seung yi savanh sayo

Well ha ha ha, be careful what you wish for! I posted the last entry on the 27th and my daughter was born at 4 am on the 28th. The internet genies were listening to my pleas, methinks.

Here's the full story...

On Sunday I went up to Mum and Dad's house to spend the afternoon relaxing. It was a super hot and humid day. Things were pretty quiet; Ji was out and about, and Mum and Dad were just puttering around the house and cooking. I had been really tired the day before after my morning of cramps but now I felt relatively energetic. I went for a good hour-long walk around the neighbourhood, past Greenwood subway station, through the schoolyard next to my old high schoool, past the house we used to live in, and up back to Monarch Park Avenue. While I was walking I noticed a few "cramps" or tightening in my tummy that seemed to come about every 15 minutes. They hadn't been happening much while I was sitting down, but seemed to be a little stronger when I was walking. By the time I got home I was hot and ready to relax in the air con.

In the late afternoon I helped Dad get a few things ready for dinner. My favourite task of the day was sitting and sorting through fresh wild blueberries. It's hard to feel useful when you're a giant pregnant lady -- everyone keeps telling you to sit down and stop lifting stuff. I wasn't even allowed to help get drinks, for heaven's sake -- so it was nice to have a chore to do. At around 5 o'clock, Aunt Cathie, Uncle Pat, and Jodi came over for dinner, and later Ji, Phet, Pheuy, and Emma joined us as well. Aunt Cathie was a labour and delivery nurse for many a year and she entertained Em and Jodi by feeling my tummy and pointing our where the baby bits were. She recommended that I eat chocolate sauce since that had seemed to work as a labor-inducer when her son Nick was born. I heartily agreed to do my best. For dinner we had an incredible Randy-riffic spread of barbequed ribs and scallops, pan-fried potatoes with green onions, and 'Shirley's' garlic sauteed green beans. For dessert we had ice cream, berries, and chocolate sauce. After dinner we chatted for awhile and then I wanted to head back to aunts' because I was getting tired. Ji had planned to have a sleepover at Gramma and Grampa's, so he stayed put while Phet and I drove home with Em. On the way, we stopped to check out the Regent Park Community Centre, where Em will be having her classes this year while she does her BEd with York. Then, a quick drop off at Em and Adam's (we were invited in but I was wiped out, and very fortunately Phet decided to come home with me).

Back at aunts' house, we watched the Comedy Network for awhile. When we're back in Toronto Phet and I are always astounded at how lame TV is, but how we can watch the dumbest shows for hours on end. We're both suckers for reality shows, gossip and star-gazing, and music documentaries. Phet will watch endless tennis but my attention span for it lasts about four seconds. Anyways, we watched this relatively decent comic who had a funny sequence about his suit being from Value Village, and then we chatted for awhile. At around midnight I decided to try and get to sleep but I started having those "cramps" again. Since I'd had a round of them the other day which had come to naught, I didn't want to jump to any conclusions. I figured I'd give them a couple of hours and then decide what to do, if anything. When I went into labour with Ji, I had not-so-bad cramps from about 7 am until 3 pm, so I figured there was no rush.

I flipped the TV back on -- see, kind of fun to have a distraction that I wouldn't have had in Bangkok -- and watched some coverage of the Emmy Awards red carpet posing. The cramps got worse, and I had to really massage my spine to get through some of them. They seemed to be a few minutes apart, but I was still in denial and kept watching TV. This, despite having been given a paper from the doctor that said to come in when the contractions were 10 minutes apart. Phet heard the TV and came over from the other room where he'd been sleeping with Ji. He joined me and we watched about half of an episode of this awesome reality show (really, not joking, I saw the show on a loooong airplane trip and I thought about it for months afterwards) called, I think, Ramsey's Disasters or something. It's about this foul mouthed and gruff British chef who goes to help chefs and owners whose restaurants are failing miserably. He checks out there horrible habits (frozen foods! garbage on the floor! lack of planning!) and offers brutal observations and extremely helpful advice. We had just gotten to the really fascinating part of the show, where he had told the restaurant owner that he ought to just sell his restaurant since he was obviously such an incompetent fool, when I took a bathroom break and realized that I was having trouble maintaining an upright position while walking because I was in so much pain, and the "cramps" were now coming less than 2 minutes apart.

We called Mum post-haste.

