasn’t like my milk wasn’t going to come in super fast. She couldn’t really argue with a dr but she could put us in touch with the lactation consultant since she technically doesn’t work for the hospital. She put us at ease and we all agreed that pedialyte was a really dumb move. Especially since he was advocating it because some people don’t like to supplement with formula. So pedialyte is better? No thank you. The great thing about the LC is that she was looking at the whole picture. Lucia had had several diapers on her first day so that was most likely where the weight loss had come from. The pediatrician came back again before we left, clearly annoyed that we hadn’t taken his advice but we really could care less. Especially when he was checking Lucia and calling her “Him” and talking about “Why are you crying, I didn’t circumcise you!” We didn’t say a thing, basically just waiting for him to realize his mistake. He eventually did and gave some lame excuse. I really wanted to say “I’m pretty sure female circumcision is illegal in the United States.” But we really just wanted to see how big of a hole he could dig himself.

We brought Lucia home on Friday and Callie came over a few hours later. I am so happy to say that Callie is doing really well with Lucia so far. I was kind of expecting the worst but she loves her little sister. She loves to smile at her and talk about what she is doing and kiss her on the forehead. It is pretty dang sweet.

Sleepy girl

So that’s our story of our baby girl who was almost born in the car and we are so very happy and so much in love with our Lucia Anna.