Timothy

Subject: Birth announcement!
Newsgroups: misc.kids
Date: 1993-08-14 13:52:04 PST

Born on August, 14th 1993 on 11.15am (CET)

           Timothy (Tim)

           Brother of Cees,
           Son of Sander and Karen.

Timothy weighs 3250 grams and has a length of 50 cms. His APGARS
were 9 and 10. He is very cute and has changed so much in the
time he is with us now (from very crinkly to a little bit crinkly)
He is doing well and already nurses very well.
Later on I will post the labor story, now I'm going to bed!

                               Karen, mom to Cees (21mo)
                                         and Tim (10 hours old)
                               (so I will have to change my .sig)


==========================================================================
Karen, the Netherlands                   mom to Cees (20mo)
karen@ankh-morpork.hacktic.nl                     and ???? (due July,31th)

The quickest way for a parent to get a child's attention is to sit down
and look comfortable.

Looking back, I think it is pretty good that I got this posted within half a day of the birth. It took me longer to get my birth story out though, managed that about a week later. It was neat to read back details like how much dilated I was in this story, which I had forgotten when I wrote the story again for my web page later. I also noticed that the emotions here were more raw still. Things like complaining about 'all those terrible contractions!'

Subject: Labor story
Newsgroups: misc.kids
Date: 1993-08-21 14:31:32 PST

Last week I posted the birth anouncement of my son Tim. Now I
found time to write the labor story, so here it is.

It all started on August, 10th when the midwife 'stripped' my
membrames to try to make things speed up a little bit. I was 41
weeks and 3 days pregnant at that time (due date confirmed by
early ultrasound). I asked some advice from the net about
stripping and talked about it with my midwife, and we decided to
go through with it, since I really wanted a home birth. In
Holland you have to go to a gyneacologist when you are more than
42 weeks pregnant and that means almost always a hospital birth.

The stripping was a little bit painful, but not too much and I
was very curious what would happen. I was about 1 or 2 cms
dilated at that moment. A few days nothing happened and on
August, 12th in the afternoon I had some light contractions, but
they died away after a few hours.

August, 13th I had to go back to the midwife. I was 41 weeks and
6 days then, so he wanted to send me to a gyn to have the baby
checked and to get his opinion. He called him and the next
morning at 10:00 I could come to the hospital. The midwife did
another internal exam to see how things were. The cervix wasn't
fully effaced yet, but he thought that if contractions would
start, the real labor would begin. But it was also possible that
it would take another few days for labor to start.

That afternoon we went to a wedding of a friend and I felt some
light contractions. When we arrived home at about 18:00 they
became stronger and we started to time them. They were not all
regular but there was an average of 3 minutes between them and
they lasted for about 45-60 seconds. They were rather painful
already so I thought that maybe labor would get started at last.
About 21:00 the contractions became less strong, so I suspected
they might be going to die away again like the day before. So we
went to bed at about 23:00 and tried to sleep.

Sleep wasn't possible. The contractions were coming too often and
were too painful for that, so at 02:00 I got out of my bed and
started timing contractions again. They still weren't regular but
they came sometimes after 2 minutes, sometimes after 4 or even 5
minutes. They were very painful, so after some time I decided to
call the midwife. Since it was weekend it was not my own midwife,
but another one which I didn't know personally. This was a bit of
a disappointment.

She came at 03:00 and checked me. Only 3 centimeters dilated and
still not fully effaced. I was very disappointed. I thought that
all that pain would have brought me further than that. So she
went home again and I was back to facing all those terrible
contractions.

In the morning I called a friend who would take care of our
eldest son and after they had parted I called the midwife again.
I was in severe pain and breathing exercises didn't help me
anymore. She checked me and I was at 5 or 6 cms. It was not much,
but I was glad there had been progress since the last check.

She stayed at our home and she made all the preparations we
needed for the baby to be born. At about 10:45 I was at 9 cms and
she broke my water. I didn't really like that, but I was not in a
mood to argue about it. The contractions really speeded up now
and I didn't have recovery time in between. I was yelling and
hoping it all would be over soon. At 11:00 I felt a bit of a urge
to push and she checked me and found a little bit of cervix left
(I don't know the correct term) that she massaged away. After
that I was allowed to push.

This came as a kind of surprise for me at that moment. I really
had to make a mental turn-around from breathing through
contractions to pushing during contractions. In the beginning I
even didn't know anymore how to push. But when I knew again it
all went very painful and smoothly. I screamed at the top of my
lungs and pushed and pushed and didn't know how long I could do
this. But it all went very quick at that point. The head was born
after a very little episotomy and there was a little hand beside
it. The umbilical cord was wounded around the baby's neck, so she
cut it when the head was born. Then came the rest of the baby and
it felt like such a relief. It was 11:15. We had another son.

Statistics: Name     : Timothy (we call him Tim)
            Weight   : 3250 grams
            Length   : 50 cms
            APGAR    : 9 / 10
            Head     : 37.5 cms
            E-mail   : tim@ankh-morpork.hacktic.nl

Now I look back on the experience and I still think it was very
painful and I had a much longer labor than I expected (labor with
Cees took about 4.5 hours). But I liked the fact I was able to
let the baby be born at home. Tim is a very easy baby, nurses
very good and sleeps a lot. He has been yellow, but luckily not
too much and now it's almost gone already. Today his umbilical
cord fell off, so now we have only 'real' baby left.

Cees is very happy that my breasts are producing real milk again.
He would like to nurse often during the day, but I try to hold
that off. I'm not sure myself how much nursing of Cees I would
like to accomodate, so we're still working on that. At least he
has helped me a few nights by emptying my breasts when they
really were overfull. That made sleeping a lot easier.

So now we are trying to get used to having two children. Cees is
not jealous, but he is having his difficulties with the new
addition. We will have to see how this works out. Sometimes it
feels like a challenge to help him adjust to the new situation,
but other times we are desperately looking at each other and
longing for him to go to his bed.

                                       Karen



===========================================================================
Karen, the Netherlands                   mom to Cees (Nov,  5th 1991)
karen@ankh-morpork.hacktic.nl                     and Tim  (Aug, 14th 1993)

The quickest way for a parent to get a child's attention is to sit down
and look comfortable.

Read Tim's longer birth story | Visit the Family Home Page | Back to .

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