Griffin’s Birth Story
By his Momma, Alison Scott Denomme
At the beginning of my pregnancy it had not occurred to me that I would do anything but a hospital birth. I wasn’t comfortable with home birth and I didn’t really know much about the Greenhouse. However, after seeing my doctor I knew I needed a different situation. My doctor is a wonderful man who really cares about his patients. That being said, he also spent five years working with high risk obstetrics. He spent an entire hour with me telling me all the things that could go wrong with my pregnancy; all the ways my baby or I could die. I know he meant well, but I left the office that day feeling scared and insecure. What was I thinking? Was I crazy? How could I possibly have a baby?All these things could go wrong! I questioned everything from my ability to give birth to my ability to be a good mother. I cried for hours after that visit and then decided that I couldn’t spend nine months feeling frightened. Later that week I went to see my chiropractors, Jody and Jodi at Infinity. They had pamphlets for The Greenhouse Birth Center in their office. I read about the center and asked Jodi and Jody about their experience there. After speaking to my husband about it we decided to check out an open house. That decision changed our lives.
Walking into the Greenhouse was like walking into the warm embrace of a good friend. I felt at ease the moment I stepped through the door. Kip was there that night. She told us that how and where we give birth was important and that the birthing center was there to help families have the kind of birth experience they wanted. Kip was so patient in answering all our questions and showing us around the center. She addressed all our concerns. I knew immediately that this was the place I wanted to have our baby.
That night David and I crunched some numbers and figured out how we could afford to use the birth center. Affording the birth center meant being frugal in other areas of our lives, but we never regretted our choice. Our care at the Greenhouse was fantastic from start to finish. I say our care because they cared for us as a family, not just me as the mom. David was welcome at every visit. Kip and Clarice answered all our questions and often gave David advice about how best to support me during the pregnancy. Our visits were wonderful. It was fantastic to lounge on the bed in the exam room and just chat and get to know Kip and Clarice during those visits. My colleague was also pregnant at the same time and she often lamented her 10 minutes doctor visits. She often complained that she never got her questions answered and felt rushed out of the office. I felt so happy knowing that would never happen at the Greenhouse.
My pregnancy progressed normally. Nothing particularly extraordinary happened until about 30 weeks. Clarice noticed that my belly measurement was growing pretty quickly which might mean excess fluid. We decided just to keep and eye on things and not worry too much. By the next visit everything looked fine again. At this point I was about 32 weeks along.
At 33 weeks my water broke. We called Clarice and we decided to go to hospital. We met Clarice at the hospital and were quickly sent to labor and delivery triage. They checked me out and found that I wasn’t dilated at all. They hooked me up to a monitor to see if I was having contractions. I told them I wasn’t, but they still wanted to use “The Machine”. Pretty soon, with the help of “The Machine”, they determined that I wasn’t in labor. ( I could have told them that- in fact, I think I did!) I got checked into the hospital and I figured that I was just in there overnight for observation and that I would go home in a day or so. Well, I was wrong. The next day they did a bunch of tests and hooked me up to “The Machine” a bunch of times to see if I was having contractions. At the end of the day, the doctor told me that all my test results were fine and that I would be on bed rest until the baby was born. It was then that I learned that I would have to stay in hospital until the baby was born.
I didn’t want to stay, so I had David look into what could be done. We knew we couldn’t have the baby at the Greenhouse, which was devastating enough, but I really didn’t want to be in the hospital. It turned out that if I left hospital AMA (against medical advice) and ended up coming back to the hospital to give birth that insurance wouldn’t cover the cost. At this point I had already been in the hospital a few days and we knew we couldn’t afford the bill, so we made the decision to stay.
I spent 17 days in the hospital reading, watching “Buffy” reruns, visiting with friends, and learning to knit. Three or four times a day the nurses, who really were very sweet to me, would come in and ask me if I was having contractions. I would say no and they would hook me up to “The Machine”. Inevitably, the machine would indicate that I was having contractions and the doctors would admonish me for being too active.
During this time, I still received care from the Greenhouse. They were not “officially” caring for me, but they did visit me in the hospital, advise David and me on how to have a positive birth experience in hospital, and generally kept up my spirits. Dawn, the birth center apprentice midwife, came to meet me and was at the birth. Kip came by and gave me markers and a coloring book and I discovered the therapeutic qualities of losing yourself in a coloring book.
On the morning of July 16th, I knew I was in labor. Nothing dramatic was happening, but my heart told me that I would be a Momma very soon. I called my husband at work and told him to be prepared to leave at any time. He, smart man that he is, went home to nap. That day, my mother-in-law, Joyce, her friend, Kathy, and my friend, Amy, and Kip all came by for a visit. Kip took one look at me, saw that I was shifting a lot in my chair and called Dawn. The nurses asked me if I was having contractions, I said yes, and one of them hooked me up to “The Machine”. Of course, this time it indicated I wasn’t having contractions! The nurse believed the machine and told me that I was mistaken, I wasn’t in labor!
