Kim and Lee's Kiwiland Diary: July 2012

WARNING!: This post may contain material that is unsuitable for people who don't want a very personal view into what transpired during our boy's birth....

"A brand new baby was born yesterdayJust in timePapa cried, baby criedSaid your tears are like mine"
Woof.
On the evening of Wednesday, 27th of June, Kim and I went to the Auckland City Hospital to induce labor. We had to do this because our birth was a "high risk" one and the doctors did not want us to go much beyond the due-date which was June 24. Well, waters did not break by the 24th and we really didn't even have a whole lot of movement on the labor front. The little man was still just kicking and squirming away inside mom's tummy.
When you induce labor in New Zealand it is pretty much a 3-step process:

Prostaglandin jelly applied to the cervix. This helps to soften the cervix and move you into waters breaking and proper labor.
Manually break waters. This is done crudely with a hook.
Oxytocin drip. This is a hormone drip which tricks the body into labor... it is the same hormone which is naturally released by a pregnant woman who goes into labor.

We did not want to go this route because we had heard induced labors are usually very long, more painful, and increase recover time. But our time ran out.

4PM Wednesday, June 27th, in we go to the Birth Center at Auckland Hospital. Our doc (Lynda) applies the jelly and slaps a monitor on Kim's belly which shows the baby's heart rate and contraction frequency reader... this was pretty cool. Even before the jelly went on, we could see Kim's uterus having sporadic contractions.

last time "comfortable" for a while...

The jelly took about 2 hours to bring on some activity. It went on at 5PM and the contractions started at 7pm. These were unlike any Kim has had before during the pregnancy and it took some concentration to get through them. Most of the labor was in her back - which is the most painful kind. This went on for about 5 hours, and then, finally, they brought a pethidine shot and gave it right to the poor woman's thigh. This helped out a lot and allowed Kim to rest and for me to catch a few hours of shut-eye as well. Pethidine has a bad reputation with pregnancy these days but it is out of your system in about 5 hours...which they knew was going to be more than enough time before the proper labor was to start.

waiting.....

So pethidine shot Wednesday night. A bit of rest, and then Thursday morning we had enough progress that they allowed us to move to the delivery suite down the hall. This was a much nicer room and we are supplied with a midwife to oversee our progress the entire time as well as the next doctor on call for the day, Gillian Gibson. Gillian manually broke our water at about 9AM. This brought on some more severe contractions which the midwives tried to help us get through but at no point offered the sweetness of the epidural.... a four-letter word for some around here.

Kim tried for the non-epidural route for about 4 hours.... she no likey. I'll skip the details of this part of the nightmare, but if you ask Kim she will agree that it was the low point of the whole exercise. We called for an epidural at around 1PM, the anesthesiologist did not show up until just after 2..... but ahhhhhhhh. Once that bad-boy got kicking in we were in business. (slightly relieved Kim below)

oxytocin drip...waters broke...now the fun starts....

We also received the Oxytocin drip just before the epidural. This stuff kicks the pregnancy behaviors into overdrive. Once the epidural was in full effect it became a waiting game. We were at about 2-3 cm when we got the epidural and we needed to get to 10 in order to get bubs out the "natural" way.

I fortified our boredom with endless episodes of Entourage whilst Kim rationed the epidural drip. I was of the mind that she should bank 4 hits of the stuff for the end, but she had other plans.

The Doc came every 4 hours after this, up until about midnight. Each time we had progress but it wasn't moving along as fast as the Doc would have liked. She kept hinting that we would have to wheel Kim into "Theater" (I ain't talkin Shakespeare, my man) but wouldn't/couldn't really tell us what was going to happen. This pushed Kim to the breaking point and I have to admit that it was really frustrating after all this time and pain to think that we may be headed for a "Caesar". But, we had another look at 1AM (Friday now) and we were almost there. Doc said one more hour, check again, and it might be time to push. An hour later she said it looked good and the midwife (Anna from Christchurch) gave Kim a few words of advice for pushing and pretty soon we would be off to the races.

At 2AM it was Me, the Midwife, and Kim starting the pushing. Midwife said it should take about an hour's worth of pushing to get him out. Kim had 2 hours since given up on the epidural as she wanted to be able to feel a bit more during the active pushing stage.

Now..... my wife isn't one of the "gossip-girl, lets-go-shopping, oh...i broke a nail" variety of dame....nossir. More like a "fall off a horse, concussion-oh-well, kettle-bell-tossin" flavour (epidural aside). So now when it was time for her to become actively involved in this process and push..... she pushed HARD on every contraction and had the midwife hold up a mirror so that she could see the fruits of her efforts. Midwife wanted 3 pushes per contraction.....well she could stow that, Kim would give her 4. (Consequently I was given the job of holding one leg...so I changed status from utterly useless to foot-rest). Doc came back in and was impressed with the progress. After about 30 min everyone agreed that bubs was coming out the old-fashioned way.... kind of.

