Far From Home
Copyright © 2005 Beyond Pregnancy.
All rights reserved.
Revised:
07/04/06.
A French citizen delivers her first 2 children in the US and her third in Japan. All VERY far from home.
Carla's birth story. April 1999 NJ, USA
We were living in Edison, New Jersey at that time and my due date was
march 28th.
I went to the doc that morning, 40 weeks appointment, and nope, nothing : fingertip dilated, not a single contraction, and feeling good ! The doc told me they were going to induce me on April 12th if I hadn't gone into labor by then. I asked him if I could be induced on April 11th because it was my deceased FIL's birthday, and the doc barked in my face that "we don't do inductions on Sundays"..I liked him a lot, can you tell ? He checked me and said "I can't feel any hair, so maybe it's a breech" "oh..ok" (Didn't know what "breech" meant, lmao, and no, doof, she wasn't breech, just BALD, DUH)
My parents were supposed to come help me (fist time mom, no friends or family and my husband was on the road all the time), and they came on that day. We did some sightseeing, went shopping, went to restaurants...and they took the plane back home on April 5th, haha, still no baby.
At that point, I was down to walking a lot, eating spicy foods (eating basically anything and everything I could get my hands on, really, lol) and still NOTHING, I had made my peace with the idea of being hugely pregnant forever.
Anyway, on April 10th, we went shopping with my husband, came back home, had an argument about his mother who had called me saying "it better be a boy, because we only have boys in that family, if you have a girl, it'll raise some questions". Good, because all we have is a girl's name, hee...
We then dined on sandwiches and went to bed. I woke up at 1:00 am feeling pressure on my stomach and lower back, woke my husband up saying "I think that's it". He stood up and got dressed while I called the hospital, and the doc (thank God not the idiot I had seen previously, another one from the practice, very nice woman) told me with a muffled laughter "so you have had one occurrence of what you think is a contraction in the past 20 minutes ? I think it's safe to say that you can stay home for a while longer"
Husband went back to bed wearing his shoes and jacket @@ and I went back to sleep. I called the OB again at 7:00 am, contractions were mild, coming every 15 minutes, and she told me to wait until they were 3-4 minutes apart...which never happened, so she called me back at 11:00 asking me to come to the hospital to get checked...I was after all 14 days overdue, lol. "Paul, we're going !!! I'm going to take a shower and call my mom". I did and kept hearing those weird noises from the kitchen, and when I finally hung up and got dressed, I found Paul sitting at the table making himself chocolate spread toast sandwiches, squeezing oranges, making coffee. "What in God's Holy name are you doing ???" "I am losing it, why ?" lol
He packed everything and we went to the car, he ate his breakfast on the way. I was admitted to the hospital at 11:45, they put me in a gown, hooked me up to an IV and we waited..and waited..and waited...while contractions were building up and getting stronger. They checked me at noon, 3 centimeters, and after 2 hours of contracting every 2 minutes, I had made a whopping 1 centimeter progress, this was going to take all week, lol. Then the contractions stopped, so they hooked me up on a pitocin drip which got them going again.
They checked me at 3:00 again and no progress, so they broke my water. YEEEAAAOOUUCH !!!!! SUNUVUGUN, they hurt !!!! I wimped out at 3:30 and got the epi..aaahhh..HEAVEN !!!!!
The nurse who was very sweet to me told me to take a nap, she kept coming into the room asking me if I was comfortable and going "you poor thing, having a baby with no family and friends, that's not right", lol. Gotta love being an expat sometimes...
They dimmed the lights and I fell asleep, until a cheerful "wake up, sleeping beauty, time to push !!!" from my nurse woke me up. The doc came in smiling and told me everything was looking fine and I was going to have that sweet pea in my arms soon and that there were bets in the nurses station about whether the little Frenchie baby was going to be a boy or a girl, lol. It was about 6:15 pm then, they wheeled the little baby cart in the room and it hit me (about time) : OMG, I'm having a baby, there is going to be one more person living and breathing in that room, OMG, OMG, OMG !!!!!
I felt my heart racing while waiting for the next contraction, but seeing everyone around me smiling and calm kept me from panicking, which I had done several times during my pregnancy, courtesy of all the well meaning people telling you horror stories about birth. Anyway, when the contraction came, the nurse shouted in a Jane Fonda voice :"take a deep breath and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, BREATHE again ! and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, good girl !!!". I pretty much burst out laughing ! We did it again 5-6 times, with the doctor looking over going : "harder, harder, harder !!!!!" and finally :"I can see the head !!! One more !!..Good, stop pushing !!!" then gently slid the baby out and "surprise, it's a girl, congratulations, Mommy and Daddy !!!!!!", they put her on my stomach, I was laughing and crying, I had never felt anything like that before, I was soo happy and in love !!!
