Maddox's Birth Story

On Saturday October 15, 2011, I had a feeling I would be giving birth soon. My due date was 5 days away but I had false labor contractions that were somewhat painful the night before. Being that labor was imminent and Olivia needed a haircut I woke up Saturday morning and booked her an appointment at Petco, not my fav doggy hair salon (the Wizard of Paws in Berkeley is infinitely better) but Petco is just so much closer to our place. Plus I figured she would want to look her Sunday best in photos with her new baby brother.

After dropping Olivia off at Petco, Brett and I decided to go to brunch at Absinthe, a great French bistro in Hayes Valley. We had a delicious lunch/brunch. We started with deviled eggs with caviar on top. I had a breakfast burrito with crispy pork belly and Brett had lamb shoulder confit with jalapeno cheddar grits. It was a gorgeous day and we sat outside and enjoyed the sun. It turned out to be an excellent last meal without kids!

 After our meal we walked around Hayes Valley, browsing the furniture stores, stopping in a chocolate store to get some truffles for later (I was still pregnant) and finally heading over to Ritual Coffee, a coffee shop in what looked like a tin can storage unit, with some strange modern art installation next to the coffee shop. I got a decaf coffee which was A-OK but Brett's coffee was amazing- it tasted like strawberries and was incredible without any milk or sugar. After our coffee stop we got a call from Petco that Olivia was ready to be picked up so we headed back to Petco, checked out her haircut, paid and went home.

To be perfectly honest I wasn't too happy with Olivia's haircut. They left her ears long but cut off all the hair from the top of her head and it just didn't frame her face correctly. Moreover, her paws were somewhat sloppy- which never happens when we send her to the Wizard.

Once at home, I got a text from Liz, my friend from kindergarten who wanted to stop by and say hi on her way to a night out in the city. Liz came over at around 7 and Liz, Brett and I were sitting on our couch in the living room when my water broke. Luckily it leaked and didn't just gush out so I didn't ruin the couch. SCORE! Shortly thereafter I started having contractions and instructed Brett to time my contractions with his Contraction Master App on his iPhone (ahhh... modern technology). He also called the advice nurse to make sure we should head on over to the hospital. Of course, the advice nurse did not pick up the phone or call us back, so after taking a shower, arranging for Olivia to be picked up and getting our stuff together we headed over to the hospital.

In the car ride over, my contractions became more painful so I started calling up friends and family to let them know we were on our way to the hospital and also to distract myself! As soon as we got checked in I was ready for my epidural but little did I know they needed to run some tests and I would have to wait about 30 minutes or so for the epidural. I continued to distract myself by playing some Bob Marley and calling a few friends to ask for labor advice. Not prepared to wait I asked if they could give me any other pain meds and after filing enough complaints the nurse hooked me up with an IV and some Demerol for my pain.

Before the IV, I was questioned as to what meds I had taken that day-.... well I took a few Tylenol when I went into labor. When the nurse asked me why I responded "for pain"... "and you thought that would help??" she asked. Ha! Well, I thought it couldn't hurt.

Once the pain meds kicked in I was feeling fine. Next they put me in a wheelchair and wheeled me upstairs to get my epidural. When the anesthesiologist came in I told him a horror story about my friend Heather who had recently gotten an epidural that didn't work. "So you want the kind that works I guess?" he asked me. "Yup!" The epidural didn't hurt too much going in, maybe it was because of the other pain meds I was already on and once the epidural kicked in I felt GREAT!

So much for a natural labor I thought. Why on earth would anyone do that? What a joke! I was on cloud nine as I continued to dilate. I had a super cool nurse taking care of me too. Once I was pain free my train of thought quickly shifted from- GET ME SOME GOD DAMN MEDS to CRAP! WHY DIDN'T I WASH MY HAIR TODAY! My hair is greasy and I'm not going to look good in the pics with my son!

So I told the nurse about my hairdo concerns (everyone will be showing up at the hospital in just a few hours and my hairdo just isn't going to cut it!) and my friend who suggested that I get a C-section so that I could get my hair and make-up done so I'd look good in the first pics with my baby. One of her friends even got a spray tan so she could make sure her scar wouldn't show over her bikini.

Since I was a cool patient, and had spent the last hour or so joking around with the nurse and anesthesiologist, the nurse asked if I would like her to wash my hair. HECK YEAH! I thought. But was she kidding? Well, she had never done that before, but she said she would. PERFECTO! I thought! I even had my high end hair dryer and trusty straightener with me so we were good to go!

