Dana Michelle Bond

As most of you know by now, our daughter, Dana Michelle Bond, decided to make her entry into the world a little earlier than expected. Here is how it all happened.

Ari’s warning: Gentlemen, this contains graphic depictions of feminine items and labor details. Scroll down for the pictures only.

Ari and I decided to stay in Christmas Eve because of the bad weather. We ate frozen pizza and watched our annual Christmas movie, “Love Actually”. We had plans the next day with some of our friends, so we went to bed right after the movie.

I woke up around 8 AM on December 25^th and thought to myself, “Damn, did I finally go pee in my pants in the middle of the night?” There had definitely been a few times while being pregnant that I had to pee really badly and didn’t want to get out of bed, and I was worried that I would pee my pants. I forced myself out of bed and went to the bathroom. My underwear was soaked. The first thought that ran through my head was “Oh shit, did my water break? I’m only at 36 weeks, how is this possible?” There had been a few things that they had talked about in our prepared childbirth class that you could do to see if your water truly did break. The first thing was to try and stop the flow when you go pee. I tried that, I was still dripping water. Then I screamed at Ari (who was still sleeping), “Ari, I think my water broke. Come smell my underwear.” I figured if it smelled like pee, then it was pee. If not, than it was my water breaking. Ari did smell it (thank you sweetie) and needless to say, it didn’t smell. The last thing they said to do in the class is to put a pad on, wait 30 minutes, and if you soaked through the pad, then it was your water breaking. Once I found a pad, that is what I did, and crawled back in bed for 30 minutes.

Sure enough, the pad was soaked. I called my doctor’s office and the on-call doctor said to head to the hospital (my doctor was on vacation). If your water breaks before you start contractions, there is a 24 hour window to deliver in. After 24 hours, there is a much greater risk of infection. At this time, I wasn’t having any contractions that I was aware of and of course, we hadn’t packed our bags yet. Ari and I rushed around trying to find what I needed. I had started to make a mental list of everything I needed, like slippers, yoga pants, camera, cord blood collection kit, etc. We got everything together, grabbed the car seat (which I had just opened up the day before and hadn’t installed yet) and headed to Presbyterian Hospital Dallas.

We arrived at Labor and Delivery about 10 AM. The doctor had called ahead, so they knew we were coming. We got checked in and set up in Room 6. They hooked me up to the fetal monitors, checked all my vitals, and took lots of blood samples. I had a bagel before I left the house, but I was a little woozy, so they hooked me up to the IV and gave me fluid. When you are at the hospital, they don’t allow you to eat or drink while in labor. My intentions were to labor at home as much as possible to avoid the restrictions. I like my food and drink :) The nurse did my first exam and I was dilated 2 cm and my cervix was thinned out about 60%. This was slightly more than when I had been at the doctor’s office on Tuesday, nothing unusual for being 36 weeks.

Since I wasn’t having contractions yet, we started off walking. We had to walk with the IV stand since I was still hooked up, but we did it anyways. After 30 minutes of walking, we headed back to our room. My blood pressure was very high, so they were trying to keep an eye on me and on the baby. Fortunately, the baby’s heart rate was doing well, so they were not worried too much. We rested for a bit after this and both of us took a nap. They also checked my blood pressure and it had come down to a more normal level, so they were not concerned as much.

By this time, I had started having a few contractions, but was not really progressing. We decided to go for some more walks. They blocked off the IV this time, so we could walk a lot easier. I was starting to feel the contractions. They were about 5 to 6 minutes apart and lasted about 30 to 40 seconds. It felt exactly like what you would think a contracting muscle is. Everything tightens for the time period and then releases.

On a side note, the TV in the room wasn’t working. Ari and the nurse tried to fix it while I was resting in bed. After one of our adventures walking, I took a look at it. Sure enough, I was able to fix it. Somehow the cord connecting the TV to the wall had come undone. I was able to instruct Ari what to do to fix it. Thank goodness we got it fixed. It really helped to pass the time.

