elsie's birth synopsis and photos--don't worry, nothing gory

Throughout my pregnancy, Aaron and I were seriously amazed at the level of intensity of opinions out there about birth and labor, from both ends of the spectrum. I'd say we fell pretty nicely in the middle of it all--wanting some things "natural" and some things "medical", but, as Aaron pointed out after we had our little sweetie, things will never go the way you envisioned them.

So, a somewhat brief synopsis of the birth:

My due date arrived, October 17th. I tried to get my mind off things. I got dressed. I went in to work. I bought some post-maternity clothes. I ate lunch with a friend and we got manicures. That evening Aaron and I drove up to Salt Lake to pick up my mom from the airport.

As soon as we got home, and I started "leaking". Eventually it was undeniably my water breaking so we packed up for the hospital.

We were put in a holding room, and told there was meconium in the fluid. That fact is what made it so some things didn't go according to "plan".

First off, I was told if I didn't dilate fast enough, I would be put on Pitocin. Oh, yeah, I was planning to go unmedicated, which is what made the idea of Pitocin disconcerting.

We were moved to our real room--which was amazing and huge--and began 12 hours of contracting and slow progression, but fast enough that I didn't need the drugs! Hooray!

We got in a little tub time at the very end, sparing Aaron's wrists from pushing on my knees to help ease the pain during contractions. I didn't feel like the water really helped with pain relief, though I was at the worst part of the process, but maybe it helped me relax mid deathly contractions.

From about this point on, I was pretty sure Aaron was in some sort of coma-shock. In my minds eye, he was just silent and wide-eyed, doing whatever the nurses told him to do to help me. In reality, I didn't really look at him--pretty sure my eyes were closed from here on out.

Eventually the sounds that came out of me during a contraction (horrifying screams, I guess) signaled to the midwife that it was time to get a-pushin'. Back to the bed for 40 minutes of blood-vessel-bursting pushing (literally, my blood vessels burst all over my face and chest), the most insane feeling of all of my insides gushing out of me without any control on my part, and then a baby!

Here's where one thing I had really wanted didn't get to happen: immediate skin-on-skin and time for breast feeding to happen naturally. Our little sweetie didn't scream or cry, had aspirated quite a bit of poopy fluid, and was having trouble breathing. I got to hold her for about 2 seconds, then they took her to try to suction out some goop and get her wailing, which still didn't work. I got to hold her again for 2 more seconds, then they took her away to the nursery to be checked out more and put on a CPAP machine and monitored in a million other ways.

After about an hour and a half, I got wheeled in to the nursery and we finally got our skin on skin time. We watched as her breath-per-minute rate evened out and got down to normal as I held her, and eventually they told us she was good to go and we could bring her back to our room for some feeding.

Am I disappointed in my experience? Heck no. Are these pictures more "medical" than I had anticipated. Yeah--but do I have a happy, healthy baby? Yes!

And here is our first family picture!

Aaron said that the first thing he thought when she came out was that she was too perfect to give a name to--even all covered in poo. It took us almost our whole two-day hospital stay before Aaron let me write her name on the hospital paperwork.

Elsie Lynne Robison

October 18, 2013

7 lbs 12 oz

20 in