Posted By: Marcy, Ezra's mommy (12/29/99)
Sunday, 2 January 2000, at 5:52 p.m.
I'M HERE! AND HERE IS THE LONG AWAITED BIRTH STORY
Well, I can say that in the end,
it's all worth it.
Ezra is just beautiful and a bundle of love.
Getting him here,
though, was a bit of a struggle.
Here is the birth story,
which should not be read by those who dream of a
quick & easy induction
(consider yourselves forwarned!):

We went to the hospital on
Monday 12/27 at 11:00am and did
the admissions paperwork. They had us
upstairs in the "Antipartum" area
by noon and hooked up to the fetal monitor.
However, the doc on call for
my practice did not know he was
supposed to start me on the Cervidel
gel due to a minor communication
mixup, so that didn't get started
until 2:30pm. He did an internal
first and I was at fingertip dilated, baby at
-3 station, 20% effaced -- basically
no improvement from the previous
Monday's exam. Oh well -- hurry up
and wait. So they insert the gel and
we wait, and wait, and wait.
Nothing seems to be happening. Around
9:00pm I send DH home to get sleep,
since it appears that the next day
will be THE BIG ONE with the
anticipated start of the pitocin drip.
I settle in, and around 10:00pm
my nurse comes running in frantically
and within a minute has the cervidel gel
removed and me hooked up to
an IV of dextrose. Seems the baby's
heart rate took a fairly significant
deceleration and they were worried
he was not tolerating the effect of the
gel well. The IV was hooked up since
I was still gestational diabetic
and had eaten very little all day (on
their orders, in case things got moving quickly).
Nothing else was scheduled for
me until morning, so they
told me to just rest up.
Easier said than done.

Around midnight they fill the other
bed in my room with another person
who was also scheduled to be
induced. However, this roommate was
one and a half weeks overdue.
As soon as they got her in the bed
and hooked to the fetal monitor,
they said "Holy cow, you're already
contracting 3-4 minutes apart!" Her
doctor came in to check her out and
she was 2cm dilated. However, all the
labor & delivery suites were in
use at that moment, so they couldn't
move her to LDR yet. To complicate things,
she had a hearing loss
and her DH was profoundly deaf.
They had to quickly find a TTY
phone so she could call her interpreter to
get that person to the hospital ASAP,
since she didn't know if she'd be able
to communicate herself in the
heat of the action. And since
DH was profoundly deaf,
the nurses didn't want
him going anywhere since
they had no way to communicate with him
if something happened.
So they were there in my antipartum
room until 4:30am when an LDR room
opened up for her.
So much for rest for me for that night!

Around 8:00am Tuesday 12/28 they move me
from antipartum to an LDR room to begin
the pitocin drip. The
doc on call does an internal
first to see if the cervidel gel
from the day before had any effect -- no dice.
Everything was unchanged.
They start the drip at 7 units,
and over the next 10 hours have me up to 27
units (maximum they do is 30 units).
Baby seems to tolerate the pitocin
better than he did the cervidel the
day before. I get into a regular contraction
pattern 2-3 minutes apart for moderately strong
contractions. By 6:00pm my cervix still
had not dilated any further. Plus,
now it appears that the spiny point of my cervix
may be a bit small, although it is too
early to tell. They stop the drip. They say
that all the pitocin receptors
in the body are probably overstressed
at this point. My doc, who happens to
have the on-call at that point,
lays out various options for us.
We could go home and come back the next day
to do the pitocin again. We
could go home and come back in a week,
a few days past EDD. We could
schedule a c-section. Or we
can try again with another round
of cervidel gel that night, to be
followed by more pitocin the next morning.
Since the baby seemed to tolerate the
pitocin well, and that has more of an
effect on his system than
cervidel, we decide on
the last option. They give a little
time for the pitocin to drain
out of my system, then
they insert round 2 of cervidel.
This time they monitor me even
closer during the night, and although the
baby's heart rate did a few decels,
they let the gel stay in to do it's
thing the full 12 hours of the dosage. By
7:00am Wednesday 12/29, they check my
cervix again. While it is much softer
than it had been, it is still
unchanged at fingertip dilated.
They go ahead and start round 2 of pitocin.
Again, I get into a regular
contraction pattern 2-3 minutes apart,
this time with even stronger contractions
registering than the day
before. Again, by 12:30 pm my cervix
was almost unchanged at 1cm dilated.
It was still too closed for them
to even consider breaking my waters.
At this point it is quite evident that
induction just isn't gonna work
with this kid. My contractions
were way strong enough to bring
on all the "action" yet nothing was
happening. A c-section was now inevitable.
However, it was another 4 hours before
the doc on-call could
get me into the OR to do
the c-section. More hurry up and wait.

