Paulsen Zoo: Ashlyn Deane: A Birth Story

Ashlyn Deane Paulsen

April 28, 2013 at 6:23am

7lbs, 6oz; 20in

Some people call their birth stories, "labor stories". This is definitely not that. It's a birth story.

Ashlyn after her first bath

Tim has been working a lot, meaning, all his Fridays off, most Saturdays, and he was supposed to work Sunday. We had been looking forward to Miracle Miles for Kids on April 27th for a while (hoping we would have our baby by then, but also so that Tim and Drew could go kayaking). Tim found out he had to work, and I decided to go up to Cayucos for Miracle Miles for Kids with the dogs anyways as a way to be distracted and not sit at home by myself all day.

At 12:30am (Sunday now), I woke up with cramps and started watching the clock to see about how far apart they were, and at around 1:30am I woke up Tim when they were about 5 to 6 minutes apart with, "I don't think you're going to work today!" We started using an app on my phone to time the cramping, and got up to have something to eat, thinking we were in for a long day. I ate some greek yogurt, and Tim made a fried egg, and sat down to write an email to people at work detailing what he was currently working on. The doggies woke up (thinking it was morning) and wanted breakfast, and Tim actually did give them a snack (and gave Cole his morning dose of antibiotics for his ears). Tim put the last of the things like phone chargers and the dog bed in the car.

Around 3:30 we called Megan because although my contractions were only 30-45 seconds long and not too intense, they were 3 minutes apart. Megan said I probably wasn't in active labor yet, because I could still mostly talk through the contractions, so to try and stay home and relax as long as I could, but to get to the hospital before I was in transition, because she's heard going through transition in the car is terrible.

It is.

After we got off the phone with Megan, we decided to go back to bed and just lay down and rest. The way Tim describes it is that in the next 10 minutes, my contractions were more intense and I was using breathing techniques to get through them. I had Tim bring in a trash bag because I was feeling nauseous. I realized I was freezing cold and got up and put on my black Hume Lake sweatpants and a black flyaway sweater. While putting on the sweatpants I realized I was shaking, and I ~~asked~~ yelled at Tim to find the papers from the birthing class that tell the stages of labor. I went to the bathroom (which triggers a contraction) and yelled at Tim to bring the throw up bag. And used it.

After scattering papers all over our bed, we found the stages of labor handout and I pointed at "transition" symptoms and said to Tim, "I think I'm in transition!" but he was already getting ready to leave because as soon as I got sick he knew we were going to the hospital. We woke up the dogs and all got in the car, and called Megan as we started driving. I told her what was going on and she said, "you sound different!" She said she would call the hospital and tell them we were coming, and they would check me and let her know how far along I was. That was around 4:40am.

The drive to the hospital was ~~no fun~~ terrible. (Tim thinks Cole is probably scarred from it and was very worried about his Mommy). Looking back now, it made the next 40 minutes pass quickly, but at the time, every time I had a contraction, Tim started driving faster. The weirdest part was, that as I was sitting there, first my 4th and 5th fingers up to my elbows went numb and tingling, then my whole arms, then my quads and stomach, and halfway up my face, and I could barely move my hands (I've had numbness like this in my hands and arms before, when I get nervous like before short track races in high school, so I wasn't freaking out).

We got to the hospital at about 5:20am. Tim remembered that if he was supposed to be awake for work, we could go through the main hospital entrance instead of the ER. I told him we were going through the ER though because it was a shorter walk, because I was still all numb. All we carried in was my two pink water bottles (one with water, one with Strawberry-Kiwi Propel) and Tim had Cole's antibiotics in his pocket. About halfway through the parking lot, I had a contraction and squated down. At this point, Tim said it was his one freak out moment..."do I leave you here and go get a wheel chair? do I pick you up?" Thankfully, after it was over I was able to get up and finish walking inside, and by the time we got there I was not numb any more (and had forgotten about that). Tim said the weird thing about walking into the ER is the people were all so calm. The nurse asked my name, and I said, "Shelby Paulsen, 5/12/--" because you know thats what they always ask, he wrote down my name and then asked my birthdate, which when Tim tells the story, I yelled it back at him. Another nurse came in with a wheelchair, and said, "we're going to go fast now", yeah, I didn't think we were going very fast.