First we got the answering machine. Phet called back right away, got Dad, and Mum was dispatched. I think she teleported the car here, because it took her THREE MINUTES to drive from Greenwood and Danforth to Pape and Eastern, a drive that would usually take about ten minutes. When Mum got here, we grabbed our bags and I lurched into the car sideways. Didn't want to sit, couldn't quite lie down. So, while Mum zinged through Toronto in the wee hours of the morn, I held myself in a sort of 45' angle semi-recumbent pose.

We got to Women's College Hospital in a flash. We got out, but the front door was shut and we had to go around to the back. I lurched on inside and Phet and I went up to the labor triage while Mum parked. The triage nurse said she'd take a look at me and see how things were going. Quite often, they'll make people return home if things haven't progressed far enough. Basically, if it's a straightforward sort of birth, your cervix has to be dilated 10 cm in order for the baby to be delivered. If you're still down around 2-4 cm, they often won't admit you. For us, the news was pleasantly surprising. Not only were the "cramps" actual contractions, but I was 7 cm dilated. I was in full-on labor. Whoo hee! I got shifted to a labor and delivery room right away.

It was clear that things were going quickly because everything got underway very speedily. They got a monitor for the baby's heartbeat, and put a blood pressure cuff on me. Much to my very great displeasure, I also had to have an IV attached to my arm. Here's the deal: about 20% of the population carry strep. This type of strep is not dangerous and doesn't have an effect on the person who carries it. The carrier may have the strep at one point and then not at another. If it's treated with penicillin, it will go away, but it may come back. However, it has been discovered fairly recently that strep carriers can pass on the strep to their babies during delivery, and that a small number of babies will become ill as a result. Doesn't sound too bad, but the illness can be as serious as meningitis or pneumonia. So, for the past few years, Women's College has been screening to-be-moms for strep. If you test positive, they dose you with penicillin intravenously during labor. It can't be before labor, because the strep can recurr within days. Now, to be effective in protecting the baby, the penicillin has to be given for at least four hours. Keep that in mind as this story progresses...

I was really, really unhappy about the IV. Remembering Ji's birth, I couldn't imagine how I'd keep the stupid thing in my arm. I had practically mangled both Phet and Mum with my wrangling pain-induced attacks during labor. The idea of being able to "hold still" and "not pull out the IV in a fury" seemed impossible. I was also really scared about the pain of the labor. Even though I could tell that everyone expected the delivery to go quickly, I couldn't quite convince myself to grit my teeth through the agony for a few hours. I decided that I'd get an epidural, even though I was also really not keen to have one. I was really worried that if I had an epidural that everything would slow down. I was also anxious that it would make me loopy and I'd miss seeing the baby when it arrived. But in the end, the fear of the pain overwhelmed everything else. I kind of felt like I was letting the team down and 'giving in' to the epidural (y'know, if I'd done it once, why was I such a sucker not to be able to do it again kind of thing), but in the end I'm glad I got it. The anaesthesiologist seemed a bit spivy, but he was efficient. The whole process seemed to take just a few minutes, and the only thing that bothered me about it was having to move to one side of the bed, curl up, and -- get this! -- hold still. "Holding still" is a phrase that is not commonly found in the vocabulary of a woman in labor, lemme tell ya.

I think that because they knew I was fairly far along, the epidural dose was not super high. It kicked in, but I wasn't all numb. At the time, I thought that it was going to be a problem that I could still feel pain, especially on my right side, but I think in retrospect that it was just as well it wasn't quite complete. I could still feel the contractions pretty seriously, but the edge was taken off the pain, and the rest periods between contractions were lucid and nice. Also, right after the birth, I could wiggle my legs, and a couple of hours later I was able to get up and walk a bit. So, although the drugs were patchy, they were just right.

After the epidural went in, things continued apace. The nurse, Phet, and Mum coached me through the contractions and put up with my miserableness. At one point, their helpful breathing-in-time started to drive me nuts, and I said to Mum, "Stop breathing!!!" Fortunately, she took it in stride and wasn't offended. Even through the epidural, I could feel when the baby shifted position and was ready to be pushed into the universe. The mise en scene for delivery got all set up while I had my eyes squinched shut. The beautiful blonde intern came in, Mum and Phet held onto my feet, and the pushing began just as the doctor arrived.

Astoundingly enough, ten pushes later our daughter made her entrance into the world.

Three cheers for the gorgeous Seung ('Falling Snow') Yi ('Happiness') Savanh ('Heaven') Sayo ('Victory!').

Post delivery tales to follow once we're up in the countryside.

[Seung Yi-2-September-2006]