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Maia at 10 minutes old
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At 6:30am, 17Aug06, Monika notices some bleeding (no
contractions yet or signs of amniotic fluid). She calls the Midwives
at the hospital who tell her to come in for a quick check to verify if
Monika is in early labor. Monika checks in at 8:30am and calls me at
work saying that the initial though is that she is in early labor but can go
home but to expect to return within 24 hours. Our midwife, Vida, wants
to run one more test.
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At 11:30am, I arrive from the hospital from work and Monika
gets the results back from the latest test. She's slowing leaking
amniotic fluid and because Monika had tested positive for particular
bacteria; she can no longer leave the hospital and will need to be put on
antibiotics to help protect the baby. So, we wait for about 2 hours
until a "birthing suite" is ready for us to move into.
Monika is having very minor and irregular contractions - she had at first
though that they were from the baby moving. Later Monika is giving
Pictosin to help induce labor and to see if this will help induce labor.
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By 4:00pm, still no signs of regular contractions; so it's
decided to manually break the amniotic bag in the hopes that
stronger/regular contractions will occur. Once her "water is
broken"; oh boy does Monika feel the contractions NOW!!! They
become regular and strong - strong enough that: Monika swears this will be
the first and LAST pregnancy she'll ever go through, kinda attempts to bite
the nurse Nicole who calmly states "Well if you bite me, you're not
breathing and you need to breathe for the baby...", and I swore I
thought I saw Monika clench her fist as though she was going to PUNCH me to
ward off the pain from the contractions.
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By 10:00pm, the pain of the contractions is so bad that
Monika decides that an epidural is needed for the pain; so by 11:30pm the
drugs kick in and she (and I) actually catch an hour nap. After the
epidural, Monika is given an oxygen mask to baby maintain a good heart
beat. It was noticed that for every contraction, the baby's heart rate
dropped, later on we found out why.
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Starting around 02:00am on 18Aug06, Monika states that she
feels like she's ready to starting "bearing down" and the Vida,
the midwife, says Monika's at full dilation - so now the fun begins...(yes,
sarcasm)
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During the process of getting the baby through the birth
canal, I'm holding a leg and the nurse is holding the other while all 3 of
us keep coaching Monika to keep breathing and push to help get baby
born. The mask was really bothering Monika and she had a hard time
keeping even breaths, but I had to help her focus because every time she
didn't breathe correctly or removed the mask, the baby's heart rate would
drop from 160bpm to 80bpm - this was a bit scary.
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With the final push and with Nicole, the nurse, and myself
"ordering" Monika that it was her job to get this baby out; Maia
was born into our world. It turns out that Maia had her cord around
her shoulder that caused the drop in heart rate during contraction, plus
Monika's small birth canal had made birthing difficult. I'm just
thankful and happy that all turned out well in the end.
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