Welcome, Liam!

 

Douglas William Buhler, Jr.

Born November 22, 2013 at 4:04 p.m.

7 lbs 8 oz, 21 inches long

We are calling him Liam. I like it, it fits him.
(His dad goes by Bill, his grandpa goes by Doug
so we struggled a bit to figure out what to call him.)

 

Things didn’t quite go as planned, but I was really happy with how they turned out.

On Thursday, my midwife became concerned. I went in for an ultrasound and his amniotic fluid was extremely low. We spent Thursday night trying to get labor started – and my midwife stayed all night and monitored his heart rate every 1/2 hour.

Friday at noon we went to the University Hospital to be induced. There is a group of nurse midwives that deliver at the hospital. I’d heard great things about them – and even considered going with them back when we decided to transfer to a midwife. They were amazing! If I were to have another baby, I would go with the nurse midwives at the U as long as I could come home after the birth and use the home birth midwife for post partum care.

The nurse midwives decided he needed to be turned (his head was forward instead of head back). So they did something one of them had learned from a midwife in Mexico – they put a sheet underneath me and each stood on one side. Then they pulled on the sheet to tilt me from right to left to right several times quickly. As soon as they finished that, I had my first hard contraction as they started a low dose of pitocin.

59 minutes later we had a baby.

 

 

Despite having no amniotic fluid (when they broke my water, no fluid at all came out), Liam was doing really well until the very end. Also, my placenta didn’t detach at all. So, after an hour of trying a lot of different things, they called in one of the doctors to dig it out. That was not pleasant. Luckily they gave me some pain medication through my IV which helped some. They offered me an epidural, but after making it all the way through the birth without one, I wasn’t about to get it then. And I have to say, I really think not having the epidural has made for a better recovery for me and I think it factored into breastfeeding going better for Liam as well.

 

Here I am holding him for the first time:

 

We pushed really hard to go home 4 to 6 hours after the birth. It took a bit of convincing, but they did let us go home that night. Sleeping in my own bed was wonderful. If I’d thought I could have done it that way, I would have planned it that way. To have the baby in the hospital, but not have to sleep there was the best of both worlds for me.

Here’s Liam in his carseat at the hospital:

 

The nurse snapped a picture of the three of us before we left:

Here’s Liam on my bed the next morning:

My midwife came 24 hours after he was born to check us both out. She also came a couple of days after that and did the hearing screening, PKU, and everything they would have done in the hospital if we had stayed.

I have to say this has been my best birth experience. It’s also been my best recovery. And although breastfeeding has been challenging, it’s been so much better than with the girls. Liam was down to 7 lbs 5 ounces 24 hours after his birth. 3 days after he was born, he was 7 lbs 6 ounces. 8 days after he was born, he was 8 lbs 5 ounces. Both of my girls lost 10% of their birth weight and were barely back to their birth weight by 2 weeks.