Carla T. was born . at 6:50 pm, 7 lbs 11 oz, 21.5 inches long, sugar and spice, and everything nice !!!
I went to the doc that morning, 40 weeks appointment, and nope, nothing : fingertip dilated, not a single contraction, and feeling good ! The doc told me they were going to induce me on April 12th if I hadn't gone into labor by then. I asked him if I could be induced on April 11th because it was my deceased FIL's birthday, and the doc barked in my face that "we don't do inductions on Sundays"..I liked him a lot, can you tell ? He checked me and said "I can't feel any hair, so maybe it's a breech" "oh..ok" (Didn't know what "breech" meant, lmao, and no, doof, she wasn't breech, just BALD, DUH)
My parents were supposed to come help me (fist time mom, no friends or family and my husband was on the road all the time), and they came on that day. We did some sightseeing, went shopping, went to restaurants...and they took the plane back home on April 5th, haha, still no baby.
At that point, I was down to walking a lot, eating spicy foods (eating basically anything and everything I could get my hands on, really, lol) and still NOTHING, I had made my peace with the idea of being hugely pregnant forever.
Anyway, on April 10th, we went shopping with my husband, came back home, had an argument about his mother who had called me saying "it better be a boy, because we only have boys in that family, if you have a girl, it'll raise some questions". Good, because all we have is a girl's name, hee...
We then dined on sandwiches and went to bed. I woke up at 1:00 am feeling pressure on my stomach and lower back, woke my husband up saying "I think that's it". He stood up and got dressed while I called the hospital, and the doc (thank God not the idiot I had seen previously, another one from the practice, very nice woman) told me with a muffled laughter "so you have had one occurrence of what you think is a contraction in the past 20 minutes ? I think it's safe to say that you can stay home for a while longer"
Husband went back to bed wearing his shoes and jacket @@ and I went back to sleep. I called the OB again at 7:00 am, contractions were mild, coming every 15 minutes, and she told me to wait until they were 3-4 minutes apart...which never happened, so she called me back at 11:00 asking me to come to the hospital to get checked...I was after all 14 days overdue, lol. "Paul, we're going !!! I'm going to take a shower and call my mom". I did and kept hearing those weird noises from the kitchen, and when I finally hung up and got dressed, I found Paul sitting at the table making himself chocolate spread toast sandwiches, squeezing oranges, making coffee. "What in God's Holy name are you doing ???" "I am losing it, why ?" lol
He packed everything and we went to the car, he ate his breakfast on the way. I was admitted to the hospital at 11:45, they put me in a gown, hooked me up to an IV and we waited..and waited..and waited...while contractions were building up and getting stronger. They checked me at noon, 3 centimeters, and after 2 hours of contracting every 2 minutes, I had made a whopping 1 centimeter progress, this was going to take all week, lol. Then the contractions stopped, so they hooked me up on a pitocin drip which got them going again.
They checked me at 3:00 again and no progress, so they broke my water. YEEEAAAOOUUCH !!!!! SUNUVUGUN, they hurt !!!! I wimped out at 3:30 and got the epi..aaahhh..HEAVEN !!!!!
The nurse who was very sweet to me told me to take a nap, she kept coming into the room asking me if I was comfortable and going "you poor thing, having a baby with no family and friends, that's not right", lol. Gotta love being an expat sometimes...
They dimmed the lights and I fell asleep, until a cheerful "wake up, sleeping beauty, time to push !!!" from my nurse woke me up. The doc came in smiling and told me everything was looking fine and I was going to have that sweet pea in my arms soon and that there were bets in the nurses station about whether the little Frenchie baby was going to be a boy or a girl, lol. It was about 6:15 pm then, they wheeled the little baby cart in the room and it hit me (about time) : OMG, I'm having a baby, there is going to be one more person living and breathing in that room, OMG, OMG, OMG !!!!!
I felt my heart racing while waiting for the next contraction, but seeing everyone around me smiling and calm kept me from panicking, which I had done several times during my pregnancy, courtesy of all the well meaning people telling you horror stories about birth. Anyway, when the contraction came, the nurse shouted in a Jane Fonda voice :"take a deep breath and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, BREATHE again ! and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, good girl !!!". I pretty much burst out laughing ! We did it again 5-6 times, with the doctor looking over going : "harder, harder, harder !!!!!" and finally :"I can see the head !!! One more !!..Good, stop pushing !!!" then gently slid the baby out and "surprise, it's a girl, congratulations, Mommy and Daddy !!!!!!", they put her on my stomach, I was laughing and crying, I had never felt anything like that before, I was soo happy and in love !!!
Carla T. was born . at 6:50 pm, 7 lbs 11 oz, 21.5 inches long, sugar and spice, and everything nice !!!
