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Our Christmas Baby Surprise!
By Greg | December 27, 2006
When she was 10 years old, my wife told her aunt that she thought parents who had babies so their birthdays coincided with Christmas were just inconsiderate; she would certainly never do any such thing. But with an official due date of 28 December, we always knew that our first baby might wind up violating my wife’s Prime Directive about when to give birth. So the fact that Kathryn brought our new daughter into the world at 6:32 on Christmas morning was ironic but not surprising. No, what was surprising was that she accomplished this feat in less than 4 hours, with no drugs, and was back at home less than 12 hours after leaving for the hospital.
Any Day Now Is…Now
Kathryn had been experiencing Braxton Hicks contractions off and on for a couple of weeks leading up to Christmas, so it wasn’t unusual that they were coming every couple of minutes during a short walk late at night on Christmas Eve. At one point during our walk, she commented that exercise wasn’t supposed to have any effect on Braxton Hicks contractions, although this time they did seem to be changing a bit as a result of walking. We joked that maybe it was actually labour after all, and we just didn’t know it yet. We hoped not, though, because that could mean violating her Prime Directive and having a baby on Christmas.
We got to bed a little after midnight, and by 2:30 Kathryn was awake with some cramping and abdominal discomfort. Half an hour later, she was starting to think she may be in labour and woke me. By 3:30, we were certain her waters had broken and she was definitely in labour; I phoned the hospital, and Kathryn got in our too-short, too-narrow bath in hopes that might help ease the increasing pain of her contractions.
Around 45 minutes later an on-call midwife arrived at our house after a long car journey. “Merry Christmas”, I said as she came to the door, “I hope we didn’t wake you”. (Ouch: flash back to years of Kathryn being on call as a veterinary surgeon, and how unimpressed we were by those words “I hope we didn’t wake you”…as if we would have been doing anything else at 3 in the morning except for trying to sleep.)
The general assumption among midwives seems to be that first-time mothers always think they’re going into labour faster than they really are, and I think it’s not uncommon for a visiting midwife or even a midwife on the other end of the phone to encourage people just to relax and stay at home as long as possible…because the baby just isn’t very likely to come nearly as quickly as they think it might. So I was grateful that both the hospital and the midwife Joyce took us seriously when we said Kathryn really was in labour. The frequency of her contractions — about every 2 to 4 minutes by the time the midwife arrived — let her know this was for real, and an internal exam confirmed it: Kathryn was already dilated 7 to 8 cms. That meant that if Kathryn wanted to go to the hospital, she needed to go now, and by ambulance. Since Kathryn was keen to use the hospital’s birthing pool (like a giant bath, much larger and deeper than our regular bath at home) for pain relief, and a phone call to the labour ward confirmed the pool was available, we opted for the ambulance ride.
Joyce offered Kathryn some entonox (nitrous oxide and oxygen) to use before and during the ambulance ride, but a quick puff on the mouthpiece of the portable gas cylinder confirmed that good old laughing gas would not be Kathryn’s favoured pain relief: instant vomiting, naturally timed perfectly with the onset of a contraction, was distinctly un-laughable.
The Ambulance Shuffle
The ambulance arrived in less than ten minutes, and half of our carefully packed bags and food and various accoutrements for what we had envisioned being a much longer labour had to be left behind for lack of space in the vehicle. We were lucky to grab everything we needed in the rush out the door.
Note to soon-to-be first-time fathers and other birth partners: whatever it is that you think you might be doing while getting ready to go to the hospital (packing clothes, loading the car, taking care of pets, phoning relatives, grabbing a last bite to eat, etc.), prepare yourself for the possibility that you may wind up doing very few, if any, of these things. Why? Because whatever it is you think you may be doing may only happen if it will fit into brief windows of a couple of minutes between contractions. Nothing will be more important than being available during a contraction, whether for massage or other physical comfort, or just simply to be there. You may have spent weeks or months preparing for this stage of the experience, with to-do lists and bags at the ready and all that, but when the time comes, all that may go right out the window.
