Caitlin: Conquering the Labyrinth of Labor, NICU, and the Early Days of Motherhood

Have you ever felt the indomitable spirit of motherhood? Together, we venture into an emotionally charged story of childbirth, intense labor complexities, and how a brave new mother, Caitlin, weathered the storm. Her journey unfolds, marked by a challenging delivery and an unexpected NICU stay. Caitlin’s story is a testament to the strength of love, resilience, and the enduring spirit of motherhood.

We navigate the labyrinth of Caitlin's childbirth experience as she shares her decision to get an epidural, the challenges she encountered, and the emotional toll of a NICU stay. Coupled with her husband's unyielding support and a unique coping mechanism, Caitlin's narration is both incredibly raw and inspiring. The journey doesn’t end in the delivery room, prepare to be moved as we explore her postpartum recovery, the early hurdles of motherhood, and how she turned her experience into a beacon of support for other parents, through a podcast.

Wrapping up this compelling conversation, we express deep gratitude to our extraordinary guests for their generosity in sharing personal stories and insights. We've touched on a gamut of topics from intense birth experiences to self-care. Want to join the conversation? Come, find us on our Facebook group. Here's to more enriching dialogues in the future. Remember, take care of yourself and stay golden until we meet next time.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Ever wondered what it's like to navigate the uncharted waters of a NICU stay after a challenging delivery? In this episode, our guest Caitlin candidly shares her incredible journey into motherhood, taking you through the unexpected twists and turns that shaped her childbirth experience. Listen in as Caitlin delves into the emotional rollercoaster of a NICU stay, the hurdle she faced, postpartum and the resilience that carried her through From the unpredictability of childbirth to the profound impact of a NICU experience. Caitlin's story is a testament to strength, love and the enduring spirit of motherhood. Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode Referral to have you here with us on the Golden Hour Birth Podcast.

Speaker 1: 0:45

The Golden Hour Birth Podcast a podcast about real birth stories and creating connections through our shared experiences. Childbirth isn't just about the child. It's about the person who gave birth, their lives, their wisdom and their empowerment. We're Liz and Natalie, the Golden Hour Birth Podcast, and we're here to laugh with you, cry with you and hold space for you. Welcome to the Golden Hour Birth Podcast. I am your co-host, lynn, and we also have Natalie here, and today we have on Caitlin. She is a mother to a two-year-old girl and she is also the co-host of a podcast called Everyday Parents. We're excited for Caitlin to share her birth story with you, so we'll get right into it.

Speaker 2: 1:36

Hi, my name is Caitlin. I am a mother to one two-year-old girl who I share with my husband. We live in Michigan together and we are co-hosts of the Everyday Parents A Day in a Life Podcast, where we share the experiences of caregivers and their daily routines raising children. You can find us on Instagram at Everyday Parents Pod, on Facebook Everyday Parents Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. So to jump into my birth story, I'll start at the beginning with pregnancy.

Speaker 2: 2:17

I was 30 years old-ish when we started trying for a baby. It took about nine months for us to get pregnant and I have very regular cycles, so it felt like a very long time, but I know it's within the window of normal and my pregnancy was, I think, pretty average. Definitely had some nausea and weirdness around food in the first trimester, a lot of exhaustion. In the second trimester I had a lot of heartburn kick in to the point where I ended up needing to be medicated, and I also had uncomfortable but not medically concerning swelling in my ankles. So I was in compression socks every day from like 14 weeks through the end of pregnancy. We also moved a couple of times when I was pregnant and my father passed away when I was around six months pregnant, so it was a busy and difficult time, but also exciting. Right with the pregnancy and the moves were because we were going closer to home and me starting a new job that I was really excited for. So all good things in the end I for going into labor. I went past my due date by about four days. My OB was going to induce the following day, which I thought was pretty early, you know, only five days past the due date. But that was kind of their typical operations. They said so, luckily, just because I didn't want the extra stress, I think, of an induction, I ended up going into labor spontaneously four days after my due date, the morning before my induction would have been scheduled.

