I've been meaning to write down the details of Elise's birth for a while now. We have told the story so many times and each time it gets my heart racing. While this all happened nearly two months ago, the details, the fear, the joy, and the pain are all still right there in my mind.
On Friday, January 11, I decided to try out a new cookie recipe. Mike was at Kaiser getting an MRI done on his knee, so I happily puttered around in the kitchen, tasting the delicious iced molasses cookies (inspired by a local bakery) as they came out of the oven.
Around 8 PM, somewhere in the middle of baking, I started having contractions. Mike got home shortly after and then took NyQuil because he wasn't feeling well. I had experienced 27 hours of contractions a couple days before, but the timing of them had been very irregular and they weren't very painful. I started to time the new contractions and noticed they were irregular too. Sometimes there would be 20 minutes between them, then 15, then 40.
I kept timing them on my phone, but I figured these were "rehearsal" contractions like the ones I had a few days earlier. The only difference was that they started to get really painful. Each one was lasting a minute to a minute and a half and as the night went on, I started to really notice the pain. When I felt a contraction coming, I had to stop everything I was doing and focus on breathing. I would lean on the bed, get down on the floor, brace myself against the wall, etc. I was practicing all the techniques they teach you in the childbirth prep classes. But the contractions were still really far apart (up to 59 minutes!). So Mike and I went to bed (he passed out pretty quickly from the NyQuil). I slept a little bit, but woke up as each contraction started, hopped out of bed to try to find a comfortable position, then hopped back into bed to try and sleep.
(Side note: Although Kaiser Redwood City is much closer to where we
live, our geneticist and OB/Gyn decided we should have this baby at
Kaiser Santa Clara so some additional tests after birth could be done.
Also, Santa Clara has a high level NICU, in case we experienced any
complications. Basically, knowing what we went through with Tessa, they
wanted to make sure we had the highest level of care available should
the need arise.)
Around 4 AM the contractions were extremely painful (but still so random) so I called Kaiser Santa Clara's Labor and Delivery line and asked if I should come in. They said I should wait until the contractions were 5-7 minutes apart for an hour. I told them I was in a lot of pain and asked if they had any advice. The woman said to try to take a shower, so I hopped in the shower and gave Mike, who was still in bed, my phone so he could time my contractions for me.
I got in the shower around 4:20 and immediately started up with contractions again. I would yell out, "START!" and Mike would start the timer. Then when it had subsided I'd yell, "STOP!" Well pretty much from the start of the shower, the contractions became extremely close together, basically a minute and thirty seconds to two minutes apart. I was yelling "START" and "STOP" with barely any pause in between. After about four really close together contractions, I decided it was time to get out of the shower and call Kaiser again . . . this was getting serious! We had skipped the 5-7 minute apart thingy!
I dialed up the Labor and Delivery department, but just as someone answered the phone, I felt another contraction coming on. I threw the phone at Mike who explained to the woman that his wife was having really painful contractions that were now just a minute and a half to two minutes apart. Meanwhile I was on all fours on the floor, writhing in pain, and being very vocal about it. :) The woman on the phone asked Mike if that was his wife she was hearing in the background. He replied, "Yes," and the woman said that it sounded like I was in active labor (ya think?) and that we should definitely come in now. She also asked if I had the urge to push (I did not) and if we thought we could make it to Santa Clara in time (we said yes).
After hanging up the phone, Mike and I scrambled to get everything ready. I threw on whatever clothes were closest (turned out to be yoga pants, a t-shirt, and flip flops). We grabbed the already packed hospital bag, the camera, our phones and chargers. Mike even fed the cats and his class pet, a guinea pig named Applesauce that he chose to take care of that weekend (what awesome timing). The contractions at this point were almost unbearably painful but I knew we'd be at the hospital soon. As we were heading out the door, Mike stopped and said, "Should I go refill the cats' water bowl?" I screamed at him, "Are you crazy?! The cats have water! We need to go NOW!" So we hopped in the car and immediately upon sitting down, my water broke.
As soon as this happened I had the urge to push, and when you have the urge to push, you really can't NOT push. So we pulled out of the driveway as my anxiety level and pain increased. Since it was 4 AM on a cool morning, Mike's car windows were completely fogged up. As he started to drive I started to scream, "Can you even see? Do you even know where you're going? How can you see? This is NOT the time to get into an accident!" Mike assured me that he could see fine and we continued on. We still planned on heading to Santa Clara, but at this point we started toying with the idea of going to Redwood City instead. As we got close to 101, I instructed Mike to go "North! North! To Redwood City!"
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"Yes! I don't think I can make it to Santa Clara!"
I sat there in the passenger seat trying pretty unsuccessfully not to push while Mike picked up speed. He later told me he was driving upwards of 95 miles per hour. He also very calmly narrated the whole drive, trying to keep me as sane as possible. "We're one exit away, we're getting closer and closer. We're almost to Woodside Road" and so on. Then we caught up to a car going pretty slow in the exit lane. In reality, I'm sure this car was going the speed limit or higher, but we were in a hurry. I told Mike it was okay, he could stay behind them. He apparently didn't feel that was acceptable, so he veered across multiple lanes (I suppose there were a couple other cars), sped up, and then cut in front of the car. As we exited on Woodside Road, I told Mike we had to go to the emergency room because it was 4:45 in the morning and told him how to get there. We got stopped at two red lights, which panicked me briefly, but they changed to green quickly because it was so early in the morning.
