Meet Rowan Jeffrey Toler! Our Birth Story

The special day finally arrived with our son's birth. Meet Rowan Jeffrey Toler! He was born just one day after his due date, September 7th, 2009, on Labor Day! He weighed 7 pounds 7 ounces and 19.5 inches long. He came into this world full of life with a sweetness and calm disposition I can't describe only that I felt that also while carrying him for 9 wonderful months. He arrived healthy and with a beautiful, glowing pink complexion. We noticed right away that he had Patrick's mouth and my eyes. It was such an incredible feeling to see him for the first time after wondering for so long what this little one was going to look like and feel like in our arms.

Days leading up to his birth I was going for long nature walks, sometimes two a day. It really helped to move being that I felt so big and also to clear my head and just be in the present moment, preparing for labor. It was also a full moon that weekend of his due date so I was hoping that would help start labor. Sure enough, my water broke and we took the 10:30pm ferry over to Swedish Ballard. The ferry ride was so beautiful. We were parked at the front of the boat and had a view of Puget Sound in the moonlight. We walked around the ferry a couple times talking about how we couldn't believe it was happening. At that time and all through that night I was not feeling any of my contractions even though the nurse said I was having them. We had a pretty good nights sleep even though we were so exited and a little bit restless that I was finally at the hospital to have our baby. The next morning of September 6th, my midwife said my contractions were still slow to progress after so many hours after my water broke and doing lots of walking so she gave me Misoprostol to help induce labor, an oral medication and after four hours no noticeable progress. We opted to take a second dose of Misoprostol instead of Pitocin because I did not want to be hooked to an IV for the rest of my labor, once on Pitocin, you continue with it all the way through labor, so I wanted to give my body another chance to kick in with Miso. That it did! I labored the rest of the day and into the evening of the 6th, even though I was only at 4cm, the nurses and midwives were very encouraging that I could do this, we were hoping at that point to be further along. After many hours and trying the shower and jacuzzi to help with the pain, I got up to 8cm, at that point we needed to give my body a little boost and started with a very small drop of Pitocin which helped a lot to make the contractions progress. I reached the pushing stage and after 3 hours of pushing, we learned that baby was not descending still, he was at -2, he needed to at least be at 0 or +1 and he was occiput posterior which means the back of the head is facing the back of me (posterior) the bony part of the head is pressed against the bony part of the pelvis which often causes prolonged labor like mine. I wasn't feeling any tremendous back pain which can often occur with the baby in this position. Thankfully, baby wasn't in any distress throughout the whole labor, he was stable and strong which helped us focus even more on making it through labor without feeling rushed. After 3 hours of pushing, the nurses and our midwife gave us a couple options to consider. We could try to push for another hour but the chances were pretty slim considering he wasn't yet engaged in my pelvis and his head position still not changing after trying many different positions, the other option was to go ahead with a cesarean. I really felt I could go on another hour if I believed it was going to change his position but our concern was if I continued to push more it would make for a more difficult cesarean surgery being he would be stuck in my pelvis and it looked like we were headed in that direction at that point so I did not want to risk it.

Patrick was an incredible labor partner, he talked me through each contraction for those 24 hours straight while I had my eyes closed focusing inward and listening to him while breathing through the contractions. I kept imagining a wave and also telling myself to surrender to the pain, don't fight it. I felt my best position was to sit upright and be still and just focus. I also liked holding on to Patrick and we slow danced and also rocking back and forth leaning on a labor/medicine ball. When we learned that a cesarean was going to be the outcome after working so hard in this labor without any pain medication, we were so disappointed, I think Patrick took it harder than I did. I saw how far we came and the experience was so hard but we did it the way we hoped, to our birth plan, working beautifully together without pain medication and it really was a memorable experience. The surgery was quick and I didn't feel any pain, I was at peace and calm with it. I couldn't believe that our baby was going to come to us so quickly. The surgery staff made it a celebration and were very joyful. Patrick and my mom were in the room with me and got to take the first pictures of Rowan coming out into the world. That was the only part that I miss not experiencing but they brought him over for me to hold him within a minute. Patrick handed him to me all wrapped up and I gave Rowan a kiss and my love for him and bond was sealed with that kiss and first embrace!