Titus

The Story of the Birth of Titus
This is the story of the events leading up to and including Titus’s birth, written within weeks of that tiring, but extraordinary day.

At Home
At around 2 o’clock Thursday, Sarah started feeling something that she described as a “stomach cramp”…inconsistent in frequency and duration. She was talking to a friend on the phone (who had just had her second baby) and asking many questions about how the start of labor might feel while trying to keep her own possible contractions a secret. She gave me a phone call around 3:30, letting me know that she thought she might be having contractions, but wasn’t sure, and that I should stay at work unless she called again. I spent the last 1 1/2 hours of the day passing tasks off to people and warning them that I may not be in to work again for a week or more.

I took off for home around 5:00, and arrived to find that Sarah’s contractions had strengthened and become more frequent, though they weren’t quite predictable yet. Sarah had read that exercise would cause false labor to stop, and true labor to strengthen, so we took off for a walk around 6:00. We decided to walk to Target to pick up some tennis balls. One of Sarah’s friends had recommended tennis balls in a sock as good pressure point therapy. On our way, I started to time the contractions, and Sarah could still walk through them, though they did slow her down a bit.

By the time we bought the tennis balls and were walking out of Target, Sarah was no longer walking through contractions, and they were pretty consistently 10-15 minutes apart. We decided to head back to the house just in case they got much worse, because I didn’t want to have to leave her on the side of the road while I ran back for the car.

When we got back to the house, we took it a little easier. I continued to time the frequency while we half-heartedly watched some TV. We made some calls to let people know that we were starting labor, and would be going to the hospital soon. It was past our supper time, so I whipped up some grilled cheese sandwiches for us. Sarah ate hers even though I made it using the wrong bread, then promptly threw it up! At around 10 o’clock, the contractions were 5 minutes apart and roughly 1 minute long. Since the standard for going to the hospital is 5 minutes apart, 1 minute long, for 1 hour, we started watching the clock a little more closely. Sarah attempted to fix her hair and gather some last-minute items for her hospital bag. I took a shower, filled up the car with gas, and bought some grape juice for Sarah (which she drank and promptly threw up)!

At 10:45, we made a couple of phone calls to let people know that we would indeed be heading into the hospital soon. Then we called the clinic and hospital at 11 to talk with them. The hospital said we could come right in, so off in the car we went! Sarah was moving pretty slowly at this time, having been sick a few times with the grape juice.

On the way to the hospital, I almost made a turn onto the wrong road (difficult to do, since it’s only a 3-turn trip), but Sarah caught me in time. We arrived at the hospital, where I dropped Sarah off, parked the car, and then met her again in the lobby. We walked up to the labor assessment unit on the third floor together, with only a few pit stops since Sarah insisted that she would not ride in a wheelchair.

At the Hospital
The nurse (Nancy?) at the front desk recognized Sarah from her phone call, and took us directly to labor assessment. She strapped a baby heartbeat monitor and contraction measuring device to Sarah as I held the bucket, since sitting on the bed like that made Sarah quite sick. After only a few contractions, Nancy figured that they were strong enough and close enough together to grant us a room over in labor and delivery! She packed us up, and wheeled Sarah to room number one, where we were to stay until a few hours past the birth.

At this point, it was roughly midnight, and Sarah didn’t stay in the bed for long. Nancy offered the whirlpool to Sarah, and she jumped right in. She spent all 45 minutes allotted to her in the tub, as her contractions continued to get harder and closer together. Towards the end of the 45 minutes, it seemed that there was little respite between contractions at all!

Sarah’s parents had arrived at the hospital as she was finishing up with the whirlpool. When she made it back to bed, they came in to visit for a little while. The nurse informed Sarah that she was fully dilated and could begin pushing at any time. Nancy also mentioned that it would take about an hour for the baby to be born, so we were pretty excited about that! We also met the resident doctor who was going to be doing the bulk of the delivery process. It was rumored that Sarah’s “real” doctor (Dr. Terry) was at the hospital, but he didn’t show up until later.

Sarah spent a few contractions resting from her trip out of the tub and into bed when the nurse told her that she should start pushing. At this point, there were only the nurse, me, and Sarah in the room. I remember thinking that it was a nice way to start the pushing process. Things were relatively calm, there weren’t a whole lot of people bustling around, and the nurse was able to work with Sarah to help her find the best way to push. We also learned a little bit about how the nurse gave feedback, and the nurse learned about which positions were most comfortable for Sarah. Sarah spent quite a while (maybe 15-30 minutes) on her side, which was a good thing as we learned later!