Since I had never dilated, I had not
received any pain medication in all this time.
For the c-section, they
gave me a spinal block.
That was one weird sensation going in,
I have to say! Very strange to be aware you
have more to your body than you can feel
or control. Once the spinal block was in,
everything moved very
quickly. They started the
procedure at 4:47pm, and
Ezra Ephraim made his worldly
appearance at 5:06pm
with a loud wail.
He was in great shape and had
APGAR scores of 8 & 9.
DH was by my side through the
whole ordeal, and managed not to
faint even though he is deathly afraid of
doctors and operations. The
funniest part of the day was
when the doc doing the c-section
"found" my fibroid. I guess he had not
reviewed the part of my charts that
indicated I have a sizeable pedunculated fibroid,
and all of a sudden I hear him say
"Holy cow look at the size of that thing!"
He even showed the actual fibroid to DH!
They left it alone, though,
since they could not deal with that
simultaneous to a c-section due to a risk
of too much bleeding.

Whew! Since I had a c-section,
I was in post-partum recovery for
4 days at the hospital, and just came
home this afternoon. Boy did I take
advantage of every hour of skilled nursing care
I could! I quizzed every nurse and lactation
specialist in the place about my technique
to make sure Ezra was being fed all right
and not doing too much damage to my poor boobs.
Let me tell you, no matter what anybody says, when
you have a little feller suckling on you at what
one nurse said was the equivalent of
200 lbs of pressure, it HURTS!
We've got the rhythm of it all going, though,
so no worries about his feedings anymore.

Well, I hear him stirring so I need to wrap
things up. I'm sure I missed the birth
stories of others during my
week-long absence from the board.
Could y'all fill me in please!

Thanks!

Marcy, Ezra's mommy (12/29/99)

LisaAnne --aka Galen's Mom 12.8.99
A week later--our birth story
Tuesday, 14 December 1999, at 4:41 p.m.

I have my reservations about writing such a very very very
long birth story, but I hope it helps someone else. I come
out of this with two pieces of advice: 1. hire a doula. 2.
believe what your body is telling you. It knows what it's
doing, even if you don't.

Wednesday morning started as usual: my alarm went off at
6:40. I was a little more uncomfortable than I had
been the day before, but that was not unexpected, and my
prenatal appointment the previous evening had made it
sound like I would definitely be able to work the rest of
the week. I did the usual morning stuff and Dh and I drove
to work together.

Wednesday was the first day of our end of the semester
portfolio reviews for all of our majors. On 15-minute
intervals, we meet with each student and discuss all of
their work for the semester. During the first session of the
day, I discovered that the chairs, which I normally find
uncomfortable, were absolutely intolerable so I moved to a
table as my seat. As we finished the review and walked to
the next room, I suddenly felt a sharp cramp-sharp
enough that it caught my breath. One of my colleagues turned
around and asked me if I was okay, I told him,
"Yeah, I think so-don't worry about it." And we walked into
the next room and started the next student's review. My
water broke five minutes later, in the middle of the
discussion, but in a way that nobody else noticed, so I
excused myself as everyone else went to the next room.