Kathryn was being settled in the back of the ambulance and I was already sitting in the front when I realized I’d put in two or three pre-packed bags, and had grabbed various last bits and pieces for Kathryn…but had forgotten my camera, phone, and PDA (which contained other contact information besides what was in the phone). I jumped out of the ambulance to go back in the house but was suddenly afraid they might accidentally leave me: off they’d go with mother-to-be, and I’d still be chasing about in the house. I rushed back to the ambulance, ran around the whole vehicle once only to discover all the doors and windows had been shut and so wound up jumping right back into my seat in order to tell them I was going back in. Quick: inside, dash upstairs, grab the gear, wash out some vomit from a plastic bucket, root around unsuccessfully trying to find Kathryn’s phone, and back to the ambulance.
As to the phone, it turned out the pregnant lady in the midst of painful contractions and wearing very little had had the presence of mind to pick up her own phone on the way out the door and drop it into her robe pocket. Whew, good thing she’s got her brain switched on!
It was a half hour ride to the hospital, and for me this was by far the least pleasant part of the whole experience: we were physically separated and couldn’t even see one another. I couldn’t tell how she was doing and couldn’t reassure her, and apart from some highly trained medical personnel and a midwife who knows about this process inside and out, there she was all by herself! However, Kathryn was doing a great job of tuning out this part of the experience, trying to convince herself that she wasn’t actually in a moving vehicle (which traditionally presents an opportunity for her throw up), and disengaging as much as possible from what was going on around her. In fact, she was calmer now that she knew she was on the way to the birthing pool. We didn’t realize it until a short while later, but this turned out to be the transition phase of labour — just before the second phase, when the baby is actually pushed out.
I Know My Way to the Birthing Pool, Thank You
We zoomed up to the labour ward, with Kathryn on a wheeled gurney. I remember being unsure whether the ambulance crew normally did this sort of thing, as there was a brief pause when they weren’t sure where the room with the birthing pool was. Kathryn was in no doubt where it was, however, and she began quietly mumbling directions and pointing down the corridor and to the right. She knew where she was going!
And once in the room, with 4 people (two ambulance crew, midwife, and me) hovering about to help her up and get her unwrapped from the blanket and gurney straps and all that, she promptly leaned forward, straddled the gurney, and shuffled herself along to the end, pushing her basketball tummy along in front of her, and fully under her own power. She bounced along to the end of the gurney, stood up, handed me her phone, dropped the clothes and went straight for the water. The ambulance crew looked on in amazement, and one let out a dumbfounded laugh.
Kathryn was now in the water, and the midwife hadn’t even finished changing into scrubs when Kathryn announced it was time to push: the second stage of labour was here.
Yes, We’ll Be Done Soon
The contractions were fast and furious; Joyce and a second midwife tried several times to check the baby’s condition with a foetal heart monitor, but except for one or two occasions, another contraction would set in so quickly that it was of little use. (With Kathryn on all fours in the pool during contractions, the midwife would have needed a diving mask and a very flexible back to get herself into position for a check — not that she would have heard much during a contraction anyway.)
Kathryn was getting a teensy bit impatient for the baby to move further down the birth canal more quickly, and at one point I commented that we didn’t want it to go too quickly. What I’d meant by that was that pushing too hard, too fast could increase the risk of painful perineal damage — essentially, tissue tearing as a result of not having enough time to stretch. She didn’t mention this until later, but I now realize that Kathryn wasn’t really very impressed by that “not too quickly” comment: she wanted to be finished with this, and finished with this now, thank you very much!
As it turned out, that whole stage of the process took all of 42 minutes. On the penultimate push, I stood up to look around Kathryn’s back and could see our baby’s whole head turned right up toward me — there was my baby’s face! This is it, Joyce announced: one more push, and the baby would be out. And so it was: one more long push, a comment from Kathryn that “oh, that feels weird”, and out she came. The midwives gently took hold of the baby (still underwater), unwound the umbilical cord from around her shoulder, turned her around, and shot her back between Kathryn’s legs head first. I reached in, Kathryn sat up, and we both lifted our baby girl straight up out of the water and onto Kathryn’s breast.
Speechless
Wow!!!
Was that amazing, or what?! Have I really just seen the birth of my daughter, just like that?
There she was, the most incredible creature ever! She was safe and sound, in her mother’s arms, exactly — and I mean exactly — as she was meant to be.
