I’m posting this somewhat late, but I’ve backdated it so I can add my backlog of other pictures above and date them correctly.
My plan was for a home birth, attended by one of the midwives from the local practice and without medical intervention or pain relief outside of a TENS machine, massage and breathing exercises. However, there’s a reason they say not to get too attached to your birth plans.
My due date came and I started waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. We started trying all those things they say will get labour started – eating pineapples, drinking raspberry leaf tea, going for long walks, eating curry and having sex. Nothing. At 41 weeks and 2 days the midwife tried a cervical sweep, but it wasn’t open at all. At 41 weeks and 4 days they suggested I try acupuncture, so I trotted off to have needles stuck in my feet and ankles. The acupuncturist also gave me bags of roots and herbs to boil into a truly vile concoction that I was to drink twice a day. None of this worked, not even enough to do a cervical sweep.
Once I went over 42 weeks, it was no longer possible to have a home birth. I was sent to the hospital for monitoring every two days – they monitored the heartbeat, contractions and did an ultrasound to check fluid levels and the placenta. They said they would give me and the baby until 42 weeks and 5 days to get things started, at which point they would induce. At exactly 42 weeks, everything was fine, as it was at 42 weeks and 2 days. Going into the checkup at 42 weeks and 4 days, I was starting to get really nervous – I really did not want to be induced but labour hadn’t started and I felt like I was being railroaded into an induction to fit a predetermined schedule, not what my baby wanted. I also didn’t want an induction because of the cascade of intervention – having one intervention increases the odds of needing more, which often leads to an emergency c-section.
So, for this checkup, Ivo came along to make sure that we could make a decision together and would be able to communicate our desires to the hospital as a united couple – and our desire was to give it a couple more days to let the labour start on its own, based on the fact that Sweden waited until 43 weeks to induce. We made this argument to the gynecologist when she came in to do the ultrasound, and although she wasn’t happy about it, she agreed, as long as I came in for monitoring every day. However, she pointed out that the fluid was getting low, there were calcium deposits in the placenta and that an induction could take quite a while. So, we left the hospital with two appointments for the next morning – one for a check-up and one for an induction (unfortunately, the check-up was scheduled after the induction so we couldn’t do both).
After the hospital I went to the library (all this on my bicycle of course), and as I browsed I thought about what to do. I came to the conclusion that we should go with the induction – I was starting to get worried that something would happen to the baby and I realized I couldn’t live with myself if by waiting I caused any harm to the little one. Although the doctors hadn’t been concerned about the heartbeat, to me it had seemed less regular than it had been during previous visits, and I started to worry. So, I called Ivo and we decided to go in for the induction the next morning.
That night we packed our bags for a long stay at the hospital – and I spent forever burning an mp3 CD of my favourites because the room I’d been shown had an mp3 CD player. Along with clothes for us and the baby, we took food and drink, books, cards and both of our laptops. At my insistence we also took along a big bag of cushions for comfort and massage during the labour – and massage oil. We were quite a sight getting onto the bus the next morning with as many bags as we could carry, topped by the Maxi-Cosi (the car seat).
We got to the hospital and were shown to our room. It was quite nice, a chair that folded out into a bed for Ivo, a fridge (with food and beverages inside to buy, like a hotel), kettle and dishes. However, the CD player didn’t play mp3 CDs – and in fact, we never did get it to work. We played music on my laptop instead.
It’s almost as big as our apartment!
And we have our own bathroom and shower – better than many European hotels!
Soon to be unpregnant Harmony.
The last shot of pregnant Harmony.
Soon after we got there, they came in to start the induction with a prostaglandin string that they wrapped around my cervix to persuade it to open up.
And then there was lunch – so typically Dutch.
One slice of cheese, one slice of ham, one package of jam and three slices of bread. The ham was changed for spreadable cheese once they knew I was veggie. Breakfast was the same, but minus one slice of bread and the ham/spreadable cheese. After the birth I could add a few items and different things to put on the bread, but this is the basic Dutch framework. Dinner was always some sort of veggie cutlet and sauce, capsules of mashed potatoes and overcooked veggies.
