Colin Thomas Rendleman
August 25th, 2004 - 9:40 p.m. - 6lbs 4 oz, 18.75" long
Pregnancy with Colin was a breeze. No morning sickness, no complications, nothing unusual. It was as my OB said "the perfect pregnancy". I think I gained like 32 pounds. He was due on August 27th I think or something like that. My OB was going to be leaving the country for Africa on the 27th and told me that if I wanted him to deliver the baby, I'd have to be induced on the 26th. Remember that I lived in a small town then and you saw your OB every time, and that was who delivered your baby no matter what time of day or night it was unless they were on vacation. :-P I didn't want to be induced, so I started walking like mad on a Monday afternoon, Aug. 23rd. I had a few contractions but nothing major. They were still kinda happening the next day so I stayed home from work and walked all day long. I walked Walmart and Lowes because it was HOT outside and I didn't want to have a heat stroke. Contractions picked up, got into a good pattern, and Tuesday night I didn't sleep well. I was definitely in labor but not to the point of going to the hospital. By Wednesday at lunch I had had enough and went to the hospital. They of course put me in triage and told me that they'd be in to check me but I'd probably be sent home. I tried to tell them that I was definitely in labor, but being a first timer they didn't really believe me. Twenty minutes later I was admitted and put in a room. I had really wanted to have a totally natural birth with him and did not plan to have an epidural or any pain meds. I labored for hours and coped fairly well with things. My labor kinda stalled at 8cm and my water still hadn't broken. I have no idea what time it was then, late afternoon or early evening. The nurses kept asking the OB if they could break my water and he kept saying to wait. After an hour or so of being "stuck" and being very tired, a nurse suggested that maybe if I got up and walked around my water would break and I'd be ready to push. That was when I lost all concentration and was on my knees by the bed. She said that it could be hours more and I gave in and got an epidural because I didn't think I could handle hours more like that. Hours later when they finally were able to break my water, I immediately went "complete" and was told not to push until the Dr. got there. Had they broken my water earlier when they asked to, it might have all been over alot sooner and I might not have gotten the epidural. So here we were, about 9:00 at night, and the OB shows up. I should add here that he got up at like 4 in the morning, so it was really late for him. They turned off the epidural and I started pushing. I still couldn't really feel a thing, and I wasn't making tremendous progress. It was determined that the baby was face up and stuck behind the arch in my pelvis. During the next contraction (apparently while I wasn't looking) I got an episiotomy and Colin was delivered with forceps. While this wasn't my ideal delivery, it was better than alot of other things that could have happened and I vowed that next time I wouldn't have an epidural.
Jonas Graham Rendleman
April 13th, 2006 - 9:52 a.m. - 5 lbs, 5 oz 18.5" long
Much like my first pregnancy, pregnancy with Jonas was a breeze, sorta. My due date was toward the end of May, I don't remember the day. No morning sickness, everything looked normal, until my 20 week ultrasound. While checking the placenta they said that it looked a little low but that they weren't worried about it because it usually looked a little low early on and that as pregnancy progressed, they anticipated that it would move up and all would be well. A couple months later at my next ultrasound it was determined that the placenta had not moved up, but rather that I had complete previa and that I would have to have a c-section, there was no other way. I was devastated. I felt cheated and robbed. This was supposed to be my redemption birth! No one in my family had ever had a c-section. I felt like I had failed somehow, and the thought of entering the hospital fine and leaving having been cut open was shocking and scary to me. I called my OB and talked to the sweet little nurse who told me that everything would be fine and that it happened to alot of people and that I shouldn't worry unless I had bleeding and that if that happened I needed to go to the hospital immediately. About two weeks later, I started having bleeding. I was admitted to the hospital and monitored. They gave me two steroid injections in the hip over the next two days. Let me tell you, those things hurt! They said that I was having contractions (which I never felt) and that they wanted to be safe and give me the injections to help his lung development in case he was born early. I was about 7 weeks out from my due date at that point. They planned to delay delivery for a total of 4 weeks. I stayed in the hospital on near total bed rest for two weeks. I was allowed to get up to go to the bathroom and to take a quick shower. Other than that I was to stay in bed and be monitored as certain intervals during the day. The contractions were still there and I was given meds to try to stop them. Those meds knocked me out and I basically lost 2 weeks of my life. I had pretty severe bleeding one night which earned me a night nearly upside down and it was determined that I wasn't going to make it the 4 weeks so they set a c-section date of April 17th. After one more light bleeding ordeal, my c-section date of April 17th was moved to April 13th with a 2 hour warning. The OB came in and said we'd waited long enough and if we continued to push things, the chance that I could bleed out increased and one or both of us could die. Nuff said, no? He said I should call my husband and get him there asap and then he looked at his watch and said he had 2 surgeries scheduled and then he'd be ready for me. "You have... 2 hours." I was a little sad because the 17th is my great grandmother's birthday and she was so excited that he was going to be born as her "present". Instead, he was born on my mother's birthday so I guess it all worked out.