(holding space for Jodie's birth story)
Louis Paul Akira's birth story, January 2005 - Kyoto, Japan
"He's asleep on the boppy on my lap right now, so I whisked a birth
story before going to take a nap with him, lol
I was at the clinic on saturday morning and the doc told me the head was getting really big;
we could wait, but it was putting us at risk for an emergency C section, and I'd have had to come in every day for checkups, amnios ( for the placenta, etc) OR I could go ahead an induce that same afternoon, with no pitocin, promise, lol.
So I checked into the hosp at 3.00 , where he inflated a small balloon on my cervix
( called the Foley's method), not my favorite 5 minutes of the day when he did it, lol, ouch
You keep the tube out, very comfy to walk with, yuck
Anyway, Paul brought the kids to a friend, came back, we had dinner, and contrax started building up at 8.00 pm; since I'm a stubborn idiot, I wanted to wait at least 12 hours after the induction to think about an epi ,and they kept coming. Apparently the ballon was working, because it fell out, from the cervix dilating.
Good thing was I could walk around and eat and drink if I wanted,I was in my room ( I kept drinking tea like a maniac to try and get my mind off the back labor ). It's a clinic with real hotel rooms, no monitoring hidden in the closets or anything , I had an awesome japanese suite, I'll send you pics if you want
I had real bad back labor, contrax were painful but bearable, but the back... I thought someone kept sawing it in half every 4 minutes due to Louis being in posterior position, i don't wish that on my worst enemy !
Paul kept grumbling about me being too stubborn, and why didn't I call the midwife and tell her to stick that epi in me instead of locking myself up in the bathroom and groaning...
so at 4.00 am, I wimped out, lol, called the midwife, and she came to get me.
I WALKED to the delivery room (limped is more like it, lol) while the nurse called the doc
(it was 4.00 am sunday).
They prepped me for the epi, while I kept having contrax stronger and stronger
Paul was beyond himself with panic and helplessness, poor thing, he kept saying "I wish I could do something, etc". I BEGGED the nurse in japanese "hayaku onegai shimasu"
("quick, please..." ).
Nurse and midwife were both real sweet, held me, showed Paul how to hold me so I'd feel less back pain, etc. I swear at that point didn't care about being buck naked, bent over Paul's arms, dripping blood and groaning in the middle of the delivery room, lol.
FINALLY the doc came in, numbed my back;
All could do was thank him, the nurse, my hubby, God, my grandma, everyone...
And THAT's when the fun started : the epi only worked on my right side, haha.
it was only like 5.00 am and I kept feeling every single contrax on my left side
He upped the dose, I felt better for a few, then it all came back, ouch.
Poor nurse was massaging my back whispering "gambatte, gambatte" ( courage, courage..)
then he checked me at 8.00 am, put an internal monitor in ( NO FUN when you feel your left side being torn in half) and told me I was fully dilated. I screamed in english 'YESSS !!!!!!!!!!"
BUT the contractions came only every 5 minutes and it would have been hell to deliver then
he told me we had to wait until they were closer , argh.
Baby's HR was fine so I held up for 3 more hours, with him adding drugs as we went, but they never were fully efficient.
Finally at 10.30, he told me via the midwife who spoke some french, that the contrax weren't getting stronger, and he was going to break my water.
At that point I swear they kept the kitchen knives away from me or I'd have cut that baby out myself , lol
He broke my water and found out the placenta was deteriorating at warp speed : the amniotic fluid was GREEN from the meconium and not being refreshed so he said he was going to use the vacuum. I could wait, but he advised against it, and I'd been through enough, it was up to me.
This sent a big chill up my spine, Paul was about to say no, I don't want her put through more, but I said ok, no more, I was too exhausted, enough already, they could have used a screwdriver for all I cared, lol
So he gave me another shot of pit, put the vacuum in while I was whimpering my heart out
and we waited for the next contrax, <gulp>
I never saw Paul so scared but it gave me strength actually, lol
The doc told me to push gently which I did, and the sigh gradually changed into a scream, as I felt the baby's head push on my spine and bowels (doc must have gotten a load of my poop on his shoes, sorry, TMI).
Doc yelled at me to stop pushing, and said "sugoi !!" ( great !), I yelled at Paul that the head was out, the doc told me "no push" ( in english, must have been the only words he knew, lol)) and gently slid the baby out, put him on my chest
he said "omedetto !! otoko no ko desu!!!!" (congrats !! it';s a boy !!)
while I FINALLY felt like I could breathe ! lol
He said all I had to do now was nurse ; it's not like in the US where they whisk the baby away from you for apgar scores and such, I just had a warmed up towel on my chest where they put Louis, he folded the towel on him and told me to try and nurse.
Louis wasn't too interested at first, lol, then he latched on carefully, sucked and got this surprised look, like "hey ! this is good !"
