7/16/10

The Birth of Jericho Skye Wilkes

It was 8:00am on Tuesday July 13th and I hadn’t been up for more than 15 minutes and daddy was still sound asleep when my phone rang. I didn’t get to it in time, but we had a message from labor and delivery asking us if we could come in earlier than our original 10am scheduled time. I quickly called them back and told them we could be there around 8:30am. I was already less than thrilled with having to be induced so not having to think about it for an extra 2 hours sounded good. I woke up your daddy and told him to get moving because we were going early. We already had our bags packed (for almost 2 weeks now) so all we needed to do was eat breakfast and say our goodbye’s. Daddy and I each ate a bowl of cereal, I poured a to go cup of orange juice since the Bradley method recommends fresh orange juice after birth and we forgot with Blythe, but I wasn’t going to forget this time. Pappa and Daddy loaded the car and it was time to bid our farewells to your big sister, Blythe. I think I did a pretty good job of holding back my tears when I said goodbye to Blythe. This would be our first night away from each other and let’s face it at 41+ weeks pregnant and about to give birth my hormones were probably doing all kinds of crazy things. The three of us (Daddy, Mommy, and Blythe) smiled for our last pictures as a family of 3 and off daddy and I went to the hospital.

We only live about 8 minutes from the hospital which was just enough time to discuss the fact that we really wish we didn’t have to evict you and that you could have come on your own, but we understood the risks of waiting any longer and of course we were excited to meet you. When we arrived at the emergency room it was under construction and there were zero signs. We looked at each other and said “this is still marked as the emergency room entrance, but where do we go?” We were directed by a man in a hard hat to a small door around the corner with a teeny tiny sign that said “Emergency Room Entrance.” Daddy and I were both glad we didn’t have a REAL emergency because the signage was more than lacking. I got out with a few of our bags to check in and daddy went and parked the car. I signed my name on a few pieces if paper and then I was headed to Labor and Delivery room #8. I stepped onto the elevator and my heart began to race. Racing because I was nervous of what ‘induction’ had in store for me and racing at the thought of the beautiful baby I was about to have. I had a “duh” moment when I first entered labor and delivery….I attempted to open the door, pushing on them several times and then realizing, oh yeah you have to press the button, then I pressed the button and stood back thinking that the doors were automatic until I finally saw some arms flailing at me to come in (apparently I wasn’t alone because your daddy did the same thing just a few minutes later). I told them my name and they promptly took me to L8 and asked “are you here by yourself today?” I wanted to say “ARE YOU CRAZY?,” but I politely said “no, my husband is parking the car and will be here shortly.”

Two nurses met me in L8 and directed me to my attire for the day: the oh so lovely and always WAY too big hospital gown. I tried to call daddy to tell him to come straight to L8 instead of back to the emergency room entrance, but he didn’t have his phone within ear shot. After I put on the enchanting attire I was directed to lay in the bed and they hooked me up to the monitors to monitor your hear beat and my contractions. They then started talking about Pitocin and IV’s, etc. and I quickly thought wait, wait I haven’t even had a chance to share our birth plan or to let these nurses know that we do NOT plan to follow the typical birthing plan of medication, pitocin, etc. I explained to them that I thought we were just inducing with breaking the bag of waters, but apparently I had misunderstood what Dr. Sanders had told us the previous week. Dr. Sanders had explained that this wouldn’t even truly be an induction because you were already head down and engaged and I was dilated to a 4. He said that usually when you induce someone their baby isn’t engaged so you need to give them pitocin to force them to have contractions to bring the head down before you can pop the bag of waters; otherwise, you run the risk of the baby falling down onto the umbilical cord. So from that I incorrectly concluded that we weren’t going the pitocin route and we were just popping the bag of waters. Luckily the nurses didn’t argue with me and just went and called Sanders who then called me and explained to me that he needed to have a few contractions on the monitor before breaking the bag of waters just to make sure you were indeed as lodged as possible and your umbilical cord was free. He did reassure me and tell me that we would do the lowest dose of pitocin. Right about then daddy walked in and I explained the ‘new’ plan. We both just looked at each other and sighed; even though this wasn’t exactly the birth we had in mind we were ready to meet you!

The nurses got the IV in and the machine pumping the pitocin around 9:20am. I have heard so many negative things about pitocin and how it is so powerful and makes your contractions unbearable etc. that I was a bit nervous what the next few minutes/hours would hold. At this point my contractions weren’t anything more than they had been (not painful, but lots of pressure). I asked Daddy to set up the music and suggested that we listen to the ELI party mix instead of starting with Enya since we could be here for a while. We sang along to a few songs, laughed at each other, posted a status update on Facebook, got the video camera ready, and by then it was 10am. I wasn’t sure when to expect Dr. Sanders to come by to break the bag of waters, but he was there sooner than I expected. By 10:10 my bag of waters had been broken and now it was just a matter of time. Within 10 minutes of my bag of waters being broken my contractions changed. Daddy and I were still being goofy, but this stage was quickly coming to an end. I had daddy take one last picture of me hooked up to the pitocin machine.

