Birth Story
chase · Fri, Aug 14, 2015We were overjoyed to welcome our daughter, Milo Ruth Lassiter DuBois, into the world at 8:14am today, August 14th, 2015.
Tuesday
The long and winding road to get there began on Tuesday morning. After weeks of long walks, accupuncture, chiropractic care, supplements, tinctures, and lots of waiting and wondering, we faced a fast-approching 42-week deadline beyond which California would not allow the homebirth we wanted. Misty’s mom and niece (Alyssa) were also set to arrive on Tuesday evening, and we wanted to be able to greet them with a new granddaughter/cousin instead of a belly. So we made the hard decision to induce labor at home by ingesting castor oil.
We woke up at 6am, ate cereal, and began drinking water. Around 7am, I mixed the castor oil with vanilla ice cream and gave Misty her first dose. She rested until a second dose at 8am. For a while she wondered if it would have any effect, but by 10am the oil’s laxative properties had kicked in and Misty was making regular trips to the bathroom. She continued drinking water regularly and we both watched the clock and her belly, ticking off the hours as they passed by and questioning whether each new sensation might be the start of labor. We continued a jigsaw puzzle of Sir Frederic Leighton’s Flaming June (depicting a woman who looks nothing if not peaceful in her body), and we played a very close game of Scrabble.
At 7:15pm we drove to the airport to pick up Misty’s mom and Alyssa. It was in the car that Misty had her first surges, although we didn’t know it at the time; she just knew she was experiencing waves of discomfort. In the first of many bold moves to come, however, she held out while we waited for burgers and fries at the In-N-Out drive-thru on the way home. She even managed to eat half an order of Animal Fries, despite castor-oil-related nausea.
At home, we made quick work of settling our guests and went to bed by 11pm. As per usual, I nodded off in about 10 seconds, but Misty’s increasingly frequent and intense surges kept her up. Bold move II was that she let me sleep while she handled the pain on her own; she filled the tub in the bathroom, hoping that the water would soften the experience. It didn’t. Her surges were strong and fast; she began timing them, and by 1am there seemed to be a sustained pattern of surges every 3–4 minutes, so we called our midwife (Michelle Welborn). She asked us questions, and while she had reason to believe we were still in early labor, she decided to come see for herself. She asked me to set up the birth tub while we waited for her.
The tub needed to be in the living room where Misty’s mom and Alyssa were sleeping, so we woke them and kicked them out, giving them our bedroom in exchange for the use of the rest of the apartment. It was a tough situation; they knew Misty was in pain, and we knew they cared about us and wanted to help. But we had chosen homebirth in part because we wanted the birth to be a really intimate experience, and that couldn’t happen unless Misty and I had personal space we needed to focus fully on each other and Milo.
Michelle arrived within half an hour and went straight to Misty to welcome her to labor with a hug. After checking her progress, she helped me finish setting up the birth tub. By the time she returned to Misty, the surges had become less frequent and intense, and we realized that even at their peak the surges had not been consistently longer than one minute. Michelle said that this sort of ebb and flow was normal for early labor, and so with a few more hugs, she bowed out for the night.
Wednesday
Misty’s labor did not. It continued to be painful throughout the night, and we slept little. (Misty did what she could to be comfortable on the couch, while I jerry-rigged a too-short bed for myself on the floor using the cushions from a chair). In the morning, Misty’s mom made breakfast tacos, but Misty felt too nauseous to eat. Meanwhile, I reached out to our friend Puja, who lives seven blocks away and had offered to host Misty’s mom and Alyssa if they needed a place to stay during the labor. By mid-morning, Puja’s husband had dropped off the key, and after breakfast I walked the two over them over to Puja’s apartment.
When I returned, Misty and I immediately got in the tub. The water was soothing and it felt wonderful to finally have some time alone together to focus on Misty’s body and her labor. But the contrast betweem the warm buoyancy of the water and the sharp pain of her surges was too great, and we couldn’t stay long.
Misty spent the rest of the day being mostly uncomfortable and unable to move. Michelle texted us and urged us to hydrate, eat, pee, and rest, with an emphasis on rest, since we had gotten so little of it the night before. We did okay (not great) on rest, but because of pressure from the baby, Misty was unable to pee; every time she tried, it triggered a very intense surge and everything closed up. In turn, she was unable to drink water and uninterested in food, so over the course of the day she became increasingly dehydrated and famished.