The next bit is on the labour, so feel free to skip ahead to the newborn baby pics unless labour interests you. We spent the afternoon reading and working (well, Ivo did some work) and I started to have contractions, but still not real labour, although pain started and we attached the TENS machine. In the evening we finished watching Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life on my laptop. Night came and still no real labour so they offered me a sleeping pill to get me through ‘til morning when they would break my waters and start with oxytocin, which would increase contractions. I slept for a few hours, but at about two in the morning the contractions became bad enough that I couldn’t sleep through them and started coming every few minutes. Sometime early in the morning they broke my waters and started the oxytocin – again, I’d wanted to avoid this, but I was in no state by then to question if these latest interventions were really necessary or if we could just wait. At this point I was at 4 cm. The contractions started coming harder and harder and at some point I accepted pethidine (Demerol in North America), a painkiller that makes you feel somewhat drunk. I know that I had a tenuous grip on reality and I really don’t remember much of the morning. Ivo informs me that I was saying some pretty wacky things, some involving overpasses and garbage cans. I was able to get up and walk around some, but they kept wanting to monitor the baby, which meant attaching things around my belly, so I spent more time than I would have liked laying on my back, which I found the most painful. And the pillows and massage stuff? Between the TENS machine and the what seemed like constant monitoring there was never a chance to use them and they stayed in their bag. Also, because of the induction it all felt too intense for massage.
At 2 pm, the doctor examined me again and I was still 4 cm, so she advised a cesarean even though the baby was in no distress. Even though I couldn’t open my eyes and I kept drifting in and out of reality, I just kept saying no cesarean, no cesarean. I was as firm as I could be even though I was barely in phase with the rest of the world. I asked if instead I could be given an epidural and we could wait to see if labour progressed naturally. The doctor seemed skeptical but agreed – I got the epidural (at this point we took the TENS machine off since it was now pointless). I promptly went to sleep for an hour and a half or so. During this time, the contractions became more regular, and when the doctor came in at 4 pm I had progressed to 6 cm so the doctor said we could proceed naturally. They now switched to self-administered morphine. At this point I could feel the urge to push and I just concentrated on getting through the contractions without pushing down at all. At about 6 pm I was 8 cm, almost there. At around 7 pm I started making mooing sounds, meaning that the final stage was upon us. The doctor and nurses came in and it felt like no time at all before they said he was crowning and I should now push. A couple of pushes later and the head was out – I waited for them to check if the cord was around the neck and then pushed him all out – apparently my final stage of labour lasted only 12 minutes instead of the more usual hour or so. Afterwards, the doctor congratulated me – she said I was an expert on giving birth and that I had been right not to proceed with the cesarean.
Our slippery son was then placed on my stomach (slightly messy pic here).
He was blue and a little floppy at first, but he started crying (pic here).
Ivo cut the cord and he was rushed over to the cart, where the pediatricians who had been called in started working on him.
Cleaning him out.
They were concerned, both because of his blueness and floppiness and because I’d been running a bit of a fever (only a degree and apparently normal on epidurals, but they are very careful here), so they rushed him up to the neo-natal unit and put him in an incubator. Ivo went up with him and got some pictures.
A little elf-smile.
Getting weighed.
All hooked up to the monitors.
Back down in the room, they brought us beschuit met muisjes (rusks with mice, which are little anise sugar candies) that new parents serve to visitors and colleagues – blue for a boy and pink for a girl. The nurse, a lovely redheaded woman with the unfortunate-in-English name of Cocky, also rounded up some bread and jam and cheese for me since I hadn’t eaten since the previous night and had in fact lost a lot of that meal.
Cocky and Ivo then wheeled my entire bed up to the neo-natal unit so I could see Liam and touch him in the box.
