Gianna's Birth Story: Chris's version

Missed Rachel's long winded version? Check it out: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5


I remember going to sleep the night of the 20th, a Sunday, praying for time to recover from the flu before Gianna was born. I had been sick all week before and trying to recover via the tried and true wait-and-see method, and with some home remedies, but I wasn’t getting better fast enough for my liking as I was getting dangerously close to the due date. I was concerned that I would be useless for the birth of Gianna and for helping out after she was born. I also didn’t want there to be any chance I could get the baby sick, although I was less concerned about that since Rachel had been sick the week prior to birth, meaning Gianna had all her antibodies, and Rachel would be breastfeeding her and Gianna would get tons of immunities from that, too.

I woke up at about 3 AM and looked over to see an empty space next to me in bed. I wasn’t that alarmed because the previous night Rachel had slept in another room since she couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to bother me. Just as a quick aside, please don’t ever tell pregnant women in the last few weeks of their pregnancy to make sure they are getting plenty of sleep. First of all they should already know that, and second, a lot of times it’s hard for them to sleep at the very end. I decided to see what she was up to so I went out to the living room. I expected to see her sitting on our couch, working on the laptop or cleaning up the apartment. To my surprise, she was leaning over our kitchen table with a look on her face that showed she was in a lot of pain.

After finding out that she had been having intense back pain since 9 PM and hadn’t slept at all, we decided to wait a little bit to make sure this really was labor and not some kind of pre-labor pain. We waited about an hour and the pain did not lessen and the contractions were right on top of each other with no breaks (poor Rachel!). At 4 AM I picked up the phone and called Thalia, a midwife and the owner of the birthing center we were going to use. Thalia groggily but nicely and dutifully answered the phone and listened to all of the pains Rachel was experiencing and decided this was the real deal, much to both our surprise. We had heard so many stories about women who, due to their excitement, get overly antsy and analytical and think the smallest contractions mean the baby is coming out ASAP. She said she wasn’t able to come to the birthing center but she would send another midwife, Carmen, to meet us there as soon as she was ready.

At about 5:30 we got the call from Carmen that she was heading to the birth center and would be there soon. We threw a bag together with all the necessaries and headed out the door. Ironically, the night before I told Rachel it would be wise to have a bag packed that night so we would be ready for anything during the week, to which she responded “Nah we’ll be fine.” It was a smooth 10 minute drive to the center and luckily Rachel only had a few contractions. We walked into the birth center and into one of the birth rooms. The inside of the birth center is so comfortable. There is a big comfy bed in the middle with a rocking chair and dresser to make you feel like you’re at home. They keep the temperature warm so that way the mothers and newborns are not cold since they spend a lot of time exposed. After giving Rachel some time to get through some rough contractions, Carmen did an exam on Rachel to find out how far along she was. Rachel had been worried that she was be at the very beginning stages of labor, if at all, and that she was just overreacting. She was 9 centimeters dilated. I asked what that meant and Carmen said “Don’t quote me on this but you’ll probably have a baby in your arms by lunch.”

After being there awhile we figured out that it made Rachel’s labor pains slightly easier to bear if I compressed her hips and lower back, essentially creating reverse pressure while the baby was trying to push all of that outwards. After some really hard labor (let me tell you, it is no joke) Rachel decided to get into the tub, hoping that the warmth would make things a little better. The tub worked wonders. Not that the pain wasn’t still incredibly great, but it did make things more bearable for her. I sat behind her so she could use my knees for support when she needed it and to comfort her and give her drinks.

I got a serious chest workout that morning. Not only had I been vigorously compressing her hips and back before she got in the tub, but now I had to do the same thing bent over with my chest on my thighs with absolutely no leverage. I looked like the symbol of the wrong way to properly lift an object on the OSHA posters. I faithfully did my duty though, which was much easier to do knowing that my job was the easier one and because Rachel was practically a saint during her labor. All the TV show images of women screaming angrily at their bumbling, terrified husbands were non-existent in that room. I was there to support her, and she bore the pain practically without complaint. I think she only got upset at me one time, but that was because I was talking too much while she was in the middle of a contraction, so that’s pretty fair.

