The Chou Life

Hudson and Calla’s maternal great-grandparents came to visit last week and thoroughly enjoyed their two great-grandchildren.  We celebrated Christmas with them a little early.  Calla had a great time with Great Grandpa and Great Grandma, and Hudson…well, he slept.  And slept some more.

-Abby

The Lord blessed us with a safe delivery of our first son last night.  After doing a lot of research and looking into our current location and circumstances, we were interested in a home birth.  Abby began having contractions early on Tuesday morning and they lasted consistently throughout the day.  When they would progress, they changed quickly and with little warning. Minor contractions would turn into a long hard ones that switched to consecutive contractions with no break.

Abby did so great.  Neither one of us was very concerned about the process until she was displaying some bleeding mid morning.  I wouldn’t consider it heavy bleeding, but it was definitely more than a typical “bloody show.”  The bleeding got worse very slowly through the day so we called our intern midwife and she said that this was fine (we’ll talk about her later).  By the afternoon, Abby’s contractions were about 2 minutes apart and lasting a little over a minute and they were hitting her very hard.  The contractions started out like “warm brownies,” but ended…not like “warm brownies;”  which is what my sister, Ruth, likes to refer to Abby’s hard labor sounds from Calla.  This is because when you eat a warm brownie, you go: “mmmmmmm.”  Anyway, the midwife showed up and started setting up her stuff.  I felt frustrated because she wasn’t giving us any instruction.  Abby started saying, “I feel the urge to push!” and Carole didn’t say anything.  I felt restricted to giving Abby advice because a midwife was there that had been a nurse for longer than I’ve been alive.

Despite the unhelpfulness of our midwife,  Abby just kept trudging along and working her way through each wave of contractions that seemed to hit harder and harder.  We had not eaten anything since breakfast and we were all beginning to feel weak.  Abby was without any pain control whatsoever, just like with Calla.  The intense pressure and volleys of pushing were wearing on my Abby and draining her of strength.  She would tell me, ” I just want to sleep.”  Despite this, she persevered and just kept fighting through the contractions.  All of a sudden, there was a “pop” and membranes and fluid gushed out.  Carole, our midwife, was downstairs (Dad later reported that she was looking out the window…anxiously waiting for her preceptor to show up).  I yell for her and she runs upstairs.  This is when it all starts.

Abby is giving it her all and I can see just a small part of Hudson’s head, but as the contractions cease, his little head slips back out of view.  With the next contraction, Abby gives another big push and his head is now sticking out and facing down.  Carole says that the cord is wrapped around his neck.  She reaches in and pulls on it in an attempt to loosen it from his neck but there is very little slack.  I reach in and am able to get 2 fingers between the cord and his neck and give it some gentle tugs, but it just won’t move.  Hudson at this point is just a head and a head doesn’t really do or move that much, but he looked dead.  Abby later tells me that she felt the same way since he wasn’t moving or crying.  We were both kinda freaking out at this point and Carole says, ” Hold on, I’ll be right back to get the scissors.”  Calla presented with a nuchal cord so we halfway expected or at least prepared for a possible 2 peat, but Carole apparently hadn’t.  I’m overcome with something, and I blurt, “No you won’t!” and I reach for my zip lock bag of hemostats and trauma shears.  I grab a pair of hemostats and pull the cord as far as I can from Hudson’s neck and I clamp the first one.  As the pliers lock over the still pulsing cord, Hudson jerks and shutters.  This scares me and I decide I should just cut the cord without placing the second clamp on, then I second guess myself and decide to put the second clamp on before I cut.  Abby later tells me that she really really really didn’t want that cord cut.  She had read in a book about another home birth story where the baby presented  with nuchal cord and the mother just pushed like crazy and got the baby out.  Well, that’s what Abby did.  Before I was able to get that second clamp on and cut the cord, Abby pushed so hard the he went from a head to everything in a split second.  I mean he just shot out of there and I’m absolutely positive that if we had a slow motion camera, you could see little Hudson Mack catching some sick air.

This is about when Mary, Carole’s preceptor walks in.  We later find that the umbilical cord was quite short so there would have been no chance of getting any slack.  Once the placenta was free, we bagged it and kept it close to Hudson.  I think Abby may have lost more blood than we realized.  That or her sugar was too low from not eating all day or she was just in extreme duress from labor, but she began to feel faint and nauseous.  Midwives gave her some herbal remedies and 6 liters/min of oxygen through a non rebreather face mask.  This and some saltine crackers slowly began bringing Abby back to feeling normal.  I felt little confidence in Carole and her ability to bring my child safely into the world.  She was unable to take a manual blood pressure, she didn’t know how to measure dilation, she didn’t know how to use the pliers that are used to place a rubber band around the umbilical cord once it is cut, and she didn’t really know how to use the baby weighing apparatus.  These are things that a midwife should know.  Since Mary was her preceptor, that means that Carole was still new to being a midwife and I can understand being new at something.  However, she has been a registered nurse for 36 years and she can’t take a blood pressure?  Mary had a hard time with the BP cuff too, stating that the knob to release the pressure was “sticking.”  Twice,  Mary would inflate the cuff and turn the knob to begin letting the air out, but when she turned the knob, the indicator would plummet so fast that you wouldn’t have time to read an accurate pressure.  She also put her littman stethoscopes on backwards (littmans have an obvious angle on the earpiece and will not work if worn backwards…and they are just uncomfortable when worn wrong). A little bit later, I tried for a pressure by palpation and the knob did not stick and operated about as perfectly as I’d ever seen.

I am very thankful for their presence and despite my unsureties, it was a relief to have “professionals” attending.  Hudson was born on December 9th, 2008 at 1720 weighing 7 pounds and 14 ounces and was 20.5 inches long (after Carole figured it out….with Abby’s help).  Abby is recovering well.  I am at home taking care of her for a few days.  Thank you all for you prayers and support!  And here he is!

-Eric

It is 5 days to Abby’s due date and up in the mountains, the snow is coming down with prejudice.  I plowed the driveway a little when I got home from work.  I’m really not sure how or what I’m doing, but it’s a lot of freaking fun to ride the quad around.  We are sitting around not so patiently awaiting the imminent arrival of our little boy.  The fire is roaring and sending adequate heat throughout the house.  Calla and Keuma are outside enjoying the snow.  I’ve got some samba music blasting in hopes of evoking some instinctive dancing and wiggling of the man child.  Maybe we’ll try some Whitesnake or ACDC next.  Abby looks more beautiful than ever.  I am so proud of her and thankful for her.

We are supposed to get about of foot of snow tonight.  I guess we’ll see.  Our midwife is at a nearby home assisting with another delivery right now.  I guess the low pressure of the storm brings on labor…apparently not for us though.  Anyways, we are still a family of 3.  Our betta fish, Chuck, passed away last weekend.  We came home from our thanksgiving weekend in Missouri to find that our trusty friend was no more.  He was a good fish but he was looking kinda rough and we figured that his time was closing in.  He wasn’t swimming as much and would just sit, as much as a fish could, at the bottom of his bowl. 

-Eric

What’s a weekend at grandma’s without some jowlers?  Huh? You don’t know what a jowler is?  Well, a jowler is any photo taken of someone who is shaking their head from side to side to create a totally distorted facial expression.  Examples of this can be found at jowlers.com.  Here are a few jowler attempts.  I’ll try and get some better ones.  You should try and take some and send them to me to post here or just so I can see some of your jowlers.