When we got into a room, the first thing the nurse did was to hand me a specimen cup (to test and see if I was leaking amniotic fluid) and a pen and shut me into the bathroom by myself to get a sample. Um, HELLO?!?! I started to try, but of course instead it just triggered a contraction and I called for Tim and he came and got me (yea, didn't have to fill the cup). I told Tim that I couldn't do this anymore, and he got in my face and asked, "Are you asking for drugs?" and I said, "YES!" but the nurse said I was having a baby soon.

We went over to the bed and I squatted on one side (squatting or leaning over with my elbows on the bed was all I ever wanted to do) and Tim was across from me holding my hands. The nurse checked me and instead of giving us any percentages or centimeters, said there was just a rim of my cervix left. They put the monitors on me and started talking about putting an IV in (because I was Group Beta strep positive). I guess the baby's heartbeat went down to 105 bpm, and the nurse was trying to get me to get on the bed and lay down because it would be best for the baby when Megan walked in (the nurse said, "wow, you got here fast!") and told the nurse that the baby's heartbeat was 120bpm in the office on Thursday so I didn't need to lay down. Megan also said forget the IV because it would take 30 minutes to get the antibiotics in and 4 hours to clean out my system.

They did give me oxygen to increase the baby's heart rate, and focusing on deep, slow breathing in the oxygen with Megan and Tim as they coached me definitely helped. I asked Megan about drugs, and she said they could try and epidural, but there was no guarantee it would work soon enough. So I gave up on that. My nurse, Colleen, was watching the monitors (and constantly adjusting the monitors on me), but I was able to feel when a contraction was coming and to tell Tim. During the contractions I was like schizofrenic...I would say, "I can't do this!" and then say, "NO! I can do this!" What Tim and I figured out (after the fact), was that I wasn't feeling the end of the contractions. I was still having cramping (from when labor started I pretty much felt crampy the whole time, it just got more intense during a contraction), but I wouldn't be breathing as hard when Colleen was still telling me the contraction was almost over. THIS is what we think was happening when my contractions were 3 minutes apart but still short, I wasn't feeling the whole thing!

At one point, Colleen noticed the pill bottle sitting on the table next to the bed where Tim had emptied his pockets and asked what medication I was taking. Tim looked at her, and the pill bottle with the cat and dog on the lid, and said, "Gah, nevermind don't worry about it."

Megan asked me if I felt like pushing, I said no. Tim says the next contraction, I said, "I feel like pushing!" and my water broke (all over the floor LOL)! Then Megan told me I had to get up on the bed, because I couldn't have the baby on the floor, and she needed to check me again to make sure I was fully dilated. Getting checked was completely uncomfortable at this point as I kept having contractions anyways.

Megan and Colleen pretty much had to convince me to push. It wasn't "painful" the pushing itself, but it was uncomfortable. And hard. Megan got all set up and they dropped the end of the bed off, Dr. Spalding came in and said hi (he still has to sign off on a few of Megan's births, but he would wait in the hall until the end), and Colleen told me how there would be respiratory techs and other people standing out of the way just in case. I was on my side and had my back to them. I didn't care.

Once I decided that I guess I had to push to get the baby out, it was actually the only time I was able to fully relax since I woke up at 12:30am. I would give 3 pushes during a contraction (I realized that when I was pushing, I couldn't actually feel the contraction... pushing > pain), and then somehow in between the contractions, the pain all went away and I could catch my breath and relax my whole body and mind. CRAZY. After 5 hours of pain, it was such a relief, and I feel like it gave me the strength the then concentrate on pushing.

Dark brown hair

Megan said she could see the head, "there's a lot of hair!" and Tim asked, "is it curly?" Haha. I figured it wasn't very close to coming out, because Drew and Carlene had told us that when the baby is about to come out, you look up and there's like 15 people in your room, including Dr. Spalding, so I kept waiting to see Dr. Spalding and THEN I would know I was almost done. Somehow during all this, I asked Colleen if they could clean off the baby before putting it on me because I don't like being dirty, she suggested a blanket on my tummy, I agreed.

Instead, I guess I decided that I needed to push better, because after one push, Megan told me to wait and not push. Then next contraction she told me to push. On the second push, the baby's head came out, and on the third push, the body. Apparently it came out so fast that Megan and Colleen didn't have time to call Dr. Spalding in, so he missed it.

Colleen put a blanket on my tummy and Megan lifted the baby up so Tim and I could see it, "it's a GIRL!" and put Ashlyn Deane on my tummy and started rubbing her off. She was crying and Megan and Colleen were exclaiming how pink she was (her APGAR scores at 1min and 5min were both 9). She didn't need any suctioning and didn't poop in utero. She was perfect.