Birth Story and Announcement!

She's here! Introducing Madelyn Estrada Myers! Born on Monday, May 18th, 2009 at 1:20 am. She weighed in at a petite 6 lbs, 13.2 oz, and was 19 inches long. Her Apgars were 6 and 9. Daddy Aaron and Lola Delia were in the delivery with me to welcome her into the world.

She's absolutely gorgeous, and has us mesmerized every moment of the day. She has so many of Daddy's features, we keep studying her face to see what she got from me besides dark hair and eyes. Her hair isn't even black, it's dark brown and has some light brown/auburn highlights:

We had such a wonderful labor and delivery course. We are amazed that it went so smoothly, considering Aaron is the manager on L&D, and often people believe there is a "staff curse" that leads to rocky hospital stays for hospital staff members and their families.

It all started on my due date: Sunday, May 17th. I didn't believe it when I woke up at 12:06 am with some uncomfortable contractions. I even said out loud, "you've gotta be kidding me, this has got to be psychosomatic." What first-time mom actually goes into labor on her due date? I tried taking a couple tylenol with a big glass of water and sleeping them off, but they persisted. I moved to the couch so my tossing and turning didn't bother Aaron. At this point, the contractions were 3-4 minutes apart, but bearable. In the living room, I used the labor ball in just about every position possible until about 3:30 am, when they started getting more unbearable alone. I had to enlist Aaron's support. He got up, made himself some coffee, and we went walking up and down the street of our neighborhood a few laps. By this time, they started spacing out to 5-8 minutes, but were stronger in intensity. It hurt the most in my lower abdomen between my belly button and pubic bone. My mom woke up at 7:30 am, as we had plans to leave the house at 8 am to attend 8:30 mass at the base chapel. I told her plans had changed, and she was happy to hear that I was finally feeling some pain after no results from our mall-walking the day before.

Over the course of the day, they watched me rock back and forth, slow dancing by myself or leaning my upper body over the labor ball with my contractions. I would rub my lower belly with each contraction, or Aaron would take a turn for several contractions in a row. Madelyn reassured me throughout the day that she was handling labor all right with the occasional kick, punch, or roll. I would sometimes mistake this for her telling me that she needed me to eat, so I snacked on white rice and pear slices. It was a good thing I kept my diet bland, because I wasn't able to keep anything down for very long. I think it was my payback for not getting morning sickness. I ended up puking the entire time I was in labor. I eventually got some Zofran about an hour before she was born, thank goodness for that.

At around 3 pm, the contractions were very strong, but still 6-8 minutes apart, and now I was also feeling a lot of lower back pain as Maddie's head was descending and pressing on my sacroiliac joint. I was so tired that I would doze off between contractions. Thank goodness for the iPhone and the Contraction Master application...it kept me focused and helped me time my contractions. I could tap the screen at the start and finish of each contractions, watch the timer, and keep a running record of my contraction frequency and durations. I knew that I reached the peak of most of my contractions at about 40-45 seconds, so it gave me reassurance that I could exhale easily and "blow away" the remainder of the contraction after I saw those numbers on the screen. Totally a worthy app to have on an iPhone for pregnant women! Anyways, I jumped into the bathtub, which helped a lot, and started jumping from tub to shower every 20 minutes or so. The strong contractions didn't get any closer, and when the tub no longer offered any relief, I decided it was time to go to the hospital. I knew that at this point, I had exhausted all the at-home pain remedies I could try.

When I got to the hospital at 5:30 pm, I was 5cm/90%/-2, with a bulging bag of water. The first contraction on the monitor had an early deceleration with it. For our curious L&D friends out there, this was actually the only kind of decel she ever had on the monitor. For those of you who don't know, Aaron and I are both instructors of fetal heart monitoring courses, and our lectures are full of worse-case scenarios and scary-looking fetal heart monitor strips. We were lucky to only have textbook early decels on our strip! Granted, I didn't look at the end of the strip when she was crowning, I had other priorities at that particular moment. Anyways, upon admission, I was still only contracting every 5 minutes, but strongly. I knew they wanted to rupture my membranes soon, so I asked for an epidural, even though I was still breathing through them all right. I could only really handle them when I was standing, and being in the bed while they started my IV and drew labs (I got stuck a few times and Aaron was actually the one who finally got my labwork) made the pain worse. They gave me Nubain to tie me over until I could get relief from the epidural. I've given Nubain to patients before, so I knew I would get tired, but I didn't know I would start sweating! My gown and pillowcase were soaked after I got the first 5 milligrams!

I got my epidural at 6:45 pm...yep, I was one of those change-of-shift epidural patients. They broke my water, and then let me sleep. I was comfortable enough to sleep, though I kept waking because of the unfamiliar environment and to glance at the fetal monitoring strip. They didn't have computer screen monitors hooked up for displaying the strips in the rooms, so I had to lean over to read the display directly from the monitor. I know, I said I wasn't going to watch the monitor, but my Mom was so focused on it, I wanted to see what she was staring at. Mom used to be an L&D nurse, but back in her day, they didn't have electronic fetal monitoring, so all the terminology we used was like a foreign language to her. I actually got to teach my mom a few things :)

After they broke my water, I didn't need any supplemental pitocin to bring my contractions closer together, I began to contract every 3 minutes on my own like clockwork. At 10 pm, my cervix only had an anterior lip. It was gone by 11:30 pm, but I didn't have the urge to push and I was still at zero station. So I labored down for an hour and started pushing at 12:40 am. I was still only at +1 station, and still didn't have the urge to push, but I started getting a window of pain on my left side, causing me to feel the contractions in my lower abdomen and SI joint again, just only on my left. The mirror was awesome and totally motivating for me to push hard and steady. I never did feel a lot of rectal pressure or the burning "ring of fire." It was just pressure like something was wedged down there, as though I sat on a can of soda. Weird analogy, I know, but that's all it felt like to me.

Okay, so I said that we didn't have any complications, but the end of the delivery got a little hairy. She had a tight nuchal cord that the doctor couldn't reduce, delivery through, nor clamp and cut before the shoulders delivered. So it got a little tighter as the rest of her body delivered, and when she went up to my belly, I knew she needed to go to the warmer for resuscitation. Aaron got to cut the cord, and she was whisked to the warmer for a couple minutes of positive-pressure ventilation (PPV) with a bag-valve mask and deep orogastric suction with the delee. That's why her first Apgar was 6. Everybody was so wrapped up with her resuscitation that when my placenta delivered, there wasn't anybody there to spike my IV pitocin infusion to help control my bleeding. I could see in the mirror that I was starting to "gush" and pass some hefty clots. (Sorry, TMI). I yelled across the room to Aaron to come away from the warmer to "Come spike my Pit, please!" Fortunately, that took care of it quickly with some aggressive fundal massage on my abdomen. Ouchy. Okay, so that was the end of the complicated part. That's it. I'm not counting any of that as "staff curse."

Otherwise, everything turned out perfect. She took to breastfeeding at 30 minutes of life like a champ, and has had no problems since, even when she hit her "I'm now 24 hours old and sleepy" phase, she still was perky enough to wake, latch, and feed. She only lost 4% of her birth weight in the hospital, and her bili level was 4.4 mg/dL. We're approaching her 3rd day of life tonight, and it feels like my milk is already coming in. She's got us all wrapped around her little finger. As my brother would put it (he's got a little one of his own): "There's new CEO in the house."

That's our birth story. Long, sorry, but worth every momentous detail. Sorry for any typos or grammatical errors, but I'm on somebody else's feeding schedule and need to make another milkrun. Thanks for checking in, believe me, there will be plenty more photos to come!