Kinsley Claire Rendleman
March 23rd, 2010 - 12:20 p.m. - 7 lbs, 4 oz, 19.5" long
This time, pregnancy dealt me a dose of morning sickness/queasiness. I was glad when it went away after a few months. We planned to VBAC instead of having a repeat c-section and searched for an OB that would support that. Not as easy as it sounds. We interviewed a few and finally settled on one that didn't seem like a freaky idiot. She wasn't hugely wild about the whole VBAC thing, but at least she agreed to let me try. She kinda gave us this scary picture of things that could happen and asked if we were willing to risk that. We said yes and went on. Pregnancy went well, but I must admit that I was a little in shock when they told us we were having a girl. I sat semi depressed for 2 days wondering what in the world I was going to do with a girl. It seems silly now, but at the time I was a disaster. It just wasn't what I was expecting. I finally just told myself to get a grip and that it would be ok and I moved on. By the time she was born I had somehow found my inner girliness and it was all good. The only strange thing during pregnancy was that she stayed breech way past the normal time. I started going to the chiropractor to help turn her, which not only made me feel better and relieved some pain and discomfort, but really did allow her to turn around week 36. I guess I can't say for certain that the chiropractor helped turn her as I did other crazy things that I read out of desperation because breech meant a definite c-section. I laid on the ironing board upside down on an incline, I laid on the stairs facing down, once I even stood on my head. Fast forward to week 40 of pregnancy. The OB had been checking me for 2 weeks and apparently I was showing slight signs of getting ready but not progressing very fast. I persuaded her to let me go another week which she semi reluctantly agreed to. I was seriously hoping go into labor since she had told me that they couldn't induce me because it would increase the chance of uterine rupture. She was also concerned about the age of the placenta because at some point it starts to not function as well. Interesting that you can make a special "single use throw away organ". I'd like to add here that I did research VBAC some and was not totally accepting when she told me things. I can read and have an opinion too. I went back the following week, was still at the same level of progression and she schedule me for a c-section the next day. Again, I was totally devastated. I didn't want a c-section but who was I to go against medical advice? I mean, she was the Dr., she had let me go an extra week so she wasn't just gung ho about the section, and she did seem pretty sad for me that I hadn't gone into labor and was going to have a c-section. We ate Chili's that night while I sulked and stewed over this decision. No one stays pregnant forever though she made it seem like some people would never go into labor on their own. The next day, against my better judgement, I showed up at the hospital as instructed for a repeat c-section for no reason other than being "past due".
Henry Rendleman VII
November 30th, 2012 - 5:12 a.m. - 8 lbs, 8 oz, 20.75" long
Once again, morning sickness and queasiness struck with this pregnancy. I think it may have been worse than the time before. I discovered that if I took Prilosec every morning the feeling was seriously curbed so I took it every morning for 3 months. I started out seeing the same OB as before. I told her at our first appointment that I wanted to VBAC. Her response was NOT as open as before. She gave us a horrible doom and gloom picture of things that could happen painted in the most negative way possible and presented as though those things happened most of the time. I knew that if I continued to see her, the outcome would be the same as before. I was determined not to have a c-section or be pressured to have one and to handle this pregnancy my way. I asked around and finally found a midwife that supported VBAC. Now I had been against midwives until this point. My theory was that if you had to have a c-section, some stranger would deliver your baby. I decided that that didn't matter since the OBs here deliver on an on call basis so you probably won't get your OB to deliver you anyway. I was also desperate to have someone support me in my decision to VBAC and not badger me the whole time and try to scare me into doing things their way. I jumped ship and crossed over into midwife land half way through pregnancy after Henry and I had a consult appointment with them and were given a totally different picture painted in bright hopeful colors with the understanding that the doom and gloom things could happen, but almost never do. The whole uterine rupture thing seems to be the greatest fear of all medical personnel with regard to VBAC as that is a worst case scenario. Henry asked the midwife if she's ever seen it happen. She said no and he asked her how long she'd been at the practice. Ten years. In ten years she had never had it happen. That was good enough for us.
