Friday, November 12, 2010
Sunday, November 7, 2010
10-22-10 Malikai joins our oaklandish family
On Friday Oct 22nd I woke at 3am feeling contractions that were stronger and more consistent than any I had had unless I was walking. I didn't want to jump to any conclusions but I felt it really might be the start of labor. After an hour and a half I was able to fall back asleep. Lornie came home from work at around 8 in the morning and we talked about plans for the day. Lornie wanted to take Amari to a pumpkin patch, I liked the idea but did not want to go as far as Half Moon Bay so we decided we would go to Ardenwood in the afternoon if I was not in labor. We also made plans to have dinner in Orinda with Amy and Cripps. I was having some contractions and decided to go for a walk to see what would happen. I was really feeling it in my sacrum when I had contrations so I decided to stop by the chiropractors on my walk. When I was walking home the contractions were feeling a bit stronger and more regular so I started to track them again. From 1:20 to 2:20 my contractions were an average of 6 minutes apart. I told Lornie I did not want to go to the pumpkin patch. I called labor and delivery to see if they would advise me to come in. They said I might want to wait and see. I decided if I rested and was still having contractions I wanted to go to the hospital because I did not want to get stuck in traffic and we wanted to be on the other side of the tunnel anyway. My contractions continued so we left for the hospital and got there around 4. They checked me in triage and I was close to 6cm so they got us set up in a labor room #7 (with the labor tub yeah!). My doula Rayna came in and started doing some body work to help me get more comfortable while the nurses got things set up and got the iv set up ( I needed to have a saline lock iv in place in order to be able to go in the tub). When things were all set I labored in the tub which felt really good but I also felt like the contractions and sensations of this labor were more intense than Amari's labor. I felt I needed to work a bit harder to stay with my breathing and good positioning and not just try to get away from the sensations. At around 8:30 I got out of the tub and I was 9 cm, 0 station, 90% effaced. I was really wanting to have a relaxing rest time and I kept thinking about my 3 hour rest during Amari's labor. I tried sitting on the birthing ball and leaning on Lornie and focused on quite breathing and resting as much as possible. At 9:30 I was fully dilated and effaced +1 station. I still wanted to rest and didn't want to push hard because I felt it was going to hurt a lot. I did some "gentle pushing" and then at around 11 got on the bed laying on my left side. I told everyone I still didn't want to push hard but I didn't want to waste time either so I wanted them to tell me if I need to change positions to be more effective. At 11:30 I started pushing more but I was still trying go a bit easy. I think it was just one or two pushes before Malikai crowned. I was so happy because it was not too uncomfortable and had not taken a long time. They had me feel his head and I did some more little short pushes and he was born at 11:48pm. He had his eyes closed and he was crying but he calmed down soon and nursed. He weighed 8lb 10 oz and was 21 1/4 inches long. I was looking at him and thinking about the other names we were considering. Lornie had gone oout to make phone calls. I asked Alef what he thought of the name Malikai. He looked it up on his phone and liked some of the meanings. When Lornie came back I asked him what he thought of the name ( I had forgotten to ask him that week) we talked about it and he said, " Let's name him Malikai." Lornie and Alef looked at the different spellings and suggested we use this spelling.
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