HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHRISTOPHE

Christophe's birth and my passage to motherhood

Tomorrow will mark Christophe's 1st Birthday. The other day, Christophe found his birth book from the midwives clinic, so I started looking at it and thought it would make an interesting post to mark this occasion.

These are the statistics from Christophe's birth:

Presentation: Vertex
Position: LOA
Complications: None
Medication given: Vancomycin
Induction: None
Augmentation: Artificial rupture of the membrane (breaking the water)
Method of delivery: Spontaneous
Placenta: Spontaneous delivery
Episiotomy: No
Laceration: 2nd degree
Delivery Anesthetics: No
Fetus gestational age: 37 weeks 6 days
Admitted to hospital: March 1/08 at 1:45am
Membranes ruptured: March 1/08 at 6:00am
Onset of Labour: March 1/08 at 9:30am
Complete cervical dilation: March 1/08 at 11:30am
Delivery of infant: March 1/08 at 1:05pm
Delivery of placenta: March 1/08 at 1:12pm
APGAR score at 1min & 5 min identical:
Heart rate:2
Respiration:2
Muscle tone:2
Reflex irritation:2
Skin color:1
Total:9
Resucitation: none
Sex: male
Weight: 7lb 15oz
Head: 35.5cm
Length: 51cm
Vitamin K: given
Erythromycin eye ointment: not given

A PhotoEssay on Birth

Well, I've finally managed to work my way back to Christophe's birth, so with no further ado, you should move on and view the photos from 01-Mar-2008, including:

Christophe: Part III

So, once Christophe was born, they put him on Pierrette's chest, vernix and all. Although it's not uncommon to move right into initial breast-feeding at this point, that couldn't be done because Christophe couldn't reach -- his umbilical cord was shorter than is normal.

As an aside, umbilical cords are lumpier than I expected. I expected something pretty smooth, but it was twisty and lumpy. I wish I'd gotten a clearer picture, but you can google-search for it. So we waited for the cord to stop pulsing, then clamped the cord and I cut it.

Having the father 'cut the cord' is laden with symbology I wasn't entirely keen to explore, but there are so few parts of the delivery process I can really help with, so I caved to tradition. It was sinewy, like, well, sinews. Or rope, maybe. Gristly muscle. All that sort of thing.

After that, some of the vernix was rubbed in, and Pierrette got to hold Christophe while the placenta (which, to be honest, looks like the bag of organs that comes in a turkey, but bigger) was birthed. Watching my new son and wife interact was pretty emotional. We called a few people -- mostly relatives. After that, Christophe got to practice his first latch, he was weighed and measured, and we dressed him.

The midwives did their best to cram a few more bits of information in my head, but lack of sleep and being a little dazed drove most of it back out. By about 3:30, we were all set to leave, so we bundled up all our belongings, said our goodbyes, and went to the front desk to pick up Christophe's new baby health card, then from there to the car, and home.

Early in the morning, I left messages for Pierrette's parents and my parents, but also for Kim and Baz, who live close enough by, and have been through this experience, so it wasn't incredibly inconvenient (we hope) to ask them to pick up a few things for us -- in particular, the infant car seat, which I had left behind at Pierrette's request so as to not "jinx it," but which we obviously needed, and a few other things from the important to the inconsequential (cake!)

They arrived with those items when Pierrette was in active labour, so we didn't get to see them, although I could hear them from the tub-area where Pierrette was, including little Sebastian. When we returned home, we discovered that Kim and Lisa had set up the bedroom for us -- baby clothes, some diapers, quite possibly even some tidying, and baby's name all laid out for us. Considering we were dead tired at that point, it was a very welcome and pleasant surprise. For those of you following the last few posts, it was the setup I documented on our return and put in the first Christophe blog post to announce his name:

Christophe: Part II

Baby Christophe, about eight hours old, taking a nap beside his mommy.

Going back a few hours to the early morning, at about 1:00 am, they admitted us to the labour room, and we talked about some options. The OB was still in favour of breaking Pierrette's waters. Since neither Pierrette or I were anxious to go that route, we wanted to consider other options, so we waited for our Naturopath to show up and possibly explore other routes. She tried some homeopathic solutions and some accupuncture, and while those might have helped, they didn't put Pierrette into active labour, so after some further discussion, we agreed to go forward with the breaking of the waters, which ended up taking place around 6:30 in the morning, along with some vancomycin to protect against Pierrette's positive antibiotic-resistant 'Group B' test.

