Here he comes
We finally got our heads around the fact we’d be having a baby right in the middle of a global pandemic, and our birth plan wasn’t going to go the way we imagined for the last 6–7 months. Then, Mason decided he wanted to meet us a little earlier than planned.
Bringing him into the world was quite a ride and I’ll try to break it down below, as well as provide some tips/advice, so those about to go through labor can be prepared.
Saturday night — 1 week, 4 days before the due date
We went to bed on a Saturday night completely unaware it would be our last night before the baby arrived. Throughout the night, Jen was feeling pretty uncomfortable and felt as though she may have picked up some sort of food poisoning from the previous night’s meal (I didn’t cook, so I couldn’t be blamed). She had never felt contractions but was pretty sure this wasn’t what they were supposed to feel like.
Sunday — 1 week, 3 days before the due date
We woke up on Sunday morning and something just did not feel right to her (always trust Mum knows best!!). We decided to give our OBGYN a call just to make sure everything seemed normal, hoping he would reassure us things were ok. However, he wasn’t convinced and asked that we go into the hospital to take a few tests.
Our mindset at this moment in time was that this would just be a quick check-in and we’d be back home within an hour or so. We had had a scheduled call home to my parents, as well as a Zoom quiz with my English mates, and we fully expected to back for both of them! Oh, how naive I was.
As we had planned quite far ahead of time, we already had our hospital bag, snacks and car seat waiting by the door. As we were leaving on Sunday morning we both looked at each other and said should we take them just in case? We decided better safe than sorry, and what a great decision it turned out to be!
When we got to the hospital, we were taken to a room on the ward and Jen was hooked up to fetal monitors to check on the baby and her blood pressure was checked — it was sky-high. This didn’t seem right, as throughout the pregnancy, in non-pregnant life and at her recent checkup a few days before, it was low. We checked a few more times to account for any anomalies and it was still the same: sky-high. Our doctor (Dr. Andrew Liu — an incredible doctor you’ll hear more about later), decided he needed bloodwork to find out what was going on. He ordered labs a-la-carte, and before we knew it the blood was off for testing with results coming back in 30 mins. At this point, we still thought everything was ok and Jen would be sent home with a shot of morphine. However, as soon as we got the results, the mood in the room changed. The results showed a decrease in platelet count and elevated liver functions. These things, combined with the high blood pressure led to a diagnosis of Preeclampsia. A rare condition that can have a real impact on both baby and Mum. Now we were in a completely different and scary predicament.
How did we get here? Jen just finished work on Friday and was looking forward to a few weeks off before the baby arrived. I thought I had at least another week at work to get everything wrapped up before I left for a paternity leave. The apartment wasn’t 100% ready for a new arrival, but here we were, at the hospital with a scary diagnosis waiting to find out the next steps.
After a short period, the birth team came into our room to discuss battle plans. They told us we wouldn’t be leaving the hospital without a baby.
Preeclampsia when left can be dangerous and can cause seizures for Mum and limited blood supply to the baby, so the overarching goal was:
Get baby out of there and make sure Mum is ok — and do it quick!
To achieve this goal, we had multiple strategies to get us there. Each plan would be flexible and change depending on how the baby reacted. We had to get our head around the fact our best-laid birth plans were not going to be possible with this new information. We were told birth plans never go as planned and limit expectations, but we didn’t expect almost every detail to go awry.
Plan 1: Get labor underway
We needed to get this party started, as Jen was in very early labor and the goal was to speed up the process. We wanted to try to avoid as many drugs as possible during the labor process (aside from an epidural) so the first move was to give Jen a small dose of Cytotec to see if that would get things moving. Towards the end of the dose, it was accompanied by checks on Jen to see how far dilated she was. It was slow and felt like she was at 1cm for what seemed like ages. We continued on this plan for the rest of Sunday and got settled in overnight to see if Monday would bring any change.
Monday — 1 week, 2 days prior to the due date
Monday morning came around and we had a lovely 6 am wake up from the lab to run more bloodwork, quickly followed by another check to see if the two doses of cervix softener had worked its magic overnight. It had pushed us to around 1.5cm, but nothing major — a little disheartening knowing we needed to get the baby out reasonably quickly. This meant we needed one final dose, followed by our next strategy.
Plan 2: Break the water
Our wish was to do things as naturally as possible, but the next step the doctor recommended was to manually break Jen’s water. The hope here was to get the body to think it was further along in labor than it was. We gave this a little bit of time to see if it worked, and the result was minimal movement. At the next check, we only moved another 1cm and the Dr decided we needed to get some momentum behind the process to ensure the safety of all involved. It was time for plan 3.
Plan 3: Speed it up / early epidural
It was now time to implement drugs we were trying to avoid. It was not the time to be precious about our plans, as we needed to listen to the experts. We started a dose of Pitocin (6). Pitocin is something that will encourage the body into labor (oxytocin). There are pros and cons to using this method, do your research prior to labor so you can choose your own path.
Another facet of our birth plan was an epidural for Jen to manage pain during active labor and pushing. If this is something you’re exploring, discuss when you want might want it (at what stage of labor). Due to the preeclampsia diagnosis, Jen’s platelet count was dropping quickly. It was currently around 85–90 and if it dropped even further, to around 75, then there was a possibility she wouldn’t be able to get the epidural due to the risks of bleeding. Therefore, we had to insert the epidural early on to ensure Jen would be able to get her wish when it did become time to push. FYI: Jen tells me that the epidural was one of the most painful parts of labor, but is so grateful she had it during contractions and pushing.
