From: slg@slgsun.att.com (The Idealistic Cynic)
Subject: Birth Announcement and Story
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Columbus, Ohio
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 18:11:45 GMT



	Iain Lawrence Gilley was born to Stacey A. James-Gilley
	and Sean L. Gilley at 1:10 AM on thursday, November 26.
	He weighed in at 8 lbs 1 oz and was 20.5 inches long.
	Apgars were 8 and 9.



Long birth story follows: (about 200 lines)
	
     On friday, November 20th, at about 2:00 AM, Stacey felt
a trickle of something run down her leg.  She'd been feeling
contractions for quite a while, though none had been very strong,
so we felt that this probably was amniotic fluid.  We tested,
using PH test paper we got from our home birth organization, and
we agreed that it looked the color we were told it should look.

     We called our birth attendants, and we were told to basically
sit tight and wait for labor.  Stacey was given some instructions
as to what to do and to not do to avoid the risk of infection.
She didn't have any major contractions that night.

     Friday morning came, and I called some friends that live
about 200 miles away that were intending to attend the birth.
I told them the news, and they were on their way.  I spent the
morning doing light house cleaning.  Once our friends got to
our house, we started timing contractions.  They were about
one minute in length, and about two minutes apart, but were
not the intense contractions we had been lead to believe would
happen when she really went into labor.

     As the day went on, we began to be a bit worried, as we were
told the risk of infection goes up drastically twelve hours after
the amniotic bag is ruptured.  We were assured, however, that the
statistics for this come from hospitals, where the woman is likely
to have internal (vaginal) examinations once an hour.  We watched
Stacey closely, but her temperature, the main indicator of infection,
stayed stable.  At about 4:00, we did the test again, and again it
seemed to come out positive.  That was the last time we saw anything
that looked like a positive test for amniotic fluid, though Stacey
tested often.

     We went out to a nice park to do some walking, hoping to
get labor started.  During the walk, Stacey had intense contractions,
but they subsided as soon as she quit being active.

     In fact, that was mostly the story of the weekend.  We timed
contractions, and went for walks, and the walks always produced intense
contractions, but they always subsided when Stacey quit being as active.

     Sunday came, and Wade went back to Lexington.  Carla and their two
children stayed.  Same stuff on Monday, except that Stacey called our
clinic to talk with the nurses there, and she was assured by them that
her amniotic bag had not ruptured based on what they were told.  They
felt there was no reason for her to be seen that day.

     We had our regular doctor's appointment on tuesday at 11:45.
When Stacey told him that she seemed to be discharging a lot of
fluid, he decided to check her to see if it was or was not amniotic
fluid.  He found it was amniotic fluid, and advised us to go to the
hospital.  We talked it over, and made the decision to do just that,
even though we had wanted a home birth.  The safety of Stacey and our
child came first.  The last thing he did was do an ultrasound to check
that the child was in a head down position.  It was.

     We reached the hospital about two and a half hours later.  We
were immediately taken into a labor and delivery room.  Stacey was
poked and prodded by several nurses and residents, and gave blood
a number of times for laboratory tests.  All of them came back negative
for infection.  An internal examination showed her dilated only to
fingertip size.  They told her to walk for a while to try to get
labor started, and she did, but after a few sessions of that, we
explained to the on duty nurse that she had been walking a lot for
the past few days, and nothing had happened.  We were told that they
could start her on a pitocin drip any time we wanted. We went ahead
and had it started.  (I should probably mention that the "we" I'm
talking about here is four people -- Stacey, myself, Carla, and
Barb, a monitrice/birth attendant.)

     It was a long night.  Very little happened until somewhat
late, and even then not much happened.  Sometime pretty late Stacey
started having contractions, but nothing so bad she couldn't sleep
though.  She decided to do just that -- sleep.  I stayed in the
room and watched the monitor.  (By that time, she had had an internal
catheter montitor put in her.  As it was done while she was still
only fingertip dilated, it was extremely painful to her.)  This was
the only time during the entire stay the monitor showed regular
peaks for her contractions.

     By morning, it was obvious that we were in for a long haul.
Stacey's contractions started becoming hard for her to work through,
and we were discouraged by the fact that her dilation was still
at one centimeter.  After a brief scare that the doctor would start
pushing a C-section that morning, things began looking up.  The doctor
said that we should continue the pitocin and see what happened.
They had to replace the internal monitor, as the first one had been
dislodged.  This caused a complete rupture of the amniotic sack.
Lots of fluid came out, and I even saw them pull out some of the
sack.  Within a couple of hours Stacey was dilated to three
centimeters.