He hasn't latched off ever since, practically, and I love him !"
I was at the clinic on saturday morning and the doc told me the head was getting really big;
we could wait, but it was putting us at risk for an emergency C section, and I'd have had to come in every day for checkups, amnios ( for the placenta, etc) OR I could go ahead an induce that same afternoon, with no pitocin, promise, lol.
So I checked into the hosp at 3.00 , where he inflated a small balloon on my cervix
( called the Foley's method), not my favorite 5 minutes of the day when he did it, lol, ouch
You keep the tube out, very comfy to walk with, yuck
Anyway, Paul brought the kids to a friend, came back, we had dinner, and contrax started building up at 8.00 pm; since I'm a stubborn idiot, I wanted to wait at least 12 hours after the induction to think about an epi ,and they kept coming. Apparently the ballon was working, because it fell out, from the cervix dilating.
Good thing was I could walk around and eat and drink if I wanted,I was in my room ( I kept drinking tea like a maniac to try and get my mind off the back labor ). It's a clinic with real hotel rooms, no monitoring hidden in the closets or anything , I had an awesome japanese suite, I'll send you pics if you want
I had real bad back labor, contrax were painful but bearable, but the back... I thought someone kept sawing it in half every 4 minutes due to Louis being in posterior position, i don't wish that on my worst enemy !
Paul kept grumbling about me being too stubborn, and why didn't I call the midwife and tell her to stick that epi in me instead of locking myself up in the bathroom and groaning...
so at 4.00 am, I wimped out, lol, called the midwife, and she came to get me.
I WALKED to the delivery room (limped is more like it, lol) while the nurse called the doc
(it was 4.00 am sunday).
They prepped me for the epi, while I kept having contrax stronger and stronger
Paul was beyond himself with panic and helplessness, poor thing, he kept saying "I wish I could do something, etc". I BEGGED the nurse in japanese "hayaku onegai shimasu"
("quick, please..." ).
Nurse and midwife were both real sweet, held me, showed Paul how to hold me so I'd feel less back pain, etc. I swear at that point didn't care about being buck naked, bent over Paul's arms, dripping blood and groaning in the middle of the delivery room, lol.
FINALLY the doc came in, numbed my back;
All could do was thank him, the nurse, my hubby, God, my grandma, everyone...
And THAT's when the fun started : the epi only worked on my right side, haha.
it was only like 5.00 am and I kept feeling every single contrax on my left side
He upped the dose, I felt better for a few, then it all came back, ouch.
Poor nurse was massaging my back whispering "gambatte, gambatte" ( courage, courage..)
then he checked me at 8.00 am, put an internal monitor in ( NO FUN when you feel your left side being torn in half) and told me I was fully dilated. I screamed in english 'YESSS !!!!!!!!!!"
BUT the contractions came only every 5 minutes and it would have been hell to deliver then
he told me we had to wait until they were closer , argh.
Baby's HR was fine so I held up for 3 more hours, with him adding drugs as we went, but they never were fully efficient.
Finally at 10.30, he told me via the midwife who spoke some french, that the contrax weren't getting stronger, and he was going to break my water.
At that point I swear they kept the kitchen knives away from me or I'd have cut that baby out myself , lol
He broke my water and found out the placenta was deteriorating at warp speed : the amniotic fluid was GREEN from the meconium and not being refreshed so he said he was going to use the vacuum. I could wait, but he advised against it, and I'd been through enough, it was up to me.
This sent a big chill up my spine, Paul was about to say no, I don't want her put through more, but I said ok, no more, I was too exhausted, enough already, they could have used a screwdriver for all I cared, lol
So he gave me another shot of pit, put the vacuum in while I was whimpering my heart out
and we waited for the next contrax, <gulp>
I never saw Paul so scared but it gave me strength actually, lol
The doc told me to push gently which I did, and the sigh gradually changed into a scream, as I felt the baby's head push on my spine and bowels (doc must have gotten a load of my poop on his shoes, sorry, TMI).
Doc yelled at me to stop pushing, and said "sugoi !!" ( great !), I yelled at Paul that the head was out, the doc told me "no push" ( in english, must have been the only words he knew, lol)) and gently slid the baby out, put him on my chest
he said "omedetto !! otoko no ko desu!!!!" (congrats !! it';s a boy !!)
while I FINALLY felt like I could breathe ! lol
He said all I had to do now was nurse ; it's not like in the US where they whisk the baby away from you for apgar scores and such, I just had a warmed up towel on my chest where they put Louis, he folded the towel on him and told me to try and nurse.
Louis wasn't too interested at first, lol, then he latched on carefully, sucked and got this surprised look, like "hey ! this is good !"
He hasn't latched off ever since, practically, and I love him !"