Jaquelyn's Birth Story

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

I had an appointment with Kay, our midwife, at 11 a.m. While there I noticed that I had some of what I think was my mucous plug coming out. I told Kay and she said it was probably signs of early labor.

My back hurt on and off most of the day. That evening I went to prenatal yoga hoping that it would help with some of the back pain. It never went away, but I felt more relaxed after yoga. I called Kay and our Doula, Ella, on my way home from yoga to let them know that I was having contractions, but I didn’t think I’d go into labor for another day or so (Kay told me she’d rather have more than less information – to call whenever I felt something was going on). I came home that evening, watched American Idol and went to bed. Right before bed I called Linda to tell her that I was feeling the back labor and that I didn’t know if I’d go into labor that night or not. She said that if I thought I might go into labor to give her a call around 5 a.m. so that she could call the school and get a sub. She needed to know because she would be keeping Sofia while Nathan, Mami and I went to the hospital.

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

Around 2 a.m. I started to have contractions while trying to sleep. They were in my back and then passing to my lower abdomen. I was still able to lie in bed, but couldn’t go back to sleep, so around 5 a.m. I got up and called Linda and told her that I might go into labor sometime that day. I went back to bed.

By 7 a.m., the contractions were gone. I told Nathan and so he took a shower and went to work. I felt really badly because at 5 a.m. when I called Linda the contractions were pretty strong (per Kay, this is normal because the hormones that can soothe contractions are released in the morning – so these hormones made the contractions go away by 7 a.m. – which is why most babies are born at night when these hormones are at their lowest and contractions keep on coming). I called Linda back and told her that the contractions were gone. She had already taken the day off, so she didn’t go into work. I felt really badly about that all day! I told her she was more than welcome to come over if she wanted to hang out with us. She came over later that morning.

Nathan had team building stuff at work that day, which included a Braves game on Wednesday night. He went ahead and went to the game and had a good time.

Later that afternoon Elaine also came over (she works from home on Wednesdays). I decided that we needed to eat Scalini’s eggplant parmesan that night for dinner. They have a promise that it’ll put you into labor! If you go into labor within 48 hours of eating the dish, you get a free dinner for 2 and a baby Scalini’s t-shirt and your baby gets posted on their wall! Mami, Linda, Elaine, Sofia and I all went to dinner at Scalini’s. The eggplant dish was delicious. The server told me that I had to eat it all for it to really work – so I stuffed myself and ate it all!!! I started feeling more contractions again on the way home from Scalini’s!

After we got home, Linda and I gave Sofia a bath and I put her to bed. She went to sleep fairly easily! After putting her to bed, I got on the computer and did a little more research on Vitamin K to make sure I could defend our position about why we weren’t giving it to the baby when I got to the hospital. Then I went to bed.

Thursday, April 16th, 2009

At 2:30 a.m. I woke up again with back pain that would contract through to my lower abs. They seemed pretty strong in that I couldn’t go back to sleep at all and I couldn’t focus on something else. I went downstairs and got on the computer for a little while to see if they would go away. No luck. I called Kay to let her know what was happening. She said she’d call the hospital and let them know we’d be in sometime that morning. I also called Ella and told her what was going on and to get ready. I decided to come back upstairs and try to listen to some of my relaxation music so I could go back to sleep. I laid on the floor in our closet until a little before 4 a.m. I finally decided that I needed a little moral support to be able to handle the contractions, so I woke Nathan up and asked him to join me to try to relax. By 5 a.m. we decided that we should just go downstairs and try to relax on the couch and also get ready to go to the hospital.

So once again I called Linda and told her that I thought I was going into labor and that we were going to try to make it to the hospital before rush hour (our hospital is in Alpharetta – about a 30 minute drive from our house with no traffic). She made it to our house by 6:30 a.m. and we were off to the hospital with Mami by 7 a.m.

On our way up to Alpharetta I started to think that the contractions were subsiding, so we went to Linda’s house instead of the hospital to wait and see what would happen. While we were there I could tell the contractions were fading because when I would sit down they would subside, but when I would stand they would come back immediately. Ella arrived at Nathan’s mom’s house and when she got there she must have realized that I wasn’t in active labor because she recommended that I go and take a nap. So I did, and I was able to sleep for about an hour and a half. When I awoke from my nap, Ella suggested that we just go back home because she thought we weren’t in active labor. She said we were having a predromal labor (false then active, then false, then active). I called Kay and told her that I didn’t think we were going to go to the hospital since my labor had slowed down. At first, she seemed to suggest that I go to the hospital anyway, but I guess I talked her out of it since I felt like things had slowed down so much. Then I asked if I should meet her at the office (Alpharetta Women’s Specialists) for her to check me. She said no – personally I think she just didn’t want to have to drive up there to check me (she doesn’t live in Alpharetta either – lives somewhere in Atlanta)! So off we went back home!

