November's Story

The Birth of November Helena Johnson

Wednesday, February 15th, 2012 - 11:39 PM

9lbs 6oz 21"

Delivered by Martin Meinig, M.D.

It started on Valentine’s Day.  Kim had an early appointment with her OB/GYN that morning.  Elyas woke Kim up at 5AM; little did we know that she really could have used the extra sleep that morning.   Kim’s friend picked her up for her appointment because Chris had a class.  Kim arrived to the appointment kind of late, Chris had forgotten to leave her Elyas’s car seat, Kim’s last pair of pants that fit her ripped as she was putting them on, and her ride was a little late too; things weren’t going very smoothly.  When the nurse checked her blood pressure it was pretty high.  She looked at Kim with concern and said, “You may be having that baby today.”  When the doctor entered he had the same look of concern on his face.  He proceeded to tell her that she had preeclampsia and that we could no longer wait for November to come on her own, it was just too dangerous for both the baby and Kim to not act immediately.  Kim went straight from the appointment to the hospital and began the process of induction.

They started out by giving Kim a medicine that would soften her cervix.  The next step was to see what happened between then and the next morning; we were hoping that the medicine would put Kim into labor on Valentine’s Day, that way she wouldn’t have to labor with petocin.  Chris was informed of what was happening and immediately left school to get the bags and join Kim at the hospital.  We did many walks around the birthing center to try to start labor, but even though this started contractions, it didn’t start labor.

The Flowers Chris bought for Kim

The next day the doctor came and broke Kim’s water.  Her water continued to leak all day long.  She started to have contractions, but they weren’t consistent enough.  Later that day the doctor came back and said that he noticed that her contractions had a certain pattern that indicated November was facing the wrong way and so she wasn’t putting enough pressure on Kim’s cervix to get her to dilate fast enough. 

At 3PM, they finally gave Kim her first dose of pitocin.  Her contractions started getting stranger and she eventually dilated to 4cm, but then it stayed.  They had to increase the dose of pitocin, which increased the pain level of her labor.  Luckily Kim’s nurse, Christina, helped Kim to relax and breathe as the contractions occurred. 

 When Kim finally had had enough she said she was ready to push and so they called the doctor to come check.  Unfortunately when he checked her she was still just at 8cm.  As soon as he left, Kim asked if she could change positions.  As soon as she did she began to scream and begged for the doctor to come back, it was time.   Even though the nurse told Kim to wait until the doctor came to push she began to push, she couldn’t help it; November started to come.  The doctor was there in no time and everything went really smooth. Kim pushed for less than 5 minutes.

November was born at 11:39PM, on February 15^th, 2012.  She weighed 9lbs 6oz, just like her dad, and was 21” long.  She had a full head of dark brown hair.  She was beautiful and perfect.

This labor was so much different from Elyas’s; it took 12 hours as opposed to 6.  Another difference was that Kim continued to have extremely painful contractions through the night after she had given birth to November.  Because of the frequent and strong contractions they had to medicate her with strong pain killers and even had to take November and finger feed her due to the intense pain that Kim was experiencing.

Dr. Meinig did an excellent job; Chris and Nurse Christina were an awesome and extremely supportive team who helped Kim through it.  The birth was all natural; no pain killers were taken until after November was born.