Between 12 and 1 o’clock, a number of things happened that would have typically resulted in a baby being born. The resident came back to the room and asked Sarah to start pushing on her back. Dr. Terry stopped by to check on Sarah a couple of times (he was also conducting another delivery next door). Sarah was making progress, but the bag of waters wasn’t breaking, and seemed to be getting in the way. Around 1 o’clock Dr. Terry decided to rupture the bag of waters himself, just to speed things along. When he did that, we learned that Titus had meconium, which heightened our heart rates, but the doctor assured us that it was manageable. Sarah wasn’t reassured quite as quickly because the doctor called for the NICU (Natal Intensive Care Unit) nurses to be ready with a kit for the baby as soon as he came out.

However, he had no intentions of coming out anytime soon. Over the course of the next two hours, Titus inched his way, never making a ton of progress. He was “Sunny Side Up”, as the doctor said, meaning that he was facing up instead of down. It is much preferred for the baby to be facing down than up. I think it has to do with two things.
1. His head is shaped to come out easier when he’s facing down.

2. The back of his head is harder than his face, and when he’s facing up his head pushed against Sarah’s tailbone, causing quite a bit more pain than if he had been the other way around.

The doctor was impressed particularly at how steady his heart rate remained during every push. He said that if we didn’t have a name picked out for him already, that we should name him “The Rock”. I told the doctor that the baby already had an uncle named Peter, so we wouldn’t be able to do that.

At this time, Dr. Terry was busy switching between our room and the room next door. He eventually delivered the baby next door, which Sarah was none too pleased about (they had started pushing a half hour after Sarah had). But we later learned that it was their third baby, so that made it seem a little less unfair!

Around the two hour mark, the doctor told us that he had been praying for the baby to come out, and then he prayed out loud for all of us. We didn’t know this at the time, but learned at Titus’s two week checkup that since he was facing up, there was a significant chance that Sarah wouldn’t be able to push him out. They were pretty sure that they were going to have to perform a C-Section. Fortunately Titus turned to the side within the half-hour and progress continued, albeit slowly.

Around 4:30 am, I made another ice-water run for Sarah, who was switching between being hot and cold quite frequently. When I came back, the doctor was taking about how the theme of this birth was patience, and that since the baby’s heart rate was still solid and everything else was doing well (and Sarah was still pushing especially well), that we just had to be a little more patient and let things move along at their own pace. The resident and nurse continued to be very helpful and encouraging. It seemed to me that Sarah was pushing even harder than she had been for the first 2 1/2 hours, which was both surprising and amazing to me! Though I couldn’t really tell what was going on, the doctor, who had been sitting in a chair away from the action most of the time, called the NICU nurses in and stood closer to the rest of us.

I think that everything happened in about 5 minutes, though my sense of time was probably very distorted by that time. In one push, Titus’s head came out, positioned as if he were laying on his left side, eyes closed, and his skin was pretty pale-looking. The doctor quickly suctioned out his nose and mouth. Then Titus’s left arm came out. On the next push, the resident grabbed the little guy’s head and gave him quite a tug. Once his shoulders were clear, he was instantly out! I heard a short little squeak/grunt as he came out, and the resident held him while the doctor clamped and cut the umbilical cord. The doctor quickly handed him over to the NICU nurses, and I couldn’t exactly tell what they did, but he was crying within seconds. That was a relief to us, since the doctor had said that crying would be the sign that everything was alright!

After the Birth
The delivery nurse smiled and said he had a “nice cry”, which I didn’t really understand at first. Then she explained how his cry was especially pleasant. I guess I was relieved to hear it because of the meconium, but I wouldn’t have made a CD out of it or anything!

At that time, I grabbed the camera to follow Titus around the room. They weighed him, took his footprints, put him under the heat lamp, and checked everything from breathing to heart to eyes to hips to who knows what else! I think I have pictures documenting most of what went on, but I can’t say that I remember it all that well. They eventually gave him to Sarah to hold after what she says felt like an eternity. Then we were able to spend some time together as a family of three for the first time!

<table align=”center” width=”70%”>
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 <td colspan=”2″ align=”left”>
 <center>
 The Story of the Birth of Titus
 </center>
 
 
 This is the story of the events leading up to and including Titus’s birth, written within weeks of that tiring, but extraordinary day.
 
