If you just want to find new photos you can do starting with this one (click on it to go to the album).
If you also want to read about the hospital stay and birth (non=graphic), just keep reading.
Late Friday morning I had an appointment with my midwife, the last one before I hit 41 weeks of pregnancy and was referred over to the doctors at the hospital for the birth. The plan was to see if she could strip the membranes and get the labour started before that happened, which she did try, but the drama began when she took the routine measurement of my blood pressure. It had been just on the border of high on and off for the past couple weeks, as it had been at the end of my pregnancy with Liam, but there were no further danger symptoms. However, this time it was very high and so she sent me off to the hospital to have it rechecked and let them monitor the baby. So, after I had dropped Liam off at peuterspeelzaal, apologized for being unable to be the helping parent that afternoon as scheduled, called Ivo to get him home from work and able to pick Liam up, I headed off to the hospital, thinking it would be just a monitor and go situation, but still throwing my hospital bag in the car.
At the hospital, they monitored me and confirmed that my blood pressure was really high. To tell the truth, I really didn’t care at that point, because on the drive to the midwife the congestion in my head from the cold I’d had for the last week had built up so I couldn’t hear out of one ear and by the time I was driving to the hospital I was in severe pain from my ear and jaw, so much I was in tears checking in and barely holding on through the testing. After the tests, they decided they wanted to hold me at least overnight for monitoring, so I asked them to have someone look at my ear, and got wheeled off to the Throat, Nose and Ear department for a specialist to take a look and confirm that yup, I had a middle ear infection. By the evening the Gynecologists had decided that I could have antibiotics and paracetemol to deal with it and I finally had some relief. I also started with blood pressure meds. Ivo and Liam came down for a visit and to get the car and brought me a few more things and I had a decent sleep.
Saturday was uneventful from a things happening point of view – Ivo and Liam came down for another visit and I mostly slept the day away, catching up on weeks of sleep deprivation – but it was a bit traumatic nonetheless. The doctor came and told me they wanted to induce the baby on Sunday morning, since with the high blood pressure there was danger for me and at 41 weeks there was no further benefit to her staying in the womb. All very logical, and in the end I agreed, but I really, really did not want to be induced. I’d been fighting during this entire pregnancy to have as natural a birth as possible due to some other issues, and here I was being placed right back where I’d successfully fought to get out of, a medically induced birth overseen by doctors and hooked up to machines, unable to leave the bed to deal with the pain and facing the possibility of a cascade of interventions and medication. But, with possibility of danger to me or the baby looming, I agreed to what I hadn’t wanted and Ivo took Liam off to Oma’s and Opa’s to stay for the next week, coming back to get a good night’s sleep at home before the induction scheduled for 9 am.
Luckily for all of us, except Ivo’s sleep, Kaya decided that she’d rather come out on her own after all. I’d had regular contractions, but not too painful, through the evening, and had even asked the doctor when he was there at about 8:30 pm if he would check me, but he refused saying if it was false labour than I’d just be disappointed, and if it was indeed labour than it would progress. But I could tell he just thought it was wishful thinking on the part of an over-emotional pregnant woman. While I was on Skype with my mother somewhat later the contractions got more intense and they just kept happening, so I started to think this might actually be it. And they kept getting more and more intense. I took a warm shower to see if that helped, and it did, but they were still happening so I called the nurse. She looked at me through a couple of them and decided to throw me on the monitor, and best in the birthing room since I’d be there in the morning anyway. By this time it was after midnight, and they monitored me until just after 1, finally looking to see what progression there was at about 1:15. At that point there was 5 cm dilation, so they said, yup, call your husband, this is happening. Luckily I’d warned him that I thought it might be happening based on the earlier contractions, so he was ready to come down.
Because it was now a natural birth, one of the cool things about this hospital (Sint Antonius in Nieuwegein) came into play, that I was attended by a really nice midwife who is attached to the hospital. This meant that while I did have to be monitored because of the blood pressure issue, that was it. She helped me breathe through the contractions until Ivo got there, and once Ivo got there at about 2:15, she broke the waters, which turned out to be poopy (which would have put us in the hospital on a monitor even without any of the preceding drama). She then attached the monitor wire to the baby’s head (which left me at least able to walk in a small area) and then, seeing how good a coach Ivo was, left us alone with instructions of when to call her. Ivo helped tremendously with breathing and massaging me through every contraction using some wonderful aromatherapy oil sent to us by a friend. Two and a half hours later I was dilated to 9 cm so I was given the go ahead to push, and two minutes later, at 4:51 on Sunday morning, little Kaya Dorothea was born.
Kaya came out healthy and pink and with a healthy cry, so she was measured (3650 g, 52 cm) and cleaned up and dressed and given to me to cuddle and feed – something she didn’t do until later, but took to like a natural. The poop in the water and blood pressure issue meant we were there for at least 24 hours for monitoring so after beschuit met muisjes and a snack we were transferred to another room where we could stay as a family for as long as needed. After a restful day and night and many cooing nurses, we were told on Monday morning that we could leave. So home we went to the kraamzorg, which I’ll write about later.