A new life begins

Baby Girl Brown

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Children Mentioned

Welcome Sweet Pea

Baby Girl Brown was born at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem at 4:46 p.m. Wednesday. She weighs 3.84 kg (8.44 pounds). She has a head full of gorgeous brown hair and has already mastered thumb sucking, displaying her brilliance at a very early age. She will get her proper name some time in the next 10 days or so, depending on when we are discharged and when I can get it together to organize such an event.

The birth story will follow later, but here are some of the fine points:

• Regular monitoring Tuesday morning showed a lack of heart rate accelerations, so we were referred to the hospital again.
• The hospital said the monitor was fine, so they tried to send us home. But first, the doctor stripped my membranes, around 4:30 p.m.
• We drove back to Modiin while I bled and cramped.
• I made it into the apartment, into the bathtub, and within 20 minutes was having contractions lasting 30 seconds in length that were 5 minutes apart.
• 20 minutes later, those contractions were 30 seconds in length and 2.5 minutes apart.
• So we headed back to the hospital courtesy of a neighbor. Dr. Savta left a birthday party early to meet us at the hospital.
• The hospital decided I wasn’t in labor. I was only 1 cm dilated, 60% effaced. That was at about 8:30 p.m.
• I’ll blog about the details later, but I was finally admitted for labor at 3 or 4 a.m. At about 5:30 a.m., I was given a dose of Demerol to sleep for a couple hours.
• At that point, I was still only 2 cm dilated. I had been in active labor, according to Dr. Savta who knows about these things, for several hours without so much as a Tylenol. This was also my first IV fluids, so I was getting pretty parched. Oh, and I had started vomiting again – 3 times.
• The next doc on shift ruptured my membranes and gave me more Demerol to sleep through the contractions. I don’t know if they mixed up the vials of Demerol and chicken bouillion or something, but it had absolutely no effect and I pretty much grunted my ass off for the next two hours.
• At 1:30 p.m., I was given an epidural and pitocin. For the record, I will beg my ass off for this happy cocktail combo in every future labor I ever had. I went from 2 cm/60% to 10 cm/100% in roughly three hours – and I slept through all of it. It was absolute bliss.
• At 5:20 p.m., I started pushing. I think I pushed about 10-12 times, but then again, I was still a bit drugged so maybe I’m wrong (a “push” here having the meaning wait for the contraction, push really hard, deep breath, push again – maybe a third one for fun – and then breath, recover and wait for the next contraction). 20 minutes later, she was in my arms. Not sure if it is because of how hard I pushed or how fast she came, but I did tear. First degree – 11 stiches – up, down and inside. They don’t hurt that bad yet and all the drugs have worn off, so we’ll see how it feels tomorrow. I don’t hurt at all either (yet) but am considering asking for a Tylenol (or Acamol, in Israel).
• All in all, 22 hour labor, 16 hours without any medication. Or a bed. Or an IV. Still a bit miffed about that one, but the midwife I had for delivery makes up for all of it. She rocked.
• And of course, no post would be complete without a huge thanks to Dr. Savta. The woman is a complete stud and didn’t sleep for the better part of 36 hours, running across the country to be there for us, time and again.
• Thus far, the baby has had a massive poop, a good pee, a bath, two shots (Vitamin K and Hep B), and spent a bit of time under a heat lamp in the maternity ward while I was getting settled.
• She also tried nursing a little. She has a good ability to suck, though it’s clear that this as actual nourishment is going to take some work.

The complete story will follow in the ample free time I expect to have (heh). And photos to come. Too tired to post them tonight.

Labor Day – or not

In the U.S. today, it’s Labor Day. Guess where I don’t live? That’s right. No labor day here.

I had my three-hour, 100 gram glucose test this morning. I took my laptop with me to watch movies and pass the time, which made things go much more quickly. The worst part was trying to get comfy on the seats in the waiting room.

It would appear that I passed. My numbers were:

• Fasting: 81 mg/dl
• 60 minutes: 135
• 120 minutes: 106
• 180 minutes: 72

And then I was starving and we went to the mall to get pastries and lunch (yes, in that order – it’s a kosher no dairy after meat thing). After lunch, I was so tired, we hopped the bus back home and took a nap (if you can call it a nap when you sleep from 12:30 to 4:30).

This means shoulder dystocia shouldn’t be a concern for us. In other news culled from the medical community, care of my referring physician Dr. Google, women of Nordic descent (I’m half Norwegian) have ridiculously large hips in proportion to the kids they create. They are the least at risk for cephalopelvic angst (I think it’s actually disproportion, but angst sums it up better to me). As the doc doing rounds put it to me last Friday: “You don’t want to push out a 5 kilo baby. But if anyone could do it, it would be you.”

Thus far, no contractions or major news to speak of. I am crampier – basically, it’s feels like I have a really bad period. I’m feeling a lot more pressure in the general area and it feels as though the baby may have moved down a little further (though I’m not sure). She is still kicking really well and very active (at least someone enjoyed the 100 grams of sugar at 7:30 in the morning).

We’re going for dinner with a couple friends at a new restaurant in Modiin tonight. It’s a sushi-noodle place called Met Su Yan (which means “excellent” in Hebrew) and should be very yummy. After that, assuming I’m not too tired (where does the energy go?), I’d like to try and take a long walk after dark tonight to see if I can motivate my reluctant home seller to move on.

I gave my belly a tour of the would-be nursery today in an attempt to show her how much nicer it would be to sleep in her crib instead of having my kidneys as a mobile above her bed, but I’m not sure she was listening. She already shows a disturbingly acute ability to tune me out.

I was hoping she just liked the color navy blue like her mom and therefore was holding out to be born in September so she could have sapphire as her birthstone. It could still be the case, but perhaps she hasn’t checked the calendar in there?

Tomorrow morning, it’s back to the women’s center for more monitoring and another scan. I am still holding out for labor starting tonight (no, I have no good reason to suspect that it will) and that she’ll show up tomorrow afternoon. The weird thing is that, like all other issues you face in pregnancy, you finally begin to accept this as the status quo. She’ll come when she comes, it’ll hurt as much as it will hurt, and God willing, we’ll all come through it unscathed.

But it would be lovely if it could be tonight or tomorrow, no?