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Birth Stories

Riggs Schuyler

Riggs Arrives....

As I listened to other birth-stories in class, I am always amazed how things rarely seem to "go as planned" - and my story is yet another example of that but having a birth-plan that outlined as much of my wishes as I could really helped maintain the integrity of having the birth experience I was looking for.

Friday morning I was making breakfast and I felt a gush of water - my water had broken. There was a moment of - well, huh, what do I do now? I called my husband to come home, called the doula and called the midwife. The midwife wanted me to come to the office to make sure it was the water breaking and check everything out. she confirmed it was the water & sent me home saying labor should be starting up, however, regardless of where I was with labor, I had to report to the hospital by 9am sat. morning b/c of the risk of infection. I spent the rest of the day and night hoping and trying to bring labor on b/c I was concerned that once I went to the hospital in the morning an induction would be imminent. Well, 24 hours came and went and labor was coming on but very very slowly. I wasn't really getting contractions regularly yet and I was afraid of going down the slippery slope of pitocin since my plan all along had been to be unmedicated.

We arrived at the hospital (Regional Memorial), and my midwife was out of town for the day on Saturday, so she had told the Dr. on call to expect us. The Dr. was great. She read my birth-plan, and came in to discuss. She said she didn't think I was really in labor yet, but she would give me some time to get things going her only request is that I have a heplock in "just in case". We tried a number of homeopathics and stimulation with a tens unit to "get things going" and we got the contractions coming but by about midnight on Saturday/Sunday morning, we were realizing my body was starting to go into labor but not very quickly and we were concerned that once I reached the 48 hour mark the Dr. was going to "take over". So we asked to go ahead and start the induction. They administered pitocin about 1 am, the midwife joined us about 6 am and by 10 am I was fully dilated and ready to push and still following my birth-plan as much as possible -no epidural, use of the shower, and music etc. The shower was so helpful with the pains. I just kept trying to breathe through them and my mantra the whole time was to "open up" I was hoping I could effect mind over matter.

We got the squatting bar out and I started to push. As I was pushing they lost the heart-rate on the baby. They then moved to use an internal monitor on the baby. They finally got his heart rate back, but it was dropping. They just kept telling me to push.
They called the Dr. (who was now a different on call Dr.) to come in and they decided they needed to do an emergency c-section b/c the heart rate was still dropping and they thought the baby's head was turned funny and that he was getting into distress.
They whisked me off to the O/R. The Dr. thought he was going to have to use general anesthesia because I didn't already have an epidural in, but the baby's heart-rate started to come back up so they did the spinal tap. It was scary as it was happening, but I just wanted the little one out safe and sound.

The end result was a beautiful, healthy baby boy! His name is Riggs Schuyler, he was 7lbs 7oz and 19 1/2 inches long. born Sunday, January 27th at 11:15am.

The experience wasn't as I planned, but I was so impressed with the hospital staff and their respect for me and the efforts they went through to stick to my plan as much as possible through each decision point in the process. I learned it really is the journey and the process that makes the difference.

My recovery is a bit slower than I had anticipated, but I can't believe the joy that comes from just holding and staring at my beautiful son.

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