Silas's Birth Story

Silas Robert Helton
Born at 11:44 pm on August 5, 2008
At Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Silas’s birth story … in pictures

August 5, 2008

3:15 am: I wake up with pain that felt like mild menstrual cramps. I wake up Eric and tell him I think I’m in labor. He says ok, and goes back to sleep.

4:15 am: My water breaks. No flood, just little squirts that last throughout labor. I tell Eric my water broke, we call the midwife center to check in and then decide…

6:30 am: Breakfast at Ritters! (No, it’s not beer – it’s apple juice)

Here is our bathroom when I went into labor… no tile, no shower, no tub… just a toilet, and a very hard working contractor.

10:30 am: Finally early labor has progressed far enough that the contractions make it hard for me to talk and we go to the midwife center. They
check me and I’m 90% effaced and 3.5 cm dilated. I laid in bed in the forest room for about an hour and Lori (our midwife) checked me again. I was 100% effaced and 4.5 cm dilated. So, they let me get into the tub!

Here’s Diana (the nurse) checking the baby’s heart rate with a Doppler. She checked it every 15 minutes to make sure the baby was doing ok. His heart rate was in the 130’s the entire time at the midwife center.

Eric stayed with me by the tub and held
my hand during contractions. We brought our laptop and listened to music the
entire time. I made a laboring mix, but we listened mostly to Iron and Wine.

I spent most of my time in the tub sitting up because I was experiencing the dreaded ‘back labor’ and laying back was really painful. The tub was AWESOME!

After I was in the tub for a couple of hours, Lori came back and checked my cervix. I was only
dilated to 5 cm. That was discouraging to all of us. I was starting to get tired and things weren’t progressing. Flash forward a couple more hours… I got out of the tub and tried a few different positions – walking, a birthing ball, all fours, and still I was 100% effaced, 5 cm dilated, and the baby was not descending (I was at -2 station). When I sat on the ball and the pain was really strong, I demanded to be ‘talked through’ the contractions. Eric and Diana obliged – ‘breathe in… relax’ – timing it to my breaths. It really helped. Diana’s attempts to get me to drink ginger ale and apple juice were failing and the drinks were making me queasy. Lori basically
said that I wasn’t progressing and we needed to think about what to do next. I said that I wanted to try and use the Nubane pain drug that they have at the center to see if it
could help me try and relax enough that I could recover some strength. I was given the drug and Eric laid down on the bed next to me and we had basically a two hour nap.

7 pm: The Nubane had worn off. With Lori’s assistance during contractions, my cervix was now 7 cm but nothing else had changed.

Between 7 pm and 8 pm: Midwife shift change. Lori and Dianna left, Ann and Kara came in. I went back into the tub for an hour or two, then Ann checked me again.

9:30 pm: Still 7 cm and -2 station. Baby’s head was ‘molding’ – meaning it was starting to swell through my pelvic opening without actual movement of the baby. On Ann’s advice we decided to go to the hospital and get an epidural, and then try to use pitocin to create stronger contractions in the hopes that I could still have a vaginal birth.

I remember thinking ‘who cares if I have a vaginal birth?’ I was really focused on a natural birth
at the birth center, so as soon as moving to the hospital became a reality, then all other options opened up and I was ok with whatever direction things headed. I was also, by this time, really looking forward to the epidural.

Up in labor and delivery, Ann was there and they put us in a room and hooked me up to an IV for fluids, and a fetal monitor. The fetal monitor made it really hard for me to relax; all I could do was listen to the baby’s heartbeat.

11 pm: After what seemed like an eternity, the anesthesiologist finally showed up and I got my epidural. The relief was immediate and intense. I opened my eyes for basically the first time in 12 hours. I had been focusing
inward for so long, it was like there was a fog in front of my face that I hadn’t even realized was there until I got the epidural and could actually see.

After I received the epidural, the baby’s heart rate dropped to about 80 beats per minute, and Ann noticed some meuconium (sp?) in the fluid coming out of me. Both of these things concerned her enough to recommend a C-section. Like I said earlier, the whole vaginal birth thing just didn’t seem that important once I ended up at the hospital with an epidural, so I said to go ahead and do the C-section. Plus, I also trusted my Midwife’s motives for recommending a C-section (baby safety rather than convenience).

Here is a worried Eric waiting to be called in to the operating room. The operating room looked like a crazy 80’s medical
drama. It had 2 large circular lights above the operating table. I got a catheter since I wouldn’t be able to feel or control my bladder, and they shaved my pubic hair because the incision would be right above it. The anesthesiologist increased the medicine in my epidural so I wouldn’t be able to feel anything, and Ann came and kept me company. They strapped my arms down like I was on an executioner’s table so that I wouldn’t flail.

I swear it was maybe 5 minutes when Ann told Eric to stand up and he got to watch the Doctor (Dr. Leonard was her name, I think) pull our baby out of my belly. It was amazing. A slight feeling of nausea as the weight in my belly immediately changed, and then a loud cry. The orange round thing at the bottom of the picture (just below the baby’s head) is my belly…

They quickly brought him over so I could see him – he was bloody and had a cone head, and he looked HUGE. I just couldn’t believe that a baby that big just came out of my belly.

It was 11:44 pm on August 5, 2008. He weighed 7 pounds, 7 ounces, and he was 20 inches long.

The crazy cone-head was from where he was stuck in my pelvis. Though he had been posterior for most of the labor, when they pulled him out, he was transverse (sideways). According to Ann, it’s not really possible to tell if he didn’t descend because of his position, or because of my pelvic opening. We won’t ever really know.

This is my first real look at Silas, after they checked his weight and height and Apgar scale (he was a 9).

This is Eric’s proud Papa moment. I love this picture. The two love’s of my life!