Speaker 2: 4:12

So I woke up around four in the morning with my water breaking and grabbed some towels, got out of bed. I didn't wake my husband up yet because I figured let him get some more rest. Things weren't like at that go point yet, although I knew, with my water having broke, that I did need to get to the hospital sooner rather than later, because I was positive for Group B Strep, which is a bacteria that is naturally occurring in some people's bodies, and so it was on mine, but it means that you do need, I think, eight hours of antibiotics is what they want to have you on before baby shows up. So, knowing that these were my last couple of hours of freedom, I got up, I took a shower, I got some food and by probably six I woke my husband up and said you know, I think it's happening. It was kind of hard to tell because, other than my water breaking, I had had, you know, spurts of contractions Braxton Hicks contractions for up to 30 minutes an hour for the past couple of weeks. So it was nice to have that additional piece of my water breaking to be like, okay, this is really going to be go time. And in true millennial fashion, I pulled up an app or just a website that had a button on it and every time you press the button it would say another one, in the style of DJ Callid, because he says that in all of his you know early mid 2000s hits. So that was how I would let my husband know that another contraction was happening was DJ Callid would come into the room and say another one. And that was our fun little tidbit.

Speaker 2: 6:04

From early labor. I, from one of my labor classes. I had heard that having a comb some people like to hold on to during labor, and so I grabbed one of those in my kit and that ended up being one of my favorite things that I brought with me to the hospital as, as things progressed so around seven about three hours in my contractions were happening regularly, for I don't even remember now how long they say they're supposed to be for when you go, but you know for that amount of time a minute or whatever it is. So the hospital is like half a mile away, so we drive up and go to check in. They take me back by myself for a while. I had one high blood pressure reading, so everybody was kind of on high alert when I was first getting checked in and I was also throwing up as I was getting checked in. Just the pain and everything that my body was going through was making me nauseous. So I threw up a little bit at the beginning there and things were starting to get pretty intense on the pain scale for me even during check in, because I was group B strep positive and because my water had broken, they didn't want to do a lot of cervical checks, so I think I was around a centimeter when I checked in and then they sent me to my delivery room. I had a wonderful nurse there. She was just starting her shift and she was checking in getting me comfortable.

Speaker 2: 7:46

I was using the exercise ball quite a bit and I was definitely having some back labor as well, so it started to get pretty painful pretty quickly for me. In addition to that exercise ball, heat packs were really helpful on my low back to kind of help that pain. I was walking around a little bit but really was not into moving very much, which was kind of surprising to me. I really enjoy movement as hobbies in terms of working out. I like to lift weights, I do yoga, I run, and so I thought that I would want to be moving and in all these different kinds of positions and ultimately when contractions hit I just wanted to be still and I just wanted to get through them. I was ramping up pretty quickly. I felt like in pain, but I also felt like I wasn't far enough along to be asking for an epidural until my pain started to get around what I described as a seven or an eight. I was just trying to think ahead because I knew that getting an epidural would take a long time.

Speaker 2: 9:02

Around 11 in the morning I asked for an epidural and they were like are you sure You're still up and moving around? So we're not sure if you need it yet, essentially. But I People are coming in and bringing me the baby out. I knew I needed it so. So by around one in the afternoon the anesthesiologist was in to do my epidural. I really don't like needles. I didn't love the idea of an epidural, so I was pretty nervous about this part. But honestly at that point I was like yes, give it to me, I need it. So my pain then was at a nine. It was the most intense kind of pain I'd ever felt and as they were giving me the epidural they had to pause a couple of times as contractions hit so that I could kind of get my bearings, grip my comb very hard and ride through that wave.