After that, Pierrette progressed relatively quickly into active labour, which around 9:30 in the morning. She spent some of that time on the bed, some time standing up, mostly in continuous fetal monitoring. Once the transition phase hit around 11:00, the midwives had enough data to suggest that the baby's heart rate was no longer a problem, and that we could probably go back to occasional use of the doppler instead.

Pushing took place from about 11:30 to about 1:00. If you haven't been through labour, I'll just say that, like mountains, it's not enough to read about a mountain and see a picture of a mountain, you have to go see a mountain. So while I had educated myself about the process of labour, it wasn't the same to actually be there. It's a pretty incredible process, and a lot of work.

All in all, I think it mostly went pretty well -- once we hit active labour, Pierrette progressed very, very quickly, and it mostly went as we had desired, almost entirely naturally. It would have been nice to do a water birth at home, but ultimately, we got the desired outcome: a healthy little boy, mostly naturally-birthed.

I'll cover the post-birth next, I guess, but not in this post. That is, as they say, another story.

Christophe: Part I

Well, it's been a long day, but I guess it's time to send out 'the word' to anyone who hasn't already heard:


So, i'll cut to the point: the name-guessing contest is over, and we have a son, Christophe Joseph Wiseman. Kim was the only one to guess the first name in advance. How we got here is a bit of a long story.

Friday was a slow day - after Thursday's surprise discovery of faint contractions, we weren't sure what to expect when we went to sleep. By morning, Pierrette couldn't feel much in the way of contractions, so we mostly spent the day resting. By afternoon, I'd given up on anything happening, so I got some work done for The FeedRoom.

Although there were some contractions in the evening, nothing with enough regularity to worry about, so we went to sleep around 10:00. At about 11:30, Pierrette woke up feeling worried, as if something were wrong. She woke me up to track fetal movements and contractions. The contractions were all over the map (as they often are in early labour, and had been during hte day), but we got almost no fetal movements despite three Lindor chocolates, a Hershey's kiss and a glass of tangerine juice.

Worried, we decided to place a call to the midwives. They weighed the options of coming over with the doppler to check on baby's heartbreat, and meeting us at the hospital to do another no-stress-test, and decided to go with the latter. The first strip on the no-stress-test was fine, but it only had a single heart acceleration, which is lower than they'd like to see, so they did another twenty-minute strip. Part-way through the second strip, the baby's heartbeat dropped to 70 and got erratic for two minutes. This was enough to get an IV and oxygen into Pierrette within thirty seconds, so I guess that was worrisome.

The midwives consulted with the OB on call, and she recommended we move into a labour room, and, after further discussion, recommended we break Pierrette's waters. Since Pierrette and I were both hoping for home-birth and a very low-intervention approach, this didn't sit exceptionally well, but after talking through the available options, the midwives admitted that with the past day or two, they weren't very comfortable with a home-birth, and basically suggested we should move into accepting that a hospital birth was best for baby's health at this point.

I'll pick up this thread in the next post -- I've got a sleeping baby nearby, so I guess it's time to get some sleep myself before the baby alarm goes off again. I'vestill got to cover water-breaking, active labour, and post-labour fun. Lots to tell. And for reasons that will become evident in the next posts, thanks a lot to those who were able to help us out today - Basil, Kim, Roy, Brenda, Lisa, not to mention the 'production team' midwives from Don Mills - East York and Deanna, our Doula.

Preparing for a home birth

At my last midwife visit they give us a list of supplies for the home birth:

• 2 large garbage bags
• Bowl for placenta
• Board/cutting board or cookie sheet
• 12 cotton flannel receiving blankets
• 4 old towels
• thermometer
• feminine napkins (heavy duty)
• hot water bottle
• cloth for baby
• 3 prong extension cord
• food and drinks
• extra pillows
• mirror
• camera 
• music and player
• notebook and pen
• gravol
• ibuprofen
• epson salts
• arnica
• rescue remedy
• 2 sets of sheets
• lots of drop cloths
• and the bag of supplies they gave me at the last visit

My task this week is to assemble all of this...