     (The contractions during this and most of the rest of the day
were so painful she couldn't use her breathing methods through many
of them, couldn't talk through them.  About all she could could do
was hang on to people and try to get past each one.  More on this
later.)

     Things had been looking good, but by now Stacey had been
laboring for about 18 hours.  Because of thinking she could have
the child anytime, she hadn't gotten much sleep over the weekend,
and neither had I.  I got about 20 minutes of sleep tuesday
night.

     At six o'clock on wednesday, Stacey was at five centimeters.
At ten o'clock, she hadn't progressed at all -- she was still at
five. 

     I have to say that I'm very happy with our doctor.  He had known
we wanted a home birth, and that for us even to go to the hospital
was a let down for us.  Now he was suggesting perhaps the worst thing
he could in our case -- a Ceasarian section.  He did leave it as our
choice, but was willing to make as many provisions for us to have
the things we wanted as he could, should we decide on the C-section.

    Between contractions Stacey and I talked about it.  To be honest,
I had already made my mind up, and I think she had as well.  Do the
C-section.  Stacey was in extreme amounts of pain with her contractions,
and they weren't doing anything to get the baby out.  Worse yet, her
temperature had started rising, indicating a possible infection in her
and the child.  But as I said, my mind was made up -- I simply wanted
Stacey's pain to stop.  I hadn't imagined that she would be in so much
pain that she really couldn't be accountable for her actions during
it.  I didn't want to watch it then, and I don't want to see it again.

     Stacey was in agreement.  She was exhausted, and her tolerance
for pain was actually getting lower as her exhaustion went up.  I
think that had she been progressing at a reasonable rate, the pain
would have been manageable, but as it was, it had gotten to the point
it seemed useless.

     So when the doctor came back in, we agreed to the C-section, but
made a couple of requests.  First that I be allowed into the operating
room, and that I be allowed to be with Stacey at all times.  That wasn't
a problem.  We asked if Carla could come in and take photographs of
the birth.  That was a little harder, but as it turned out, it was allowed.
Stacey requested that she be allowed to nurse on the delivery table.
They agreed, even though it turned out that didn't happen.

     Carla and I put on scrub suits, while Stacey was prepped.  She had
chosen an epidural so that she could stay conscience during the birth.
I stayed with her thoughout the entire time, watched her get the epidural,
held her hand as the actual section began and progressed, and watched
our child being born.  Stacey even had pain during the section.  At about
the time the doctor was pulling the child out, she had either pain, or
something that felt like pain to her.  I remember her trying to get the
doctor to stop what he was doing, and him telling her they couldn't stop.
Stacey remembers the doctor saying that the baby was going to cry even
before they got him out.  I only vaguely remember that.  I much more
clearly remember him pulling the child out, and seeing that the child
was a boy and saying: "It's a boy, Stacey, it's an Iain!"

     While Stacey was being finished, I was able to go look at this new
being.  His hands and feet were purple, though the rest of him was
pinking up nicely.  I remember very tentatively touching tis child, not
really even believing in him yet.  I asked if I could pick him up and
carry him to Stacey, and someone made the comment "He's yours, you can do
whatever you want."  They swaddled him, and I picked him up and took him
to show to Stacey.  Laid as she was on the operating table, she could
see much of him, and she was shaking so hard that even when the nurse
took the straps off of her right hand, she still had a hard time touching
him.  When the operation was finished, Stacey was allowed to hold and
touch him, and even to breast feed him in the recovery room.

     I could go on about the next four days in the hospital, but I won't.
I did want to say something more about the pain Stacey had.  I don't know
what it's like for most women, but what Stacey had was *intense*.  And 
they had a hard time getting the epidural right, so she had a lot of pain
then as well.  And she had pain as they pulled Iain out of her.  I remember
thinking that if I had to watch her go through that pain again, I didn't
want to have any more children.  It was almost impossible for me to watch
without breaking down -- and I couldn't break down, as Stacey was depending
on me for strength for her.

---


     Most of the above was written on Nov 29th.  Iain is now about two weeks
old.  Both Stacey and I are very much in love with him, though I won't say
we haven't gone through some hard nights, and very frustrating times.  But
everybody says it gets better, and to be honest, it already is.  Iain is
only waking up about once a night, and he is generally a very calm and
happy baby, with not a lot of crying.

     I'm sure other parents know how frightening it is to contemplate this
new being, and know just how responsible you are for him or her for quite
a few years.  It's frightening, but it's also wondrous and exciting and
emotional and so many other things.  Ah well, enough.  Most of you ou 
there reading this *know* how I feel.

Sean.
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