Today, 25 September was my estimated delivery date. The countdown timer we set up on our devices officially says 00:00:00 or I'm assuming it does since I haven't really bothered to check. I've been rather busy with the little bundle of joy we brought home just over a week ago. Baby Avery was born at 3:58pm on 16 September 2020 at Parklands Hospital in Durban. She was delivered by C-section, 31 hours after induced labour failed to progress. Her birth weight was 2.9kgs and length 52cm. 10 Perfect fingers, and 10 adorable toes... these are the numbers and details that everyone seems to ask about first when a baby is born. It was the numbers that led to our decision to bring her into the world earlier than she might have been ready to come.
As you can see just by skimming my blog, I have been writing ad nauseum about my pregnancy over the past few months and the fact that it has culminated in this life changing event of her birth adds some pressure in writing this particular post. I wanted to document the experience as it occurred which again is mostly focused on numbers and details, but having held and cuddled and nursed this little person over the past few days, I can't pretend that these numbers and details actually matter that much to me at all. So I've settled on a compromise, here is the rundown of the events that transpired on her birthday followed by the things that I will remember the most about my first moments meeting my daughter.
At 36 weeks pregnant her estimated weight was 2.50kgs, according to our doctor. Slightly lower than the average but no cause for concern as some babies are just genetically small. At 37 weeks, she's 2.55. He says come back next week, growth isn't great but all other checks show she's doing fine. At 38 weeks, on a Wednesday afternoon, she weighs an estimated 2.6kgs. Another week with hardly any growth. Dr. checks the blood pressure through her middle cerebral artery and it is below the average. He's happy that she is full term and well developed enough to be born at 38 weeks and says let's induce on Friday, 2 days time. She isn't growing much in there, still no cause for concern but the environment isn't doing her any good, let's get her out so she can start to grow. My heart is broken and I need time to decide. There's no way I can get there mentally by Friday. A hospital delivery wasn't my plan. She was meant to be born at home with the assistance of a midwife in her perfect and God appointed time, somewhere between 40 and 42 weeks.
We take the weekend to take it all in, I bounce on my birthing ball every couple of hours in the hope that I might go into labour naturally but we have no such luck. After considering all the options and every different combination of outcomes we decide to trust the good doctor. We've bought a little more time and she'll be 39 weeks on the day we induce, 15 September 2020 seems like a good date to have a baby!
We arrive at the hospital at 6:30am and the delivery ward is lovely and spacious with enough room for me to walk around and a comfy chair for dad to relax during the labour process. My cervix was completely closed but still we go ahead and I'm induced by 7:30am. Now we wait. After an hour, Ransley and I are still excitedly chatting about the reality that we will be taking home our baby in the next day or two when we're told that my Covid test results haven't been processed yet so we need to be transferred to the "yellow zone" for persons still under investigation. Since I've already been induced I can't leave the hospital. I'm terrified as they wheel me past the "red zone" with confirmed positive Covid-19 cases. It's directly on the other side of this same hallway and for the next few hours we wait in a private room with Ransley calling every possible contact to try and expedite our lab results so I can get back to the comfort of the labour ward. The nurse in the Yellow Zone is lovely and helps to calm our nerves, answering lots of questions. However, she does mention that it would be best for me to get out of here as soon as possible, I quote "You don't want to deliver your baby down here."
At around 2pm my results have been received, they're negative and I can be transferred back to my room in Labour and Delivery. I've been monitored periodically and still haven't gone into labour. The first dose of induction meds haven't worked so Dr. does one more dose and that's all he is able to do for today but he says it looks likes we might be here all night. By the time he comes back to check on me for his evening rounds, I've only had very minor contractions and he says to just hang in there and he'll be back in the morning to see where we are. He keeps saying, "This is all about patience." I have no problem waiting, it's not like I have much else going on and I really want to give baby as much time as possible to be ready for us but it's pretty much determined by now that she will not be born on 15 September.
The hospital would have allowed Rans to stay the night but he decided to go home and refresh himself before the big day. If I did happen to go into labour suddenly during the night, both he and the Dr. would have to be called back in time so there wasn't much chance of him missing her birth. That didn't stop me from silently panicking when contractions started growing stronger an hour after he left the hospital. The night time nurse, Doris, told me they were still too small and that I should try and get some sleep but I was still in the insomnia phase of pregnancy. I was up till 2am, I was the only patient in the labour ward so I was free to walk up and down the passage. I tried having a hot shower to ease the pain of the contractions and I bounced on the birthing ball for most of that night. I only got around 3 hours of sleep.
At 7am the next morning Ranz was back and the nurse had wheeled in a prep table with the epidural kit. I said that I would still be deciding if I wanted to take it. Shortly after, I was only 2cm dilated when the Dr. came in and checked on me. The contractions seemed so intense and my heart sank when I heard the dismally small number. Little did I know that I had yet to experience what real pain felt like. He assured us though that come what may, "today is the day". She will be born on 16 September 2020.
At midday, Dr. proceeded to stretch my cervix to 3cm which I am certain was the most painful part of the entire birth process for me. I was now adamant that I wanted an epidural. My body was already fatigued and I was losing my pleasant and positive outlook. I was also really disappointed that I wasn't progressing. I knew by then that things were not going as smoothly as they should be and the chances of needing an emergency C-section were getting higher. He called for the anesthetist to administer my epidural and while I waited, getting nervous in anticipation of the needle that I had seen in movies and on Google images, the contractions started coming harder and faster. It was really painful but I was happy on the inside as this was a sign that I might still have my natural delivery after all. I breathed through the contractions and we timed 23 in an hour on our app. Everytime one subsided I felt a sense of pride that I was actually managing this but it had now been more than 12 hours of labour and my body was so worn out that we still opted for the epidural.
