Lila Sophia Morrow
Born August 1, 2011 at 3:16 p.m.
7 pounds, 7.5 ounces, 21 inches
I woke up in the middle of the night on August 1, 2011 at 1:00 a.m. to a small gush of fluid that drenched my shorts enough for me to suspect that my water had broken. I lay in bed quietly for a couple of hours thinking about my next step, but was too excited to sleep. I knew that this would be the day that I would get to meet my baby. At 3:00 a.m. I called the Bryn Mawr Birth Center and paged the midwife on call. I described to her what had happened. She told me to go back to sleep or try to get some rest, to call back at 8:30 in the morning. So I tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn’t. I woke up early, showered, and packed my bags (for the 200th time). I called the Birth Center again around 8:45 a.m. and the midwife told me to come in so that she could confirm or negate my suspicions. I got into the office around 10:00 a.m. The midwife on call did the “litmus” test on me and it was negative for amniotic fluid. But then she used a speculum to collect fluid and when she put it in under the microscope, she confirmed that it was indeed amniotic fluid. This was it! I suddenly felt so unprepared for this even though I had the last nine months to prepare.
Since I was using midwives and planning a completely natural childbirth, I was not admitted to the hospital. The midwife did mention to me that it was OB protocol to admit a patient whose water was broken and start an immediate induction and she said I could choose this option if I wanted. I really wanted to avoid an induction if I could because of my strong desire for a natural childbirth. I expressed this to the midwife and she said that midwives consider it safe to go for about 24 hours with ruptured membranes. However, she said that if I was not in active labor by 1:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning, that I would have to be admitted to the hospital and given Pitocin to jump start my labor. Then she did a non-stress test on the baby. The baby’s heart rate was fine and I had three contractions in about twenty minutes that I didn’t feel at all.
At this point, she told me to go home and wait for contractions to start. In the meantime I could try drinking castor oil, do acupuncture or reflexology. The latter two sounded like a bit of a hassle to me to get an appointment within a few hours, etc., so I decided to go the castor oil route. She handed me two bottles of castor oil, told me to put both of them in a milkshake and drink it all at once.
On my way home I stopped at Hope’s Cookies in Bryn Mawr (right by Villanova and close to where I lived senior year) and ordered a vanilla milkshake (24 ounces!), and put the castor oil in the shake and gulped it down, amidst some curious stares.
I arrived back home around 11:45 a.m. My dad was at our house watching Connor and I told Sean that he should go into work to tie up any loose ends because the baby was going to be born later that day. However, I figured it would take a while, at least four to five hours or so, for the castor oil to take any effect. I still wasn’t feeling any contractions or pain at all. I honestly thought it wouldn’t work at all (just an Old Wives Tale!) and resigned myself to checking into the hospital the next morning to be induced.
I told my dad that I was going to lay down to rest so I went upstairs. Soon thereafter I started to feel sick and began regular trips to the bathroom. I knew this would be a side effect of the castor oil. I did just down several ounces of a powerful laxative. Then around 2:15 I noticed that the stomach pains were coming in waves of about five minutes, then 4 minutes, then three minutes. At 2:30 p.m. I was texting my friends Julie and Maureen and describing “mild pain.” By 2:45 p.m. my pain was getting pretty bad and I called the midwife who told me to come in right away, just based on the sound of my voice.
At that point I was still thinking that I had at least several hours to go, but that was I was feeling was *probably contractions* (I still wasn’t really sure!). Then about five minutes later, things took a turn for the worse. I called Sean and told him to get home immediately. I kept getting on and off the toilet, and then I got on my hands and knees in the bathroom. I kept saying to myself, “I have to get up and put on my pants,” but at that point I was frozen in pain and couldn’t move. Around 3:00 Sean came home, burst into the bedroom and said, “Okay, let’s go!” At this point, I knew that I could never make it to the car. I certainly couldn’t make a half-hour drive. It was too late. I felt the urge to go to the bathroom and I got on the toilet again, and lo and behold, her head was already coming out.
I said, to Sean, “Call 911.” Somehow I managed to drag myself on the bed, and the baby’s whole head came out almost immediately. I could hear the 911 operator barking instructions, and Sean was in a pure panic. I felt that the cord was around once around the baby’s neck. Sean was able to quickly get the cord off of her neck and at that point I knew that I had to get the baby OUT. In one more push, at 3:16 p.m., the baby flew out and Sean caught her. He saw her take her first breath and she began crying immediately. I rubbed the baby’s back for a few seconds before I looked down and noticed that I had a baby girl! (I was totally expecting another boy).
All the while my dad was downstairs and Connor was napping. Neither of them had any idea what was happening! About two minutes later, the paramedics ran in. (This is when my dad realized what was going on). They helped us clear out the baby’s mouth and cut the cord. After about thirty minutes of asking me questions with Sean and I still in complete shock, the paramedics carted me out of my house and into the ambulance. I could see some of my neighbors outside staring in concern at the ends of their driveways and as we drove off; some people ran up to my dad to see what was going on. I asked the paramedics to take me to the Birth Center but they said they had to take me to the closest emergency room so I ended up at Phoenixville Hospital where the on-call OB (Dr. Cohen) delivered the placenta. I didn’t need any stitches (great job, Sean!). The nurse checked out the baby and said that she looked great. They also did extra blood tests on her because of her unplanned home birth. All checked out perfectly. That night we talked about what to name her. Sean said, “I’m sorry, but I already think of her as Lila. I just don’t see her as anything else.” So I said, “Okay, Lila it is.” I ended up staying in the hospital for a day and a half where Baby Lila and I were monitored. Wednesday morning, August third, both Lila and I were discharged and went home to start our lives together as a family of four.
Despite the craziness of her birth, we were both so very lucky that everything turned out as well as it did. Thinking back, if any little thing had gone wrong, we both could have died. Lila and I were lucky that God and her Grandpa Morrow were watching out for us that day. I could never have imagined in a million years something so spectacular, scary and wonderful happening to me all in the same day.
If my daughter's spectacular and miraculous entrance into this world is in any way indicative of what is to come, I can't wait to see what my baby girl's future holds.
