Kathy's Birth Story
Hi Vittoria!
Wanted to let you know that I had my baby boy this past Monday November 30th (2009) at 4:24 pm. His name is Beckett William King Fong Lau, and he was 8 lbs 8 oz, 21 ∏ inches long. He’s healthy and beautiful and we’re thrilled to have the new addition to our family! Our son Griffin (who turned 3 today) is still adjusting, but he’s very sweet with Beckett and seems excited to have a little baby around so we’ll see how it goes.
I went in to be induced at midnight on the 29th to St. Vincent’s. I was at 2 centimeters and already having inconsistent contractions on my own, so they decided against misoprostol because once they give it, it’s not easy to control or stop its affects. They decided to give me a very tiny amount of pitocin each hour until my cervix dilated. The ob/gyn wanted to take it very slow and was being conservative with the pitocin, which was great because I hardly felt anything till I was at 4 centimeters by midday day the next day.
I went for the epidural at that time and was very glad that I did because my delivery was incredibly relaxed, calm and almost peaceful (not to mention pain free). They were able to stop the pitocin very soon after my epidural. When the contractions started lowering Beckett’s heart rate, they wanted me to start pushing and I probably pushed for maybe an hour (?) until he was out. Ironically, my older son was also born at 4:30 pm on a Monday with similar timing (I actually pushed longer with Beckett because I started sooner).
Recovery has been going really well – only a 2nd degree tear this time (had a 3rd degree tear the first time). The worst has been my uterus contracting while I breast feed. They were really bad like labor contractions (7-8 on scale of 1-10) and nothing was working to stop the pain, so they gave me some vicodin which is safe to take while breast feeding. They said that with additional births, your contractions during breast feeding can be a lot more severe because your uterus does not have as much muscle memory as the first time you give birth. The good news is that my milk finally came in and breast feeding is going really well so I’m very happy about that.
Mentally I’m ready for post natal yoga, but will wait a couple weeks till my belly is less tender. Hi to the prenatal yoga class and I guess my lesson learned was not to be afraid of pitocin if it’s used conservatively!