The Story of Monkey

I already wrote about my labor in Sassy’s story, so I’ll start with what happened after Sassy’s birth.

After Sassy was born, the intensity of my contractions dropped so much it was like they weren’t even there. I fell into a half-sleep and just rested. Dr. S got there two minutes after Sassy was born. The first thing he did was a quick ultrasound to check on Monkey. Unfortunately, Monkey had turned breech. Dr. S was aware of my desire for as natural a birth as possible and my extreme desire to avoid a c-section. We had talked about the possibility of Baby B turning breech as Baby A was born, and he had agreed to attempt a breech delivery if it came to that. But first we were going to attempt a version.

The anesthesiologist was more or less freaking out in the background, strongly insisting that we needed to do a spinal immediately. But Dr. S was true to my wishes and made two attempts at a version without it. He was not successful. At that point, he and I talked through our options. He wanted to try a more aggressive version but thought it best to go ahead with the spinal at this point. For one thing, the already-attempted versions had been very painful for me and this would be worse. For another, if something went wrong we’d have to do an immediate c-section. There might not be time for a spinal, and then I’d have to be put under. I decided to accept the spinal.

The freaked-out anesthesiologist was very relieved to be doing the spinal he’d longed for. He obviously had no confidence in either a successful version or a successful breech delivery, because he gave me the whole gamut of c-section drugs instead of the minimum dose I’d been expecting. Once again, I entered my half-asleep state.

I don’t remember much of what was going on, but Papa Runner said there were three people involved in the version—Dr. S, midwife Sara, and a nurse all pushing on my stomach in a coordinated effort. As soon as Monkey turned, Dr. S grabbed the vacuum extractor to pull him out as fast as possible. This was something I didn’t realize had happened until Brett told me later. He said it was crazy to see how hard they pulled on him.

The next thing I knew, they were yelling at me to push. I couldn’t feel a darn thing and have no idea if I was even pushing. I heard them say the head was out and to push more. At this point I was very confused. I didn’t realize they had flipped him, thought we were doing a breech delivery, and couldn’t figure out why I still needed to push if the head was out. And then my brain caught up and realized the version had been a success.

Monkey finally made his grand entrance at 9:49 am, 24 minutes after his sister. He weighed in at 5lb 12oz and 17.5 inches. Due to the trauma of his version and vacuum-assisted delivery, his initial APGAR was 3, but he quickly improved to a 9. So my best, almost-intervention-free birth was followed by my worst, intervention-heavy birth. BUT we avoided the c-section, so I was happy.

Just one more thing to add: When I was able to nurse both babies soon after, Sassy, who was pain-med free and birthed as my body directed, was awake, aware, and eager to nurse. Monkey, who got a high dose of spinal meds, was very aggressively turned, and then yanked out with a vacuum, was groggy and uninterested. In my previous births, I wasn’t allowed to nurse Smartie because she was a preemie and taken to the NICU, and Sweetie, who also was born after a spinal, was groggy and uninterested in nursing. How amazing the difference natural childbirth makes!

If you want to read my other birth/pregnancy stories, here they are: Smartie, Grace, Sweetie, and Ian.