Olive Marie’s Elevator Birth: Using the Abdominal Lift & Tuck to Engage Baby
Melissa Thornton shares her fourth baby’s birth story. She wouldn’t have found it so funny if she didn’t have other births to compare:
“I will start by saying that this pregnancy has been a major blessing from day one. I was sick in the beginning but after that felt great. I slept great, gained the right amount of weight, it was all just great. Her being a girl was just icing on the cake. All along though I did have this “fear/thought” that this would be a fast labor. Mostly based on the fact the fact that Zael’s labor was slow then super fast at the end. I thought for sure I could skip the slow part and go straight to the fast part. Ha. Anyways, Zael was born at 40 weeks and I thought for SURE she would be born earlier. Funny. Anyways. it gets to be 38 weeks and I decided that the baby is coming soon, so I get all ready for her. I still felt fine but mentally I was “done” with the pregnancy, bad idea by the way. That week went by then by 39 I thought for SURE this would be the weekend, I even went to the chiropractor to move things along. Nope. 40 weeks (my due date was on the weekend) I start having contractions, I walked, get ready, then after a day or so it all stops. That was fine, I was glad for the break. The following week I got my membranes stripped, which started contractions, but nothing real or strong. Every day that week I thought would be the day, nope. Finally on Thursday night I started to have contractions, painful ones. I tried to stay in bed but it was too painful so I spent the night watching Dance Moms (gag me) and laboring between 5-7ish min apart. I thought those were painful, and they were, now i think they were early labor. I let Michael sleep and woke him around 5:30am and told him about the labor. I wanted to get out before the kids woke up and I wanted to get to the hospital before it got bad.
We bring in reinforcements for the kids and get in the car, we drive to the hospital, the way there I had one contraction. Michael says “Well I guess you wont get that car birth you were worried about” (ha). We get to the hospital and they hook me up and it all stalls. Not 100% but didn’t continue enough to stay. Not to mention a night of labor and I was at the same dilation and effacement as I was at the doctors office the day before. I was not a happy camper. I knew then that it had to be positional and she just wasn’t in the right position (spinning babies became my go-to source). The nurses would say “she’s just not ready” those are NOT words anyone wants to hear at this point of life by the way. Amanda (the midwife I saw AND has been at all of my natural births) told me my choices were to either stay and walk for a few hours or go home with a shot of morphine in my rear to help me rest. I COULD be induced but there were no rooms and we would sit in triage for hours and that meant monitors and wires. I chose the shot of morphine, best decision ever. The morphine helps you rest and kinda stops contractions while you are sleeping. When it wears off your labor either stops or picks up quickly. I went home, and basically laid in bed all day. I don’t think I slept the whole time I just felt like i was laying on clouds..ha. I did have some contractions and when it was almost worn off I was woken by a strong contraction. I got up, had dinner, Mike took the kids. That night I went to bed around 8pm. And thats when the “fun” started. From 8pm until about 4am I had VERY painful contractions almost exactly 10 min apart on the dot. I read spinning babies and decided around 2:30am to try the Abdominal Tuck and Lift for 10 contractions. Of course that took about 1.5 hours. And it HURT but I really think it hurt less than the contractions without it; because she was shredding my bones with her sweet little head. Around this time I also called L and D and told them the situation, they said if the contractions aren’t at least 5 min apart then Im probably not making progress (AHH!), so wait for that. They were totally full and had no room for me and that was probably part of why she said that. But I knew that the pain I was feeling WAS active labor.