It kept getting harder. At 2pm, some water went down the wrong pipe and Misty’s Animal Fries made an encore appearance on our living room floor. We kept texting updates to Michelle, who tried to help but only had the view I was giving her, which reflected my own underestimation of the level of pain Misty was experiencing. Around 4pm, and exhausted Misty explained that her full bladder was making the “rests” between surges painful, and the surges themselves more painful than they already were. Meanwhile, the surges were not becoming more frequent or intense; she was suffering for no reason.
We shared this with Michelle and she — like a knight in shining armor — made it to our apartment within half an hour and began solving things. Step one was emptying Misty’s bladder; Michelle was ready with a catheter and had relieved the pressure within ten minutes. Feeling much better, Misty was able to start drinking water again. We also checked Misty’s cervix and were delighted to see that it had made tremendous progress; Misty was in active labor! Equally tremendous was the sense of weight being lifted off our shoulders when Michelle told us that we were close enough for her to stay with us until we met our baby.
She continued making our lives better. While Misty and I rested in our bed, Michelle shuffled back and forth to the kitchen, returning to our bedroom door each time with a new food item presented gleefully in the palm of her hand, as if she were one of the assistants on The Price is Right and we were supposed to choose which showcase we wanted to eat. Eventually we settled on a jar of soup, which Michelle heated up and presented on a small plate in a bowl circled by elegant little triangles of toast. So unnecessary, but so nice.
I fed Misty a few spoonfuls of soup. She peed again. She drank water. Michelle sent us both to bed. Eat, drink, pee, rest. Michelle had it covered.
But when she did an exam again at 11pm, not only had Misty not progressed, but she was less dilated than we previously thought. 24 hours after Misty’s labor had begun, we were once again deflated. Knowing that we might have a lot more waiting left ahead of us, Michelle went home to get some deeper rest while she encouraged us to do the same.
She was back soon. Misty’s surges, though still too far apart to presage active labor, were still rather intense, and there was no way she could sleep. The pain was too much. Misty needed relief. At 2:07am, I called Michelle. She talked to both of us, and when we hung up, Misty and I started packing a hospital bag.
We somehow crammed all our stuff (backpacks, blankets, pillows, car seat) and ourselves into Michelle’s tiny Fiat and drove the 1.2 miles to to the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center. Michelle had called ahead, so they were expecting us, but it was evidently a very busy night because they put us in one of the last available triage rooms and it took a long time for the right people to appear and evaluate Misty. When they did, they never stopped coming; over the next several days we met a dizzying array of doctors, nurses, residents, and attendants. In many cases we had the surreal experience of seeing the same person after they’d clocked out, gone home, lived their life, and were back for another shift — and there we still were, still at the hospital, still waiting.
While most of the Kaiser doctors were exceptionally kind, understanding, and skilled, there were definitely a few who did not inspire confidence or whose beside manner left something to be desired. Unfortunately this included the first resident who checked Misty’s cervix; she told us that Misty was even less dilated than Michelle’s most recent assessment, and when we mentioned that Misty was unable to pee, she ordered — and made us wait for — an ultrasound-like test called a “bladder scan” to measure the volume of urine in Misty’s bladder (lo and behold, the result was: A LOT). When at long last they asked us what we wanted to do, we told them that Misty was overdue and wanted an epidural and an artifical induction. To which their response was something like, Oh, why didn’t you say so? Come on up!
We got the last available labor room (evidently baby deliveries have a season, and it’s August/Setpember). When the anesthesiologist arrived, Michelle left, I put on a mask, and Misty sat up on a bed with her back concealed by a sanitary drape. Setting up the epidural went pretty quickly, and for bold move III, Misty was a champ about it; she quivered a bit and asked questions about the weird sensations, but she kept her composure. Meanwhile, as I sat on a short stool in front of her and watched her face as it happened, I totally lost it. I felt hot and cold at the same time, broke into a cold sweat, and could barely resist the urge to poop or vomit; I was certain I was going to collapse on the floor. I knew Misty was about to get the pain relief she needed, but as the image of what I was seeing burned into my mind, I couldn’t help thinking this is our homebirth and worrying about Misty and feeling profoundly sick.
