Wednesday, May 04, 2005
What Happened in Dodge on May 4th, 1997
When I was pregnant with Owen, I found myself talking to a good friend (who was pregnant with her third child) about how rotten my previous three deliveries had been. Think: posterior, ineffective 24 hour labour, epidurals, forceps, episiotomy… and you pretty much have a good picture of what took place THREE TIMES.
My friend Anne had suffered through two hellish labours which included long ineffective labour, gestational diabetes and an emergency caesarian.
We were mad as hell and we weren’t going to take it anymore. We both agreed that we wanted to find out if there were other options to help us get through our labours in a more positive way. One of the strategies we tried was to set up a one night child birth education session with an expert in our community. We had several overlapping issues and we figured we could get some good tips for our “types” of labours. (We both had repeated posterior labours). We were both also similar personalities to some extent, in that we were both not given to yoga and guided visualization crap that everyone tried to push us into.
So our CE coach came and helped us identify our problem areas. She told us that it was important to find out for each of us what helped us to relax and then to do it when we were in labour. I identified shopping, talking on the phone to friends, watching movies, walking on the beach, reading and taking hot baths.
Anne was determined to have a home birth, so she hired a midwife and made her plans. I was just a bit too scared to have a home birth, because of the complications my other labours had involved (use of forceps for two). Instead, I asked a friend of mine who is a nurse practitioner to be my labour coach. My husband would be there, and my two daughters, Dorothy and Sarah (who were about 13 and 11) wanted to participate too. I decided that Zoe might not be up to it, so arranged for her to go on a sleepover when I was in labour. Our plan was to have labour at home and just breeze over to the hospital when it was almost time for the baby.
On Friday, May 2nd, my first real contractions started, and I had my “show” or vaginal discharge, so I knew this baby was coming in the next few days. I got as much sleep as possible that night – and my coach Victoria came over on Saturday morning. We went for a long walk to the beach. After lunch, we went to the mall and spent several hours shopping and walking around. By 9 pm, I had had strong contractions for 12 hours and thought it must be getting there, so we went over to the hospital to see how it was going. To my dismay, the doctor there said I was barely dilated and sent me home. His last words to me were “see you sometime tomorrow”.
I was just crushed. We knew now that it was another posterior presentation. I also knew what this meant. Unless I could relax enough to get the baby to turn, it was going to be a very long night. (and next day) Trying to keep my spirits up, we stopped at a video store and rented “Twister” which had just come out in video.
When I got home, I decided to have a hot bath, and drank several glasses of white wine. Yes, I was drowning in my sorrows, literally! Then we watched Twister. Frankly I didn’t watch most of the movie because my contractions were so strong they were taking my breath away. When the movie was over around midnight, I told the kids they should go to bed and that we’d wake them up if anything happened.
By this time, I could barely move, let alone talk. I kept saying to my coach – let’s try to do one more hour. Around 2 am, I started to panic – and I told Victoria and my husband to wake up the kids – we had to go back to the hospital NOW! I distinctively remember yelling at everyone to get into the van. (The poor kids hadn’t even gotten 2 hours of sleep).
Here is where it gets exciting. We lived less than five minutes from the hospital. My husband was driving, my daughter Sarah was in the front passenger seat. My daughter Dorothy was in the back seat. I was lying with my head on Victoria on the middle bench with my feet on the door of the van.
I had three contractions on the way to the hospital. On the first one, my water broke. On the second one, I felt the urge to push. On the third one, my son was born. In the van. In the dark. Into my loose floppy pants. I think I screamed “its coming out!” or something. My coach reassured me and said something like, “don’t worry, just breathe”.
When we arrived at the hospital emergency two minutes later, my daughter Sarah ran towards a nurse who was smoking outside. She told the nurse that her mom was having a baby in the car. My husband opened the side door, pulled off my pants, and grabbed the baby. Victoria told him to gently put him on top of me. I think by then I had pretty much passed out because I don’t remember much of what happened.
It seemed to take forever, but eventually people came and took the baby away, and then me. My doctor showed up to deliver the placenta, joking that I might need a caesarian to do that. He also gave me one stitch without any freezing as I had a tiny tear. Gah! That hurt.
