Caspian's Birth Story

When I think about the birth of my son, it is impossible to separate it from my pregnancy. I fell pregnant less than a month after our wedding, and the combination of the move to a new place with no connections and a horrible, horrible pregnancy.....I was not doing well. Michael took wonderful care of me in my sickness, but as a grad student he was busy. And I was not. For the first five months I threw up an average of 2 times a day, with several days scattered around where I threw up every hour. I was not diagnosed with Hyperemisis, but it was never ruled out either. I did manage to stay out of the ER (whoop whoop!) but just barely. Some days we were hours away from deciding to go when I was finally able to keep something down. Finally, around Christmas, I started to get some relief. The nausea never went away completely but it became rarer and rarer for me to throw up.

As the nausea wore away, I became ill with viruses. I think I had some form of really nasty cold for the rest of my pregnancy. I think my immune system was really shot at that point.

On the 17th and 18th of April there was a Latin Immersion course at Notre Dame that I got in on. I worked a very full day on Friday and then scooted over to pick up the first bit of the course. I got really excited about it and had a ton of fun. Saturday (the 18th) was a 12 hour day speaking and hearing only Latin. It was great but exhausting and I was sitting on the floor/standing a lot with not a lot of water available. I suspect that weekend set me off a bit! Saturday night I was spread out on the couch with my legs draped over Michael and we noticed my ankles were pretty swollen and pitting. We called in and our midwife said that it could be a sign of pre-eclampsia but they were pretty common symptoms of plain old pregnancy so she recommended we wait until Monday to come in and have some tests done, since I wasn't having any more serious signs of pre-eclampsia (changes in vision, sudden, painful headaches, etc) Funnily enough, I had just gotten curious about pre-eclampsia about a week before this happened and read up on it so I was able to recognize early warning signs. I didn't think my face was very swollen but looking back at pictures it definitely was.

At my baby shower only two weeks before the birth. ("Hold up one finger if you think it's a boy, two if you think it's a girl!") Notice how swollen my face is compared to the next picture, taken only a week after the birth.

 

I went in for some tests on Monday and as I was getting in the car to go to work later that day I got a call from the midwives saying that the initial tests indicated pre-eclampsia and not to worry but not to go to work. They had me come back in to do another test and start a 24 hour urine sample. (I think it was at this point they also sent me over to the hospital for observation. I spent all afternoon until around 10pm at the hospital that day but they released me in the end since there wasn't a conclusive diagnosis) My blood pressure was still low so they were hoping that the dip test was an inaccurate estimate, as they sometimes are. On Tuesday we dropped off the sample for testing. Wednesday morning I got a call from the only midwife in the group I hadn't met yet. She wanted us to come in. Michael was tied up at University so I went in by myself and she told me that I had pre-eclampsia and I needed to be induced. She was so lovely and kind and I could tell she really felt for me. The minimum level of protienuria for a diagnosis of pre-eclampsia is, as I recall 4g. I had 2400. And when she checked my blood pressure again it had gone up enough to cause concern as well. 

I was 35 weeks pregnant. Michael came home as quick as he could and we started packing our bags!! I gave Mary a bunch of laundry to do, haha. We went to a greek restaurant for an early dinner and then headed to the hospital. There was a lot of crying involved...but it slowly started to sink in that we were going to meet our baby very soon!! 

They started me on a cervical ripener to get things ready for the induction in the morning. They only gave me one of three doses, because he wasn't a fan, but the first one alone caused me to contract throughout the night. None of us slept super well that night but we did get to sleep in a bit. In the morning we moved up to L&D and they got me started on the pitocin around 10am. Mary was there, and Ginger, my doula, showed up soon after. (Her whole family came down with the flu the day before >_< but luckily she escaped) The pitocin kicked in immediately and I was getting a little panicked right at first. I was so exhausted already from the night before I felt incredibly overwhelmed thinking about doing hours more of this. As soon as Ginger got there she was able to help me relax through my contractions and everything went pretty smoothly from there on out. I got incredibly focused and pretty much blocked out all my senses as best I could in order to focus on relaxing and working with the contractions. I remember telling myself that the contractions were good and they're bringing my baby out. I had my eyes closed/rolled back in my head most of the time, and only a very vague sense of the conversation around me. Michael took a nap and I didn't even notice! 

I'm  not sure how far apart my contractions were during labor but they seemed really close together. I kept wanting to lie down in between them to rest but I couldn't be prone during the contractions so I was doing a lot of up, down, up down, and hospital beds are not fun to climb on while you're in labor. They ended up putting down a mat for me on the floor, which was great. I had a lot of back labor (in fact, my back was the part of my body that took the longest to recover after the birth)

I didn't recognize transition when I hit it and I don't think anyone else did, either. Looking back, I remember getting emotionally antsy but I don't think I really showed it. I would say I felt sort of fed up but not crazy or like I needed an epidural. I asked to be checked at around 2:30 or so when I was in transition, because I felt like I really really needed to at least know if I was getting close. (I was 2 c at 10 am when we started and hadn't been checked since) I was already dilated to 8 centimeters! After that it started to get intense pretty quickly. I think I was only in the "pushing" stage about 20 minutes. I did NOT want to tear, so I didn't push and didn't push for a really long time even though I was feeling really pushy. Eventually the midwifes had to tell me it was REALLY time to push now and I think I pushed a couple times and his head came out. RELIEF. Crowning was definitely painful but it didn't last very long and I am SO glad I didn't get any pain killers. They did break the waters in between pushes :) I was on my hands and knees on the floor. And then one short push later, his body was out and Michael quickly caught him and they handed him off to me. I laid down on the floor and held him on my chest and he surprised me by being a boy! Apparently nobody told Michael that babies look a bit blue before they take their first breath and Michael was worried when he first saw him, he thought he looked dead! :( But nobody was acting worried so he knew quickly that everything was ok. Michael says I said, "Hi, baby" a lot :) After it stopped pulsating, Michael cut the cord.

Overall pain level was probably a five...not fun but definitely manageable. Crowning was probably an 8 or so! It was a totally different kind of pain, one that just takes your breath away. The experience was amazing. I love remembering labor and birth. Ginger made everything better. haha. I would sooo much rather give birth again than be pregnant again, haha. If only...

Happy Daddy :)

My baby boy

Aunt Polly (Mary)

Going home the next day! I already looked (and felt) so much better!

We took some time deciding if we were going to name him what we had planned, but pretty quickly we decided YES! So while we were hanging out with him skin to skin we called our families and told them that Caspian Isaiah Duryea was here!! Born at 3:13 on 4.23.15, exactly a month before his due date. They hadn't taken him to weigh him yet but he was 5lbs 5oz and 18 in.  He was so tiny!! It seems almost unreal thinking about it. I'm pretty sure he was the smallest baby my dad had ever seen. (I was the smallest of the 7 kids at 8.8 and Levi was the largest at 11.13. Yes, he was born naturally o.o I thought of that shortly after delivery and remembered how awesome my mom is) I think we held him for an hour and a half-2 hours before anybody did anything with him, which was amazing.
We didn't have a carseat yet, so Ginger found one and brought it to the hospital for us :) He didn't have any complications other than slight jaundice and was able to go home the next day.

teenyteenytiny little hands!! and still fuzzy :)

 

At last I look and feel healthy again!

6 months.

Caspian is now a busy, happy 7 mo old and we love him SO much :)