Benji's Birth Story

Kaylee524 · May 2014

Hello all! I have been way out of the loop the last couple weeks - adjusting to motherhood has been a lot more challenging than I had even expected. But I'm back, and I'm anxious to jump back in!

Benjamin Alexander was born on Thursday, May 8, 2014 at 8:02pm. Here is his birth story.

My due date was May 5^th – a Monday – and that day came and went with no indications of Benji’s impending arrival. I even had a doctor’s appointment the next day, and Dr. Brown said that I was 70-80% effaced but “maybe a fingertip” dilated.

When I went to bed on Wednesday night, I was feeling a little bit strange but wasn’t certain that this was it. Throughout the night, I was awoken by contractions, but they weren’t strong enough or regular enough to keep me awake. However, at about 3am I couldn’t sleep through them any longer. I woke up and started timing them. At that point, they were lasting about a minute and were roughly seven minutes apart. When I could tell that they were staying regular and coming closer together, I woke DH up. That was at about 4am. I asked him if he’d like to have a baby today, and he said yes of course!

Over the next hour, we continued to time contractions. They were coming closer together and by about 5:30am they seemed to be less than 5 minutes apart. I called the doctor's office and of course was directed to the doctor on call. She suggested we wait a little while to make sure the contractions continued to be regular and get closer together. I waited about a half hour. On the way to the hospital, we let our parents know that it was baby time – or at least that we thought it was.

When we arrived at the hospital, we headed up to labor and delivery and were set up in a triage room. They strapped me up to monitors for the contractions and the baby’s heart rate. During the first few contractions, Benji’s heart rate dropped scarily low – to the 70s and 80s. They said that my contractions were not as regular as I seemed to think, but because of the heart rate issue they decided to keep me there. I was transferred to a labor & delivery suite. At this point, I texted my sister to make sure that she knew where we were and that should could check on our dogs. She let me know that my mom was actually already on her way in to the city – a 4.5 hour drive – and would be there by 11am to 12noon.

After we got settled into the L&D suite, my doctor arrived. Because of the baby’s dropping heart rate, he explained that they were going to go ahead and break my water and due an amnio-infusion to add some extra cushioning around him. When they broke my water, there was meconium in the fluid, and that was honestly the first moment that I started to get really anxious. The doctor explained that they would need to have the NICU nurse in the delivery room when Benji was born so that they could check him over in case he inhaled some of the meconium.

They started the amnio-infusion, and my contractions started to get more and more severe. Benji’s heart rate continued to drop with each contraction, and the nurse explained that they wanted to get an epidural going early in case they needed to take us in for an emergency cesarean. By that point, the contractions were bad enough that I was actually happy to hear that I would be getting the epidural soon!

My mother and sister arrived right as they were putting the epidural in. This was at about 12noon.

The next eight hours was full of twisting and turning to keep my blood pressure down, the baby’s heart rate up, and the epidural medicine flowing. At several points, alarms went off for either my blood pressure or the baby’s heart rate. Once when the alarms went off about six people ran into the room, and that was fairly terrifying, but once they got everything sorted it all went back to normal.

Unfortunately at about 7:30pm my epidural started to run out – especially on my left side. The contractions were one on top of another and wrapped the whole way from my back to my abdomen. The pain was excruciating, and I began to get violently sick. At this point I talked to my nurse and she said that it was ok to start pushing if I thought that would help with the pain. I agreed to start pushing.

My doctor was in another room delivering a baby, so I pushed through several contractions without him there. He finally arrived and the nurse informed him that the baby’s heart rate was dropping very low with each push. I pushed through a few contractions with him there, and then he had me stop. He got a very serious look on his face and said that at this point it was better for the baby to be out than in. I was terrified that we were going to straight to an emergency cesarean, but he proposed the vacuum first.

He got set up with the vacuum and I pushed through a couple of contractions. Things went very quickly at this point. On the third or fourth contraction, the doctor told me to stop pushing, and I knew that meant that Benji’s head was out. He said no umbilical cord around the neck, and that was great news! One more big push, and Benji was born! He didn’t cry right away, and they wouldn’t let DH cut the umbilical cord because they wanted him to go straight over with the NICU nurse. On his way over to the warmer, he let out one big squall, and I knew he would be ok!

Benji was small, weighing in at about 6 pounds 1 ounce and about 19 inches long. He didn’t even fit his newborn clothes at first! However, in the last 2.5 weeks he has grown a lot and even grew out of some of his smallest clothes. Breastfeeding was difficult at first and continues to be troublesome when he cluster feeds (ouch!), but we are all getting settled!