![[Pic of Maya]](Maya.jpg)
Maya Louise Barton was born Monday, 31 August 1998 at 1:02 p.m. MDT. At birth, she weighed 8 pounds 3.8 ounces. She measured 20 inches long and was in good health except for a fractured clavical collarbone which should heal on its own without any medical intervention.
Christine's pregnancy had been a relatively easy one. After we took the home pregnancy test in early January and discovered we were to have our first child, we both braced ourselves for a bumpy nine months. After all, Christine had been reading birth stories on Internet websites for the previous year and had heard just about every imaginable story possible.
We waited for the nausea and the general miserableness typically experienced during the first trimester. It never came. Neither did many of the other pregnancy symptoms. Christine didn't get any visible stretch marks until three weeks before she delivered. She did not have backaches. She remained nausea free throughout. She even managed to avoid the discomfort of Braxton-Hicks contractions until the last week or so. Even then, they were not uncomfortable. She said she didn't really even know she was having a Braxton-Hicks contraction unless she felt her stomach and it was hard and firm.
When we went in for her prenatal checkup three weeks before her due date, the doctor did an internal exam and told her she was already 2 centimeters dilated and 50 percent effaced. He gave her a 30 to 40 percent chance of having the baby within the next week. Christine was excited. She started taking the dog on long walks every night.
But the following came and went. At the next prenatal visit, her doctor reported that she was almost three centimeters and more effaced than the previous week. He also said the baby was at a 0 station. While Christine was somewhat discouraged with her progress, she was happy when the doctor said, "some women will labor for hours to get to where you are now."
Christine and I had read a lot of material both in print and on the Net about pregnancy and childbirth. After studying, we decided we wanted to try to do this childbirth with little or no pain medications. Christine was willing to get local anesthetic while she was pushing, but we wanted to avoid epidurals and other pain blocks.
We studied the Bradley Method, a popular natural-childbirth method for which there is much information available. Unlike Lamaze and other traditional childbirth methods emphasize breathing techniques to help a woman cope with the stresses of labor, the Bradley Method encourages you to take it easy. More importantly, the Bradley Method states that a woman should take the time in her early phases of labor to relax completely and study her contractions to learn how they work. Then, as labor progresses to where she can push, she can push more effectively by working with her contractions.
We had told her doctor we wanted the labor to be pain-medication-free. He told us we were in a good situation to do so because of how well she was progressing.
Because of how easy the pregnancy had been, I was dumbfounded when Christine told me the was anxious to have the baby. "I want to have this baby now," she said a few days later.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because I don't want to go into work tomorrow," she replied. I told her that wasn't a good reason to want to have the baby.
Humoring Christine's desire to deliver, I began accompanying her on her long walks. On Sunday, August 30, we walked about three miles. When we returned, we tied the dog up in the backyard and hopped in the truck and headed into the mountains. We spent over an hour driving on dirt roads, looking for rutted-out roads to drive on, and dodging grazing cattle. Christine was tired when we got home and went to bed around 10. I stayed up a little later, as usual, playing around with my computer and a programmed called fetchmail. I went to bed around 2 a.m.
When I came to bed, Christine told me she was feeling some pains. I asked her where and she told her it was around her cervix. I think I may have mumbled something about seeing how it was tomorrow and fell asleep.
At 6:40, Christine claims she tried to wake me up and I just rolled over to the other side of the bed.
At 7:11, she tried to wake me again. I looked at my watch and noticed it was still a few minutes until I usually got up for work and held up my hand and said "Five minutes! Five minutes!"
At 7:13, she shook me again. I looked at my watch and said, "It hasn't been five minutes yet." Finally, she burst out, "I'm hurting!" I asked why. "Contractions!"
I got out of bed and collected information from her. She had been up since 2 a.m. having contractions. Her contractions had been much more tolerable when she walked around, so she had spent most of the previous five hours walking about the house. I asked if I had time to take a shower- she said I did.
After a shower and some breakfast, I called the hospital and asked to be transferred to Labor and Delivery. I told the nurse my wife was in labor and I was calling ahead to let the hospital know we'd probably be coming in at some time today. She asked me for some information. I told her the results of our prenatal visit the week before. She said, "This is great! Nobody ever gives me this much information!" The nurse continued talking to me for a few minutes about how to help Christine with her labor- mostly giving me information I already knew. Finally, when I got off the phone, Christine said, "What we're you talking to her about?!"
We walked around the house some more until Christine started feeling fatigued from all the walking. We discovered if she walked around, we could tell time by her contractions. They were coming about 3 minutes apart. If she sat down or layed down, they would stop for up to seven minutes. Then she would usually get two intense contractions in a row very quickly.
At 9 a.m. I called the doctor's office. The nurse took our information and talked to the doctor. He said to come to his office before we went to the hospital.
Because of the intensity of her contractions when resting, Christine was unsure about sitting in the car. But once she got in the car, she was okay. We got to the doctor's office by 9:30. We were called back at once and the doctor came in quickly and checked her out. She had dilated to 5 centimeters and was in a +2 station. She was ready to go. While he didn't say anything about stripping her membranes, he did say, "Let's make sure this keeps going," and did something that was slightly uncomfortable for Christine. We figured it out later.
Then, it was off to the hospital. Once we were shown to our Labor/Delivery room, the nurse told Christine to take off her clothes and put on a gown. We told the nurse we didn't want an epidural and we didn't want Christine to be on an IV while she labored. We had read this dillutes the concentration of hormones in the blood responsible for labor.
We had figured on Christine walking the halls as she labored, but after the nurse put the external fetal monitor on her, we just ended up staying in the room. Christine labored for about an hour and then began begging me for an epidural. She was getting a little hysterical and I realized that she really hadn't even started doing any of the Bradley relaxation techniques. I told her she was doing just fine and encouraged her to detach herself from what was happening and try to become an observer. She sat on a rocking chair in the corner, closed her eyes, and began rocking. After that, you couldn't tell she was in labor. She just looked like she was sleeping. The nurse that was attending to us didn't know and she kept asking Christine questions and offering to help her move around, unaware that Christine was in the midst of a powerful contraction.
At 11, I saw Christine was laboring fine by herself on the chair and went down to the snack bar and got a salad and a drink. I took it up to the room but I didn't get to eat much salad before Christine's contractions were getting too intense for her to block the pain with her mind. I started rubbing her back -- hard -- during each contraction and ate a little of my lunch in between. I never did finish the salad.
By 12:30, Christine was 9 centimeters dilated and the doctor came and broke her water. He also injected her with novacaine to lessen the pain in the birth canal. She started pushing and was doing very well. Suddenly, the baby's pulse on the monitor dropped to 60 beats per minute -- about half of what was normal. The doctor said the baby was getting annoyed, for what ever reason, and needed to get out quick. He did a midline episiotomy and Christine pushed some more. He could feel the head, but finally had to use forceps to get the baby out. When she came out, the umbilical cord was wrapped over her shoulder, effectively compressing it and slowing her heart rate. But now she was fine. It was 1:02 p.m. We had been at the hospital for three hours.
Christine said she wanted to hold the baby. The doctor cleaned the baby off and handed it to Christine who held it for a moment. The doctor said the baby had a big head. Christine yelled, "Doran! You big head!" Everyone laughed. The nurse from the nursery from then forward simply referred to me as "Big head."
The doctor handed the baby to the nursery nurse who cleaned the baby up some more as I watched. The doctor then proceeded to help Christine birth the placenta and then repaired Christine's episiotomy and tearing. She had a fourth degree tear- it was pretty bad.
Christine was starting to feel very light-headed and tired- as expected. They brought in an IV for her and some orange juice, which were both gladly accepted.
I had heard stories about husbands/coaches getting really disgusted by all the blood and fluid involved in a baby delivery. But I was surprised with how at ease I was. The nurse handed the baby to me to hold while Christine was getting sewn up. I walked over to the side of the bed and noticed the placenta and umbilical cord in a metal bowl on a cart. It was fascinating. Everything was fascinating to me.
After Christine was sewn up (which took some time due to the extent of the tears), we tried to get Maya Louise to breastfeed. She acted as if she had been reading up on this part while she was in the womb and took to it immediately. After she ate for 20 minutes, I took Maya to the nursery and they got Christine ready to move to a recovery room.
In the nursery, Maya received erythromicin in her eyes, was measured, photographed, and had her footprints recorded. The nurse asked me if I wanted her to have a hepatitis vaccine and I said I did. I left shortly after to see Christine. The nursery said they would call when Maya was hungry.
Christine rested the rest of the day. But every time the nurses came to help her into the bathroom to pee, she would nearly pass out. She had two or three IVs and drank several cups of apple juice and water. Finally, later in the evening, she managed to pee. That was good because otherwise she have had to get catheterized.
Our pediatrician came that evening and examined Maya and discovered she had a fractured clavical collarbone- most likely sustained during the birth. He said there's not much they can do about it- it would heal on its own in the next couple of weeks. But she would experience some discomfort in that area.
Maya ate good throughout the night. Christine got sleep between feedings
and took Ibuprofen for the swelling and the pain.
Here are some of the meanings we've found of the name Maya
(and its variations):
What does Maya mean?