Trish and I got a picture before the real action started:
Early on, the nurses predicted a 3:00 P.M. delivery, and things looked on track for that. Trish was progressing fine. Then the baby's heart rate dropped for a minute, and the nurses came rushing in to change Trisha's position and give her oxygen. It was a little scary. I kept telling myself that worse-case scenario, they could take the baby by c-section, and everyone would be OK. The nurses turned off the pitocin, and progress stopped. Eventually they got the meds cranked up again, and Trish got to 8 centimeters. One of the nurses called Trish's long-time OB-GYN, Dr. Grauer,who canceled the rest of her afternoon appointments so she could come deliver the baby. It took her a while to get down to the hospital, and Trish was still at 8 cm when Dr. Grauer arrived. Dr. Grauer hung out after she was supposed to go home to see it through. She said Trish had been having dysfunctional labor all day. The contraction pattern wasn't what they want to see, and it indicated the baby was in occiput posterior position (face up). The baby was also not lined up well and didn't want to move down. I was so worried that after a long and painful day, Trish was going to need a c-section. The nurse said babies can be delivered in OP position, but it's harder and takes longer.
Finally, around 6:00 P.M., Trish was ready to start pushing. We went to the cafeteria to get some dinner right before and ended up running into one of Jim's old co-workers who had left Kaiser for Scripps. There was a Jamba Juice machine in the cafeteria, and we made a poor snap decision to purchase a giant mango smoothie. We scarfed the food back in the hospital room but hadn't made much progress on the smoothie when the pushing began. Jim and I sat on the couch on the side of the room. I had the smoothie in hand, and it was just really weird - like I was watching a movie, with refreshments, of my baby's birth. I had to put the smoothie down and let it go to waste.
Trish pushed a bit, and then Dr. Grauer said she wanted to let her rest briefly and see if the baby would move down into a better position. Around 6:45 P.M., Dr. Grauer came back, and the pushing began again in earnest. It was really hard to watch. The epidural, although helpful, didn't prevent all pain. At one point, Trish said, in a tiny, high voice, "It hurts!" She asked repeatedly how she was doing and if we were making progress. In the beginning, Dr. Grauer wasn't super-engaged. She was standing a ways back during the pushing and left the room at one point. Trish asked if we were almost there, and Jeremy said, "I think when the doctor doesn't leave the room, that means we're almost there." It was awful seeing Trish in so much pain, concerned husband at her side, knowing it was all for us. I cried sometimes. Trish thought it would be easy - a few pushes, and the baby would pop out. They commented that she'd never had to push so long. I was off to the side going, "See? I'm telling you, Kringel babies don't come out!" I, irrationally, felt a little validated when even a professional birther couldn't get our baby out.
The nurses' shift change was at 7:00 P.M. The nurses who were ending their shift brought in the new nurses and were getting them up to speed. Things started getting exciting right around then. One of the outgoing nurses said if she heard a baby crying, she was going to come back in and see it; she didn't care if we saw her in her shorts. She and the other outgoing nurse ended up lingering long enough that all four of them were there, plus all the rest of the team, when the baby was born at 7:22 P.M. She was 7 lbs 14 oz, and I think 19.5 inches. I'll have to confirm. By the time she came out, she had flipped so she was face down. I thought she looked just like Ever when she was born, but by the next day the resemblance was gone. In any case, she was a healthy little girl, and we were so very grateful to have her safely here. She had dark hair and dark, ruddy skin. She looked like a little Eskimo baby. The nurses had me in a gown so I could do skin-to-skin as soon as she came out.
Trish said that when people were checking to see how dilated she was, they seemed to be petting the head of this baby. There was much talk of how much hair she had:
The nurses had me in a hospital gown so that I could slip the baby in for skin-to-skin contact as soon as she was born. Jim and I focused on the baby while Trish was getting cared for. Dr. Grauer said Trish didn't tear at all, "even with Big Head over there." (That's a direct quote.) Trish was bleeding, though. The nurses kept switching out pads. I got to see a placenta for the first time, and I saw the giant bag of blood and other junk get picked up off the floor and thrown away. Childbirth is so incredibly gnarly. It's a wonder anyone survives.