So there we were, getting momentum with drugs we didn’t really want, but working toward 10cms at a much better speed and inching closer and closer to meeting our baby. But things weren’t that simple, there were a few more hurdles.
As the contractions got stronger, the baby started to struggle in the womb. This was something I had no idea could be a thing, but it was the scariest part of the whole process. Every time Jen had a contraction, Mason’s heart rate would drop to zero for a short period of time; a sign that he was in distress. I spent around an hour staring at the contraction screen with two bar graphs showing two of my favorite people in pain; Jen with strong contractions, Mason with a drastic drop in heart rate. Our graphs looked a little like this one (babies HR at the top, Jen’s contractions at the bottom).
This fetal distress meant we had to change plans yet again, with the overarching goal of a healthy Mum and baby, and trying our best to avoid a c-section.
Plan 4: Abort plans 2 & 3 — slow it back down
So now it seemed like the strategy was to take a few steps back, or at least slow things down to keep everyone healthy. The birth team decided we needed to put Jen’s water back in (we had no idea this was even possible!!).
The reason behind this plan was the Doctor felt the reason Mason was struggling was due to pressure on the cord, so whenever there was less space due to the contractions, the cord was being squished and cutting off Mason’s lifeline. If we could float the baby again, then it could allow him to deal with the contractions much better. In parallel to this, we reduced the level of Pitocin down to 3 to slow the intensity of Jen’s contractions.
It was then a waiting game, we spent about 1–2 hours watching the graphs like a hawk to see if this plan was successful. If it didn’t work, we’d have to get in there and get baby out through whatever means possible (likely a c-section).
This is the point where our luck turned around: Plan 4 worked and the baby was handling the contractions much better - the mood in the room noticeably changed.
The final stretch
Jen’s contractions started to get stronger, and we knew we were getting closer to meeting our little man. Where everything that happened since we arrived at the hospital seemed to go against us, it was from this moment on luck was now on our side.
We went from 4cms to 10cms in about 2 hours (a journey that normally takes around 1 hour/cm) and before we knew it, Jen was ready to push. She was absolutely incredible, she pushed for an hour which by all accounts is amazing for your first child. I was there at the business end and, to avoid going into too much detail, it was a wild experience that is hard to put into words.
Here he is!
After one of the craziest and most incredible journeys, Mason entered the world and we became a family of three! Everyone talks about the feeling you have when you see your child for the first time. You become overwhelmed by a feeling of euphoria — baby is out safe and sound, and your wife is a superwoman. It’s a feeling I’ll never be able to explain, but one that every Dad will share after they go through this experience.
Reflecting on the experience
After reflecting on this adventure, the main feeling is that of gratitude. Gratitude for Jen who was just incredible. Gratitude for the nurses who looked after us and calmly talked us through what was a really scary experience. But also to our Doctor, Andrew Liu. His battle plans (as he always called them) were incredible; he guided us through the process, did his best to follow our wishes, changed his thinking based on the latest data, and somehow managed to get us from a scary diagnosis through the labor process, all while avoiding a c-section when most signs pointed that direction. I’ll be forever grateful for his experience and flexible planning to keep my little family safe.
If you’re still reading at this point, that’s our crazy and incredible journey. I learned a lot throughout this process and wanted to finish off with some tips for Dad that may help as you go through your own labor journey (sometimes you do feel helpless):
- Think of the big picture — This is the only thing that matters. You need to leave that hospital with a healthy wife and baby and that’s the lens you need to use when making decisions. Always remind yourself of this, if plans go off-piste.
- Sometimes things don’t go as planned — Be flexible, listen to the experts and come to a joint decision with your wife. Also, make sure you have talked this through together prior to labor, as she could well be in a lot of pain whilst you are in charge of making some big decisions. Also, know which bits you can push back on and which bits you need to just go with. An example from our story: they could have gone straight to dosing Jen up with Pitocin when we arrived at the hospital. We let our doctor know we wanted to avoid/delay this, if possible, so he listened and came up with alternative strategies. We ultimately ended up having to use Pitocin, but we were grateful he let us try other options first.
- Keep everyone informed — This was especially true in our experience, as no one was allowed in the room with us, and everyone wanted to know how we were getting on after the preeclampsia diagnosis. My tip: set up groups of people you need to keep informed, remove your wife from any of those groups, write one general message that you can then copy and paste to all other groups. Don’t write individual messages, your focus shouldn't be on your phone, it needs to be on your wife and baby. With this in mind, try to send these updates when she is sleeping/distracted/trying to relax - not in the middle of a contraction!
- Focus on your wife — I wanted to reiterate this in its own bullet point. She is going through a crazy experience and needs you by her side and focused. Everything else can wait. Go through contractions with her, hold her hand, reassure her, don’t show her that you’re scared, keep encouraging her, keep telling her she’s doing an amazing job. You know her better than most, so tell her the information that you think she’ll be comfortable hearing. E.g. if she doesn’t want to know the strength of the contraction, as it will worry her, then don’t tell her.
- Reduce worry — Your job is to help guide your wife through labor. The last thing you want to do is increase anxiety. Even if you are scared, you need to be strong and reassure her. Focus on the immediate next step on the journey, as anything more is an unknown at this point.
Bringing a child into the world is an amazing experience and one that will be uniquely yours. I hope it isn’t stressful and I hope you learned a few tips for when your labor journey starts. Just remember, the only plan you need is to walk out of the hospital with a happy and healthy wife and baby.
If you’d like to read more about our journey, please see the following articles on this publication:
