For years, I have spoke of documenting our life on a blog to keep family and friends current on where we are and what we are doing. With the birth of Kai Victor here is the birth of my blog.
Our due date was May 11, 2011. We moved into our house in Waialua, HI home of the world's best sugar on March 29 giving us several weeks before the arrival of the baby to settle in. We quickly unpacked learned the quickest way to the beach and found all the farmers markets. However, May 11 came and went. I continued to go to visits at Tripler Army Medical Center and they spoke of induction. My plan was to have a natural childbirth, I consulted my doula and scheduled an appointment for acupuncture which worked for many of her mothers.
Making the appointment for acupuncture was all I needed. That night May 18 Victor and I had our last meal without a baby at the local Thai place, I felt some contractions and hoped they would stick around. They did. The whole night I was up using the techniques my doula had taught me and managing the pain. At 4am I called my doula and let her know this was for real. By 8, after rush hour, I felt ready to go to Tripler and meet my baby.
We were admitted to Labor and Delivery as I was already 8cm dilated. By 10 i was fully dilated waiting for my water to break and pushing. Victor and Sharon my doula were huge assets in helping me to manage the pain. Baby was head down and looked good and was looking like he/she would be able to come out. By 5pm, baby's head remained turn and unable to make any descent. I was utterly exhausted, they started fluids which gave me some more energy to push and meet my baby. Baby had other plans. The midwives suggested an epidural and pitocin at this point something I had really wanted to avoid. In my exhaustion, we decided to heed their advice and I was administered an epidural at 6pm and pitocin following, I felt like a new person but my contractions slowed as did baby's heart rate despite my continued pushing. At that point, it was recommended that I have an emergency c section. I was disheartened but wanted to meet my baby and consented to the surgery.
They wheeled me into surgery with my doctor being about 30 years old and put up the curtain and started surgery. Victor joined me and moments later I hear "It's a Boy", Victor was able to cut the cord and hold our baby. He brought him to me, tears of joys came to me as I touched the baby, kissed his chubby cheeks and felt the overwhelming sense of love for him. Victor and Baby left the room and I was left to be patched up.
That is when the surgery team realized they were short a pair of scissors. No one could find the scissors. They ordered an x-ray machine by brought in. They continued to sew me up despite the missing scissors. A solider wheeled in the x ray machine, and had difficulty setting it up but finally succeed. All I wanted was my baby that i was willing to have the scissors in my abdomen. They finally brought me to recovery where Victor was holding our baby skin to skin. I finally held my baby was somewhat successfully able to breast feed.
Our dear friends Meg and Travis were waiting for us at this point and both were able to pop in and wish their congrats to us and our son. 20 minutes later they had the results of the x ray and the scissors were not in the x ray. We will see what happens when I go to the airport. By 11:30 we were finally transferred up to the mother baby unit, where Victor promptly fell asleep at a table while I went through their orientation.
It was not until much debate that we finally named our son, Kai Victor.
