Sunday, January 22, 2012

Birth: The Not So Gory Story

I have been asked to post details of the birth of my daughter Chaya Sarah, aka Siri. Labor stories are usually full of details that are a bit too gory for my liking. So here you get the abridged version without any gross details.
I first went into labor on Sunday afternoon, January 15th around 3 PM. I was waiting for this for a long time-- I was five days late. Previously I had always delivered exactly on time so you can imagine that the five days felt like forever.
I slept through the night hoping that when I woke up, it would be time to go to the hospital. My doctor had already scheduled an induction for me, but I really do not want to be induced. Instead I insisted that I was really in labor and I would go straight to the hospital. When I called the office, they told me that I should just come in and see the doctor. For some reason, they were totally backed up and it took three hours to finish my appointment. When they finally finished, they told me to go straight to the hospital because I would need a "sniff of pitocin" to encourage this baby to come out!
To make a long story short, I finally got my Pitocin at around 3:30 PM, but it seems there was a drip in the tubing. The nurse kept changing my gown rather than checking why it was getting wet. Needless to say, the Pitocin was not really helping. It was probably because I was not getting the correct amount (or any at all!). When 7:30 rolled around and the nurses finally changed shifts, the new nurse was willing to look at the tubing and she determined that it was in fact dripping.
The doctor was wondering why my labor was not progressing. Now we had the answer!
My sister had predicted that I would go into labor on Monday, and that the delivery would be in the middle of the night- early Tuesday morning.
I felt like she gave us a curse! We went into labor and delivery at two o'clock!
In the end, with a little bit of coaxing and pushing, our baby girl was born on Monday night, January 16th, Martin Luther King Day at 11:29 PM.
For the first few days of her life we called her Martina Luthera, in honor of the great MLK. Then, on Thursday, we named her Chaya Sarah, aka Siri, after my beloved grandmother Hilda (I am hoping to post soon about my feelings of naming my daughter after my grandmother).
Thank you to everyone for all the good wishes. We are super happy to have Siri in our lives!

Come again!