A Thai Birth Story

From the hotel couch of Allie....

I realize that Emerson is now 3 weeks old and that this is super delayed.  My mom was wonderful enough to come to Bangkok to hang out with us and the little one for the past two weeks and so all my time not taking care of the baby was spent enjoying hanging out with my mom.  More on that later.

Anyways…. I have had some folks ask about our birth story.  And I am slightly torn about what to share.  Not that I want to keep it a secret but if you had asked me 12 months ago if I ever wanted to hear someone else’s birth story I would have (and probably did say), ‘You had a baby, what else is there to tell?’  Ahh how naive I was/am.  The past six weeks I have been reading the gruesome rite of passage for other women in hopes that I would be comforted or encouraged.  Sometimes I was, but more often these stories made me nauseous and afraid. 

So here is what I will say.  If you want to hear the gory details then email me and I will tell you the full story, however, here’s an overview.  If you don't want to hear anything about it....you can stop reading after this picture.

On Christmas day our friends Matt and Nicole came to visit us in Bangkok.  They had a week off from teaching and decided to come see us.  We spent the day hanging out, eating Christmas cookies, and had a Christmas feast at a restaurant offering all you can eat tacos and pie (they go together like peanut butter and potato chips).  Chris and Matt decided they wanted to go to the movies.  So we went to a particularly long movie and during the movie I started having what I thought were regular contractions.  So I surreptitiously timed them to see how far apart they were without disturbing the movie.  Thinking that we probably had some time as they were 10 minutes apart, Chris and I headed  back to the hotel and tried to sleep.  I was kinda excited at the thought that we might meet our daughter soon so I showered (I wanted to look presentable, yeah right) and then went to bed still timing contractions.  At about 3am I couldn’t sleep anymore and they were starting to be about 6 minutes apart.  So we got up, grabbed our go bag, and headed to the hospital.  Another nice thing about being here in Bangkok is that our hotel is about 500 meters from the hospital entrance.  Since it was 3am, all the clubs were starting to close so there was a ton of traffic.  We decided to hoof it to the hospital.  In my head I was thinking that we should hurry so that we didn’t travel all the way to Thailand to have our baby in a nice hospital and end up having to birth her 200 meters from the hospital entrance. 

We walked into the ER and I tell the receptionist that I need to go to labor and delivery.  She must have been sleepy because she looks at me and says ‘Do you have an appointment?’  I wanted to say, ‘yes I think that 3:30am is a very good time to schedule all my medical appointments, as I am nocturnal.’  But I held my tongue and they put me on a gurney and wheeled me up to L&D. 

Once there the nurse checked me out and said I am still about 3cm and we have a long way to go.  “What?!”  I was pretty positive we would be in and out before you could say ‘Sawasdee’ (That’s hello/good day in Thai).  Whelp, we wait till the doctor comes in at 7am to check me out.  Those contractions that were so darn regular for the 6 hours leading up to heading to the hospital?....gone.  So now it is Dec. 26^th, the day our doctor had scheduled us to come in and possibly induce and we are at the hospital but Chris and I both are reluctant to induce.  So he tells us that we can head upstairs to the post partum unit and walk around for awhile to try and get things going.  I, of course, take this as a personal challenge, ended up spending the day speed walking the halls (after the nurse forbade me from going outside).  Nicole and Matt even came by to hang out with us and play some cards.  I did air squats, Brazilian soccer team warm up drills (brought back some high school memories), and jumping jacks….nothing worked.  I felt better than the previous week.  Awesome.  So the Dr. came back to check on us around 5pm and said we have two options, we can go home and come back whenever we feel like we are starting to go into labor again or he can induce me in the morning.  By this point, I knew that if I went home I would not come back to the hospital until I was sure we were in labor (meaning the baby’s head was already out), so after much discussion, we decided to induce in the morning but pray, pray, pray, that she would come on her own in the night.  Wouldn’t you know it?  I had the best night of sleep in weeks that night.  I felt terrible, like a failure.  How could I have been so wrong, I didn’t even know when I was going into labor?! Lame.

The funny thing God taught me through this is that His plans are perfect.  Not my expectations, not my hopes or demands for myself, but He knows where I need to be and what needs to happen.  I am terrible at trusting Him, but Emerson was His long before she was even a thought for us.  So resting in that, we head down to induce the next morning at 8am.  The nurses are all super nice and in their limited English make bets on when the baby will be born, ‘1pm’ one says, then our Dr. says, ‘4pm if you are lucky.’  Blerg.  The pitocin starts dripping in and about 20 minutes later…yup, contractions.  We watch some TV to pass the time and two hours later, things are getting kinda real so I ask for an epidural.  I know that many people are wholeheartedly against them but I have never had a desire to have a natural childbirth so I was ready and willing to get one.  The anesthesiologist is a young woman who is really nice and gives me my epidural no questions asked, around 10:30am.  Pretty soon I am feeling good, so good that I take mini naps for the next hour and a half.  Then to the best of my knowledge, the epidural starts to wear off because I am in some serious pain.  So we call the anesthesiologist back in, she gives me another bolus, and I am off to nap town again.  This happens every hour and a half until 4:30pm. At this point the Dr. comes back in to check says I still have a ways to go and it’ll probably be 530 or 6pm before baby is born.  Another hit of the epidural and we hang out until 6pm.  And wouldn’t you know it?! Epidural runs out…again.  So at 6pm I’m thinking, ok if it’s go time soon, I want some more drugs.  We push the call button for the anesthesiologist and instead, the OB comes in.  He says (something like) ‘If this baby doesn’t come out soon, we will have to do a C-section, so you need to push really hard right now.’  Whaaaa? Well crap, here goes.  All of the sudden there are like 2 nurses by my legs, the doctor, and 4 other nurses watching from against the wall.  Why would anyone want to watch?  I still can’t figure that out but I was too freaked out about a c-section to care.  So let the pushing commence!  We only pushed for about 20 minutes (Thanks crossfit (and the two nurses that were simultaneously pushing down on my stomach as if it were a tube of toothpaste)) and then our little bundle of joy arrived!    Afterward when they were taking her to get some tests done, they were cleaning me up and if you have ever been to a nail salon where the nail artists speak a different language and felt like they were talking about your cuticles, this was that combined with a trip to the lady doctor times 1000.  Fortunately, I was so out of it, I didn’t care much til I thought about it later.  So that’s the story of how Emerson came into this world, it did not go how I planned but it was perfectJ

Fun Facts:

The anesthesiologist said she had never had to give anyone that many doses of medicine before.  (Hall of fame low pain threshold, what what?!)

While the nurses were pressing down on my stomach, all I could focus on was that one of them was wearing Hello Kitty glasses….no frames.  Stinkin’ hipsters.

Chris had a special uniform to wear so that he could go into the nursery. (I'll post a picture soon)

The best thing we found to watch on TV to pass the time were EPL soccer games….in Thai. 

We were the first in the L&D ward and the last ones out on 12/27

We got 2 small duffel bags full of baby goodies.  My favorite were the diapers, brand name?  Mamy poko.  They are fantastic!

We took a taxi home from the hospital.  Check out Emerson's sweet car seat.