Mark Asher's (Long) Birth Story

BeanNut · September 2014

Short: Mark Asher was born on 9/24/14 at 2:07am. He was 8 lb 4 oz and 21.5” at 38 weeks 1 day.

Long Story: On Tues 9/23, I felt off-exhausted and weepy-almost like I was getting sick. I stopped at the grocery store at 3pm to pick up a couple items before picking up my girls from preschool. All day I had a “wet” feeling but never felt a trickle or gush of water so I assumed it wasn’t my water. When I was leaving the grocery store, I felt a trickle so I called my doctor’s office to check in and had to leave a message. I decided to ask my husband to leave work and pick up the girls so that I could head home and try to figure out what to do. The office called back an hour later and I let them know them know that the amount of fluid was very small but based on the watery consistency I thought it could be amniotic fluid. They asked me to head to L&D triage to have it tested. We waited about an hour for my brother in law to come over and watch the girls then headed to the hospital around 5pm. We brought our suitcase although I felt about 80% sure they would send us home.

By 6pm, we were admitted because my swab was positive for amniotic fluid and my irregular contractions were starting to come every 5 minutes. I was 3 cm and 80% effaced (same as I was a 4 days earlier at my doctor’s office). We decided to recheck in 2 hours to see if I would progress naturally. By 8pm, I decided to get my epidural (which took a long time to place-ouch) then we rechecked- 5 cm and 90% effaced. I think I was too excited because around this time, time really slowed down and I had a lot of trouble relaxing and waiting for progress. Around 9:30, I was rechecked and hadn’t dilated any further although baby had moved from -1 to +1 station. I tried to sleep thinking my anxiety might be slowing me down. I never fell asleep but 2 hours later I was 7cm.

Around 1:15am, I was finally (almost) complete. I changed positions in bed and felt a pop in my stomach. Apparently I had a second larger bag of waters and it broke (weirdest sensation ever!). Baby’s heartbeat dipped a lot at the same time so they gave me oxygen and called my doctor to head in right away. Fortunately his heart rate came up after a few minutes but because there was meconium in my water, we started pushing as soon as the doctor walked in a few minutes later. Pushing was harder than the second time (when they allowed me to labor down first) but easier than with my first. Twenty or thirty minutes later at 2:07am, he was born. I had one second degree tear (probably because the doctor pushed me to get him out as fast as possible). Surprise, baby boy was 8 lb 4 oz, bigger than my first two babies, and born at just 38+1. Turns out he didn’t inhale any meconium and he is doing great. We are home now and all of us (including my two girls) are enjoying this sweet baby so much!