Shortly after that, Misty got more tubes and wires (IV, catheter, fetal monitor) and finally, at about 5am, started receiving pitocin to help induce labor. Michelle went home again to rest, and we contacted Misty’s mom and Alyssa, who had checked into a hotel after going to dinner with JP and Puja. After Misty and I got a few hours of much-needed sleep (as she now could with her pain relieved and her bladder emptied), daylight broke, and they joined us. While nobody was happy about the circumstances, it was nice to finally bring them into the the birthing process and have their company instead of just wondering and worrying about them.
Thursday
The next 24 hours were, unfortunately, uneventful. The doctors (who, by the way, were surprisingly and wonderfully tolerant of our desire to continue giving labor a chance) checked Misty’s cervix every four hours, and while we were teased with signs of progress, we never made it past a tipping point. Misty dilated to 5cm, but then she stayed there for another four hours, and then four more. Her surges — which, with the help of oxytocin, happened every few minutes for most of the day — never sustained an intensity that was sufficient to encourage further progress. Her urine output, though no longer a comfort issue, continued to be a medical concern; despite receiving more than four liters of IV fluid over the course of the day, she barely peed. It was hard to know whether to blame severe dehydration or a fetus-related blockage in the path from kidney to bladder; in either case, Misty’s legs swelled and progress stalled.
Michelle visited a few more times over the course of the day and otherwise kept in frequent contact via text. It amazed us both how at ease she was with the entire staff at Kaiser; she knew half of them already, and with those she didn’t, she earned their trust quickly by speaking their language (acronyms, data). They even let her help in ways that I would have thought impossible for liability reasons: she put on gloves, grabbed absorbent pads, and helped move and clean and re-dress Misty periodically. She also acted as our guide, reading the charts and explaining instead of just telling. After Misty’s mom and Alyssa went home for the night, Michelle and I also ordered Thai food, shared recipes and recipe apps, and geeked out over gourmet chocolate and The Simpsons. For all the reasons, it made a world of difference having her there.
Friday
By about 5am, what few spikes of intensity we had seen in Misty’s surges were long past. As a last ditch measure, we had tried cutting off the pitocin, restarting at a high level, and quickly ratcheting up to higher levels — a technique that can sometimes jolt the uterus into renewed action. But Misty’s uterus, nearly 60 hours into labor and fed only by the most bare-bones (as The Oregon Trail would put it) rations, had nothing left to give. So we made the hard but compassionate choice to deliver Milo by Cesarian section.
Michelle, who had gone home earlier, returned to help us make that choice and then to prepare for it. She explained what would happen, confirming what few details she wasn’t sure of with the [extremely helpful male] nurse who was tending to us at the time. She made sure we took our final opportunities to get some rest, and she joined me in the cafeteria to make sure I had food in my stomach. Then Misty was carted away, I donned some surgical scrubs (Michelle was thoughtful enough to protect me from all the surgical scents by placing a drop of lavender oil on my mask), waited a bit, and walked down the hall to join her.
The operating theater was brightly lit with floodlights and big windows that actually had a lovely view of the hills of Pacfic Heights. Could have been worse. As Michelle had warned us, there were more doctors and nurses and pediatricians than ever — some we knew by now and some who were new to us. They led me to a stool next to Misty, on the side of the curtain where her head and arms were sticking out. We didn’t say much, but we held hands as the anesthetic kicked in and the procedure began. Within just a few minutes, the a very nauseuous and uncomfortable Misty gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, and I joined Misty in failing to hold back the best tears of my life.
I took photos of Milo as she was checked by the pediatricians. She had expelled meconium in utero, so they vacuumed it from her throat and patted her on the back to help kick her lungs into action. I also got to cut the cord, and then we weighed and measured her — a whopping 8 lbs. 9.8 oz, and 22”! When the surgeons were done sealing Misty’s incision, Misty was wheeled — and I wheeled the baby in her bassinet — back to the labor room, where we were soon joined by Misty’s mom and Alyssa, and a still-recovering Misty got to hold our baby for the first time.
Milo stayed awake for the first hour or so, silently observing the new world around her before falling into an extended nap. Later, when she woke up, she proved precocious by latching onto the breast easily. Though we still have no idea how to be parents and though there are many challenges yet to come, we couldn’t be more happy to have finally met Milo. Getting there took us down a different road than we had planned, but we’re so thankful for the love and support that we had along the way, and in the end we got the healthy momma and the perfect little girl we wanted.