It felt awful leaving him there.
Monday morning they informed us at about 8 that we could go up at 9 and I could try to feed him. But I was to go up in a wheelchair which Ivo needed to fetch from the ground floor – had a mechanism like a shopping cart. He tried to do this, but it took him forever to get back upstairs because the elevators were full of patients, so we missed that feeding. We still visited with him.
He was sleeping peacefully.
At noon, we tried again, but the nurse was filling in from another department and had little idea how to help me breastfeed – she basically waved my breast in front of his face and then said he wasn’t interested. So she fed him through the tube. I wasn’t happy. They did bring me a breastpump and I started to pump out tiny amounts of colustrum. That evening we tried again and we got a nurse who knew what she was doing.
Still trying.
But alas, he wasn’t interested and we ended up finger feeding him – using a pinkie to start the sucking reflex with a formula and colustrum syringe alongside. We then left him for the night.
Tuesday morning we went up and learned how to bathe him. He was out of the incubator now. We also tried feeding again, but no luck, so we finger fed him and then he slept.
I pumped with him lying in front of me to inspire production.
Liam sleeping on a pillow in front of me.
Tuesday afternoon, Ivo went to the City Hall to register Liam’s birth (necessary within three days) and make a stop at home to take some things back and make sure the cats were alive. We had been told that we would need to vacate our room some time that day and that I would be moved to a shared room and that Ivo could no longer stay over. Since Ivo’s two days off were over and he needed to be at work on Wednesday morning to interview someone for a job, this was OK.
Tuesday afternoon they finally got the lab results back which showed no infection. They’d already shown that his glucose levels were fine, so that that meant he could come back down to me.
I kept trying to breast-feed, with little luck. He kept getting his hands in the way and didn’t want to open his mouth wide enough. He slept a lot. Ivo went home in the evening even though I was now allowed to stay in the room since Liam was there with me. I was told we were staying until breastfeeding was well established.
At night I tried to feed him, but I wasn’t sure how well I was going. And the night nurse was awful. She was the only one who pretty much refused to work with me on the communication thing, speaking no English and not understanding my Dutch. Although I’d tried to use English as much as possible in order to make sure I understood everything, not all Dutch people speak as much English as advertised and a lot of Dutch was used – however, mostly we worked together to ensure communication took place. Not this woman – her whole attitude was disapproving of me – whether it was me in particular, not speaking Dutch, or just her way with everyone, I’ll never know. I tried to tell her that I didn’t know how long he’d fed since I’d fallen asleep and that I wasn’t sure I was doing it right, but she wouldn’t listen. So, I didn’t call her the rest of the night, although I was supposed to when he woke up. And early in the morning she just basically fed him, without really even letting me try. I was quite angry, but didn’t really know what to do, so I just waited for the day shift to come on.
But at 8 am, the doctor came in and told me they were discharging me that morning after they checked Liam and me, and if I could vacate by 10 am, that would be great. Of course, this posed a wee problem – Ivo had already left for work in The Hague and I had no money and no working bankcard, even if I could go home without an escort. We tried calling various people, but no one could come until 2:30 at the earliest, when Ivo’s sister Cyrille got off work. So I packed everything up and waited – mid-morning they moved me to another room to wait (where I met a lovely Irish and Australian couple in the last days of their pregnancy). I kept trying to breastfeed, with some success, but it was still frustrating. Finally, Cyrille came to get me and loaded me into the taxi (surreally enough, the driver was English, so it felt like another world entirely). Liam was fussing a bit as we left, but calmed down in the taxi, just looking around and taking in the world around him. The drive home proved why the Dutch cycle everywhere – Cyrille on her bike got to our house at the same time as me in the taxi. Cyrille then waited with me until the kraamverzorgster came to help (more on kraamzorg later). She stayed until Ivo got home so she could go over info and instructions with the both of us. Finally, she left, and we were alone with our son, beginning our life at home as a family.