Speaker 2: 9:59

Once the epidural was placed it kind of only worked on one side and I was still having pain in like a seven range. The nurse noticed this and said that's not quite right. Like you're not as at ease as we would expect for women who are having the epidural. So they called the anesthesiologist back in. They gave me like an additional dose. They didn't have to replace anything, but they gave me extra medication and gave me my own button to essentially keep things moving. So after that my pain was pretty much gone. I took a little bit of a nap. I was in bed. They would kind of rotate me every half hour or so. My contractions were still coming regularly and things were feeling pretty good. So eventually time starts to run together a little bit. But at some point after I got my epidural and it was actually working, they came to check my cervix again and I was pretty far along, like seven centimeters or something. So they were encouraging. Things are moving along well, feeling pretty excited, and we just kind of kept going for several hours.

Speaker 2: 11:26

After that, around 6.30, my nurse was nearing the end of her shift the one who had been with me all day. My OB, who I'd seen before, was also ending her shift and leaving, and so a new midwife, who I did not know, was coming in to handle my labor, which was fine. I had gone to a very large OB practice and I knew that any one of a number of doctors could be my delivering doctor. I just didn't care so much if I had a relationship with this person, or not really. I trusted them all and figured that things were gonna turn out. So they kept asking me if I was feeling any pressure, and I really wasn't, because my epidural was working very well.

Speaker 2: 12:22

At this point I started to wean myself off of my extra meds button and, luckily, had relative control of my legs, like they were pretty impressed with how well I could roll and move as they asked me to. But I wasn't feeling anything, and I know sometimes folks with epidurals talk about feeling like a ring of fire or something and luckily for me none of that was happening. So by around seven the whole team is in there and they're getting ready to have me push. My husband is there holding one leg he's great in medical situations, by the way, which was super helpful and a nurse was holding another leg. My nurse, whose shift was about to end, said that she was gonna stay with me, which I so appreciated, and I also had a couple of new nurses in there and some medical students coming in and out from time to time, so it was a busy space.

Speaker 2: 13:26

I did ask to have the mirror placed so that I could watch during the pushing, and I started pushing and the baby's moving and everything's doing well. She's coming pretty quick, from what I understand, for a first-time delivery, I never did end up feeling the pressure that indicated that I should push, but I could definitely feel when the contractions were happening, so I just worked with those. I was surprised. My team told me to hold my breath, which didn't feel natural, but it was working. Baby was on her way, we could see her head, I could reach down and touch her and eventually, though, her heart rate started to accelerate or decelerate or whatever it does when the alarms start going off and the midwife said alright, I need you to get her out in this push or else I'm going to have to cut you open, by which she meant an appeasiatomy, I was pretty sure. So we got her out in the next push, and the midwife I was with had me reach down and actually like catch her and pull her out once her shoulders were through and I put her on my chest and she let out a cry, but not very loud.

Speaker 2: 14:56

So the nurses started to get concerned. It turned out that she had fluid in her lungs and she was basically rushed off into the in room incubator. The nurses were surrounding her getting her some oxygen. There was potential concern that there could have been meconium in that fluid, although the nurses were saying they really didn't think that was the case. Meanwhile, I'm being stitched up. My husband doesn't know where to go, whether to be standing with me, who's like sitting there bleeding? I delivered the placenta and then the midwife is stitching me up, for which I asked the mirror to be moved at that point because I didn't need to see that.

Speaker 2: 15:40

I had two first degree tears, which are the least severe, and eventually the nurses are saying that the baby's going to go to the intensive care unit and so my husband goes with her. He kind of like they were like, well, you can go, and he looked at me like well, I don't know what to do, and I was like go, someone should be with her. Then everybody's gone. Everybody's gone from the room. The baby's gone, my husband's gone, the nurse who stayed over on her shift is gone. It's just me and two other nurses.

Speaker 2: 16:18

The cafeteria was closed at that point so they could only get me like a sandwich from the vending machine. They're trying to take me to the bathroom, but I can't go yet. So I'm getting catheters. I'm getting just all the uncomfortable sort of poking and prodding that happens after labor. Then they wheel in a breast pump for me to pump with. I'd actually pumped once at home before, which I was glad that I had because it was just nice to figure that out in like a non stressful situation. I pumped quite a lot of colostrum, so that was encouraging.