Close to 9 AM Rachel announced she felt her body was getting ready to push. Carmen had just stepped out of the bathroom so I called her in, and then a midwife-in-training, Melena, showed up as well to help out with the birth. If I thought I had witnessed something special during the labor, the actual delivery portion was incredible. As Rachel started to allow her body to push, it was like every muscle in her entire body was tightening all at the same time. I could feel them getting so tight it was like they could break the bones in my legs. Rachel’s whole body turned beet red (literally) during every hard push. I was just in complete shock at the amount of effort she was putting out to bring this baby into the world.

Things started moving very quickly. After what seemed like not much pushing at all compared to the labor, I could see Gianna's hair floating in the water. Then I could see her head crowning. This to me was actually the scariest part, because it was the first point where it seemed like Rachel was hitting a wall. Despite how intense the labor pain was for her, she had not said anything self-defeating like “I can’t do this” the entire time. She knew she could do it, and all the more that she had to do it. But this was the point where the pain became different and more of a stinging pain, and I remember her on the verge of tears just saying “No no no no no…” It was pretty difficult to witness but also hopeful because the baby was right on the verge of coming out. The midwives were incredibly reassuring and kept encouraging Rachel through the effort and pain. Then all of a sudden, Gianna's head popped all the way out, to which Rachel exclaimed “Oh my gosh her head is out! That feels so much better!” Just moments after this, she gave one last push and Gianna officially came into the world, and began crying after she was pulled out of the water.

Those were amazing first moments with the baby. There was so much joy to have our new baby, and also Rachel’s joy of having done something so good and heroically difficult. We both got to hold the baby while we waited for the next birth milestone to take place, the passing of the placenta. For those who don’t know much about it, the placenta is the baby’s food source while it is in the womb and each baby gets their own, so once the baby is born it has to come out too. For the purposes of the placenta after birth, you can reference Rachel’s old post concerning encapsulating the placenta.

Unfortunately things did not work out quite how we had hoped. For some reason, Rachel’s placenta would not pass. The midwives tried everything within their abilities and limits medicine wise. Starting with herbs and eventually trying the drug called pitocin, it quickly became a bad situation. The bleeding after birth doesn’t really stop until the placenta passes and the uterus clamps down, so Rachel continued to bleed profusely. When it was confirmed that nothing more could be done, and our only recourse was to have it removed at the hospital, my heart sank into my stomach. We had done everything in our power to stay away from the hospital, and with good reason. Hospitals in general are not places where birth is treated as the wonderful thing that it is. Births are treated like a life or death trauma situation, rather than normal and healthy like it really is in the majority of cases. There’s also the prejudice you have to deal with against anyone who does not fall into their view of what medicine is, such as midwives.

However, we had no choice. Rachel had lost too much blood, so off to the hospital we went. I drove our car and Rachel, Carmen, and the baby all rode in my car. Melena followed in her car. We pulled up to the emergency room entrance of Trinity Mother Frances hospital and Carmen and Melena took Rachel inside, and I had to go find a parking space and then bring the baby to meet them inside. What a difficult and disheartening experience that was. The hospital parking lot was literally full, and I do mean literally. The outside parking, the paid parking…everything. I drove around for what seemed like 30 minutes until I finally gave up. My wife was inside and I had no idea what was going on and had a 2 hour old newborn baby with me in the car as I searched in vain for a parking spot. I went back to the entrance of the hospital, found a security guard and said “Please take my car, whatever you have to do, but I have to get inside right now.” The man must have been an angel, because he looked at me holding baby Gianna and said “I’ll take care of it.” As I walked away I said “Just let me know how to pay”, and the truth was at that moment I didn’t care whether it cost $100 to park that car, I was done with it. To my surprise he said “It’s on me, don’t worry about it.” What a blessing.