Since my legs were somewhat paralyzed from the epidural, she brought over a wash bucket and washed and conditioned my hair with my Shu Umera ultra rich conditioner. SO THIS IS WHAT I GET WITH MY CADILLAC HEALTH PLAN, HUH? Man, I love Skadden right now!!! I called a few more friends to brag about my health insurance and the great service I was getting in the hospital. What a relief to not worry about having bed head when all my friends and family showed up!!!

Then all of a sudden it was midnight, I was 5 centimeters or so dilated but that nurse was off duty. Panic struck in... Who will blow dry and straighten my hair? Would the next nurse think I'm nuts? Could I even ask her to do that? Brett? Yikes. So Brett did a great job with the blowdryer but when it came time to straighten I gave him the instructions but things just weren't going as planned. He wanted to start at the tips, not at the roots and that just wasn't going to work. I could see a disaster waiting to happen so I decided to take matters into my own hands and straighten my own hair. Not a bad idea- it turned out just fine.

And somehow, the only side effect I got from the epidural- continuous shaking and the tensing up of my right side and my neck- all went away as soon as I started to get my hair washed. So funny! Talk about a stress free experience.

By 1:30am or so I was fully dilated but the new nurse wanted me to wait for an hour and a half before I started to push. She was hoping the baby would come down more so it would be easier to push. Brett and I tried to go to bed. After an hour or so I woke up- how could I sleep when meeting my baby was mere hours away? I woke up Brett and we spent a few minutes together getting excited for our new arrival. Then I pushed my nurse call button (man I love those) and told her I was starting to feel some pressure. Finally it was time to push!

I pushed for an hour and forty-five minutes. It's kind of weird when you feel no pain but feel pressure from the contractions and have to guess when it's good to push. Basically you hold your breath and push for ten seconds. Then wait 2 minutes or so for the next contraction. Then push again. I had to wear an oxygen mask most of the time because the baby did better when I had the mask on (they monitor the baby's heart beat on a screen the entire time so if anything goes wrong they can immediately ship you off for a c-section). I had 2 main problems with pushing (1) my nurse was a shy Sally- she was the quiet type and although she was very nice I really could have used my boot camp instructor for this phase, not someone who would be better off getting me into a meditative trance and (2) preggo pilates had taught me some moves for pushing which actually were ineffective. Plus it just takes awhile to figure out how to push the correct way.

The nurse kept saying "just one more push then I'll call in the doctor".... she lied. That one pushed turned into about 40 but finally at around 4:40 the doctor came in, I pushed a few more times and out came baby Maddox at 4:47am on Sunday, October 16th (4 days early). They wiped him off and put him on my chest. It was such an incredible, yet bizarre feeling. It still didn't seem real. He was crying for a bit, then spent a long time looking all around. Wow. My son is here. CRAZY!

The nurse gave him a bath, washed his hair and then brought him back so I could breastfeed him. He latched on immediately and the nurse said his latch was an A+. What a smart baby! We'll start looking into Harvard and Yale next week I thought. (ha ha) Then the nurse took him to give him a bath and then it was Brett's turn to hold him. I could tell he was nervous at first but after a few minutes he was a natural.

My good friend Yalda showed up a few minutes later. Then they moved us to a different room where we would be spending the next two nights. Friends and family continued to show up over the next two days (Aaron and Courtney, Mike and Sarah, Anne, Katye and of course my parents, grandma, Brett's mom and step dad and Brett's dad and step mom).

I don't think being a parent really sunk in for about a day or so but the last night we were in the hospital, they brought us a Celebration Dinner of fillet mignon and over that dinner Brett and I read a really sweet email from his dad (his dad's reaction to meeting baby Maddox and what he remembered about raising Brett), both started crying and finally felt like parents.

It's crazy how there is no way to prepare yourself for being a parent. No way to know what it will feel like, how wonderful it is or how much you are able to love someone that you created. It has been 10 days now and we are so incredibly happy to have our gorgeous baby boy. He mostly eats and sleeps (especially eats- we even had to take him to the ER the other night when an advice nurse told us he shouldn't be crying for 6-7 hours whenever he was not feeding. Turns out he was just going through a growth spurt and needs to eat every 30 minutes)!. Ok.... well that's fine! Although we are up a lot at night- we are just so thrilled and couldn't be happier.

The end.