Tuesday morning around 2:15am, Birgit's water breaks in bed (and thanks to advice from her sister Sylvia, a waterproof bedcover saves the matress!). She attempts to contact Jamison, who sleeps like a brick through both her phone calls and text messages. Next she calls Nadia, the doula, who lets Birgit know that since she's not feeling regular contractions, active labor is probably 12 hours away.
Jamison finally wakes up to his alarm at 6am, which, oddly enough, is also his cell phone... After checking his messages, he calls Birgit who informs him that we're still several hours away from active labor, but that early labor contractions are 6-8 minutes apart. Jamison packs necessities for a 3-day hospital stay, arranges care for his dog Chewbacca, and picks up Birgit’s favorite breakfast taquitos on his way over.
Nadia arrives around noon and checks Birgit’s labor conditions to find she is only 2cm dilated. Despite still being in early labor, Theodora, the midwife, asks Birgit to come into the hospital at 3pm given the time duration since her water broke. Birgit, Jamison, and Nadia attempt to settle into their assigned delivery room at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital.
Birgit’s labor moves very slowly as she feels quite distracted by the environment. Unfortunately, a new nurse who is rather insensitive to Birgit’s contractions and also seems quite uncertain of paperwork requirements creates very frequent interruptions while loud construction drilling noises seem to be directly below us. Some Pitocin is administered in the hopes that it will help Birgit stabilize the erratic pattern of contractions. Eventually around 7pm, the nurses have a shift change and the drilling noises cease (see funny story update) and Birgit is able to settle into a better rhythm of contractions and progress into the active labor stage.
About 9pm, Theodora checks Birgit again to find she is still only 2cm dilated and reasons that some scar tissue from a previous surgery may be interfering with dilation. After a painful procedure in which the dilation is manually ‘helped along’, Birgit continues to labor but is beginning to feel exhausted after so much pain and effort.
As the night progresses on, active labor continues to move forward slowly. Exhausted, Birgit heads to take a bathroom break with Nadia around 1am. In the bathroom, Birgit tells Nadia she knows that logic dictates she should do the epidural, but is so concerned about the risks that can have on her and her baby girl. Nadia assures her that at this point, given the situation, it may be the best strategy, so reluctantly, Birgit agrees. Yet, as she gets up off the toilet, they notice some blood drop into the toilet bowl, and Nadia carefully tells Birgit ‘that is a good sign!’<br />
After Birgit informs everyone that she’s decided to allow the epidural, Theodora makes one last exam to find that Birgit is miraculously 10cm dilated and that she can feel the baby’s head! Happy to hear the news that ‘all that is needed’ are a few pushes, Birgit finds the strength to keep going forward without any pain medications.
From this point on, Birgit is on a mission and with no-nonsense, moves into hard pushing with her contraction. Steady progress is made and, several pushes later at 2:37am, Birgit and Jamison’s new baby girl arrives!
After some bonding time on mom’s chest and dad taking her to be weighed and measured by the nurse, she latches right on to breastfeed and goes to town feeding for 30 minutes. Afterwards, Birgit, Jamison, and their new baby girl are moved to a post-partum room where they are to stay for the next 2 days to have several tests and follow-up done. Later that morning, Birgit and Jamison agree on their new baby girl’s name: Beatriz Samandra Day-Kamps.
Aside from some minor concerns regarding differing blood types from mom (A-) and dad (A+), everything is perfect. Tests for bilirubin levels (jaundice) are ordered during our pediatrician’s visit. After the first three tests, the results are so good that Birgit, Jamison, and Beatriz Samandra are allowed to go home early and bring their new baby girl to the pediatrician’s office the next morning instead.
(Additions by Birgit)
Once we got home, the following 2 days we went to the Dr's office until we got the good news that the blood test results from the A+ /
A- concerns that could affect her jaundice and immune system in general, finally showed progress, so now we wait 2 weeks for the final ok on 12/27. We certainly appreciate all the support and prayers so many of you have sent our way during this time ;-)
And for those of you who knew that the predicted birth-date of our daughter was 12/17 and that Birgit's parents booked their flight from Holland to Houston on 12/9 to make sure they could land in time for the birth of our daughter, might say that she waited to be born on 12/10 at 2:37am to ensure her Dutch "Oma" and "Opa" could still arrive in time (despite the fact that their flight got diverted to New Orleans due to weather conditions)...
To 'conclude' the birthing adventure, the weather chose to bestow us with SNOW in Houston the day Beatriz Samandra Day-Kamps was born ;-)