My wife has done some amazing things in her life, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt so proud of her than I have ever since that moment. She was exhausted, and it had all been tremendously painful, but she’d done it — she’d known exactly what she needed to do, and she’d done it exactly as it needed to be done. No drugs, no fuss, not even any swearing or throwing of things like we’d always seen in television sitcoms. No, this was the real deal.
I probably would have been content just to kneel there, lost in marvel, for a good few hours, but the gentle words of the second midwife interrupted my reverie: “Do you have a camera?”. (Well, of course I do, silly! What sort of dolt would be in a situation like this without a camera?) I dried off my hands and arms and captured the first images of mother and baby, just a few minutes old.
Kathryn came out of the water and onto a bed for the third stage (delivery of the placenta), and that too went perfectly fine. With our new daughter suckling, delivery of the placenta took place just 13 minutes after the baby, and again without any medications to assist. Joyce clamped the umbilical cord, I cut it, and then we were left to be together.
It was now that I really got a good look at my new daughter for the first time. There she was: Hannah Sophia, having her first meal! I stood at the head of the bed so I could get my head down next to Kathryn’s and hug her with one arm. Mouth firmly affixed to her food source, Hannah Sophia’s little forehead wrinkled and her eyes looked up at me when I spoke to her. The look on her little face is probably my single most vivid memory of the whole experience.
She too knew what needed to be done, and she spent 1 1/4 hours on that first feed. Then she slept for 12 or 14 hours, interrupted only by the occasional glance around as she was passed between sets of arms, or had a change, or when the pediatrician came to examine her.
Kathryn’s parents arrived at the hospital an hour or so after the birth and have been indispensable grandparents. The three of us (grandparents and I) went back to our house during the maternity ward’s “strictly closed, thou shalt not visit” period and returned things to a slightly more orderly state and grabbed a bite to eat. (Christmas meal: cereal for me, bread for grandparents. And yes, it was a great Christmas meal!) When we returned a bit after 2 o’clock, Kathryn had been cleared to go whenever she was ready. Although it’s not unusual for new mothers to spend some days in hospital, all had gone so smoothly, and both mother and daughter were in such good shape, that they were happy for us to go home.
Going Home
So, we had some cuddles and took a few more photos, and gradually got ourselves ready to go. Kathryn actually had a pretty sore head from resting it against the hard plastic edge of the birthing pool, as well as other general aches and pains, so we asked for some paracetamol (acetaminophen) before setting out. Since everything at the hospital had been just stellar so far, we were really surprised when more than a quarter of an hour passed without the paracetamol. I went to check on it again, and they said it was just coming, they just had to locate her drug chart. Another quarter of an hour passed, during which time they apparently looked all over the place for her drug chart, and finally an apologetic nurse or midwife came and said she just wanted to check, did we actually have her drug chart somewhere? Finally, the penny dropped through the sleep-deprived haze: we explained that Kathryn hadn’t actually had anything yet. “No painkillers, right, OK, but what about earlier? What did you have earlier?” Again, we explained that she hadn’t had anything. “What, nothing at all? The whole time? Oh!” Aha! Problem solved: they couldn’t find the drug chart, because without any drugs having been administered, there was no drug chart! OK, drug chart was started, Kathryn swallowed her paracetamol, and off we went.
We arrived back home a bit before 5 o’clock, with less than 12 hours having passed since we’d set out in the ambulance.
All was well: baby was resting quietly, mother was in great shape, dad was pleased as punch, and grandparents were perfectly grandparently. Now that is one amazing Christmas!
Opening presents and downing a big Christmas dinner? That would have to wait for the next day. For now, we had all we needed.
Postscript: About Hannah Sophia’s Name
‘Hannah’ is a Hebrew name meaning grace and mercy, and ‘Sophia’ is the French spelling of the Greek name for wisdom. We plan to use both of her names, together (’Hannah Sophia’, rather than just ‘Hannah’), until she’s old enough to decide whether she’d like to go by both or just use one or the other.
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January 1st, 2007 at 11:28 am
[...] For me, the even bigger news is the arrival of my daughter, Hannah Sophia, who was born on Christmas morning at 6:32. If you’d like to read the full details of her birth, just drop by my new personal blog over at Where Else to Put It? [...]