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We went to the bathroom and by the time we got back to the bed I looked at daddy and said “this is getting more serious,” and he responded “hey, I am the coach, I will make that call.” Haha funny daddy, but that’s the last joke. After a few contractions we went back to the bathroom to make sure I wasn’t working against anything and we labored on the toilet for several contractions. This is a less than ideal laboring place for me because my feet didn’t touch the ground so it was very hard to completely relax. Daddy put his feet up under mine to help bridge the gap between my feet and the floor. Despite the discomfort it is a good place to labor when your bag of waters is broken/leaking and when the baby is making its way down the birth canal.

By the time we got back to the bed the contractions were getting pretty intense. I felt like I was having back labor so daddy tried to help me relieve it, but in the end I was better off left alone. The back rubs in between contractions were very nice, but during the contractions I needed to be on my own. Apparently when you are on pitocin they want to monitor you at all times and not just a 20 minutes strip every hour so we were only able to take the monitors off for 5 minutes when we went to the bathroom. The heartbeat strip had fallen down so the nurse came in to fix it and I had to make her wait to mess with it until I wasn’t having a contraction. At this point she asked me how the contractions were (I knew she was checking to see if she should increase the pitocin) and I told her that they were getting more intense and that more pitocin was NOT needed. About 2 contractions after she fixed the monitor I was really uncomfortable and tried a few new positions, but none of them were relieving the back pain and in the end the side laying position was the best. I looked at daddy and said “I remember this, this is bad, why did we think we wanted to do this again?” Daddy reassured me and told me I was doing a great job. Not too long after this I was really feeling like I couldn’t relax at the peak of the contractions, but I wanted to make sure that was the case so I made myself go through two more contractions before asking daddy to ask the nurses to check me. Daddy started to walk out the door to get the nurses and then he turned back (thinking, maybe I should get her to do a few more contractions) and when I saw him turn back I yelled “GO, I don’t care if I am not ready, I want them to check me.” I was slightly nervous to be checked because I really didn’t think that it had been long enough for me to be at this point, but on the other hand I knew this feeling and it really felt how I remembered it feeling towards the end of Blythe’s birth. At this point we had had little to no communication with the nursing staff and in all fairness I hadn’t been communicating with daddy all that much because it was all happening so fast. Daddy poked his head outside the door and said “can I get someone to check her?” The nursing staff said “oh sure, she wants to know where she’s at?” Apparently just 2 minutes before Jason poked his head outside the door Dr. Sanders had called up to the nursing station and said that he was on his way and asked if he needed to drive fast. They told him that not only did he not need to drive fast, but that he didn’t need to come. Dr. Sanders had warned them that last time once my bag of waters broke I moved really FAST. I think I had maybe 2 contractions before then nurse came in to check me and those two contractions were significantly more intense than the ones before. She checked me and said I was at a 7 and then another nurse to the side of me said that I would probably have this baby in 30-40 minutes. I thought to myself ‘o.k. I can do this.’ Then the next contraction happened and I had a ‘I am not pushing, but my entire body is pushing’ contraction and luckily the nurse was still there because she quickly saw that this baby was coming NOW! The nurse beside me was yelling at me to “blow out the candle, and not push because my cervix would swell.” Daddy quickly leaned over and said “listen to your body.” The nurse asked me to roll over on my back and I remembered from my birth with Blythe how painful that was so I told her no. After another contraction she didn’t really give me a choice and I was rolled over and they were telling me to push. I pushed twice and within 4 minutes and about 4 super painful super explosive contractions you were born. Daddy and I looked down and saw that we had another beautiful baby girl; finally we were a family of 4!

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5 comments:

  1. What a beautiful story. It is so great that you wrote this down so quickly to capture every detail! Girl, you had me tearing up within the first few sentences. I can't imagine what it would feel like to leave your first born knowing that when you returned your lives would be changed forever. I was looking at a pitcture of you and Bylthe the other day and thought to myself. Wow it is no longer Jason, Monica and Blythe...it is now Jericho too. How amazing!

    Thanks for sharing and I hope to meet little Jericho very soon and bring you guys dinner so you can work to enjoy every moment with your beautifil family! Congratulations and great job!

    - Jennifer Cabezas

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  2. Such a sweet story. You are one trooper! Welcome little Jericho to the world!

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  3. I love reading birth stories! I always get goose bumps at the end. :) Great story!! Way to go, Monica, Jason and Jericho!

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  4. I had been stalking your blog for a few days, now, waiting to hear that story! ;) Thanks for sharing...

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  5. You are amazing!!! I am always inspired by not only how you journal so well and capture every detail, but what a super woman you are!!

    When we have number 2, I also plan on going all natural again :) You just showed that it really is possible!

    Congrats and much love to ALL 4 of you!
    Sandra Curtis

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