Hello, Max!

I have finally found a brief moment where both of my boys are cooperating with an update-Max is sleeping and Clint is not on the computer.

As most of you have heard, Max has made his entrance into the world! The following is his birth story. Warning-almost nothing went according to plan so, while there was no emergency, if you are expecting and only like to think happy labor thoughts, skip to the end.

I went into labor on Thursday, April 12th at 2:45 PM when my water broke at work. I was the only one in the office, as the Dr. I work for was out of town, so I called the other office manager to let her know what was happening and hit the road home. I was feeling the contractions low and fairly strong in my lower abdomen. I got home and (almost) woke Clint up (he works nights and 3:15 PM is not usually a time he is conscious). We labored at home for a good long time until my contractions were 2 minutes apart and 1 minute in length for about 2 hours. During that time, Kristin, good friend and unofficial doula, arrived. We left for the hospital at 11 PM Thursday night, calling my parents on the way out the door.

At the hospital, I was none too happy to find that after 8 long hours in labor, I was only 2 cm dilated. My water had broken up high, so the nurse suggested that we break the bag down low, over Max's head, to see if it might speed up my labor. It didn't. After many long hours of labor and wave upon wave of strengthening contractions, at 12:00 noon on Friday I was still only 6 1/2 cm dilated and fading fast. At this point, I had begged for death numerous times, and Clint and Kristin had not seen my eyes for a few hours. I was having strong pain in my back, which Clint was having to put pressure on during every contraction. I was not progressing well on my own, and options were to try and continue on as I was, try Pitocin to increase the intensity of my contractions, or have an epidural and pitocin. I decided that I could not handle anything stronger than what I was experiencing and, despite having wanted a natural birth, opted for the epidural, which Clint supported. After the epidural, the nurse did another cervical exam to find that my cervix had actually begun swelling, and I was now only dilated to 5 cm- an event that would have caused them to give me an epidural, anyway.

Unfortunately, the pitocin didn't help me to dilate much. At 3:30, my doctor came in to check on me and found I was only up to 7 cm, which he stretched to 8 cm. And that was as far as I dilated. At 6 PM Friday, after about 27 hours in labor, the doctor on call approached us about a c-section. He had tracked the intensity of my contractions and found that my uterus was contracting dysfunctionally-meaning that I would have a few good, strong contractions, followed by several weaker, closer contractions. He worried that before I ever dilated fully, my uterus would be too tired to push out a baby and could possibly hemorrhage. Max's heart rate was fine, and I was still OK, just very tired. We decided to go with the c-section while Max was OK and it was not yet an emergency surgery. During the operation, it was discovered that Max was in an occiput posterior position, meaning he was head-down but backwards, with his face looking up, instead of down. This, in combination with his size, attributed to the long, painful labor and lack of progression.

At 8:16 PM Friday, April 13th Maximus Caine Jurek was born tipping the scales 9 lbs, 8 oz. and measuring 20 1/2 in. long. His head was 13' in diameter. He was in the 98th percentile for size.