On the way home we stopped at Whole Foods to get some red raspberry leaf tea (help the uterus contract) and magnesium (to take before bed to calm things down in my body) that Ella had recommended. Then we stopped for lunch at Crepe Revolutions in the West End Village. It was good. I was contracting a little bit all day. After lunch we went back home.

In order to give Nathan and I some rest (since we hadn’t slept well that night – or the night before for me) Mami decided to take Sofia to Barbara and Sally’s house for the afternoon. Linda went back home – again!

All afternoon I was having contractions – when I was lying on the couch they slowed down a little, but they were still coming pretty regularly. As soon as I stood up they came even stronger and faster. I even talked to Aidita around 6:30 p.m. and she said that I should call the midwife and let her know what was happening and to go to the hospital. In hindsight, I think she was the only one that believed I was in real labor that night!

I had a hard time eating dinner, but decided that for strength reasons I should probably try to eat something. I very slowly ate about 2/3 of Mami’s leftover eggplant parmesan from the night before!!

At 6:53 p.m. (I have my cell phone records) I called Kay to let her know that I was still having contractions, but that I going to bed and I wasn’t calling anyone or going anywhere until I made it to 11 a.m. the next day! I didn’t want to false alarm anymore!!!!

Mami got home around 7:45 p.m. Right before she came in the door I went upstairs to try to hide before Sofia saw me – I didn’t have the extra energy to try to help with her bedtime routine. I went to Mami’s room since Nathan would need our room to put Sofia to bed. Once Sofia was inside, Mami fed her some dinner. In the meantime I was upstairs having serious contractions! They were getting stronger and no matter what position I was in they were not going away. Nathan then went to give Sofia a bath and try to put her to bed. That was around 8 p.m. I was starting to have some serious pain and a STRONG feeling to be at the hospital! I told Mami I needed to go to the hospital. She said she didn’t think so and that I should just try to lie down and rest. I snapped at her and told her that I was the one in labor and I was the one that decided when to go to the hospital!!! I guess I get snippy when I’m in labor :o). So, I called Ella around 9 p.m. and told her that I felt like I needed to go to the hospital. She said, “oh honey, I don’t think so,” and proceeded to talk me out of going. I told Ella that I was getting scared that the contractions were strong and very close and I needed to go the hospital. Since she didn’t seem to think I really needed to go, I told her that I’d try to take a bath and she said that seemed like a good idea. In the middle of that call Nathan came in to Mami’s room to tell me that he was frustrated because he was having a hard time getting Sofia to sleep (Of all nights for her to fight bedtime!!! She has been so great with it lately. I guess her routine had been too disrupted that day.). I looked at him like he was crazy! I was going crazy with contractions, but he needed help putting Sofia to bed?!?!?! I told him to take her back downstairs and let her wind down then try again. I wanted my HypnoBirthing CD’s and music, but it would have to wait because Nathan was busy and Mami didn’t know how to set it up.

At that point, I told Mami to go run me a bath (in the guest bathroom because Sofia was in our room). I got into the tub with much difficulty and was able to turn onto my left side. I had a hard time getting comfortable! I was in the tub for about 40 minutes when again I started feeling scared and that I needed to be in the hospital. Nathan was still busy with Sofia! I felt like I needed some support from someone that was familiar with HypnoBirthing (even though Mami was doing a GREAT job of calming me in the best ways she knew – she was trickling water over my body with a cup)! During that time I told Mami to go back downstairs and tell Nathan that Sofia had had enough time to calm down and that he needed to get her to bed already!!! I decided to call Ella again and ask her to come to our house. That was at 9:43 p.m. I told her that I needed her to come to our house. She stalled a little and asked if it would be O.K. if she took a nap first?!?!?! My immediate reaction internally was to scream, but I needed to hold my composure for my birth process. So I didn’t say anything. I think she sensed my frustration and said that she’d go ahead and come!

After I got off the phone with Ella I told Mami that she HAD to get Nathan (I still hadn’t had a PEEP of HypnoBirthing affirmations or music or anything!). I couldn’t do it without him anymore. When she went in to our room to tell him, Sofia was almost asleep, but woke up due to Mami walking in. So Mami said Nathan would be there in a couple of minutes. The bathtub was no longer making the contractions any easier. I decided to stand up and run the shower on my back and see if that would help the back pain ease some. As soon as I stood up I felt a STRONG URGE TO PUSH!!! I told Mami, I don’t care what Sofia is doing, Nathan has to come NOW!! While she went back out and about a half of a push later, my amniotic sac BUSTED and water gushed into the bathtub! The pain got EVEN STRONGER!! That was while Mami was getting Nathan. Nathan came a couple of seconds later and I told him that my water had broken and that I was pushing and that he needed to get my cell phone so that we could call Kay. We called Kay at 9:59 p.m.