A quick check in the bathroom told me that it was definitely
amniotic fluid. But still I had nothing I would have
described as contractions-I was just really crampy, like I
had been for about a week. I called Dh and put him on
alert, then called my doctor's office. The doctor was out,
and the nurse wanted to page him before telling me
exactly what to do, so I settled into my office to wait for
the return call. A small group of people started gathering,
and I delegated work, handed out grades, and conversed with
them as I waited. Finally the nurse called me back
and said, "We haven't heard from the doctor, but we're
sending you on to the hospital." So I called Dh back, and
he picked me up about 20 minutes later.

On the way back to the neighborhood I timed my "cramps" and
discovered they were about seven minutes apart.
We decided to stop at the house on the way to the hospital.
Dh went upstairs to get everything, while I waited at
the car. He soon returned, and we drove the three blocks to
the hospital, put the truck in valet parking, and went
upstairs to labor triage at about 11:00 a.m. The internal
exam showed me to be practically completely effaced, but
only about 1 cm dilated. My doctor called into the room, and
told me that if things didn't progress by mid-afternoon
we'd look into a pitocin drip.

So we moved over the LDR. We got a nice room with a south
facing view looking out over a view of steeples
peeking over tree-lined streets of brick homes. The nurse,
whose name was also Lisa, hooked me up to the
monitor, and ran the IV for the antibiotics for the Group B
Strep. Dh put on a Sting CD. After a few minutes, she told
me I could move around at will, making sure I took the IV
with me until the medication ran out, at which point I was
left with the heplock.

While in triage I had started having more serious
contractions, mostly in my back. I vomited up my breakfast
during several of the early contractions. At first, I leaned
against Dh's chest and did my slow Lamaze breathing
while he rubbed my back. A short time after moving to the
LDR, this strategy stopped working, so I bent over the
air conditioner (which was on full blast), looked out the
window and continued the slow breathing with him
applying counter pressure either with his hands or with a
paint roller. At some point around 1:00, I felt like I
needed to have a bm, so the nurse checked my progress. I was
at about 2-3 cm. When she told me I had the
incredible sinking feeling that it was going to take all
night to have this baby.

The afternoon wore on. The intensity of the contractions
increased, and they got closer and closer while
remaining in my back. I began to wonder about the sanity of
continuing ad infinitum without pain medication. The
nurse was nervous because the active positions I was taking
made it practically impossible for the monitor to
register any information about the baby, so I took about 10
or 15 minutes of contractions standing straight up from
time to time. My legs were tired, but lying down was far too
uncomfortable to be an option. I had requested use of
one of the hospital's doulas, and she helped for quite a
while-applying counterpressure to my back, suggesting
new positions when the old one stopped being effective. I
tried a lot of different things-the ball, squatting next to
a chair, etc. some were effective, some weren't. The most
comfortable position was still leaning on the air
conditioner looking out the window. Her help allowed Dh to
stand next to me, hold me, and help me relax and
breathe. (Unfortunately, they were understaffed that day
(flu season) so she couldn't stay with us the whole time,
and was working both with me and with another patient.) We
discussed the option of pain medication with both
her and the nurse and I decided to wait and maybe consider
some narcotics or something later. Some time after
the doula left, our nurse came back to check on us. She
needed to move another patient upstairs to the Mom/Baby
ward. I was feeling incredible pressure to have a bm, and
she offered to check my progress again, but told me
she didn't think I was very close for a variety of reasons.
Among them was, "your eyes don't look right". Keeping in
mind that every exam increased the risk of infection since
my waters had broken, I said, okay, I don't need an
exam.

After she left, the contractions got more and more severe
and then subsided for a while. I felt like I needed to go to
the bathroom again, but this time I had a contraction on the
toilet and felt a mild urge to push. It scared me and
surprised me. I didn't think there was any way I should be
feeling that. (What Dh didn't tell me was that my eyes
had gone a little crazy about five minutes after she left.)
Then things got very strange. I leaned against a shelving
unit with my head in between the speakers of the CD player.
Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here was playing-we
had put it on repeat after the Sting CD because I find it
very relaxing. The contractions waved over me. As each one
hit, I felt a stronger and stronger urge to push and began
using the Lamaze technique of blowing out to fight it.
After the second one I was so frustrated and upset I wanted
to cry. After the third one, I whimpered to Dh "I wish
she'd come back soon." He asked, "Do you want me to call
her?" I said yes.

