Tiernan Shae & Caulla Anora Mae
a birth story
I woke early Thursday morning (11/8/07) to Sarah telling me that she is in labor. I groggily started coming awake, rolled over and looked at the alarm clock to find that it was all of 3:30 in the morning. Right, labor…we did this Sunday morning. Maybe this one isn’t the real deal either…then I heard her sharp intake of breath and I was wide awake. This wasn’t the early stage labor that dropped out on us a few days prior, this was the real deal! My wife was in labor and it was hitting her hard.
My first priority was calling Jesica, the midwife, to let her know that we were a go. After describing what I was seeing and hearing she determined that we were not in early stage, rather we were already in late stage labor. The ball was rolling, and nothing was going to stop it this time! She put out the calls to the rest of the midwives letting them know what was up, and was on her way over.
My job was simple. I had a few calls of my own to make, calling in the rest of those who were the core of our support team for the birth, and then calling work to let them know I wasn’t going to be coming in. Then a quick shower, and start filling the pool.
I don’t know who was the first one to arrive, but by the time we really got started most of the midwives were present. A quick mental head count reveals that we had 4 midwives and one apprentice present, along with Sarah’s parents and Dan, who was to be my emotional anchor during all of this. He kept me calm while the midwives took over the preparations, and that was invaluable since it helped me be ready to go on into the birth room when Sarah started feeling the urge to push.
Rolling back a touch, Sarah’s water broke sometime around 5:00…I think…and just a few minutes later one of the midwives rolled up to the apartment. Sarah’s comment was that either she had just taken the longest, hardest leak of her life, or her water had just broken. Yeah, it was the water, and that pretty much signaled the point of no turning back.
The labor…I can’t begin to describe what Sarah was feeling, but seeing her sitting in the birth pool, dealing with those wracking contractions. How can I truly express the combination of pride, fear, and anguish that I went through each and every time those hit? I couldn’t believe that this was actually happening, and that she was bearing up so well through the whole thing.
Things seemed to move so slowly, yet the time was also flying by. Sarah went into really heavy labor around 9:00, and started really bearing down with Tiernan. Time started to change at that point, and everything seemed to take so long, yet it also seemed to pass in a flash. Sarah was my focus and everything else faded into the background. Eventually Tiernan started to present, and at first it was thought that he was head down. Not unreasonable since he had been head down for the longest time, even in the last ultrasound that we had done. Soon it was discovered that his head had a crack in it, and since that didn’t seem quite right the figured that he was rump down rather than head down.
Before I knew it we were hearing Sarah cry that she could feel him, and within moments he had emerged and Sarah was catching him. We enjoyed a couple of moments of quiet while she held him and crooned, and I held them both. Then somebody asked me if I wanted to cut the cord. Mind you I am a squeamish sort, and in our birth plan I had clearly stated that I was not going to cut the cord. So what did I do when this question was posed to me? Yeah, I said “sure” and they handed me the scissors and I was cutting the cord. Then the wrapped him up and handed him to me since Sarah was starting the next set of contractions.
Things started getting crazy from then on, and I did my best to cradle my sone and stay back out of the way. Sarah started crying that it hurt, and she hadn’t done that with Tiernan’s birth. She couldn’t identify where it hurt, only that something felt wrong and it hurt, and it hurt a lot! To be honest, at this point I think that she wasn’t speaking of her own pain, but rather she was receiving impressions from Caulla. But that is all in retrospect. At the time all I knew was that Sarah was in excruciating pain, the kind that tears at your heart, and there was nothing that I could do to help her. Then she was saying that she could feel something, maybe a foot. Foot was quickly confirmed, and at that point Jesica declared that Sarah needed to get out of the birth pool and onto a stool. Earlier they had tried putting the stool in the pool, but the inflated floor of the pool made it too difficult to get a stable position for the stool, so they quickly set things up to the side and helped Sarah from the pool.
From there…from there the race was on. They tried everything possible to help her get into a position to make it easier to push Caulla out, and Sarah was quickly running out of energy. At some point they had Sarah stand up, and strong Joey held her up while she pushed. I will forever have that image burned into my memory, of my wife clinging to the shoulders of another woman who was planted like a tree, taking all of Sarah’s weight while Sarah bore down. This helped get Caulla most of the way out, but she hung up with her head still inside. They had Sarah get down into a kneeling position again, and Jesica and Jennifer started assessing the situation, trying to see where Caulla was hung up. You see, not only was Caulla a footling breech, she was also a posterior breech, with her back to Sarah’s back.
Then yet another of those memorable moments happened, and I heard Jesica telling Sarah that she loved her and was sorry for what she was about to do. After the fact I learned that she was reaching inside, taking her hand over the top of Caulla’s head, and grasping her cheekbones to pull her head back so that they could clear her chin from Sarah’s pelvic bone and pull her out.
Through all of this I was standing, back to the wall, Tiernan wrapped up and cradled in my arms, doing my best to stay out of the way of these warrior women who were doing everything in their power to deliver my daughter safely. I had not noticed it at the time, but Joey had been calling the minutes, and at one point the order was given to call 911. Within moments Caulla was extracted, and while she had a strong pulse she was not breathing. My heart was in my throat. My worst fears were being played out right before my eyes, and I was afraid that we were going to lose Caulla.