Kay asked if we felt like we could make it to the hospital. I said no because I was already REALLY uncomfortable and there was NO way I could get in our car and make it to the hospital. So since we weren’t going to make it, she said we need to call 911 and have the EMT’s come to be there for when the baby came out. Nathan went and called from our house phone (we were talking to Kay on the speaker on my cell phone).

The EMT’s got here very quickly. They came in 2 ambulances and 1 fire truck!! I think Mami said there were 7 of them!!! I was on my hands and knees (knees in the tub, elbows on the edge of the tub) in the tub with the shower running when they arrived. According to Nathan and Mami, the EMT’s were freaking out because there was water in the tub and the shower was running. First they asked if they could take me to the hospital. Nathan asked where they were going to take me. They said Northside Hospital and I said NO! We asked if they could take us to North Fulton Regional Hospital and they said they were not allowed to go there! So, in my mind, I decided that it was better to have a baby at home than to be taken to God knows what doctor at Northside. I worked really hard to find a midwife/practice where I felt like they respected my birth wishes and I wasn’t going to give that up now!! They asked if I would get out of the tub and I signaled NO – I just didn’t feel like I could do it in between contractions! So they set up their baby delivery equipment next to the bathtub (I guess stuff to clamp/cut the cord, etc.). The EMT’s and Kay wanted to know if anyone could see the baby’s head. Since my butt was facing the back wall, the only way to check was for Nathan to get into the tub and look. So off came his pants and shirt. He came into the tub in his boxers and had to stick his head under the shower to try to look. I knew her head wasn’t coming out, but since I was having so many contractions, I couldn’t really talk – that would have taken too much energy and taken me out of my zone. Too funny . . . I was naked (with a towel that Mami had draped over my back) and Nathan was in his boxers and there were 7 men in our house – you KNOW I was in labor if I didn’t care!

Kay stayed on the cell phone the entire time. I was still having my urges to push/contractions every minute or two and they were lasting 30 – 45 seconds. The baby was working her way down the birth canal. Every time that I felt the urge to push I would just breathe deeply through the contraction – deep belly breaths like they taught us in HypnoBirthing. I also would close my eyes and try to get into my zone. Whenever I was going into relaxation, I would always see different colors – white, green, blue, yellow . . . but the best most relaxing color was purple. I kept praying that every time I would have another contraction that I could see the purple! I never felt the need to moan or yell or scream, just breathe and close my eyes to see the colors. The other thing I saw a lot of was my special relaxing place that Fran’s HypnoBirthing CD takes you to – my place is Papi and Aidita’s backyard. I envisioned the trees and the waves of the pool and me laying in the hammock swaying back and forth without a care in the world. This imagery was working well for me. Since Nathan was with Sofia for so long (my birth just seemed to come at the worst possible time of the day!), I never got to hear any of our music, but at least I was able to envision it in my head from practicing it so many times!

After about 30 – 40 minutes of me being on my elbows and knees, they were starting to ache, so I decided that I was going to try to get out of the tub and onto the floor on my left side. After several tries, I finally got onto the floor in Sofia’s room. They laid a bunch of blankets on the floor so I wouldn’t mess up the rug! I was still having the urge to push every minute or two. Nathan came and laid on the floor next to me and I was able to squeeze his back/hands every time I had an urge to push. That was VERY reassuring to me to have him there RIGHT next to me!!

After waiting a while, the EMT’s supervisor showed up at our house. She said that they could not just wait there indefinitely until the baby came out. Either they had to take me somewhere or they had to leave. Kay asked her if they would agree to take me to North Fulton. She said they’d take me wherever I wanted to go! So they came back and asked if I wanted to be taken to North Fulton. I said yes because I knew that it was going to be another hour or so of me breathing the baby down the birth canal before she came out. Even though she was crowning, my bearing down (not holding my breathe and pushing) meant I was slowly pushing her out.

So the next crazy challenge was figuring out how to get me into the ambulance. I knew it was going to be difficult because I every time I changed positions my body wanted to “push.” I finally was able to get onto my feet and then they wanted to put me into this chair to strap me in and carry me down the steps. When I stood up, Mami put a bathrobe around me. The EMT supervisor held onto my hand and kept trying to push me into the chair. I needed for that immediate contraction to fade before I could move and figure out how I was going to sit down with the baby’s head 1/3 out of me. I finally said, “can you move and let Ella help me to sit down.” I didn’t need to be pushed into the chair, I needed to be told how to sit. Ella talked me through it and I sat down. In a couple of minutes after being jostled down the stairs we were at the front door next to the gurney. Now I had to figure out how to get up out of the chair and down onto the gurney. When I stood up I had a strong urge to “push.” The EMT was standing there next to me, so I grabbed his hand and squeezed (Nathan was behind me). Nathan said he looked at one of the other EMT’s and winced like I was killing him :o). Finally after the push urge went away, I was able to lay down on my left side on the gurney. They covered me with more blankets and up I went into the ambulance. As soon as I was inside the ambulance I had another urge to push. Nathan wasn’t inside yet, so I grabbed the EMT’s hand in front of me and squeezed!!! Finally we were off to the hospital in the ambulance.