Within moments she was there, and when I told her what was
happening she said, "Well. Let's have a check". I
lay down on the bed and she checked. She hit the call button
on the bed and said to the desk "I need a resident
and page My doctor for delivery. She's complete and +3."
Apparently her fingers had hit his head!! She told me not
to push, and whirled into action finishing setting up the
room. I fought the next contraction with both her and Dh
helping me. The resident came in-a young woman about my age,
named Tammy Williams. By this time Lisa
had pulled the end off the bed, moved the tool tray into
position, and Dr.Williams told me with the next contraction
to push just a little so they could see what I could do. So
I pushed just a little, with the first part of the
contraction,
and blew through the rest. At this point, they told me,
"you're about three pushes away from having this baby. Do
you want to wait for My doctor or just do it?" I was tired
of fighting it. I was afraid if I didn't just do it I
wouldn't have
the strength left after he got there. So we went for it with
the next contraction.

This was the hardest part of the entire thing. I had become
accustomed to blowing through the contractions and
had a difficult time refocusing at first. Then, with the
second push of the contraction, I felt the most incredible
pain (as he was crowning) and really started to fight it. After
the contraction the nurse took my hand and made me feel his head. I could feel his hair, and I realized I could do
this. With the next contraction his head came out, and on
the third the rest of him. They put him on my stomach, and I
was just amazed by this little human lying there. Dh
cut the umbilical cord. The placenta was taking its time
coming out, but about five minutes after it slid out my
doctor walked into the room. He examined the placenta,
examined me, and started to repair my one small tear.
Dh and the baby moved over to the heater table. Apparently
all this time I was just gushing blood. My doctor had
the nurses give me two shots (one in each thigh) and restart
an IV of Pitocin to help my uterus contract so it would
stop. Eventually, after about 5:30 or so, the activity
subsided, I was repaired, and my doctor finished up and
left. Dh called our parents and family,
the nurse did the paperwork,
and the baby & I studied each other and snoozed. I felt
good. I had wanted to try for a pain medication free birth,
and I did it!

Dh went home to get his clothes and arrange for my dinner,
which my friend delivered to our room in Mom/Baby
about 9:00. We all stayed together that night, and Dh and I
began in earnest the process of becoming parents. Dh
changed his first diaper at 3:30 in the morning and walked
the floor with Galen so I could sleep. The next day
Galen and I practiced breastfeeding, and Dh started working
on his lullabies. That evening, my doctor came by to
find me conversing with my friend with Galen asleep by my
side, and Dh snoring soundly in the other bed. Later
they took Galen to the nursery for some routine checkups.
Laying there in the dark I suddenly felt a twinge of panic.
I hadn't felt the baby move all day!! Then it hit me . . .
the baby was out. They brought him back for feedings, and Dh
and I slept all night. At the last feeding the nurses told
me they'd bring him back about 6:00 for the day. I woke up
with the certainty that it's 7:00 where's my baby? And the
strange thing is that it was 7:00. I finally understood in a
small way what it was to become a mother.

Birth Story...finally
Posted By: Jana a.k.a. Emma's MOM!
Wednesday, 29 December 1999, at 12:28 p.m.

Hey everyone. Well it has been a week plus and
I am just now getting to the computer to post the birth
story of Emma.

It all started on Thursday, Dec. 16th, my due date.
That evening I noticed a gob of thick stuff on the TP
when I went to the bathroom and realized that I was loosing
my mucous plug. I was so excited. I called my
Mom and told her that I thought tht things were starting to
happen and she should be "on call" to come to town.
(she lives 2.5 hours away) That night I had some pretty good
contractions all through the night and was pretty sure
that I would go into labor on Friday. Friday morning I
noticed a bloody show but the contractions stopped all
together. I went for a walk and still nothing. I decided
to go into work because we were having our company
Christmas lunch that day. I went in and got a few things done,
went to lunch, then came home early to relax and wait.
I called my Mom again and she said that she was going to go
ahead and come to town that evening. We were having our extended
family Christmas on Saturday in town so she came on in a day early.