Prenatal Classes

We went to some prenatal classes put on by our naturopath this weekend; they were good. Informative, and some experience-sharing, in a relatively small/intimate setting so that it was more of a discussion than a 'class', which was nice.

Deanna (naturopath) is opinionated (pro-breast-feeding, anti-vaccination, anti-formula, anti-circumcision), which has its moments, although she's mostly pretty good at differentiating between 'general information' and 'my opinion', which is important.

I haven't read up on vaccination, I know it's controversial for some, so I don't really have an opinion on the subject, but I mostly agree on the other points, at a high level. I'm pro-breastfeeding, but I also know from some of the experiences that others have had, it doesn't always work out the way one might like, so it obviously depends on your experience. That said, there's an argument to be made that some of the problems that can occur are brought on by the way the birth experience goes for the baby.

Babies who are medicated (e.g. mother gets epidural, which gets into baby's blood) and who are separated from the mother right after birth seem to have a harder time triggering the instincts, which can lead to some early formula-feeding, which leads to nipple confusion, etc.

It seems that like the epidural cascade, the farther you head from a simple natural birth, the more other kinds of intervention you're likely to be forced into employing, so I'm hoping we can stick to the former as much as possible.

Visitation
By the way, just to get some of y'all prepared now, we're planning on doing a little of the babymooning approach - spending a fair amount of the first days and weeks in close quarters with the baby without too much outside influence, and bringing family and friends in for short visits independently of each other to keep the stress on everyone low.

That means that many of you can expect you're not going to see the baby in the first week, and that when you see the baby, it may be a short visit at our convenience, and could even get rescheduled a few times. I know you're all busy, but the first few weeks at least will be all on our schedule.

So if you were thinking otherwise, now's a good time to start readjusting expectations. Doesn't mean we don't want to see you, doesn't mean we won't try and make it happen, just means that we're not going to be pushing to get everyone in quickly, we're not going to throw a big bash with all friends and family, and we'll play it by ear a lot.

Speaking of babies, I hear Shawn's in Mtl until the twins arrive. Good luck, Shawn!

Dreamming about the big day

I started having the prenatal dreams that you hear about were you go over the birth or getting ready for the birth at night in your dreams. Last night I dreamt that we were getting ready by grocery shopping. We were making sure the fridge was stocked with all sorts of great foods and that the house had enough junk food to feed an army. Our shopping list was a bit like this: cookies, cookies, cookies, juice, strawberries, raspberries, cookies, chocolate, ice cream, pancake, more strawberries and cookies and for some strange reason quiche. This list is not 100% accurate but does include many of the items we will actually by to have in the house during the birth. i think I was also in labour while we were shopping I think we will make sure that in real life the groceries are done well in advance.

I also dreamt that the baby was here and Geoff, the baby and me were all on our bed resting and celebrating with a glass of champagne. That one I want to do right after baby's born I would like to pop open the bottle of champagne our friends Stacey and Brendan gave us for our wedding that we were going to open on our first anniversary but did not because I was pregnant. It's seems to be a meaningful bottle to share with people at the birth.

Yoga, sleep, birthing info night

Last night I started yoga again. I had stopped for a few weeks because I found it too difficult to get to class on time. I found a different class that starts 30 mins latter. This gives me enough time for a bit to eat. The instructor is this sweet lady for scotland, it's her own business so it's also nice to be supporting a independent teacher rather then a huge studio. The classes are held in the basement of a church near Queen and Carlaw, so I can get home fast afterwards.

That said because I yoga'ed last night I actually slept the entire night :-) It's amazing what a little exercise and stretching can do for one.

On wen. we when to a home birthing information session. I am seriously starting to think about doing a home birth. Alot of the myths and worries I have about home birthing are gone now. I am planning to do a drug free labour so why not do it in the comfort of my own home. My grandmother did it? Some of the things I was worried about was the cats - they said most of the times animals just hide or watch and you can always lock them up somewheres. I was also scared I would not have enough space but my midwives seem to be convinced that there is tones of room. All you need is a bed, shower/bath, long dresser and small table. Christie (my midwife) also mentioned that it would probably be much easier to try alternative methods if I was not dilating fast enough or wanted pain relief at home because there would be no medical staff to interfere.

Got to go I have a dentist appointment.