Cooper's Big Day!

Let's start at the most important part of this. Cooper John Monihan was born on Wednesday, 29 December 2004 at 02:07 AM. He weighed in at 9 lbs 6.2 ozs with a measurement of 20.75 inches. He was a BIG baby. So, on to where the story really is interesting...onset of labor.

On Friday, 24 December 2004, Abbie and I had to go to Loudoun Hospital to get a stress test done on the baby, just to ensure that, since we were over 41 weeks, there wasn't any problem with the baby. The stress test showed the baby to be in good health and responding appropriately. The interesting thing that I noticed, and verified by the nurse, was that Abbie was experiencing minor contractions during the test. Later that day, she finally started to feel them. Saturday, the contractions were sparse. Abbie went to an accupuncturist to help her with the onset of labor. The accupuncturist said that Abbie would go into labor on Monday the 27th. Riiiight.

So, Sunday the 27th rolls around, and we still don't have consistent contractions. Shame. I thought they would start on Saturday in earnest or at the latest, Sunday morning. Sunday evening at 11:22 PM, Abbie started to complain about Power Surges (we didn't like the negative connotation of "contraction"). This was when labor started for her. She struggled throughout the night while I slept like a baby. Needless to say, she wasn't happy that I got to sleep. The next morning, I stayed home from work to be with her while she labored. It continued to get stronger as the day progressed, but nothing she couldn't manage. At around 07:00 PM, our Doula, Wendy, showed up. We went through the entire night with Abbie coping with the surges, until, around 04:45 AM, she couldn't handle it anymore, and had an urge to push. Wendy decided it was time for us to go.

We made our way to the hospital, getting there by around 05:30 AM. Guess what? Abbie was only 1cm dilated. We wanted to go back home. The nurse wouldn't let us without signing a waiver that we left against medical advice (they wanted to do a stress test on the baby, which would've left us there another 20-30 minutes). After some wrangling with the nurse, we reluctantly agreed to do the stress test. Mid-stream, Abbie commented, "I think I'm leaking." Her water had just broke. So, we were now stuck at the hospital with a 24-hour timeline that needed to be met...the baby needed to be born by 7AM the next morning or there was a very increased danger of infection to the baby.

We moved into one of the labor/delivery rooms and began the process of naturally inducing labor along, using things such as walking, birthing balls, baths and visualization. Around 12:30 PM Tuesday afternoon, I couldn't function anymore from lack of sleep. So we decided to have Abbie's mom, Wanda, take over for me while I got an hour of rest. Now, Wanda's a wonderful woman, but sometimes, Ab gets stressed out by her easily, so we were unsure as to how it would work out with Wanda in the room. To our surprise, she turned out to be a Godsend. She came in like gangbusters and got Abbie's labor progessing more. Her advice, coupled with that of Wendy, brought on stronger surges and closer surges...exactly what we were looking for.

Our doctor, Dr. Rashid, showed up around 01:00 PM to check on us. He did an exam, and said that, while she was still only 1-2 cms dilated, he wasn't worried about the labor progressing, and just wanted Abbie to keep doing what she was doing. With that, he disappeared. He came back at 6PM to check on Abbie, and we hit a turning point.

Abbie had been in labor for about 42 hours. She was exhausted, and ready for the baby to come out. Dr. Rashid told us that she was only about 3cm's dilated. This is when we had to make a decision. Dr. Rashid was concerned that the labor wasn't progressing fast enough, and we needed to have the baby by 07:00 AM the next morning. We decided to get the Petocin and an epidural. The epidural was administered around 06:40 PM, and the Petocin drip started at 07:15 PM. It calmed down considerably then in the room. I managed to get another hour's sleep, while Abbie attempted to rest. The power surges started getting stronger and more frequent. Doula Wendy, having spent over 43 hours with us, finally began to shut down, and she had to leave to get some rest. She called in a relief pitcher for us, and Doula Margaret arrived about an hour later.

At 12:00AM, Abbie had dilated 5cms. Not fast enough. The nurse went to get consent from Dr. Rashid to up the dosage of Petocin. She got it, and the dosage was upped to the maximum amount. By 01:00 AM, the epidural started to wear off, and Abbie began complaining about pain during each surge. Dr. Rashid was called in to evaluate the pain Abbie was having around 01:30 AM. There wasn't anything he wanted to do with the epidural. From his vantage point, Abbie's best pushes were coming now that the epidural was wearing off and she could feel it. "You wanted to do this naturally, remember?" was his question to her. I could see the look in her eyes that said, "Screw You Doc!" Abbie was now at the point where she was asking to have the baby cut out. I had to hold her left leg up (she was on her right side for the end of labor), and man, she's a strong woman. Dr. Rashid disappeared at this point.

Abbie continued to push until the baby's head was fully visible. This is when it gets comical. The nurse is yelling at Abbie to stop pushing. Abbie's telling her to "f*** off", and decides to keep pushing, in spite of the nurse's orders. The nurse runs out of the room to find Dr. Rashid...and I can hear her yelling at the top of her lungs in the hallway, "DOCTOR, GET IN HERE NOW!" She returns to suction the baby's nose and mouth, and I switch sides to get out of the way of the nurses. Now, I've got an even better view of what's going on.

Let me diverge and say this...if you've never seen your wife give birth, it's a site to see. For me, seeing that head hanging out of her nether regions was surreal. And then, to see it come out fully, that's unbelievable. I have a newfound respect for my wife.

I announced that we had a little Cooper John right after he came out, and then it was mass chaos again as the nurses went into action. I didn't get to cut the cord like we wanted, but what can you do? Dr. Rashid took cord blood for us to ship off for storage. I highly recommend storing cord blood in case something happens to your baby later in life. Full details on the benefit would require a whole 'nother blog, but needless to say, we believe in it and its potential. We used Cryo-Cell (www.cryo-cell.com).

After all this excitement, it was time to relax and recover. We spent the next two nights (Wednesday and Thursday nights) in the hospital. Abbie, while still numb from the epidural, ended up taking a walk around 06:00 AM on Wednesday morning trying to find Cooper (he was in the nursery). She was walking around saying, "where's my baby?" We finally got Cooper in her room, where he pretty much stayed the entire time, with the exceptions of the designated times he needed to have his check-ups.

On Thursday evening, I brought Cooper to the nursery for his check-up, and was told he'd be brought to our room later. Well, he wasn't back in 1.5 hours, so I went to find him. He hadn't been checked yet, because he was moved to the "special care nursery". Turns out, the little bugger had jaundice. Tests were run and it was verified that he had levels of bilirubins that indicated low level jaundice. Unfortunately, his bilirubin levels continued to rise thru Friday. The pediatrician at the hospital gave us an order to bring him back to the ER on Saturday, 1 January 2005, to get his bilirubin levels checked. And unfortunately, they were back up. This means returning to the hospital the next day to check on it.

All in all, it was an experience. I do have an Ofoto album set up that I'll continue to add pictures to. If you're interested in viewing it, send me an email and I'll send you a link to it. They'll ask you to sign up, but it's free and doesn't obligate you to anything. I hope that you enjoy this blog for Cooper, and if you ever think of anything you want to know, please let us know.