On Monday, January 25th we went to our scheduled non-stress test at San Francisco General Hospital . While the fetal monitoring showed a healthily functioning baby, an ultrasound was not able to pick up enough empty pockets of amniotic fluid. All had an elbow, or some umbilical cord, or placenta in it, so they did not qualify. I had what medical people call an AFI of ZERO. This means that there is technically NO Amniotic Fluid for the baby to be moving around in. The technician sent us up to Labor and Delivery, for more fetal monitoring and another ultrasound. Once again, the AFI registered at zero, and even Judy was unable to convince them to accept the pockets of fluid on the screen. The hospital midwives and doctors recommended that we begin immediate Pitocin induction.
We were reluctant to begin immediately, but we agreed to a membrane sweep (yow-WEE!) and went home to collect ourselves with the promise to return later that night to be admitted for induction. Contractions began to intensify while I was at home, so when we arrived back at the hospital they began with a low dose of Pitocin. When my membranes were swept, my cervix was at 1cm dilated, but very soft. I was still at this stage when I went to bed. Since the point was to get some rest and not begin the full labor right away, the midwives agreed to keep the levels low, and I was able to get some sleep.
Pitocin was increased slowly all day Tuesday, and contractions began to get more intense. By the end of the day I was 3cm dilated and 50% effaced. We started to get excited! Things seemed to be moving! The midwives wanted my labor to continue progressing and we decided to move on to Misoprostol at midnight (Wednesday morning). I spent the day walking around the labor and delivery department, with the hopes that gravity and my movement would keep the labor on track.
After the second dose around evening time, I got into the bathtub for a while and my contractions became even stronger. Jessica (Sage Femme’s rock star student midwife) arrived and was great support to both Corby and me. My water broke sometime during this part of the process, and the nurses and midwives seemed kind of surprised. I got to explain (over and over, actually) that there WAS fluid in my sac after all!
When my cervix was checked again, the midwives had some bad news: I was still at 3cm, and 50% effaced. My cervix was very soft still, but all that hard work I had been going through was not considered “REAL LABOR” by them. This news was VERY DISCOURAGING, and the messenger was not very gentle, either. By now it was 3AM on Thursday, and Corby and I were both exhausted. Jessica helped us to be OK with our next step: an epidural.
I was given a shot of morphine around 4am on Thursday, but by 7am the contractions were back and stronger than ever. I was then given fentanyl so that I could hold still while they inserted the epidural. The anesthesiologists came in with a huge cart and went to work. In no time all the feeling in my legs was gone, and Corby and I were able to sleep. I just had to remember to keep pushing the button to give my epidural more juice. Jessica went home to wait on a progress update. Meanwhile I could rest and prepare my brain for THE PUSH. At around 11:30 PM the midwives checked me again, and now I was FULLY DILATED!!! AND AT STAGE ONE!!! They said I could start pushing when I was ready, they’d be back for me in an hour.
We called Jessica and the next thing I knew she was by my bed wafting in refreshing tangerine. The epidural was turned off and I began to breathe thru the returning contractions. With the fading epidural I could tell I was not feeling their full force. My legs were still quite numb, so Corby and Jessica helped me fold my knees up and gave me their hands to pull while I pushed. The next part was a bit of a blur, “PUSH, Breathe, PUSH, Concentrate, PUSH, Downward, PUSH OOOOOOOooooopening,” were all that were in my mind. My low OOOing turned into songs, and finally a maniacal “HA HAA HAAA HAAA HA HAA HAA!” escaped me as Lakota’s head emerged. Corby said, “I CAN SEE HIS HEAD!” And the next thing I felt was like a bag of tennis balls coming out of me. (thump-thumb-bump-bum) That was his body. Corby laid the baby on my chest (which was actually my stomach because the cord was too short), and the image of his grimacing blue face will be seared in my mind’s eye forever.
He started to cough and breathe, and then cry—not too little and not too much, but stronger and stronger as his lungs unfurled. My baby was crying, my husband was crying, I was crying, it was beautiful!
Corby finished cutting the cord, and then Lakota and I were face to face. Oh WOW that was amazing. The nurse turned off the pump on my Pitocin and flooded me with it after Lakota was out, so that my uterus would continue to contract fully. I guess it worked, because I heard the midwives go, “WOAH!” as my placenta shot out. I tore a bit, too but I didn’t really care. Corby and I were singing Happy Birthday to our beautiful son.— Lakota Nova Kearns born 2:48 AM. He was born 9lbs. 3oz. 21 ¼ inches long, 37 ¼ cm. head. Momma pushed him out in about 45 minutes and 6-7 pushes or so.
The rest of Friday was spent as comfortably as could be expected in a hospital: Corby and I rested for a few hours, and then asked the hospital to prepare to discharge us. SF general usually keeps its newly-delivered mothers and babies at least 24 hours, and preferably 48 hours. We were very eager to get home, since we had no plans to be in the hospital in the first place.
Alas, our freedom was not to be: a nurse examining Lakota believed that she heard a heart murmur, and reported this to a pediatrician. The pediatrician found no heart murmur when she examined our baby, but she was concerned by his rapid breathing. She ordered blood work done, and the results seemed to point to inflammation and a possible infection. There was no way to tell for sure without a blood culture, they said, but it would take two days to see results. If he was not administered antibiotics immediately, he could have a full-blown infection which could prove harder to control.
All plans to be discharged were halted, and we agreed to the procedures in the hopes that we’d be able to leave once he was cleared. We were moved to a new shared room, and Corby could not stay overnight anymore. There was NO WAY we were going to leave our son to go through any IVs, blood draws, or medicine administration alone. So, our brand new family was separated before its first day together was over.
We’ll leave out the stories of all the next blood draws, IVs, fluid pumps and antibiotics for you—they were heart-breaking for mother, father, and baby. The next few days were a blur of new baby bliss, learning to breastfeed, friendly faces bearing healing foods, soups, and love, and waiting for good news. Mommy was discharged and moved into the dorm-style room in the nursery for breastfeeding moms. There were no facilities for fathers, so we spent hours in the windowless waiting room bonding as best as we could.
On Tuesday we pushed hard to for Lakota to be discharged, making calls to our pediatricians to get a second opinion. They were reluctant to counsel us to leave the hospital and stop the course of antibiotics. “WHAT IF the baby really does have an infection?” The only bacteria that had grown in the blood cultures was a skin contaminant, probably picked up when the first culture was taken. Our son was diagnosed with “POSSIBLE SEPSIS”. The doctor finally agreed that we could leave on Friday after Lakota’s 1:30 pm antibiotics.
This was the news we had been waiting for! We put our heads down and powered through the next few days. Esther’s mother arrived from Hong Kong with a fresh attitude, and by noon on Friday we were packed and ready to go. At 3pm Lakota was feeling the breeze on his face for the first time. He didn’t like it very much, but we were FREE!
When all was said and done with, we had spent a total of 10 days and 11 nights in the hospital. Four of those nights were spent in labor, and the next seven were long, stressful, and possibly unnecessary. In my perfect world, I would have given birth to Lakota at the Sage Femme Birth Center, and then gone home and spent the next two weeks in bed, blissed-out with my husband and falling in love with my son.
In this perfect world, however, our brand new family was challenged in ways that I could have never foreseen, and we are stronger for having experienced it. This wasn’t our ideal birth, but we were cared for by very capable hands, and found compassion and caring in places that we weren’t looking. The love, kindness and support from family, friends, and even strangers brought us through some dark times. The word “grateful” does not even begin to describe how we feel. THANK YOU.