My mom got in and we all just sat around Friday night.
My DH had heard of a woman who had gone into labor twice
while watching Raging Bull so he had bought the movie and
thought that we should give it a try. Well, after dozing off
and on throughout the movie in bed my water broke!!!
It was 11:30 p.m. I jumped out of bed and told my DH that
my water had broken then ran down the hall, knocked on my
Mom's door and told her that "wake up. It's time."
I called my doctor and someone else called me back.
My doctor was away for the weekend.
I was a little bummed but not as upset as my Mom.
He is her OBGYN too and she is crazy about him.
The substitute told me to go into the hospital.

We arrived at the hospital at 11:55 and they got me all set up.
I was terrified because I had heard that after
your water breaks the contractions come on like gang busters.
I was determined to have a natural birth and
had done a lot to prepare for one. So, the waiting begins.
We sat up all night and I never did get any good
contractions going. I tried different natural ways to induce
labor but none of them seemed to be working.
I was very concerned because I knew what was coming from the doctors.
By 8:00 the next morning they convinced me to get hooked up
to a pitocin drip. I don't think that my contractions
would have ever started otherwise. I knew that with the pitocin,
I would be confined to bed with an IV and a fetal heartrate monitor
and a contraction monitor. I realized that a lot of the methods
I had learned for dealing with the pain would
be useless. I decided to do my best and see how far I could get.
They hooked me up around 8:30 after two tries getting
the IV in....YIKES! I was pretty scared and very nervous
around this time.

The contractions started coming pretty regularly around 45 minutes
after I was on the pitocin. The nurse sat in the room with us
chatting and discreetly uping the dosage gradually. I did not
know this until later. By noon the contraction were getting
pretty painful. The doctor came in to check me and I was only
dialated 2 cm. I was at 1.5 when I arrived. Needless to say
I was pretty discouraged. The contractions started getting
even stronger and I was in a lot of pain and unable to move at all to
make them more bearable. The nurses suddenly rushed in and said
that the babies heartrate was dropping either during or
after the contractions. They could not tell which.
They wanted to hook up an internal fetal monitor.
I was very opposed to this and said that I did not want it.
I was getting very scared at this time and the pain was so bad that
I was having trouble thinking straight. The contraction were
lasting over a minute and were two minutes apart, not giving
me much time to recover. The nurses said that I should turn on my side
so the baby could get more oxygen and they put an oxygen mask on me.
The babies heartrate improved a lot and was practically
normal immediately. I, however, was hurting even more on my side
and was very upset by now. I told my DH that I wanted him
to get a nurse and I wanted something for the pain.
The anesthesiologist came in and I asked for an epidural.

She got it all together right away and I did not mind it at all.
My concerns with the epiural were that it would
slow labor down. I knew that being hooked up to the pitocin
already this was not going to happen so I think I made a good choice.
The pain subsided fast but did not go away all together.
They wanted to make it so that I could rest and take a nap
before the pushing stage since I had been up all night.
They gave me a little more of the epidural and
I felt soooooooo much better!

They came and checked me right after the epidural
and I was at a 6! Things were progressing fast! Next,
they wanted to hook me up to an internal uterine contraction
monitor so that they could control the pitocin
drip more efficiently. I said, "no thanks." So, they said that
they wanted to check me again and then we would talk about what to do.
The nurse came in and checked and I was at 10cm!!!!!
DH had gone for a hamburger since I was going to be taking a nap soon!
Everyone scrambled to go and find him then they
started wheeling things around to set up for the delivery.
I was in awe! This all happened around 2:30. So, I had gone
from a 2 to 10 in 2.5 hours.

After everything was set up I started the pushing phase of labor.
With the epidural, this was not painful at all.
I could still feel when the contractions were happening and I
focused very hard on pushing that little
baby out. The nurses and the doctor were great and very encouraging.
They started seeing the head crown and told me that the baby
had a full head of dark hair. Everyone said that they thought
it was going to be a boy. I kept pushing with the contractions
and occasionally they would have me wait one or two out while
they prepared for the babies birth. After an hour and twenty minutes
of pushing little Emma popped out and they told me I had a girl!!!!
Tears were flowing all around. My Mom, Dad and DH were all there for the
delivery. Even the nurses were crying. I guess they don't deliver too
many babies when the sex is unknown. They placed Emma on my stomach
and she was so quite just looking her mother over.

