Full of Surprises Sam

My sister’s partner, Maurice, moved out to Nova Scotia about a month ago to take a new job. Kerry and the kids will be joining him once they take care of some things: sell the house here, find a house there, iron out a few of the more acrimonious details with an ex, pack, give birth, etc.

The baby was due on September 15, and indications were that it would arrive earlier than that. Maurice delayed his departure for NS as long as possible, but then he really had to go. The due date came and went, and still no baby. He flew back for a visit the weekend after the due date. Still no baby. He called his boss and arranged to take the rest of the week off, which isn’t something you feel good about asking for during your first month at a new job. But his boss said yes, and Maurice stayed the rest of the week so he could be there for the baby’s arrival.

Total strangers started giving them advice. A little old lady came running out of a store and told Kerry she needed to have more sex. “And you tell him your orgasm is just as important as his!” said the little old lady emphatically.

Men would approach Maurice in parking lots and say “The problem is you’ve been out of town. She needs more sex to go into labour.”

Kerry and Maurice did everything in their power to convince the baby to emerge. They drank castor oil. They spent hours on the breast pump. They went for long moonlit walks on the Gatineau trails and had lots of sex in those chalets along the trail (there were too many children at home for them to have sex there).

But still no baby.

Kerry updated her Facebook status bar: “Kerry is still pregnant and probably always will be.”

There were visits from the midwife and trips to the hospital for stress tests, to see how the baby was doing. From all indications, he was doing fine but his placenta was starting to show its age.

Finally, an induction was scheduled for Friday – the day before Maurice’s flight back to Nova Scotia. But when they showed up at the hospital the ob-gyn decided not to induce because the baby had turned sideways instead of head down. There was a risk of the umbilical cord getting into the wrong place. “What kind of baby turns transverse at 42 weeks?” mused the ob-gyn.

On Saturday Maurice called me and said he had no choice, he had to do a bunch of things before he left and he had to leave, but could I go stay with Kerry at the hospital? He picked me up and drove me to the Gatineau Hospital.

Kerry was doing great – smiling and relaxed and good-natured as always. This is her fourth baby, and she’s had the other three naturally, at home with midwives or alone, and they’ve all been remarkably easy births. This baby has been full of surprises from conception onwards.

Okay, here’s a bit of medical trivia for you. They use prostaglandin as kind of a pre-induction technique if your cervix isn’t soft enough yet for an oxytocin induction. Guess where they get prostaglandin? If you said pig semen, you’re right!

That’s where Kerry was at when I got to the hospital: she had a string of pig semen tucked up in her vagina, and was waiting for it to soften her cervix. And she was waiting for the baby to put his head back down into the birthing position. If all went well, they could induce the next day.

The contractions started on Saturday evening. We were just sitting and chatting and they hooked up a machine that monitors the baby’s heartrate and the mom’s contractions. She was having good strong painless contractions every two minutes. I was mesmorized by the machine. Sometimes the baby’s heartbeat would speed up and he’d sound like this: giddy-up, giddy-up, giddy-up, giddy-up. The machine was spewing out reams of graph paper. This machine is not new technology, because I had it attached to me when I was in labour 25 years ago, and I found it annoying that my baby’s father and the hospital staff were so focused on the machine. I’d be contorted in agony and they’d all be staring at the number on the machine, saying “Oooh, that was a strong one!”

But I found myself doing exactly the same thing, because the damn machine is hypnotic. Fortunately Kerry thought it was funny. Maybe because she wasn’t in any pain.

They checked her cervix a few times, and she was still only 3cm dilated, which is where she’d been for a month.

The contractions stopped during the night.

At 11:00 am they determined that the baby was in a good position for birth and the pig semen had done its job, so they started the oxytocin induction.

Kerry and I sat and talked for a few more hours. She was having contractions every three minutes. She wasn’t in any discomfort. Then the OB-GYN came in and did another internal.

“Oooh,” she said, obviously surprised, “You are 8 centimeters! I am going to break the waters.”

I got my camera ready and took a few warm-up pictures. The doctor broke the waters, and there was a big gush. But the doctor didn’t take her hand out, and she started to look concerned. They were all talking french, so Kerry and I didn’t understand it all. But it was becoming clear that we were going from an easy, painless, uncomplicated birth to some kind of obstetrical emergency.

They put Kerry in an upside-down-bicycle position – flat on her back with her butt up on something and her knees by her ears.
I was pressed into service pushing on one of Kerry’s legs. The room was filling up with serious-looking people and serious-looking equipment, including a crash cart. There were 8 people in there.

The doctor said to Kerry that she needed her to push really hard, because the baby’s cord was being pinched by his head against the cervix and she couldn’t get it out of the way – they only had a few minutes to deliver him, or they’d have to do an emergency C-section. (I found out later that you’ve got seven minutes before the baby dies, and only four or five before brain damage. There probably wasn’t even time for a C-section.)

The doctor’s whole hand and part of her arm were entirely inside of Kerry’s vagina. There was a lot of blood. Everybody was scared – you could see it and feel it. I knew that if anybody could push a baby out under such adverse circumstances, Kerry could. If what they were telling her to do was humanly possible, she would do it. Kerry was staying calm and following instructions PUSH PUSH PUSH PUSH but I could see the fear in her face and my own legs were shaking like crazy.

And then the doctor was on her knees on the table, shoving a plastic vacuum tool into Kerry’s vagina and then she was pulling as hard as she could while everybody’s saying PUSH PUSH PUSH PUSH PUSH AS HARD AS YOU CAN. And I could see the baby’s hair and Kerry screamed and the baby’s head popped out. The doctor grabbed him by his neck and jaw and pulled him right out of there. It was so brutal compared to Kerry’s other births. But there he was, out, safe, alive, real!

A nurse burst into tears. Some of the people left the room, taking the crash cart and other equipment with them. Others stayed behind to patch up Kerry and clean up the room, which, frankly, looked pretty gruesome. I grabbed my camera. I hadn’t gotten any pictures of the birth because I was too busy shoving her knee into her ear. They put the baby on Kerry right away, and the two of them – both traumatized – comforted each other. He hardly cried at all – as soon as he was against her skin, he settled right down and looked very peaceful and alert and serene. Kerry, not so much, because she was being stitched up and that hurts.

Later we were moved back into the maternity ward, and I spent another night sleeping on the Venus Fly-Chair and eating from the vending machines. (Kerry’s meals looked worse than mine, by the way. We photographed all of them.)

The baby’s name is Sam! He weighs eight and a half pounds and is 22 inches long. He’s really mellow, easy-going, bright-eyed, alert and aware. I like him a lot. He’s going home today to meet his three big brothers and his big sister. Kerry can’t wait to get home to all her other babies.

Oh – Kerry asked me to post this picture on the blog. Sam’s big sister Arrow sent it over to the hospital as a gift for Kerry. It’s a picture of Arrow, Kerry and Tyren.