Speaker 2: 17:04

And then after a couple of hours and my husband's texting me a couple of pictures of our baby and the incubator, she's got an IV in, which took a long time for them to get in. She's got a feeding tube. I luckily was never worried for her. I knew that her. It just didn't seem like something that I needed to be worried about, just like from the way that the nurses were reacting and from the reports that I was getting from my husband. But it was still tough being there on my own and without her.

Speaker 2: 17:47

And then they rolled me out of the delivery ward to my recovery room and you ring a bell for the baby's birth as you leave delivery. I remember it felt so bizarre doing that and not having my baby with me. And so then I get into recovery and kind of go through that whole rigmarole get my meds. They want me to pump every two or three hours, so they bring me all those parts and I didn't realize until later just how difficult it was to not have her in the room with us. There's just so little time as a patient yourself in the hospital when you're recovering from labor, to be able to even make it to NICU. So it was difficult.

Speaker 2: 18:51

Eventually my husband came back down and I was ready to go to visit her and we got to hold her and I honestly don't know if I remember much about like that first encounter. It was a little strange, like you have to wash your hands for three hours before you get in there, you have to have masks on, because we were in NICU and I just remember feeling so sad for her because it just felt like this shouldn't be what her first experience in the world is like. Her IV looked so painful, her feeding tube looked so painful and of course I'm so glad that she was getting the care that she needed. She also had a CPAP machine on for that first night. So it was just a lot to see her all hooked up to these tubes and these wires and not be able to breastfeed and not get the golden hour and I'm so thankful that I never was worried about her survival.

Speaker 2: 20:06

But all the extra rigor removal with NICU was just difficult. So we spent the next couple of days alternating between my room so that I could get rest and recovery and meds and meals which all always took a long time and NICU with her. I was pumping every two to three hours, but my milk hadn't really come in yet. So outside of my first pumping session, where I had quite a bit, I didn't have enough to give her. So we ended up supplementing with donor milk and eventually with formula. During our stay there I ended up being a wild overproducer once we got home and my milk did come in. But it was just stressful to feel like this is one more thing I'm doing wrong on top of everything else that's wrong with her, which again didn't seem like that much, but she was still in NICU Even when I was discharged she still was not.

Speaker 2: 21:18

We wanted to stay with her. Obviously we wanted to bring her home with us when we went, and so we were able to be transferred to this room next to the NICU that is for parents to stay with their babies, but it's like a windowless room. There's no bathroom with it I lose access to meals and it just was like a cramped and weird place to spend the night. There was no bed in there, just one of those couches that the men always complain about being so uncomfortable to sleep on while the woman is in labor and delivery. But we did it. We made it she would not sleep in her bassinet at all, or her incubator at all, once she was in that little room with us. So we were basically alternating, staying up and holding her and trying to figure it all out. She was feeding tubes, she was off her CPAP I'm pretty sure she was off her IV as well at that point, just hooked up to a bunch of alarms that were really annoying, and the nurses had been telling us for at least a day like oh yeah, she looks good, I'm sure she'll be discharged any moment now. And then the doctors just kept keeping her for the results of one more test, one more check of her glucose, or to make sure that her labs came back clear of infection in the lungs, and I appreciate their thoroughness, but I wanted to go home, I wanted to take my baby home and eventually, after we stayed just one night in the weird windowless room. She was able to come home.

Speaker 2: 23:01

Postpartum, I think, was pretty typical for me. It was painful. I had my rotating stock of meds that I was taking regularly. I had stitches that hurt very badly every time I went to the bathroom as they healed and I was breastfeeding nonstop around the clock. I remember my husband and I looked at each other at like day 10. And we were both sitting on the couch and just reaching across to barely hold hands and we were like this is intense. And he was like, should I get a vasectomy? And I was like I don't know. I've been thinking about that too. So it was a lot those first several days, weeks, the newborn phase, just like, was not it for me, I can see a friend's newborn and be very excited for them and what they're going to experience in the future. Seeing a newborn does not make me get baby fever at all, but we made it through and as we made it through, we realized that hearing about these experiences from other parents of like what they're going through in a day, you know, especially like one of the things that I experienced a lot was that sense of dread or deep sadness in the evenings, and I've heard a lot of other moms say that now Hearing those kinds of stories was really encouraging to us and that was where our podcast kind of was born the idea for it came and eventually then turned into the actual podcast. So it's meant to create that sense of solidarity about these kinds of experiences.