I fell in love immediately. She is so incredible and so beautiful
and the World will never be the same!

I ended up with an episiotomy and they had some trouble getting all
of the placenta out. Apparently, it was fragmented!?!
They worked on me for quite a while but I didn't care. I
was too amazed by the tiny little being in front of me that me and
DH had made.

I passed a large clot several days later and found out that
it was part of the placenta. It was about the size
of a large orange and it scared me to death. I got a fever and an
infection and didn't feel too great for a couple of days post-partum.
Everything is great now though. We are both doing well and getting to know
one another better each day. She is breast feeding great and I LOVE HER!

Thanks to all of you for your help and support throughout all of this.
Please, let me know who else had their baby.
I have been so out of touch!

Janna

FINALLY got time to post my birth story!! m and long!
Posted By: LisaBee - mommy to Riley Gabrielle
21 November
Whew! Riley is now two weeks old and I only
just have time to post my birth story!!

I was due on November 17, but nothing was happening -
I tried nipple stimulation, eating spicy foods, long walks
- you name it. Then on the morning of Sat 20th, I woke up at
5:30 am feeling kind of damp, and my first thought
was that my poor long-suffering bladder and finally packed
in. But nope, it was my water breaking, kind of a slow
trickle. With my DD and DS, contractions started about half
an hour after the water broke, so I figured it would be
the same again. My mom came to pick up DD and DS, and DH and
I made our way to the hospital, thinking we
would have our baby by lunch time.

Well, nothing happened! I was examined, and they confirmed
it was my waters breaking, and I was 2 cm dilated,
but no contractions! So it was just a matter of waiting. And
waiting....by 6 pm that night, and still no baby action, the
doctor told me if I didn't go into labour by myself they
would induc me at 7 am the next morning. At 10 pm, with
still no sign of our baby, I told DH to go home and get some
sleep. You guessed it, at 10:45pm I got my first
contraction. Then another one, about three minutes later.
Then they started coming, only a minute or so apart, very
strong and sudden. The nurse told me I'd better call DH back
in. Luckily we live only 10 minutes from the hospital.
Already I was feeling like I couldn;t get on top of the
pain, it was just so sudden, so I asked for an epidural.

DH arrived back just as the epi was being inserted, and
shortly after that, my mom arrived.After a while, still no
relief from killer contractions, they were now one after the
other with no break in between. After about an hour, the
nurse suggested that I lie on my side to maybe help the
epidural to start working, as I was getting no pain relief
from it at all, and was still sucking like crazy on the gas.
So I rolled over onto my side, hanging on for dear life to
the gas mouthpiece. Twenty minutes later, still no pain
relief from the epidural. The midwife said she'd examine
me again and then call the anaethetist to re-do the
epidural. She rolled me onto my back, and all of a sudden I
heard her yell "The head's here!" - and there was my baby's
head, already sticking out! The midwife was totally
unprepared for the arrival, there was no crib or blankets
ready, so she was yelling out of the door for another
nurse to come help, and shouting at DH to press the
emergency call button on the wall. Then she told me to
push, and one push was all it took before our beautiful
Riley Gabrielle slid out into the world. They laid her on my
chest and she looked so pink and clean and gorgeous.

She weighed 7 lbs 12, the lightest of all my kids! and had
lovely dark hair. The midwife then told me the other
good news - I didn't need stitches!! The labour lasted 2 and
a half hours, from the first contraction.

We left hospital 24 hours later, and despite me having
painfully sore nipples the first week, Riley is feeding well
and is gaining weight well. The sleeping thing still needs
some work, though!!

So that's my story. Can't wait to read the upcoming birth
stories for this month, and congratulations ot all the new
moms and also the new moms-to-be!