Doc called for the stirrups and I was relieved of my leg-holding duties and basically told to move on out the way. We were at 1 hour of pushing and last I saw very close to full crowning. But as an the hour went by... and the doc pre-emptively applied the local anesthetic to an unmentionable area.... I could start to sense that we were in for some extra-curricular activities. This baby was estimated at 9.1 lbs.... a big boy and the doc knew it. The midwife very calmly, and quietly, picked up a phone on the wall and I overheard something about "blah, blah, fetal distress". Out of nowhere 3 more people were in the room... a lady with a ventouse machine, a guy with a bright orange resuscitation bag, and some other person who just seemed to want to see the show.

All of this went down so quickly that it could have been unnoticed..... but I noticed. I've never felt, in a matter of seconds, a wave a panic and helplessness where it seemed like everything you love in the world could be snatched away right in front of you. That's what those seconds felt like and the midwife must have noticed because she asked if I wanted to sit down.

So then, episiotomy... blood... baby's head got out... attached the ventouse machine... but you could stow that too because Kim pushed the rest of him out on the next contraction. 35.5 hours from when we were admitted to the hospital to baby in arms....

Big boy. Purple. Full head of hair. Right onto Kim's chest gurgling with all attitude we knew he had from his 9 months inside.

Beau Patrick Stewart. 56.5cm long. 4.115kgs. Where the heck did she keep it all???

Big boy. Purple. Full head of hair. Right onto Kim's chest gurgling with all attitude we knew he had from his 9 months inside.

4.115....like I said....a bruiser

4 more hours to allow the epidural to wear off and verify that Kim could walk and we were off to Birth Care. Birth Care is a neat benefit of being a resident of New Zealand. It is like a hotel which is loaded with midwives who help mom out in her first tough, few days. We opted for a partner suite where I could stay as well. The help was great. All meals and cleaning is sorted out so it makes it really easy on you. The only negative is that they are hell-bent on breast feeding. Which is fine, but we weren't getting a ton of milk to little Beau. Rather than suggest we supplement with formula, they said nothing. As a result Beau lost 0.5 kgs of weight... over 10% of his birth weight.. much more of a weight loss than is acceptable. We didn't find this out until we got home and our local midwife (Cathy) came by to weigh him.

Mom and Beau at Birth Care

We stayed at Birth Care from early Friday morning through to Monday morning whereupon I FINALLY got to use the new truck for its intended purpose:

the truck is correct.

Now lets get this baby home safe. Pre-flight check. Go!:

Baby - Check
Wifey - Check
Travel music - Check
Adjust Range Rover to appropriate suspension height - Check
Watch fuel gauge move counter-clockwise the whole way home - Check
Heated seat for navigator (me) - Check

proud Daddy driving new family truckster

One more event before we can settle in back home though. Got to hope that Li'l Ella doesn't go ballistic and tear off one of Beau's arms when he gets home. Not to worry though.... the great Lyn Ekdahl provided me with some literature on the proper way to introduce a new pack member to a previously single-child-spoiled doggy. Once I figured out that Ella is probably slower in more than one way as a greyhound, the information made sense (www.greyhoundsaspets.org.nz).

As expected the introduction went smoothly. To date, Beau is just another strange smell for Ella that she wants to lick.

can I eat him now?

The week we got home we actually made several trips out of the house with Beau, and sometimes Ella, for various reasons including running back to hospital for a checkup on Kim, getting Beau's tongue and upper lip laser'd (he was tongue-tied like Kim as a baby), going to dinner at a friend's house, and last but not least, Beau's first trip to a west coast (best coast) beach. This time we went to Piha.... never been before:

new world order.... finally got Ella off the seats and in the boot!

Beau and Kim on Piha Beach

Lion rock at Piha

So far so good. We are figuring out this parenting thing one day at a time and have been overwhelmed with the amount of support and kindness from neighbors, friends, and co-workers. The health care here has been amazing... it is almost like they WANT you to have babies and actually care about the well-being of mom and baby from the start to the end of the process. The government here paid for most of the Birth Care stay, a lactation consultant, and weekly visits from our local midwife to make sure everything is going ok. They aren't just trying to gouge us or our insurance for as many dollars as they can.... weird... and refreshing....

As a final example, a very nice woman I work with (Monique Judd!!!) , but do not even know that well, went ahead and knitted Beau a pair of booties.... I mean.... how do you repay that level of un-solicited kindness?