Speaker 2: 24:46

One thing that I was surprised by postpartum was how long it took my tears to really heal. I could easily feel the scar tissue on them for at least six months postpartum and I was not prepared for that. It made me a little bit nervous. The stitches healing also at one point felt like it might have been like a prolapse because, I think because of the swelling. So I went to see the doctor for that at some point postpartum and I also went for a couple of lactation consultants because I had some blocked ducks and some blocked ducks and it was just pretty painful for me to breastfeed in the beginning, at least for the first like 30 seconds or so, as baby got her latch. Luckily she latched well. She did very well with breastfeeding, to the point where she refused to take a bottle for her entire infancy. So luckily I work from home and my husband was a stay at home dad. So we were able to navigate that challenge as well and she's had no other health problems since then, since her stay in the NICU. So we're very grateful and we're very lucky.

Speaker 2: 26:05

Reflecting on my experience, I don't know that there's much that I would have done differently. I think I would tell myself to trust myself and not doubt that it was time to get the epidural. I knew my body and I knew what was happening and I knew when I was reaching a threshold of pain that just wasn't going to be productive or helpful for me to work with. As far as postpartum and navigating early phases with a newborn, I would say that my biggest advice to a no parent is that everything changes, everything is a phase and at the beginning the changes happen so quickly, but time also feels like it's going so slowly, so it's tough to navigate. And I don't mean it in a toxic positivity kind of way of like oh, everything changes, this is just a phase, and joy how beautiful it is while it lasts. I mean it in a way of like you can survive. This might suck right now and it truly sucks at some points, and that's valid and know that it's not going to be that forever. I'm surprised also by how emotional and in some ways, empowering it feels to tell the full birth story from start to finish.

Speaker 2: 27:35

I think a lot of features of my birth story were very positive. I had great support. I had great medical care, my husband was a great support and, even though I wouldn't choose, obviously, to do a NICU stay again, my baby was always well taken care of. At least there was a NICU in the same hospital. I can't imagine if she'd had to be like transferred across town. So overall, I know that I was very lucky in the way that I experienced my birth and even postpartum. While I struggled I wasn't having like postpartum depression or postpartum anxiety. So so thank you, liz and Natalie, for telling these stories and inviting me to tell my story as well. I hope it helps someone navigate at least some part of the pregnancy or birth or postpartum process, and I'm always happy to chat more. You can find me, like I said, at Everyday Parents Pod on Instagram is where we are most active.

Speaker 1: 28:47

Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Golden Hour Birth Podcast. We hope you've enjoyed our discussion and found it insightful and beneficial. Remember, the Golden Hour Birth Podcast is made possible by the support of listeners like you. If you appreciate the content we bring you each week, consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast platform or sharing the show with your friends and family. Your support helps us reach more people and continue creating valuable episodes. If you have any questions, suggestions or topics you'd like us to cover in future episodes, we'd love to hear from you. You can reach us on our website, www. Goldenhourbirthpodcast, or connect with us on social media. We value your feedback and want to make sure that we're delivering the content you want to hear. Before we sign off, we'd like to express our gratitude to our incredible guests who joined us today. We are honored that they trust us enough to be so open and vulnerable.

Speaker 1: 29:45

We're grateful for their time and willingness to share their stories with us If you're interested in taking the conversation further with us, join us on our Facebook group, the Golden Hour Birth Circle. We'll be back next week with another exciting episode, so be sure to tune in. Until then, stay golden and remember to take care of yourself. We'll catch you on the next episode of the Golden Hour Birth Podcast. Bye.