Rans tried to distract me and joked with the anesthetist while I was preparing myself to get poked in the spine, I was still having contractions and it was quite hard to try and stay absolutely still while he did his job but I just kept breathing through and the contractions actually distracted me from the discomfort of the needle. The epidural worked almost immediately and I was now a bit loopy from the anesthetic.
I would have to say the next few hours were the most difficult for me mentally. I didn't feel the Dr. breaking my water but I could feel minimal discomfort from the contractions as they started to intensify. I laid there unable to move my lower body and began to get very emotional. This wasn't how I had pictured this experience at all. I had a smooth, textbook pregnancy with no medical complications over the past 9 months. Even my bout of hyperemesis gravidarum in the first trimester was over exactly when I expected and I managed to get through without being admitted to hospital for dehydration like many other women. Now here I was, a patient, unable to adjust my body without calling for help. I was uncomfortable, I was convinced that I was contorting my back and I couldn't feel it. It could have been in my head but I was becoming paranoid about my posture and how I might be hurting myself without knowing. I couldn't stop tears from flowing and the nurses were unsure how to console me since it wasn't physical pain that I was feeling. Mostly, I hated the sight of the nurses flailing my legs around while adjusting me when I couldn't feel anything. I felt undignified and I felt like it wasn't worth it to try and do this naturally anymore.
When the doctor came back to check on me at around 2:30pm and said my temperature was increasing and he was concerned about infection, I was secretly relieved that he advised we go ahead with a c-section while baby was still happy and doing well. I hadn't dilated past 3cm yet so the chances of labour progressing for natural delivery before the infection progressed was not good. Still, I asked if we could wait and he wasn't happy with that option, so we called for the anesthetist to top up my epidural for surgery and within minutes I was wheeled away to theater.
Up until this point in my life I had never been admitted to a hospital, I had never had even a minor medical procedure done, never had stitches before. Of course I was scared being wheeled a bit too briskly down the hospital passageways on a bed like a scene out of Greys Anatomy. Rans walked beside the bed and I could tell he was trying to keep me positive, asking me if I was ready to meet our little girl and making nervous jokes. It was only the next day that he admitted this was the scariest moment of his life. I am notoriously skeptical of Doctors in this country, even though we had heard from so many people that ours was one of the best in his field, I had my heart set on a midwife assisted birth because I didn't trust that a Dr. would be able to see past the science and make the experience as natural as God had intended. Am I happy that I had a cesar? No, not at all. But my God am I happy I had my gynae! His speed and his temperament was exactly right for someone like me. I didn't need to be coddled or pandered to, I just needed him to be fast.
During the procedure, He and the anesthetist bantered back and forth and tried to distract me with a few jokes. They told me that the epidural didn't seem to be working and I would have to get another one. My heart was just about to sink with fear and exhaustion but luckily before the ill-timed joke registered, he lifted up my little girl and I was in shock. That was all of 9 minutes that I was on his table. The moment I saw her, I have to admit, It wasn't the love at first sight experience I had heard about from many other parents. Instead I just felt overwhelming relief and I immediately gave in to the calming effects of the anesthetic that I had been unconsciously fighting all this time and I sank into a euphoric haze. She was here and my job was done.
As they stitched me up and dressed my incision, I chatted with Ransley who was ecstatically running between myself and the baby as the theater team fussed over us both. The doctor kept checking in with me behind the curtain, assuring me that our baby is perfect and that my operation went well. I was crying and laughing and dozing off to sleep all at the same time. They handed her to me and I wanted to kiss her face but my mask was in the way. It hadn't really registered yet that this was the baby who was inside my tummy just minutes ago. We took some pictures, Rans was gushing. He couldn't stop laughing and joking with the doctors, he was talking my ear off even though he knew I wasn't paying attention. We both handle excitement quite differently. He gets really chatty and jovial and I get quiet and reflective, trying to take everything in. After a while Rans followed baby to the nursery while I was still being tended to and I was glad for the moment of quiet time to myself, to gather my thoughts and say a quick, silent prayer of thanks for the gift of life. Mine, Ransley's, Avery's and our collective life as a family that had just begun.
I was nearly an hour until I held her again. They had me wait in a recovery ward while the anesthetic wore off. In the meantime Rans was doing skin-to-skin with her in the nursery. I was already so proud when the nurses in recovery asked, "Are you Avery's mummy?". That was amazing, hearing her name out loud. It was confirmation that she was real. She was a whole person, a life outside my body, in the world with her own name. Many people mark the day their kids are born as the best or most important day of their lives and I have to say that it didn't register to me at the time but looking back it definitely was both the best and most important day of my life so far. It was the day I became not just a mummy but "Avery's mummy". I think pride was the overwhelming feeling of the day. I was quite proud of myself and so proud of Ransley for staying strong and positive through it all.
Happy Birthday Avery! If you stumble upon this post one day, know that before you even opened your eyes and acknowledged the world around you, before you achieved a single accomplishment, mummy was infinitely proud of you.
