Informed Consent

The story so far:

Jamie and I did a lot of research before coming into the hospital to find out what the “Best” way of having a baby was. I can tell you, there’s a lot of opinions out there. The conclusion that we came to was that the safest way of having a baby was to keep the medical folk from using their toys and having minimal ‘interventions’.

When Jamie’s water broke Tuesday morning, that changed a bit of our plans. The problem with the water breaking is that it disrupts the infection fighting system around the baby. It’s not bad in itself, but it starts the clock on an increasing risk of infection.

Through the day and the night of the first 24 hours in the hospital, we were having lots of contractions, but nothing that really resolved itself into the pattern of Active Labor. We kept hoping, and trying…Jamie was walking herself up and down flights of stairs trying to get things started. However, we just didn’t get the ball rolling. We were just too early. But the water was broken so we were committed.

Wednesday morning, we decided that we needed to push things along, and so we asked for the cervical softening agent. This really kicked things into gear. Jamie had awesome contractions and a real pattern going. I will never be able to express to anyone the incredible respect I have for my wife for the way she fought through 12 hours of masive, intense labor.  After each hit, she looked up and said “May I have another.”

However, after a day of beating, we still didn’t have a accellerating dialation of the cervix, and we weren’t making progress. Actually, we were making progress, but it really looked like it might be another 24 hours of the same. The medical staff was complaining and saying they wanted to speed things up.

Jamie and I had a talk, in between eruptions. We decided we wanted to speed things up, for the baby and the ticking clock of the infection risk. We knew that more interventions meant more chances of complications, but if nature was going to take too long….

We opted for getting the epidural, and starting on the pitocin. The anesthesiologist came in and stuck a couple of needles in Jamie’s back, and pretty soon she was happy and relaxed. It was really fun seeing Jamie again after a day of losing her into focused meditation and breathing and pain.

Unfortunately, almost immediately, the complications started. Jamie’s blood pressure took a dive, due to the pain medicine, and the baby’s heart rate slowed. Soon Jamie was covered with diagnostic gear, and electrode was placed into the baby’s scalp to keep the monitoring good. A quick hit of blood pressure medicine fixed the crisis, and the staff set to tuning the medications to keep the problem from recurring. It happened twice more before morning.

Now we’ve been on the epidural, and the pitocin for about eight hours. We’re still not getting the fast cervical dialation we need, and the staff is starting to talk to us about a cesarian.

I don’t know if there was ever any chance of avoiding that result, but I definitely feel that there is a great Delivery Room Train. Once you climb aboard, a lot of the passengers end up on rails to the same destination. We’re hoping to end up with a healthy baby, and a healthy mommy, and with luck, we’ll be done this afternoon.

Love to you all.