Next Nathan says the driver exited our neighborhood through the main entrance – and we needed to make a left turn to get on S. Cobb Drive to get on 285 North. Well, you can’t make a left turn out of that entrance, so they turned right. Then they asked Nathan if the Bolton Rd. entrance to 285 was South-bound only. He said yes, so they KEPT GOING THE WRONG WAY down James Jackson Pkwy!! We went all the way down to Bankhead Highway - the complete opposite direction we needed to be going!!! Ella was in her car following the ambulance and Mami was in our Explorer following Ella. Mami said she was freaking out because she thought that the supervisor got pissed because I made Ella take her place to get into the chair and decided she’d just take me to Grady Hospital (not that great of a hospital in Atlanta!!!!)! So Mami said she got pissed and started thinking all sorts of bad stuff about that lady.

Friday, April 17th, 2009

Well . . . we finally made it to North Fulton Regional Hospital about 12:20 a.m. Ella got lost on the way to the hospital and since Mami was following her . . . they didn’t make it to the hospital by the time the baby came!!!! SAD!!!!!!!! Poor Ella – I’m not sure this was her finest birth, but I still think she’s a great person – very loving and knowledgeable about pregnancy . . . but maybe she’s used to doing more home births than hospital births!

Once we got to the hospital the EMT’s hung out in our room and waited for the baby to be born (I guess they wanted to see all they had worked so hard for). Kay and the nurses immediately grabbed my leg and tried to get it into the air so they could see how far the baby was out. Her head was about 1/2 - 2/3 of the way out! They did tell me to push a few times – harder than I would have pushed myself – I knew that this was going against my wishes, but by that point I was tired and I knew the extra pushes would get the baby out faster and I would be done. I guess I gave into them!!!! But it was on my terms because I was tired. The baby came out about 5 minutes later. If I would have kept breathing her down in my own way/time I knew it would have been about 30 minutes before she had come out. I just was running out of energy. I wish I could have verbalized all of this to Nathan so he could have helped me to be stronger, but I was too tired to talk! So . . . on my terms . . . Jaquelyn Margaret Almond-Rubio was born at 12:27 a.m. on Friday, April 17th!!!!

She was immediately placed on my chest (Nathan, my wonderful husband, reminded them that she needed to be skin-to-skin!)!! She was wide-eyed and looked at me immediately – it was AMAZING!!! Within 5 minutes she was licking at my breast. She licked for about 30 minutes and around 1:10 a.m. (less than an hour after her birth) she was latched on and nursing!!! Even more AMAZING!!!!!!!!! She had a strong suck from the first latch!!!! What a miracle from GOD!!! It’s just incredible how a full term baby comes out knowing how to nurse :o)

They didn’t take her away from me for about an hour and a half. We just got to lay there and look at each other and nurse and stare (while Kay worked on getting out my placenta and doing a few repairs). She was awake that whole time. Finally they came and took her to weigh her and do her APGAR test – in our room with Nathan standing by – no needles or shots or eye goop, though - YAY!! She weighed 8 lbs. 6.8 oz. and they say she was 19.5” (although we think she’s longer).

Nathan and I were both impressed at the level of care and concern for mother and baby’s interests at North Fulton (much different from our hospital in North Carolina for Sofia’s birth where it was their way or the highway)! The labor and delivery nurses were kind, patient, compassionate and knowledgeable!! I would go back in a heartbeat!

After the delivery my blood pressure was a little high (180/130), so we all stayed in L&D until about 4 a.m. while they ran some tests on me to make sure my organs/functions were OK. After everything tested out OK, we were all released to go to post-partum!

And Sofia was at home sleeping through all of it after her rough start to the evening :o)

Sofia came to see her little sister in the hospital the next day around 11:30 a.m. She was so loving towards Jaquelyn – never seemed a bit jealous – even while I was nursing her! And speaking of nursing . . . Sofia stopped nursing about 1 month ago. Since Jaquelyn’s birth she has only asked to nurse a couple of times and when I tell her that “leche es para la bebe” she seems to be OK with that. That is also another true blessing from God! I never, ever thought Sofia would stop nursing before Jaquelyn came . . . I always just assumed I’d be tandem nursing! I’m so glad that so far it has seemed to work out. We’ll continue to see what happens and how God blesses our entire family!!!!!!

AMEN!!!!