I should have known better though. These incredible women went to work on her, helping her breath, and even getting her to breath on her own, though not consistently. Time became extremely fluid at that point, and minutes passed as eternity. Under my breath I was talking to her, and someone told me to call out to her, to talk her into breathing. I am sure that somebody told me to come down and put Tiernan next to her, and to reach out and touch her and encourage her to breath. My focus was extremely narrow at that point, with Caulla being at the center of it all. Things were happening around me, but they were not important next to the need to get my daughter to breath. I heard sirens outside, and there was an animated discussion over cutting her ambilical chord, but that was all off to the side.
Then one of the midwives told me that things were going to get crazy real fast, and that the paramedics were going to be transporting my daughter. Did I want to go with them and Caulla? YES!!!!! I knew that Sarah was in capable hands, and Tiernan seemed quite healthy, but my daughter needed me, and I needed to be there to take care of everything. So, still in my pajamas I went and put on my slippers, grabbed my wallet and keys, snagged my coat, and was ready to go.
Yes, I was in a state of shock at this point, but I knew that I needed to be strong for Caulla. If I broke down and turned into the blubbering fool that I wanted to be then something bad might happen, and that wasn’t what was necessary. In the periphery I heard the emergency people asking if the mother was going to be transported, and I heard Sarah’s vehement response that she was staying home. Somebody made a comment that if she didn’t put in an appearance with Tiernan at the hospital within an hour then Child Services would be contacted and they would be coming in for a home visit. Can I tell you how outraged that made me? But I needed to be polite, and I knew that the midwives could take care of everything. So off I went, following them down the stairs, and climbing into the ambulance for the first ambulance ride of my life.
Doing my best to regain my composure I chatted with the driver as we made our way through traffic, making observations about how so many people are oblivious to the siren and the need to get out of the way. By the time we got to the hospital I was pretty much in control of myself again, and was prepared for the paperwork that I knew was ahead of me. As they pulled her out of the ambulance I was told that she was breathing on her own, but it was thready and shallow, so they were still assisting her w ith her breathing.
They quickly transitioned us from the emergency room to the NICU, and after some additional paperwork I learned that Tim, my father-in-law had caught up with us. He helped me calm down again as I was getting a bit jittery. It was at this point that I learned that Caulla had a cranial fracture, and I got a close look at it while I helped clean her up. Somewhere in there Joy and Jennifer showed up and were able to answer some of the questions about the birth that I had not been able to answer. We were told that Caulla was going to be taken down for a cat scan, and advised to go get a bite to eat while she was down there. We were also advised that they would be transporting her to Doernbecker for further treatment as they had no neonatal neurosurgeons on staff at St. Vincents.
That was when I realized that it had been a good 5 hours or more since I had eaten anything, and the shakes of shock were starting to set in. Tim took me under his expert wing, and took me down for some food for energy. The food helped, but all I could think of was my precious little girl. I hate to say it, but Sarah and Tiernan were not on my mind at all at that point in things. My focus was tight, and it was on Caulla and nothing else.
When we got back up the Panda Team from Doernbecker was there and they were preparing Caulla for transport. I found that I had even more paperwork in front of me at that point, but I took care of it and made sure that I was going with them. Then we were off again for the second ambulance ride in three hours.
I remember getting there, seeing her settled in and talking to people, but at that point things were starting to run together. I had reached my limit and was running on autopilot at that point. I don’t know what I would have done if Tim hadn’t been there at my side. At some point I remember talking to the neurosurgeon who advised me that they were going to do another cat scan, and depending upon the results they were either going to do an emergency surgery that night, or would schedule one for the next morning. The results came back that she was stable, with no additional bleeding, and they scheduled the surgery for the next morning.
Time to backfill for a second. Caulla had a rather severe indentation in her skull, and the biggest fear was the placement as it was right over one of the two major veins in the cranial cavity, and the first scan showed what might be splinters nicking one of those veins. If that vein was damaged and burst there would be nothing they could do to save her as she would bleed to death within moments. Having had heart surgery earlier in the year I had some idea of what they were talking about, though from a different perspective. Still, this frame of reference was something that I could grasp, and it helped me stay stable and work with them. The last scan of the evening showed no additional bleeding, so it was presumed that everything was stable, and Tim and I were sent home.
Coming in the door my first thought was for Sarah, and I went straight to the bedroom to find her curled up with Tiernan. Tim and Loyce left after a short time, and Sarah and I were able to spend some time together. For the life of me I can’t recall what we talked about, but it helped me stabilize again before we went to bed because we all needed strength for the next day.
The next day started early with us getting ready to travel down to the hospital so we could see Caulla before they prepped her for surgery. We were advised that the surgery would involve exposing her skull, extracting the broken plate, reshaping the plate, and sewing it back into place. We were positioned in the waiting room, eagerly anticipating word of the surgery that we knew would take hours. After a couple of hours the sugeon came out and advised us that he had performed a minor procedure that only worked 20% of the time, where he inserts an instrument under the bone and attempted to pop it out. It seems that the bone plate wasn’t broken, just indented, rather like a ping pong ball, and he actually referred to the procedure as a ping pong procedure. We finally got him to stop talking about the procedure and learned that the procedure had been a success. They had her in post-op recovery, and we would be called when they were ready to take her back to the NICU.
From there begins the story of her recovery, and our journey to bring our little girl home…
December 18, 2007 at 10:06 am
It would seem that my writing about my experience is rather new. I was asked permission by the Jennifer, the birth center owner to submit my story to a couple of different publications. She added in some of the technical details that I was not cognizant of during the birth, but otherwise the story remains unchanged. I will post more when I hear more about this.