Mike pulled the car up right outside the emergency room door, got out, and ran in to get some help. He told the person at the registration window that his wife was in the car about to have a baby. Mike came back out followed by a woman with a wheelchair who upon seeing me writhing in pain decided a wheelchair wasn't going to cut it. She quickly went back inside, fetched two emergency room workers, and they came out to the car to help get me inside to a gurney. I don't remember much from this except that they helped me walk inside, I immediately laid down on the gurney, and they wheeled me into the elevator to go to the second floor where Labor and Delivery is located. I also remember the Emergency Room being strangely empty and quiet (which is incredibly fortunate!). I only recall seeing two people sitting in the corner of the waiting room. Mike did not go up with me because he went back to the car to lock it and get our hospital bag.
Upon arriving up at the second floor at 4:50 AM, they wheeled me into a delivery room, transferred me to the hospital bed, undressed me, and assembled a team of nurses and a midwife. Redwood City had NOT been expecting us, so they asked if I was a Kaiser member and I somehow managed to spit out my membership number. They tried to get a blood pressure band around my arm, but I was shaking so hard that they gave up pretty quickly. A minute or two later, Mike arrived in the room. An emergency room employee came to get Mike's keys so she could move his car forward so it wasn't blocking the ER entrance. Kaiser
goes above and beyond! Thank goodness
they didn't ask him to move his car to the parking lot or I'm sure he
would have missed the birth.
The next eleven minutes are mostly a blur. I do, however, remember saying two things:
1) I turned to Mike and said, "My mom is going to KILL me!" I thought this because she wanted us to call when we were on our way to the hospital. Obviously there was no time to do that, so I was sure she would be pissed when Mike called and said we had the baby! Of course when he did actually call to explain the situation she was not pissed at all. :)
2) I said to one of the nurses, "Is it too late for an epidural?" I was pretty sure of the answer to that question, but the nurse confirmed. She looked at me and said, "Honey, you're having this baby in minutes."
As the team of nurses and the midwife were getting everything ready, they were trying to have me
not push. They wanted a pediatrician to be present for a couple reasons. First, because we arrived so far in the process, they wanted a doctor there to check on the baby because she had not been monitored at all. Normally they would have been watching her heart rate for hours. Second, there was meconium in my amniotic fluid so they wanted to make sure the baby's airway wasn't blocked by having swallowed any of it. So they tried to get me to slow down the whole process by asking me not to push, but really I couldn't control it. I tried breathing in and out very quickly as they instructed me to, but it was no use. The pediatrician was not there yet and I was ready to have this baby! The midwife decided the process could not be delayed any longer so she told me I could push. Then she asked Mike to help by holding one of my legs up (a nurse had the other one). As soon as Mike held my leg, everything was easy. Baby decided to make her appearance very quickly. 5:01 AM. Eleven minutes after we got to the hospital.
The midwife immediately unwrapped the umbilical cord from the baby's neck, cut the cord, and she was whisked away by two other nurses. Mike then looked at me, holding my hand, and said, "We have a baby! We have a baby! You're done. We have our baby girl." He then shifted his focus to the baby as the nurses checked her lungs by patting on her chest and took her vitals. The midwife, meanwhile, took care of me, but I started shaking pretty violently and got incredibly thirsty. Mike fed me ice chips and one of the nurses brought in warm blankets to cover me up. I'm pretty sure my body was in shock. It seriously felt like a movie!
After a few minutes and making sure the baby was okay, the nurses brought her over for me to hold. I just remember staring at her beautiful little face, her absolutely perfect little mouth. One of the nurses asked if she had a name yet and Mike told them it was Elise. Due to a "spontaneous birth" (that's what the Kaiser paperwork called it), they let us stay in the delivery room longer than usual to monitor the baby and give me time to recover. This gave us some quality time to bond with and hold Elise. Once the nurses were sure there were no immediate signs of trouble (they were now aware of our situation with Tessa), we were moved to a recovery room.
That day, Elise was showered with love from her mommy and daddy and twenty-one visitors! Mike and I held and snuggled our baby girl a lot that day. I remember thinking, after even just a couple of hours, how different this experience felt compared to Tessa's birth and the hours afterward. A different experience was really what I had hoped for and I sure got it!
Seven weeks have passed and I still look back on Elise's birth almost every day. I remember how scared I was, thinking I could possibly deliver my baby in the car . . . we later joked that had this happened, we would have named her Honda. I remember how amazing those first couple days in the hospital were . . . how sweet it felt to hold our baby, how relieved we were when all of her test results came back normal, how amazing I felt and how easy my recovery was. I was also so happy that we ended up at Redwood City where I was familiar with the doctors and nurses, where we could be closer to our families, and where the level of care is incredible!
It was a dream of a birth! A scary dream in some ways and an amazing dream in every way. Finally, we have our baby girl! :)
Elise Tessa Walton
5:01 AM
7 pounds, 3 ounces
19 inches