Love to all

LisaBee and Riley Gabrielle

Daniel Saul Picker is Here! 11/25/99
Posted By: L.C. Picker New Mom!
Tuesday, 7 December 1999, at 6:55 a.m.

Well we had a little Thanksgiving Turkey at 12:21am
T-giving morning Nov 25th! He weighed 6lbs 9oz and is 20" long.

I went to my Dr's appt on Wed morning 11/24 and they said,
Hmm, you're 5cm dilated and 100% effaced. Geez
you need to go to the hospital right now! Well I cursed DH
because I had asked him to come to my appt that
morning and he went to work instead! Nonetheless not only
did DH make it to the hospital in time for Daniel Saul
Picker to arrive....it took 13 hours from the time I was
admitted! Our parents too made it in time to sit for in the
waiting room for 10 hours. That must have been a scene.

They broke my water a short while after arriving at the
hospital and I thought it would gush out of me but instead
it just trickled for hours and hours because his head was so
low and pressing on my pelvis. Everyone thought Daniel
would just pop right out because my labor progressed
pretty quickly over the last couple of weeks but
when I didn't go past 6cm dilated for a couple of hours the
DR got a little antsy and gave me the lowest dose of
Pitocin. Well I was then in a lot of pain at the end and I
got my drug fix late - nearly 8cm so by the time it came to
push him out I was totally numb & paralyzed from the
epidural drug and it delayed my labor by 4 hours. I
recommend the epidural - but EARLIER the better to it has
more time to wear off. Nonetheless we have a really
cute little guy. When Daniel came home is was very jaundiced
- level 20 bilirubin so he was put on a phototherapy
belt for 5 days. His bilirubin level finally went down to
12.5 and he was taken off the photo belt. This phototherapy
light belt went around his torso and plugged into a light
box. He looked like a little glow worm. I must say I never
thought I'd have to plug in my child to an electrical source
A nurse came in everyday to take a blood sample to
send back to the hospital lab so they can watch the
bilirubin levels go down.

I hope all well with everyone's PG and
ANDREA ARE YOU OUT THERE???
ALICIA EMAILED AND SAID YOU HAD
YOUR BABY ON 11/25 TOO!!!!

LOL

Lisa

Posted By: MicheleF & Britney born Dec 4 1999
Tuesday, 7 December 1999, at 3:40 a.m.

I would like to announce the arrival of Britney Louise
(or Charlotte) Cheng (Haven't decided yet).
She arrived on Sat Dec 4th at 4:38pm.

I had a show on Dec 3 at 1:30am and went to the hospital
right away. They did an internal and the outside of the
cervix is soft and stretchy and the inside is still tightly
shut. But I was having B/H at 5mins apart. The next morning
I was progressing to 2-3mins apart but the B/H is still not
painful. Dr. came and did and internal and I was 2cm
dilated. Nothing truly happened that day (I even was allowed
to go the supermarket and do some more
shopping!!). Came back to the hospital only to find that all
B/H were gone! Devastated and thought they will send
me home but since I was still bleeding, they have decided to
wait for another day.

On Dec 4th morning, dr. did a REAL painful internal and I
was only 3cm dilated and she said the baby's h/b had 2
dips (slowed down) according to the monitor so she will
break my waters and get things going. She broke my
waters at 10:30am and I was supposed to get an epidural and
pitocin afterwards. At 11:30am, the epidural was
hooked in and my blood pressure went really low (70/40) so
they didn't start the pitocin till 1:30pm. I was fully
dilated at 4:15pm and my dr. did help me with a perineal
massage and a little cut. Britney is finally here at 4:38pm.

The actual process was really quick so it wasn't too bad
(except I kept yelling "GET HER OUT PLEASE!!").
Recovery was fast and I could hardly feel the stitches.

She is born at 37wks 4d and weighing at 7lbs 1oz, 49cms. Dr.
said I may need a c-section if she was born at
40wks. She is beautiful (all mother say the same thing about
their owns?!) and has a full head of hair (none of my
other kids had any hair at birth).

Cheers,

Michele