I walked inside with Gianna and got a Visitor Pass, and headed up to Labor and Delivery where I found out Rachel was. I took the elevator up and called to gain access to the delivery wing. After finding out what room she was in, I went inside. There was Rachel, surrounded by the nurses and midwives, bleeding onto the bed. After getting her registered and signed in, the midwives were forced to leave the room despite our wishes and the doctor made his first appearance. He was a very blunt man, probably in his early 50’s. We immediately started off on the wrong foot as he verbally expressed his displeasure with the fact that we used “lay midwives”, as he kept calling them. The irony was that they are certified midwives with tons of experience. He was not an overly positive person and immediately started saying all the things he would try but also what might go wrong. His first plan was to try to get the placenta out manually, there on the table. He asked another doctor to do this and then he left the room. This other doctor was a woman, who was very calm and sweet.

The woman doctor tried as best she could to remove the placenta by slightly tugging on the umbilical cord, but to no avail. The doctor returned, frustrated that the procedure had not worked, but he seemed genuinely interested in Rachel’s well being so I was less offended by him. He tried similar tactics but it didn’t work. Rachel just kept losing more and more blood without any success, and she was getting very pale and I was reaching my limit of what I could watch her go through. To her credit, she never uttered a single complain as she was poked, prodded, and had her insides literally pulled on. The doctor frustratingly pulled his gloves off and announced that he needed to perform a D&C, which is a minor operation that required Rachel being taken to the OR, without me. There he would try to get deeper inside and pull the placenta out, and if that didn’t work he would have to use instruments to cut it out. I could say nothing. We gave our consent and Rachel got wheeled away, half asleep from the stress of what she had undergone and the blood loss. The midwives had left prior to this point since they were exiled out of the room and were forced to leave the wing altogether. They offered to stay and wait with me but I declined since they did not need to suffer needlessly. I apologized for the treatment they received but they were not phased by it. They knew it would be like this beforehand, since it always is. They dread when clients go to the hospital because they almost always are treated like voodoo doctors.

I forgot to mention that while Rachel was first being registered with the nurses her Mom, Marcela, showed up and was with us while all this had been happening. Marcela and I went out to the waiting area with Gianna and sat there for about an hour and a half without any news of what had happened with Rachel. I ate during this time and Marcela and I took turns holding the baby. Gianna opened her eyes for the first time as I was holding her there in the waiting room, so I was the first thing she ever saw and she stared at me intently before going back to sleep. She was a perfect angel and didn’t cry at all, which is great because I’m not sure I would have been able to bear it, as I had nothing to give her to calm her down.

Finally the doctor came out and gave me amazing news. He was able to get the placenta out without any instruments and Rachel was fine and hadn’t needed a transfusion (she was borderline in need of one). He said we would be able to see her after she recovered in about an hour. I sat there thanking God that he answered my prayers and that we would all be together again soon. After Rachel recovered, we all got taken back to the original room and got some time together to relax. We were moved shortly into an overnight mother/baby room, where we spent the night. During the afternoon and evening, Rachel had her vitals checked every 2 hours by a nurse. She slept some, and we ordered food to the room and ate. Rachel tried to breastfeed Gianna but she just wasn’t interested, and we started to get worried that she had gone so long without eating. We were calmed though by the fact that babies are fine for 12-24 hours after birth without food.

The night was a very trying night, I think I slept for 10 minutes total. Marcela went back to our apartment to get some rest. For some reason the hospital did not think it necessary to give comfortable sleeping arrangements for guests. I sat in a terribly uncomfortable chair all night and checked on Gianna every 15 minutes to make sure she was doing ok and breathing, she was just so quiet. When she cried I bounced her so Rachel could rest. The hours dragged on and on, 1 AM, 2 AM, 2:30 AM. I felt like a zombie since I had been awake for 24 hours straight already. The night shift nurse kept checking in on us to see how we were.

After what seemed like forever, it was 7 AM, and the sun came up. We finally got to see the nurses from the day before, and found out that we could leave that morning around lunch. We ate and then we got to visit with a lactation consultant, who worked with Rachel to teach Gianna to latch and breastfeed properly. We were allowed to leave around 11 AM, but we decided to stay until 12:30 so we could meet a second time with the lactation consultant. Finally, we were discharged and hopped in the car to head home.

Being back in the apartment made me feel like a human being again. It was so good to be home! We had a healthy mom and baby, and our little treasure was safe and sound. It was a trying but amazing day and I thank God for the experience and getting us through it. Praise the Lord!