Much before knowing the gender of our baby, Dan and I had selected two names for her in case she were to be a girl. Victoria Maria (which was one of our top choices for a couple of years already) and Lavinia Maria. If the baby were to be a boy, we were pretty much clueless as to what name him. We try to find names we really like that have the same spelling in english and portuguese. This is slightly easier for girl names, we've found out.
Anyway, for a while we really considered calling our baby Lavinia. But there were a couple of problems to it but I will attend to just one of them. The situation was that people I personally talked to about choosing the name Lavinia tended to think we made the name up! And there are few things I dislike more than made up names.
So it was kinda settled, Victoria Maria was our name for a girl. But what if it was a boy? So here I go trying to find inspiration on the saints. I looked for December saints. No clues for boy names there, but what I found out was that in December, precisely, there was a martyr St Victoria (from the early church) and there also was this Blessed Maria Vittoria. I didn't pay much attention to the feast days because they didn't match our December, 17th due date anyway, but it was enough for me to really stick with our chosen name, if it were to be a girl.
Fast forward to when I had already scheduled my last appointment, the last week my mom was here, we were eagerly waiting for baby Vicky to come out, but she wasn't showing any signs of coming out anytime soon. I thought to myself: "I'm starting to think this is all because of that Blessed Maria Vittoria. but when was it that she died? I can't remember". So I look it up again, there it was: December, 15th.
And sure enough, that's when our Vicky was born.
I will now finally describe the labor and delivery, because - like Dan told me - you might also be thinking that I wrote and wrote, but I said nothing on my last post! haha
Okay, so here it goes.
I went to bed at around 9pm or even before. At 11pm I felt the first contraction and it was already a little painful. It woke me up from my light slumber. I took a print screen of my phone with the time on it. Went back to sleep. The contractions kept coming, but in a random fashion. I would take another print screen and went back to sleep. At 1:45am I started having painful contractions every 12 min apart.
After one hour, I woke Dan to let him know we would probably be going to the hospital some time soon. But I let him sleep a bit more. After a short while, I got off bed, brushed my teeth, changed clothes. At around 3am I called L&D telling them a bit about my situation asking them if I should head to the hospital at that time.
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| My contractions! The second picture on the bottom line shows my call to labor and delivery |
Big mistake! Although I was VERY sure I was in labor already, and the contractions were really painful, the person who answered my call replied with the go-to answer that the contractions should be close to 5 minutes apart. But of course she added that if I was feeling really uncomfortable we could come to triage. Well, that's something too subjective for my math/objective brain to deal with. Was I too uncomfortable? I don't know!!!!
So I waited a little longer. But the pains were bad. To make things worse, I even had some contractions skip the 12 min period so it all seemed a bit off and not too regurlar. But my guts told me to make it official and to wake my mom up so she could take care of the sleeping kids. Then I woke Dan up. I went out to the garage to start our car so it could heat a little bit before we go. By then everybody was up, including the children! Nice! Let me add that the children were sick. Real nice. And easy.
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| but they look adorable! |
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| playing soccer at 4am. |
Dan and I left for the hospital! The car was still cold but I wasn't thinking much about it! I thought I had a few contractions that were 7 minutes apart. I remember telling Dan: "I don't care what they tell me at triage, I'm not leaving that hospital". But there was no need for such drama and impositions of my own. Entering the front desk, Dan already pulled a wheel chair for me. And I must have done a really painful face at some point because when somebody was ready to take us upstairs they already put me in a delivery room, not the triage booths. We entered the room at 4:15am.
Nurses kept coming to settle me in. One of them checked my cervix: "oh, eh, she is 7, 8cm dilated. No cervix on this (left side) and a tiiiny bit left on that side (right side)". I cried: "I knew it". Doctor was already in the room, I think. We briefly discussed my options. I decided to have the epidural anyway. Something we talked about made me think it was worth it, although it wasn't guarantee the baby would wait for it or that it would be totally efficient.
So first thing to be done was to settle an IV for fluids. And then things got too adventurous. Trying to stay positive and polite here! Long story short, after 20 min, 3 nurses, 6 pokes and 3 blown out veins, they finally got an IV on me! And I'm not exaggerating one bit. I can surely assure you that it wasn't the best time to waste precious 20 minutes just to hook up an IV. The doctor visited me a couple times to tell me that if I felt an urge to push we would just stop everything and have the baby!
She also checked me again and I was 9cm dilated already. My water was still intact. She also told me: "I know you must be really struggling now, but you really don't show it. Most women at this stage are already screaming". Not exactly comforting, I tell you, specially when I was still waiting to get my epidural in.
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| these pictures show my bruises one week after delivery |
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| this one I actually just hurt again today while making the bed.... |
Miraculously, I wasn't making any sound out of pain, I was controlling my contractions, baby was holding up. Then the anesthesiologist came (ps. I just have to kudos myself for writing "anesthesiologist" down without auto-correct at first try!). And there goes another 20-30 minutes just waiting for the epidural process to be settled down. The nurse kept telling him: "she is 9cm dilated but her contractions are 4/5 minutes apart. That's the only thing that's backing us up now".
The epidural hadn't kicked in yet, but the doctor broke my water. No meconium! I cried of relief a little bit! Then it all happened too fast. Four or five nurses and the doctor all around me, it was time to push. I could still feel the contractions. The monitor was of little help. It seemed to me that everything was under my half-numb-body control and blundering discernment. "did I just have a contraction?"- "hum, we can try to push". Or "I think we just lost a mini one" (mini one?? Was that a thing?).
I really don't know exactly what happened but it seemed to me it took an eternity for baby to crown. I started crying: "I can't do this. I can't push." I felt too numb. On Becca's and Nico's delivery I proud myself I was able to successfully push even with the epidural. But not with Vicky. They explained to me because I was so far along they gave me the strongest and fastest epidural, so something about that made pushing too hard for me.
I asked them if I could do a weird motion with my hands on the air to help my brain visualize the pushing movement. They said "sure". And then it worked a bit. Doctor said: "I don't know what you did there, but keep doing it because this push was much better the all the other ones you did so far". And then a little later, baby was crowning. And then 2, 3 more quick pushes and I felt the whole baby coming out, but apparently I didn't know that was it:
Me: "Aaah, what was that?"
Doctor: "IT'S YOUR BABY"!!
All I know baby Vicky was ready in my arms practically right away. We did skin to skin, she nursed. I talked to her about our family. That she will love her sister Becca because she is so much fun! Vicky was too sweet. Too content. Too alert. Too perfect.
Nurse 1: "Aw, she is so calm"
Nurse 2: "Oh third babies, they have to be".
And Vicky surely is a very good baby!
But part 2 ends here!
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