As he’s dragging me out I feel like I need to go to the bathroom, when I tried to go and couldn’t I knew I was getting “pushy”. I did NOT tell Michael, he was freaked out enough. Mikes mom still wasn’t there but we had to leave anyway, the kids were still asleep. We get in the car and start the very quick drive to O’Neal. Only to realize that O’Neal is CLOSED (?), Michael turns the car around and is asking me how to go. I start trying to give him directions, through my screams…lol. It was those contractions that I tried just letting my pelvic muscles relax and I knew she was headed out the birth canal; my water bag was bulging. I was in the most uncomfortable position possible in his truck bc I couldn’t sit down. Ok, back to the drive. I gave him the correct direction until O’Neal and Harrell’s Ferry. So he went the wrong way and pulled into a parking lot that I have seen a million times but didnt recognize at that moment. He said “where are we? What way do we go??” I was in that stage of labor where you are fake crying/moaning/complaining. I looked around had no clue and said “I don’t KNOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW :insert hysterical crying here:” Contractions coming like nuts, no breaks. By the grace of God he turned the right way. Somewhere in this time he called L and D and begged to have someone waiting at the door. They told him to meet them at the ER (a place we have never been). We FINALLY pull up at Ochsner, Mike then pulls into a parking lot, can’t find the ER entrance, rides over a curb (big bump!) and pulls in at the front entrance (the same one we had used the day before). He gets out of his side of the truck and comes around to my side. Right as he opens the door my water breaks, I was like AHHH MY WATER JUST BROKE! He said just get out!! Lets get inside!!!! He tells me to sit in the wheel chair that he found but I couldn’t sit so I pushed it in. The door was open, it should not have been open, a miracle. We go in the lobby, Im screaming. As we get onto the elevator I start to feel “the ring of fire”. I hear mike saying “what floor?” I know what floor but have no way of getting those words to my mouth. So he pushes 2 (its not 2). We get to floor 2 and it opens, I can see its the wrong floor, the door opens and Mike says something along the lines of “we need help!” two cardiac nurses get on. Out of the 4 of us on the elevator I was probably the least scared/nervous. While on floor two the elevator goes back DOWN to floor 1, the doors open and there is a couple standing there (I don’t remember this as I was delivering Olive’s head at just that moment). For obvious reason the couple decides to wait for the next elevator. Before we FINALLY get to floor 4 she is completely born. Thank goodness for skirts rights? (I was standing up) Goo/fluid flies everywhere. All over my legs, the floor (gross!). I cant lift her completely bc she is still o
n the cord so I hold her on my belly. She cried a little, but just to be sure I flipped her and made sure she was breathing, she turned pink instantly. The nurse gives the ol’ “your doing a good job mama” but it doesn’t hide the fact that she is totally freaked out. I sit in the wheelchair and they roll me out.
I didn’t know this at the time but Michael had run to the front desk and yelled “WE NEED HELP! NOW! WE JUST HAD A LIVE BIRTH!”. The nurse came and told me later that they thought that was super funny, ha! When I told mike later he realized how dumb that sounded too and he laughed at himself. I am wheeled into triage (where we will stay for 7 hours due to a lack of rooms even though Amanda had a nice room for me complete with a relaxing tub of water). I stand up, blood goes all over my shoes and legs; and I never saw those shoes again. They were my favorite but somehow they got lost in the crazy. I get on the bed and Amanda and another nurse come and say that they were waiting in the ER for us when they were called up because we were already there. She even told me about the nice room she had set up for me, boo I never got to see it. So i get on the bed, deliver the placenta, no tears, no stitches, not much bleeding. And all I felt was SERIOUS relief that it was over. They tried to clean me up, they weren’t totally successful. But thankfully in about 10 min I was able to to the bathroom where the nurse cleaned me a bit better.I am very glad that this was not my first natural birth, because although it was interesting and a great story it was NUTS. Im happy that I do have 2 other births to look back and say “aww, birth is such a beautiful event”. Also you hear stories of women giving birth in cars and get jealous, nooooo, the car is hands down the most uncomfortable birth position.
So baby girl is here, she is THE calmest and sweetest baby I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. Which is good, because we named her Olive bc we needed a peace maker around this house! I have no idea how to wrap up this story but I hope you enjoyed it! :)”