The middle 3 months of pregnancy were great and then the last 3 months struck. I knew that he was going to be bigger because I had discomfort symptoms way sooner than with any other pregnancy. I felt full of baby as ridiculous as that sounds. I had back pain that wouldn't go away and my chiropractor determined that I had a pinched nerve because of the way he was laying. I tried massage pillows, hot showers, sitting on an exercise ball, sitting in my office chair backwards, nothing really helped for long. You'd think that sitting or laying down would have helped but that actually made things worse. It felt like it shoved him further into my rib area, not fun. I was sure that he would be early. I hoped for it, I prayed for it, I just knew that the 4th baby was sure to be early. Given the fact that the 3rd baby was late, I'm not really sure why I thought that. The midwife said that I was good to go until 42 weeks. Again, surely I won't go that long... We went in at 40 weeks, saw someone different, and left with a few questions that we couldn't really get her to answer. I had no idea that midwives had to have a Dr. write the order to induce you, I had always been told that I couldn't have pitocin with a VBAC and yet this midwife just said that wasn't true, I had been told that they would try to induce me with non drug methods, and again, she was telling me that they wouldn't as they were unreliable. I came home and sent "my" midwife an email asking what was up. The long and the short of it was that we were to come in for another appointment at 41 weeks and she'd square away the details. Now it was getting interesting.
We went in for an ultrasound before our 41 week appointment. They wanted to check the fluid level and placenta function and make sure that he was practice breathing and had a good heartbeat etc. The fluid looked a little cloudy, but other than that things looked great. We went to the appointment with the midwife and she checked me to see if I was progressing which I was. YAY! She entered information from the ultrasound along with information from my exam into this calculator that they have to guess at the success of VBAC, 87% was our score. She seemed pretty happy with that. We discussed induction and such and she said that she would give all of the information they collected that day to their physician and get back to me with his/her decision. She said that worst case scenario we would have a c-section the following Friday because that was 42 weeks and they didn't want to push things. I was a little sad about that but thought that since I was progressing there was no way I'd make that date anyway. She stripped my membranes in the office before we left just for good measure and as an attempt to speed progression, said she'd call us as soon as she got the info from the Dr., and we came home feeling pretty good about things.
The plot thickens now. Our midwife called us back that evening with info from the Dr. It was Tuesday night the 27th. She told us that the Dr. wanted to schedule a c-section for Thursday morning the 29th and that there would be no inducing, just the section. We were supposed to be there at 8:30 a.m. and the surgery would start at 10:30 a.m. and we'd be done. I was not happy. I was furious and disappointed. How could this be happening again? We'd worked so hard to avoid this, waited so long to try it, we'd switched Dr.s and gotten opinions and here we were again. This was not what we had planned! I felt a little let down by my midwife honestly, but she has to follow their physician's final say so it's not her fault. I sat in my office and sulked about this for a long time. I just couldn't wrap my head around it, I felt blind sided just like last time. Here I was at the end, I'd waited extra time and now someone was calling time. All I could think was that I didn't want to do it. That's when it hit me, I didn't want to have a c-section and they couldn't make me! I talked to Henry about it and we decided that we would be good waiting until Monday the 3rd but no later. If we still hadn't had him by then, we'd give in for the c-section. I called the midwife Wednesday morning and told her that we had decided not to have the c-section. She didn't really know what to say. I said that I wanted to come in for an appointment on Friday to be checked again and that we would have a c-section Monday if he wasn't born before. I figured that if they were willing to cheat me out of a day due to scheduling, they could give me a few extra. She then told me some doom and gloom about my ultrasound results in my opinion to scare me into going in Thursday morning. She said that there was meconium in the fluid and that the fluid level was really low and that my placenta looked like it was wearing out. She said that she'd checked the schedule for c-section dates and there weren't any at least through Tuesday and that I was pretty much on my own since I was going against medical advice and if I wanted a c-section on Monday I'd just have to go to the hospital, request one and wait. I contacted a friend who contacted her midwife and the results were discussed. The opinion of that midwife was that all of my results were normal given the stage of my pregnancy and she didn't see any reason to rush into a section. I was having contractions Wednesday night, but they were all over the place. I took that as a good sign since some is better than none.