After Trish and the baby were squared away, the room cleared out and we started celebrating - "We did it! That was crazy!" I told Trish how bad I felt for her. She said, "I told you I'd probably yell at the end!" She claimed that she hadn't really been in pain; she was just uncomfortable. (Total lie.) I told her how I was just so scared that after that whole day, she was going to end up needing surgery. I was so relieved a c-section hadn't been necessary.
Jeremy had posted a couple updates to Facebook about the days' proceedings. A couple times during the day, he read the comments to Trisha, complete with capitalization and punctuation. It was hilarious. I videotaped one of his readings after Arden was born (hence the crying baby):
Not long after things had calmed down and the room had cleared, Trish needed to go to the bathroom. The nurses came in to help her. Next thing I knew, one of the nurses was saying, "She's pale!" and they were rushing her back to the bed to lay her down. She had lost a blood clot and was bleeding and bleeding. I'd thought we were out of the woods, and then we weren't. I thought, "Now is when the bad thing is going to happen." It was so scary. They quickly got her a medication that shrinks the uterus. That controlled the bleeding, thank heavens, and we were all able to move upstairs to recovery about 11:00 P.M. Jeremy and Trish had a room, and we had a separate room with the baby.
That first night was rough. Nurses kept coming in to check the baby's vitals. Her temperature was low, so I had to hold her skin-to-skin for a long time. She fussed a lot. They would only give us a teeny bit of formula at a time because newborns' stomachs are so small, but she always seemed still hungry. By 4:00 A.M., I was exhausted and had not been able to sleep for one second. I wanted Jim to help (he'd been trying to sleep on the couch but had just been up for a diaper change), and he jumped up all bitter and said, "Fine! I'll just do everything! Give me the baby!" I yelled back, "Nevermind! I can't ever sleep anyway, so I'll just do it!" We were so very tired. It hurt, but we survived the night.
The next morning, I went home to fetch Mamo, Ever, and Wren. (Ever had cried when we'd called the night before and told her about the baby but said it was too late to come to the hospital.) It was nice to have all the fam together.
Jeremy and Trish came up to our room before they checked out. Mamo gave Trish a big hug and cried. Such an amazing thing she did for us.
Poor Trish and her swollen face. Nice to know I'm not the only one who experiences that, although mine was always worse than this:
Team Baby, plus our other kids:
I took Mamo and Wrenbo home, but Ever opted to stay with us at the hospital until we checked out that evening. She was very good hanging out in the room for hours. She colored and did more baby holding:
During our time in the hospital, we surveyed all the nurses about the baby's name. Arden had been at the top of my list for a while. I think Lark is adorable, but I couldn't do a first name that ends with a "k" because of our last name. ("Lark Kringel" sounds like "Lar Kringel" unless you over-enunciate and pause between the names.) I also wasn't a big fan of becoming a weird bird-name family. We discussed Juniper, Sullivan, Rowan, and Auden. Jim was pushing for Curran, but I had to veto that one. Jeremy and I spent lots of time that long Friday researching the name options. Sullivan is used primarily for boys; Rowan is more evenly matched; Arden was used primarily for boys decades ago but is now used much more often for girls. (Jeremy found a website that told us how many boys and how many girls were given each name in recent years.) Every single person we asked, besides Jeremy, voted for Arden. When the birth certificate lady came in on Saturday, we asked her opinion. She said she sees lots of Rowans (a turn-off for Jim), and she loved the name Arden. Her friend from high school has a 13-year-old daughter named Arden. And so the deal was sealed. I have to say, with our other girls we didn't solicit opinions on names much, partly because we know our style is a bit unique. This time, however, it was helpful.
Arden Lark, ready for the car ride home:
Later we got a thank-you card from Trisha that made both Mamo and me cry:
Jeremy and Trish are incredible. What a gift they gave us!
I wanted everything to go well so they wouldn't regret their decision to do this. Things definitely weren't as smooth as we would have hoped, beginning to end. After she went home from the hospital, Trish continued to bleed. She ended up needing a D&C weeks later. Something funky happened to her uterus. A little nodule where the placenta was attached to the uterus didn't fully heal, and the D&C also revealed scar tissue and a polyp. Ten days after the D&C - which was about two months after Arden was born - the bleeding finally stopped. These Kringel babies don't make it easy, but thank heavens Trish is all right. We are forever indebted to her and Jeremy.
* See http://itswilsontime.blogspot.com/2016/07/7-8-2016.html for Trisha's account of Arden's birthday.
