The Birth of Parker Joost (5/10/11)

It all started at 6:50am. That's the official beginning, but I hadn't realized it until later. I realized, at 6:50am, that I had to go to the bathroom and debated with myself exactly how badly I needed to go. I didn't want to get out of my comfortable position because, being so heavily pregnant at 39 weeks 2 days, getting back into any comfortable position is a feat worthy of the Olympics. Finally, I decided that going to the bathroom was much more important so I sat up and leaked. I cursed to myself. I had avoided another entire pregnancy without peeing myself; not while laughing, sneezing, coughing, anything. And now, I thought, I had broken my record. I moved toward the end of the bed and leaked some more. I rushed to the bathroom and accomplished my task. Back in the bedroom, I riffled through my underwear drawer for a fresh, dry pair and began to climb back into bed. I leaked and cursed. At this point, I was about 80% sure that my waters had broken.

With still a 20% uncertainty, I retrieved yet another pair of dry underwear and climbed back into bed. By now Justin, my husband, was awake.

"Are we having a baby today," he questioned, thinking he was being funny.

"Possibly," I answered, not being funny at all.

Of course, he was curious as to what I meant so I was forced to explain the entire episode, along with my personal percentile of certainty. I told him to go to work. I hadn't yet had a contraction so I figured that when I did I would just keep track until they got close enough together to be of concern. I told him I would call him when I was sure of my situation. Now came the part of trying not to think about it while I cared for my daughter. Difficult task, indeed. I suddenly began to have contractions. Not close enough together to worry, but definitely there and hard. It became very difficult for me to care for my daughter, especially since it seemed like she wanted to climb into my lap during every contraction. I called Justin. He told me to bring our daughter to his mother, who lived right around the corner, so that I could labour and let him know what was going on. So, off I went, having been told to call him back at 11am with an update.

I'm not sure my mother-in-law actually knew I was in labour for a while. I stayed, had some coffee and chatted, all the while having irregular contractions. Finally, I asked if I could leave Guinevere, my daughter, with her. She gladly accepted and I walked home while contracting. I called Justin to let him know that I had been leaking and contracting the whole time so now I was 99% sure that my waters had broken. I asked what I should do. We decided that I should cancel the midwife appointment that was set for later that day. My mother was going to be driving me, since I had no car. I called her to cancel her driving me and she suggested that I call the midwives because my waters had broken. After getting off the phone with her, I paged my midwife, Sylvia. When she called back, she gave me the worst news I had yet come across. I was GBS positive. GBS is a sort of infection that randomly appears and disappears in women. If you test positive once, you may not test positive the next time, that sort of thing. I had tested negative with my daughter, so I had just assumed I would this time. Not so. I was told that because my waters had broken and I was GBS positive I had two options. I could induce labour to speed the process along, or I could come and get the antibiotics and let labour progress on its own. If it didn't go fast enough, they would induce. I had no fears about the speed of my labour but I had to call Justin about whether or not antibiotics were necessary. I wanted an accurate risk to benefit weighting and my husband is very good at that.

We decided to head in and meet Sylvia at 1pm. Justin came home from work as I paged Sylvia to let her know what we had decided. The downside was that I had stopped having contractions at around 11:16am. With Guinevere, I had decided that I would be going to St. Joseph's Hospital in Hamilton. Well, actually I more decided that I would never ever, EVER be going to Brantford General and St. Joe's is what we ended up with. We decided to go back there this time around because I thought the hospital was FABULOUS. Anyway, it takes about 45 minutes to get there. When we arrived, I was praying for another contraction. I did not want to be induced. We signed in and got a room, luckily apparently since it seemed that every pregnant woman in the area was giving birth. We got the last room. We went over our options again and decided to start the IV of antibiotics. We waited, trying to figure out what to do after. Would we sit around the hospital for four hours, or however long it took for me to start contracting again? Or would we leave and come back, risking losing the room to another anxious midwife? In the end, our baby decided for us. We would be staying because I began to contract again, intensely and close together. It was 2:30pm.

My contractions were severe from the start. At first, I was still able to talk and laugh between the pain. It didn't take long for the contractions to hurt so badly that I cried between them instead. Sylvia checked me at this point. I was 4.5-5cm dilated. I tried various positions to coax the baby out, none of which was laying down. I already knew that I had THE WORST pain in that position and making the pain worse than it was right then was NOT an option for me. I leaned against the bed, rocked with Justin holding me, sat on the toilet (squatting position) because that had gotten Guinevere out and leaned over the back of the bed. Sylvia checked me again but I had only progressed to 7cm so she allowed me in the tub with the promise that I would tell her as soon as I felt like I had to push.

We weren't in the tub for very long, it felt like 5 minutes. I felt the need to push and we rushed back to the room for delivery. The whole process was very hands off during labour and delivery wasn't very different except for the midwives being close enough to catch the baby. I started by leaning over the back of the bed. But I got a new option! It was a squat bar. They hooked it up to the bed and I held onto it while kneeling and pushing. I watched as my beautiful son came into the world. I grabbed him to me and laughed as the pain eased slightly. Clutching him to me, I delivered the afterbirth and began to breastfeed my son for the first time.

Baby's Name: Parker Joost

Baby's Gender: BOY

Date of Birth: May 10th

EDD: May 15th

Weight/ Height: 8lbs 14oz/ 21.5in

In Attendance: Sylvia, Georgia, Georgia's student (the first male midwife in Ontario and maybe Canada) and Justin.

Time: 5:12pm