My labor progressed very steadily for several hours. I was able to knit and entertain friends until around 8:00 at night when I decided to try and get some sleep. David tucked me in, but I didn’t really sleep, I just sort of rested. I was having back labor and lying down was uncomfortable, so I moved to a chair and David put on our hypnosis CD. We sat together and breathed through the contractions and everything was cool. Around 2:00 in the morning I felt like I wanted a shower. David called Dawn back and I hopped into the shower. The warm water felt so nice on my back. I stayed in the shower as long as I could, but after a while I felt like I needed to sit down. I dried off and then threw up. At this point, David decided to call the nurse. She checked me and even though I was only 3 centimeters dilated they decided to send me to labor and delivery.
It was 4:30. Even though I had just been hooked up to “The Machine” at the OB Special Care Ward, I had to be hooked up to it again now that I was on a different ward. After reading the tape printed off by “The Machine” the nurse informed me that I was indeed in labor. (Gee, thanks so much for filling me in! I wondered what was going on!) She also informed me that since I was only dilated 3 centimeters that nothing was going to happen soon so the nurses would attend to other patients.
Almost as soon as she left the room my contractions became more intense. Dawn was there helping me through the contractions and for a while I was fine, but pretty soon I found I couldn’t stay in my hypnotic state and the contractions were getting beyond my power to handle. I asked David and Dawn to discuss pain management options while I went to the bathroom. David came into the bathroom and gave me a pep talk about how I wouldn’t be a failure if I took pain medication. All through his speech I was grunting and really bearing down hard because I felt like I had to poop. Apparently, I was really red in the face because David said “Stop pushing so hard, you’re going to hurt yourself”. Well, the word “pushing” invaded my consciousness and I realized that it was not poop that I was pushing out. I reached down between my legs. I felt the slick surface of my baby’s head. I called Dawn and asked her to “take a peek” and she confirmed that it was the head that I had felt. At that moment a nurse with a syringe full of pain medication came in; realizing that I was almost at the end of my birth process I calmly told her that the medication wouldn’t be needed.
After the nurse left, everything happened really quickly. First, I delivered the baby’s head. Then it seemed as if all the nurses on the ward came into the bathroom and began freaking out because I was delivering in the bathroom. They told me not to push (Yeah, right!); soon I had a nurse on each limb and they preparing to carry me from the toilet to the bed. I really didn’t feel comfortable with being moved given that my son’s head was already delivered so with one mighty push I delivered the rest of my baby. It was 5:20 in the morning.
This should have been a wonderful moment for me and my husband to be with our baby, but it wasn’t. The nurses whisked him away before David or I could even really see him and I was carried to the bed. I remember that I kept asking to see my son, but the nurses kept refusing. David kept as close to our baby as he could and finally got them to bring him to me. I held him for less than a minute before they took him away to the NICU. When I heard that he had been taken to ICU I assumed something was wrong and became very upset. The nurses reassured me that he was absolutely fine; that it was just the hospital policy to remove all premature babies to the NICU. This upset me further. Why would you take a healthy baby away from his mother? What kind of stupid policy was that? Things only got worse from there. I had torn badly during the birth and lost a good deal of blood. They gave me medication to stop the bleeding and the medication caused a spike in my temperature. That, in addition to the normal temperature spike that occurs after birth, caused me to have quite a fever. The hospital staff determined that I must have an infection and wouldn’t let me see my son for 24 hours. This news devastated me.
The next day I was released from the hospital and Griffin had been moved to an NICU satellite unit. I was determined that I would not go home without my baby so I just set up camp in the satellite unit. After three days I was able to take him home. He was jaundiced, but otherwise fine. The first thing we did once we got him home was to cut the hospital bracelets off and really claim him as ours. Then we unplugged the phone, hung a “do not disturb” sign on our door, cuddled in bed together and began our babymoon.
Since ours was not a “normal” delivery, the lactation consultant and other post-partum services offered by the hospital were not available to our family. In retrospect, I’m glad about that because in my need I turned to the Greenhouse. They helped with breastfeeding problems, talked to me about my birth experience, connected me with other moms, and were just supportive.
Having my son at the hospital was a traumatic and disempowering experience. My trust in myself was shaken. In the months that followed my son’s birth, it was spending time with the other moms at the Greenhouse Birth Center that helped me regain confidence in myself. It is because of the support of everyone at the Greenhouse that I learned to trust my own instincts to do what is best for my baby.