 
 </td>
</tr>

<tr>
 <td colspan=”2″ align=”left”>
 At Home
 
 
 At around 2 o’clock Thursday, Sarah started feeling something that she described as a “stomach cramp”…inconsistent in frequency and duration. She was talking to a friend on the phone (who had just had her second baby) and asking many questions about how the start of labor might feel while trying to keep her own possible contractions a secret. She gave me a phone call around 3:30, letting me know that she thought she might be having contractions, but wasn’t sure, and that I should stay at work unless she called again. I spent the last 1 1/2 hours of the day passing tasks off to people and warning them that I may not be in to work again for a week or more.
 
 I took off for home around 5:00, and arrived to find that Sarah’s contractions had strengthened and become more frequent, though they weren’t quite predictable yet. Sarah had read that exercise would cause false labor to stop, and true labor to strengthen, so we took off for a walk around 6:00. We decided to walk to Target to pick up some tennis balls. One of Sarah’s friends had recommended tennis balls in a sock as good pressure point therapy. On our way, I started to time the contractions, and Sarah could still walk through them, though they did slow her down a bit.
 
 By the time we bought the tennis balls and were walking out of Target, Sarah was no longer walking through contractions, and they were pretty consistently 10-15 minutes apart. We decided to head back to the house just in case they got much worse, because I didn’t want to have to leave her on the side of the road while I ran back for the car.
 
 When we got back to the house, we took it a little easier. I continued to time the frequency while we half-heartedly watched some TV. We made some calls to let people know that we were starting labor, and would be going to the hospital soon. It was past our supper time, so I whipped up some grilled cheese sandwiches for us. Sarah ate hers even though I made it using the wrong bread, then promptly threw it up! At around 10 o’clock, the contractions were 5 minutes apart and roughly 1 minute long. Since the standard for going to the hospital is 5 minutes apart, 1 minute long, for 1 hour, we started watching the clock a little more closely. Sarah attempted to fix her hair and gather some last-minute items for her hospital bag. I took a shower, filled up the car with gas, and bought some grape juice for Sarah (which she drank and promptly threw up)!
 
 At 10:45, we made a couple of phone calls to let people know that we would indeed be heading into the hospital soon. Then we called the clinic and hospital at 11 to talk with them. The hospital said we could come right in, so off in the car we went! Sarah was moving pretty slowly at this time, having been sick a few times with the grape juice.
 
 On the way to the hospital, I almost made a turn onto the wrong road (difficult to do, since it’s only a 3-turn trip), but Sarah caught me in time. We arrived at the hospital, where I dropped Sarah off, parked the car, and then met her again in the lobby. We walked up to the labor assessment unit on the third floor together, with only a few pit stops since Sarah insisted that she would not ride in a wheelchair.
 
 
 </td>
</tr>

<tr>
 <td colspan=”2″ align=”left”>
 At the Hospital
 
 
 The nurse (Nancy?) at the front desk recognized Sarah from her phone call, and took us directly to labor assessment. She strapped a baby heartbeat monitor and contraction measuring device to Sarah as I held the bucket, since sitting on the bed like that made Sarah quite sick. After only a few contractions, Nancy figured that they were strong enough and close enough together to grant us a room over in labor and delivery! She packed us up, and wheeled Sarah to room number one, where we were to stay until a few hours past the birth.
 
 At this point, it was roughly midnight, and Sarah didn’t stay in the bed for long. Nancy offered the whirlpool to Sarah, and she jumped right in. She spent all 45 minutes allotted to her in the tub, as her contractions continued to get harder and closer together. Towards the end of the 45 minutes, it seemed that there was little respite between contractions at all!
 
 Sarah’s parents had arrived at the hospital as she was finishing up with the whirlpool. When she made it back to bed, they came in to visit for a little while. The nurse informed Sarah that she was fully dilated and could begin pushing at any time. Nancy also mentioned that it would take about an hour for the baby to be born, so we were pretty excited about that! We also met the resident doctor who was going to be doing the bulk of the delivery process. It was rumored that Sarah’s “real” doctor (Dr. Terry) was at the hospital, but he didn’t show up until later.
 
 Sarah spent a few contractions resting from her trip out of the tub and into bed when the nurse told her that she should start pushing. At this point, there were only the nurse, me, and Sarah in the room. I remember thinking that it was a nice way to start the pushing process. Things were relatively calm, there weren’t a whole lot of people bustling around, and the nurse was able to work with Sarah to help her find the best way to push. We also learned a little bit about how the nurse gave feedback, and the nurse learned about which positions were most comfortable for Sarah. Sarah spent quite a while (maybe 15-30 minutes) on her side, which was a good thing as we learned later!
 