Now we get down to business. Thursday morning about 4 a.m. I started having contractions that woke me up. By 5 a.m., they were waking Henry up. We monitored them for an hour and a half, he let the office know that he wouldn't be in, and we labored on. I have to say that this labor was different than my first labor, this one was more intense. Some would say that I just didn't remember my first one so well, but I assure you that I would have remembered pain like that. I still wasn't totally convinced that I was really in true labor until about lunch. By 3:30 I had had enough and we went to the hospital. I have to say that I don't feel that I handled labor all that well this time. I'm not sure if practice would have made a difference or not, but we'll never know. I can tell you that I'm pretty sure that the entire 4th floor of the hospital knew that I was in serious labor a few hours after we got there. I hate to admit that I was "that girl", but I totally was. It wasn't so much the abdominal contractions that got me, it was a pelvic pressure. I was convinced for many hours that he was going to shoot out like a rocket. I have to say that that is the most intense pain I have ever felt and I am glad that we had already decided that this was our last baby because there is no way that I would voluntarily sign up for that again. The labor and pain were pretty intense and I'm pretty sure I had been asking Henry about pain meds for a while, but being true to his word he coached me off the ledge multiple times because I made him promise that he wouldn't let me give in and get an epidural. We decided to try nitrous as a pain control method but I seriously hated that. After a while longer, somewhere around hour 13 of labor, I had had enough and literally screamed and begged for an epidural. I'm not proud of that, but sometimes you have to know your limits. The nurses left the room and Henry and I discussed whether or not that's really what we wanted to do. The midwife said we were progressing but that it was going to be a while longer and the epidural might relax the situation enough so that labor would progress faster. I was fine with that and about 4 contractions later the pain fairies came to help me out.
After a few more hours, the midwife checked me out again. We discovered 3 things, 1. My water had broken at some point. 2. What water was left was clear (remember the doom and gloom report?) and 3. The baby was face up (again?? what is it with these boys?). She decided to have me lay on my side with one leg propped up on the tray thing to see if he would turn and come on down like he was on The Price Is Right. I'm not sure how long I laid there like that but she came in at about 4 a.m. and checked the situation again. He was still face up, but conditions were right to push! This ordeal was almost over. He was still at a zero station so she said we'd do some "warm up pushes" to get him moving before we went to full on pushing. My contractions were about one and a half to two minutes long which got me an extra set of 10 count pushing most of the time. That's 40 seconds of pushing with a few seconds to breathe in between. Henry was a great coach and about half way through the hour that I spent pushing the midwife asked him if he wanted to deliver the baby. It only took him a few seconds to say yes and she gave him instructions about what he would do when. A few more contractions later she told him to put on his gloves and stand at the end of the bed with his hands clasped so that the gloves would remain sterile. A few more contractions and his little head appeared. I had had them put a mirror at the end of the bed when I started pushing so that I could see my progress. I had also read in books that the head rotates as it emerges but I didn't think I'd actually see that happen. First the crown, then his forehead. She told me not to push as his head rotated and his little cheeks and chin appeared. I hung out for the rest of the contraction while she explained to Henry what he would do. She told him to hold the baby's head under the cheeks and that I would push and he would gently pull to deliver the shoulders. One more push and he was out! Henry put him on my chest for some skin to skin contact while the nurses roughed him up a bit to get him breathing well. The midwife clamped the cord a little bit later and Henry got to cut it, why not since he'd just delivered the baby? After delivering the placenta, I asked if it looked like it was old and failing. The midwife kinda giggled as she said "no, it looks fine". I had no stitches with this delivery. YAY!
To sum it all up, here's how I feel. I'm not sorry that I changed Dr.s or went against medical advice. I do feel like a bit of a rebel for standing up for myself and saying no to something that I didn't feel was right. I knew things were happening and that I just needed more time, much like animals "just know". I'm glad that I trusted my instincts and had limits. I'm glad that I got an epidural so that I could enjoy the birth that I always wanted. Pain free childbirth that you still participate in is good and I don't feel like a sell out. I feel that I "experienced" all I wanted to experience. Do I feel a little cocky for having a successful VBAC when everyone said that it was too risky at the end? Maybe, but I had God on my side and he had it all under control. The people who were supposed to be at the birth to make it happen were there. I had never met any of them before but it didn't matter, and they have a special place in my heart for trying their best and helping me out and making it happen. They didn't give up on me even when things were unclear. I feel that I was in the right place to "try something risky" because if Vanderbilt can't fix you, it's probably your time anyway. I'm also thankful for a couple of friends, Melissa and Hillary, who shared their knowledge and opinions on the matter. I couldn't have made the decision to "rebel" without their support. Mostly I'm grateful for Henry because he stood by me and stood up for me through it all. He was always super supportive and never left me hanging. I'm glad that he got his son and got to carry on the family name. I'm glad that he got the opportunities that he missed with Kinsley, like coaching me through labor and delivery and seeing the miracle of birth rather than the miracle of modern medicine. I'm excited that he got the unusual opportunity to deliver him himself. How many guys can say that they delivered their own baby? I'm thankful that we shared such an awesome bonding experience that we will have forever, and I'm glad that we did it our way. ~Kellie~
I love the birth stories!! My best birth was my all natural birth with Alana. My two c sections with the twins then Zeke were traumatic and frightening. I'm glad all went well for Henry and how cool that big Henry got to catch him. :)
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