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Cassidy Marie's Birth Story By RoseofNO |
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Birth Stories -
Homebirth Birth Stories
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Monday, 24 November 2008 09:17 |
My Story started on Monday...March 2nd, 1998. I had a doctors appointment on that day. One of those check-up-in-the-stirrups type appointments. Upon leaving the doctors office, I was informed that my daughter-in-law, Gina, was at the hospital in possible labor. She was already a week overdue. I went straight to the hospital. Four hours later they released her and told her to come back when she was "more ready" (is "more ready" proper English?). She seemed pretty darn ready to everyone but the hospital, so it seems.
Anyway, I brought her home with me and she was in pain the rest of the evening and all through the night. Gina woke me a little after eight thirty in the morning, on Tuesday, March 3rd. Her pains had started getting worse about 5 AM, but she said they weren't "all that bad." And, since she had had a couple of false alarms, She was afraid to wake me up for nothing. NOTHING?, I ask you. Well...by the time she woke me up, she was in terrible shape. I still thought we had plenty of time because, I was not aware that she had been having these enhanced...to put it mildly... pains for the last several hours, and people don't have babies at home, except on television and in the movies. Right? Hmph! I told her that I was going to get dressed in a hurry and we would leave for the hospital.
We had her other child with us, my five year old grandson, and I told him to go get dressed. An event I knew he couldn't possilby accomplish before the conception of the next child, but I asked him to, none the less. Before I could get my teeth brushed, Gina had a BAD pain. I took her and sat her down in the dining room, at the table. Before I could run back down the hall to my bedroom, she had another BAD pain. I ran back up the hall...and this is a long hall... and stayed with her until it eased up, then ran back to my room to get dressed. I no sooner got into my room when Ryan, the five year old, came to tell me that his Mommy was having yet another pain. I ran to her again. You have noticed all the running...right? The pain subsided and she said she had to go to the bathroom. I walked her to the bathroom...because there was no way she could run... and left her to go try and get dressed once more. Once again, I was immediately summoned back. This time her water broke. I knew we might be in trouble then, but still had no idea we would not make the hospital.
I decided to call for an ambulance...just in case. Mostly, I was worried about handling her, as bad as her pains were, and my Grandson on a long trip...six blocks or so...to the hopital. I brought her into my bedroom, layed her on my bed, called 911, then proceeded to try and get dressed once again. At this point all I had done towards getting dressed was to take my pajama top off. (I barely had time to get the top back on before the medics got here...much less get dressed.) She kept having pains the whole time. They were coming about every fifteen to twenty seconds. It was starting to dawn on me that we were in more than a little trouble. Ha! No one can call me slow!
The phone rang..one of many times...I answered and screamed, "WHAT!" Having lost any semblance of manners when her water broke. It was an employee of A- Med Ambulance and she gave me the phone number where to reach her if the baby started to crown. I screamed at her a while about the ambulance, then thanked her and hung up the phone... all the while taking care of Gina while she was having pains, and calling 911 over and over to find out where the damn ambulance was, and trying to get some clothes on. I was really getting ticked off.
Then the babies head showed up. Holy Toledo! What I felt then was something akin to being told I was going to get my teeth filled without benefit of Novocain. I called Stephanie, from the ambulance service, to tell her. This was about 9:10 AM. She calmly said these words to me, "Grandma, we are going to deliver your grandbaby." I said...okay,screamed...these words to her, "OH NO WE'RE NOT. I CAN'T DO THIS. I DON'T WANT TO DO THIS! WHERE'S THE DAMN AMBULANCE?" She kept calmly talking to me until somehow it got through that I had no other choices, this was it. I had to do it. I don't know how I heard her soft, soothing, voice over my ranting and raving, but fortunately it penetrated my addled brain. Then some kind of calm came over me and I settled down to do what I had to do. She instructed me to tell Gina with her next contraction to take a deep breath and "push, push, push." I was to rub in a downward motion on her stomach while she was pushing. And, I had to lift her to a semi sitting position at the same time. Between contractions, coming about every five to ten seconds now, she laid back down and I had to rub her tummy in a circular motion. With each contraction, the head would show more, but with the release of the contraction, the head would disappear again. Stephanie said that this was okay. Thank God for Stephanie! She had to okay every move I made because I had retreated to some adolescent point in my life and was not capable of any form of rationale reasoning on my own.
Then, on one big contraction the head came out all the way. Things were moving along at lightening speed now. Everything but the ambulance...that is. I had to support the babies head with one hand, rub the stomach with the other, pull her up to a sitting position, give instructions, and talk on the phone...all of this while Gina was mauling me. She even used a couple of real bad words. With the next contraction, the shoulders appeared. Now, in between all of this, don't forget, we have a five year old on the bed watching everything and listening to his Mother scream, and me panic. He started to cry, of all things. All I could think of is this is just what I need now, a crying kid!
I had no idea that I still had a thought process going on, but by some miracle it came to me to put him to work helping. I told him to go to the window and watch for the ambulance. He got up right away, stopped crying, and looked vigilantly out the window for the ambulance. At one point, he got back on the bed, and started rubbing his Mommy's tummy and telling her to "breathe Mom, push Mom." He had been listening to me give her instructions. Then he would go back to the window and watch. He was standing in front of the window, with the curtains pulled back, and I see the ambulance go by...and keep going! It passed us up! Obviously going faster than it had the entire trip here.
I never did have time to unlock the front door and had no way to leave to do it now. Ryan does not know how to open it. I told Stephanie, who else? of my dilemma, and she told me that the next break Gina had, to hand her the phone, run unlock the door, and come back. Notice...she had to tell me to come back. Stephanie was communicating with the ambulance the whole time, though not with much success, as far as I could tell. I don't know what good it did to hand Gina the phone, all she did was hold it and scream. Actually, for all the pain she was having, she was tolerating it well...or so I thought.
When I ran to unlock the door, Ryan followed me and I left him in the driveway to flag the ambulance down and bring the medics to his Mom. Normally, when in my right mind, I would not leave a five year old in the street alone. He stood his little self out in that big driveway, like a trooper, and brought them to us. :-)
They got here at about 9:18 AM, almost thirty minutes after I had called them, just in time to catch the baby. Two pushes after they arrived, Cassidy Marie, weighing 7lbs., 2 oz., and nineteen and a half inches long, made her final slip into the world, at 9:20 AM. Less than fifty minutes after Gina woke me up. We had been in the final stages of child birth for ten minutes before the medics got here.
It was the scariest thing I have ever gone through. Not to mention the messiest and bloodiest. And, NO, I cannot look back on it and say, "what a wonderful experience." Things like this need to happen in the hospital where they are supposed to happen. If I would have known that Gina was going to be fine, and that the baby was going to be fine.... born with no problems, like getting stuck, or not being able to breathe once born, then maybe it would not have been as scary. But, those unknowns are so frightening that it is hard to see past them. And, the baby did have a breathing problem for a short time. The medics had to work on her several minutes. They would set her down on Gina's chest, then pick her up again and do something else. However...Mom and baby are fine. :-) And, so is Ryan. I talked to him about the experience after it was over because I knew he was frightened and would need to talk about it. The doc was in bad shape for a while though. I stayed shook up for many hours after the ambulance had taken her away, even though I knew everything was okay. Then the first thing I did after the ambulance pulled out of the driveway, was to run inside and "GET ONLINE!"
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