 Between 12 and 1 o’clock, a number of things happened that would have typically resulted in a baby being born. The resident came back to the room and asked Sarah to start pushing on her back. Dr. Terry stopped by to check on Sarah a couple of times (he was also conducting another delivery next door). Sarah was making progress, but the bag of waters wasn’t breaking, and seemed to be getting in the way. Around 1 o’clock Dr. Terry decided to rupture the bag of waters himself, just to speed things along. When he did that, we learned that Titus had meconium, which heightened our heart rates, but the doctor assured us that it was manageable. Sarah wasn’t reassured quite as quickly because the doctor called for the NICU (Natal Intensive Care Unit) nurses to be ready with a kit for the baby as soon as he came out.
 
 However, he had no intentions of coming out anytime soon. Over the course of the next two hours, Titus inched his way, never making a ton of progress. He was “Sunny Side Up”, as the doctor said, meaning that he was facing up instead of down. It is much preferred for the baby to be facing down than up. I think it has to do with two things.
 
 1. His head is shaped to come out easier when he’s facing down.
 
 2. The back of his head is harder than his face, and when he’s facing up his head pushed against Sarah’s tailbone, causing quite a bit more pain than if he had been the other way around.
 
 The doctor was impressed particularly at how steady his heart rate remained during every push. He said that if we didn’t have a name picked out for him already, that we should name him “The Rock”. I told the doctor that the baby already had an uncle named Peter, so we wouldn’t be able to do that.
 
 At this time, Dr. Terry was busy switching between our room and the room next door. He eventually delivered the baby next door, which Sarah was none too pleased about (they had started pushing a half hour after Sarah had). But we later learned that it was their third baby, so that made it seem a little less unfair!
 
 Around the two hour mark, the doctor told us that he had been praying for the baby to come out, and then he prayed out loud for all of us. We didn’t know this at the time, but learned at Titus’s two week checkup that since he was facing up, there was a significant chance that Sarah wouldn’t be able to push him out. They were pretty sure that they were going to have to perform a C-Section. Fortunately Titus turned to the side within the half-hour and progress continued, albeit slowly.
 
 Around 4:30 am, I made another ice-water run for Sarah, who was switching between being hot and cold quite frequently. When I came back, the doctor was taking about how the theme of this birth was patience, and that since the baby’s heart rate was still solid and everything else was doing well (and Sarah was still pushing especially well), that we just had to be a little more patient and let things move along at their own pace. The resident and nurse continued to be very helpful and encouraging. It seemed to me that Sarah was pushing even harder than she had been for the first 2 1/2 hours, which was both surprising and amazing to me! Though I couldn’t really tell what was going on, the doctor, who had been sitting in a chair away from the action most of the time, called the NICU nurses in and stood closer to the rest of us.
 
 I think that everything happened in about 5 minutes, though my sense of time was probably very distorted by that time. In one push, Titus’s head came out, positioned as if he were laying on his left side, eyes closed, and his skin was pretty pale-looking. The doctor quickly suctioned out his nose and mouth. Then Titus’s left arm came out. On the next push, the resident grabbed the little guy’s head and gave him quite a tug. Once his shoulders were clear, he was instantly out! I heard a short little squeak/grunt as he came out, and the resident held him while the doctor clamped and cut the umbilical cord. The doctor quickly handed him over to the NICU nurses, and I couldn’t exactly tell what they did, but he was crying within seconds. That was a relief to us, since the doctor had said that crying would be the sign that everything was alright!
 
 
 </td>
</tr>

<tr>
 <td colspan=”2″ align=”left”>
 After the Birth
 
 
 The delivery nurse smiled and said he had a “nice cry”, which I didn’t really understand at first. Then she explained how his cry was especially pleasant. I guess I was relieved to hear it because of the meconium, but I wouldn’t have made a CD out of it or anything!
 
 At that time, I grabbed the camera to follow Titus around the room. They weighed him, took his footprints, put him under the heat lamp, and checked everything from breathing to heart to eyes to hips to who knows what else! I think I have pictures documenting most of what went on, but I can’t say that I remember it all that well. They eventually gave him to Sarah to hold after what she says felt like an eternity. Then we were able to spend some time together as a family of three for the first time!
 
 
 </td>
</tr>
</table>

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