Around 4 PM, the doctor came in to check me. I had dilated to 4 cm and was 100% thinned out. We were making progress, but not fast enough. I had to dilate to 10 cm to get the baby out and do it before 8 AM on the 26^th. To help speed thing up, the doctor put me on a pitocin drip. This required me to stay hooked up to the fetal monitors continuously, so no more walking. I was able to sit on a birth ball next to the bed and move around positions in bed.

The contractions definitely kicked in with the pitocin. They were coming much more frequently and for a longer period of time. While sitting on the ball watching TV, I was able to move with them and breathe through them fairly comfortably. But I was getting tired, and I knew I would need my legs muscles to push. By this point in time, it was 7 PM and I was 6 cm dilated. It takes about 1 cm an hour to dilate to 10 cm followed by an hour or two of pushing. That being said, we had about 5 more hours left. The contractions were much worse when I was lying in bed and I was getting tired. I wanted to nap, so I opted to get the epidural.

The anesthesiologist came in around 7:30 PM to give me the epidural. It didn’t hurt at all. However, the pain did not go away. I had something called a “hot spot.” There was one location on the left side that would sear with pain during every contraction. I think it hurt worse than the contractions themselves. Since I was in such pain, they continued to put more anesthesia in my epidural. After an hour of this, the doctor came in to check how I was doing. She said, “You’re ready to go.” I said, “You’re kidding me, right?”

I was so numb from all the anesthesia, that I couldn’t feel anything. I couldn’t feel the urge to push, the contractions, nothing. Since they had pumped me with so much anesthesia to kill the hot spot, I wasn’t going to feel the birth. But who knew it would go that quick. I thought I had 5 more hours of contractions and I really needed a nap. It wasn’t exactly how I had hoped, but then again, who knew that I would have progressed so quickly.

They put my legs in the stirrups, tilled my bed up, and told Ari to get the camera ready. The doctor and nurses used directive pushing to tell me when to push during the contractions and to hold it. I had to take a deep breath, hold it for 10 seconds while bearing down, and repeat three times in a row before a break. That was tough to do. I wanted to stop in between each breath. Once the doctor explained to me that when I take the breaths that the baby sucks back in, I knew I had to do it, even if it left me light headed. After two groups of pushes, we were making good progress, but I needed a little oxygen from a mask.

The doctors and nurses were asking us if we had a name. We didn’t tell them, but we let them know the first letter, a D. They spent the whole time while I was pushing guessing what her name would be. No one could come up with it. They came up with some other interesting names though :)

Finally, after two more groups of pushes, Dana Michelle Bond was born on December 25^th at 8:56 PM. She was 5 lbs, 4 ounces. Ari got to cut the cord and the nurses cleaned her up. I also had a 2^nd degree tear, so the doctor was stitching me up while they were attending to Dana. She had mucus and some other things in her lungs, so they weren’t able to hand her over to me right afterward. They wanted to take her up to the nursery to make sure that she was okay since she was so early. She did well on her Apgar scores; they were 8 and 9.

We were left to recover while they took Dana upstairs. We finally made it to our room, Room 420, by 11 PM. I was starving and I wanted something to eat. My choices were the turkey leftover from Christmas lunch in the cafeteria, or jello. I obviously opted for the jello. I was so hungry, I ate two of them. Who knew jello was so good.

Dana was brought in to our room a little bit later. She was having trouble regulating her body temperature, so she had been under the warmer in the nursery and they were coming back to check on her often. The nurses come in every few hours to check both mom and baby’s vital signs. Dana spent most of the night making what I would call “kvetchy” noises. We tried to wake her and breastfeed her, but she wanted nothing to do with it. At some point during the night, her nurse checked her temperature, and it was a bit low, so they wanted to bring her back up to the nursery to keep her under the warmers. This gave Ari and me a chance to sleep.

Waiting for the contractions to start

The exact time Dana Michelle Bond was born

Daddy cutting the cord

Dana Michelle Bond