After I was cleaned up, the nurse asked me if I wanted to go visit my son. Apparently he was in the special care unit under observation because he had been born under traumatic circumstances. It was cold out there in the car!
I honestly looked at her and thought… “my son? What are you talking about?” I think I was in shock. Shock about how he was born, but mostly shock that I had actually had a son. I had three girls already and was totally expecting another girl. We hadn’t even picked a name for a boy. This was totally unexpected.
I went to visit my baby boy and was amazed at how beautiful he was. He was very fair and somewhat golden compared to the other girls. This would turn out to be jaundice!
The next day I wanted to take him home, but the doctor came to tell us that they had concerns about his bilirubin levels. With normal jaundice, the levels went down after 24 hours, but his were increasing. The doctor hinted that it could be a liver problem and that they needed to do some tests. We were so scared for that day.
Luckily, it turned out to be something else. My son had an ABO blood incompatibility. This meant that while I had type O positive blood, he had type B negative blood, and that because of the extended time period he was still attached to me in the car, our bloods mixed. He was allergic to my blood. This is something like the RH negative factor, but not exactly the same.
Anyway, he had to be under special lights and what with breastfeeding, they let us go the second day. It was quite a big deal – and our local paper did a front page story of us with a wonderful picture of our whole family. That picture would haunt me for years to come. I remember being in the bank one day (over a year later) and the teller asking, “aren’t you the woman who had the baby in the car?” This type of thing happened many times. And of course, our doctor decided to name the baby Dodge. (he was born in a Dodge Caravan).
In the meantime, we had to actually come up with a real name, so while I was waiting in the hospital, I got my husband to bring in the baby name book. I made a list of 50 names that I liked. I asked him to narrow the list down to 20, which he did. Then I took the list to the girls, who each were allowed to knock off a few names. When we had it down to 10 names, we held a vote. Everyone got an equal vote. And yes, there was extreme lobbying going on between the girls. Dorothy wanted Jordan, Sarah wanted Owen, Zoe wanted Nolan (because the only nice boy she knew was named Nolan), I wanted Renaud, and John wanted Ellery. (as in Ellery Queen)
We slowly eliminated names from the list and after a couple of weeks (yes really) we named him: Owen Ellery Jordan...
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Oh...MY....GOD! What an exciting birth story! I was on the edge of my chair th whole time. Of course, I love birth stories in general. You should tell them all for each kid on their birthday here. That is if the other ones aren't too traumatic. Happy birthday to Owen!
Kim
Relaxed homeskool
bradley.chicago.il.us/kim
Kim
Relaxed homeskool
bradley.chicago.il.us/kim
# posted by 
: 9:09 a.m.
: 9:09 a.m.
Happy Birthday Owen! Eventually I had the same Dr. as you and this story is how I identified you as my sister-in-law!
Jen
Jen
# posted by : 2:16 p.m.
: 2:16 p.m.
What a cool story! I now know somebody who gave birth in a car! I'm going to start dropping that casually, you know: "Well, my girl Lisa, who gave birth in a car, says..."
I have been wanting to tell my kids birth stories... and hope to put them all on - Owen's came first! Zoe is July, and Sarah and Dorothy aren't until the fall... so hopefully I will still be blogging by then.
That is a fabulous birth story! So exciting!
Jonah had ABO incompatibility too, you're the only other person I know that's heard of it LOL! He looked like a mini George Hamilton with that lovely golden tan :)
Jonah had ABO incompatibility too, you're the only other person I know that's heard of it LOL! He looked like a mini George Hamilton with that lovely golden tan :)
Awesome Lisa! WOW.. and I thought I had great birth stories! You win again~
So was Zoe upset that you didn't throw the name Nolan in there somewhere?
So was Zoe upset that you didn't throw the name Nolan in there somewhere?
# posted by : 12:55 p.m.
: 12:55 p.m.
You never know what is going to happen - you can plan, and plan, and plan - have the best doctor or midwife picked out and then nature takes it's course. Wonderful lbirth story - I should write mine - I've got two kids coming up in June, so I better get started!
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