Luca's Birth Story

Our sweet Luca was born on 12 January via c-section. Here is the birth story...

In late December, I began weekly ultrasounds and fetal monitoring, standard practice for "geriatric" - over 40 - moms. Go geriatric moms! And, they found I had low amniotic fluid and the baby had turned breech. So I began every-few-day visits for fluid check-ins - and tried about 47 baby turning techniques, including moxybustion and hanging from an inversion table.

The baby didn't turn (had he run out of room in his short mom's tummy?!), but my fluid remained low yet stable, so we made it to week 39 for a planed c-section.

After I was able let go of my desire to have a natural, unmedicated, woo woo hypnobirth birth, the project manager in me was rather happy to have a specific date and time for the delivery, and that the delivery would be over in less than an hour. It was fun to pick out the baby's birthdate - 1/12/11. I love palindromes. And, I learned that "2" is my husband's favorite number.

Of course, the baby had his own plan, as usual.... at 4 am on the 12th, my bag of waters released, and I started having surges (contractions in hypnobirth speak). I was in disbelief, since it seemed too coincidental, and thought maybe I just kept peeing on myself (!), but the contractions were very strong and regular. So off we went to St. Luke's and when I was checked, my midwife could feel the baby's bony butt. They arrested my labor with a drug called Terbutaline, so we could go forward with a scheduled instead of emergency c-section.

So, the 12th was truly meant to be the baby's birthday! Dr. Norrell at St. Luke's was amazing throughout the process and with my surgery. She even cut so she would avoid my tattoo.

In the end, Luca came out, bloody and beautiful. I still can't believe he's here!