The Birth of Clancy Johannes
 The SHORT version

April 22, 2013 my body spends the day clearing itself out, I don't think it's early labour though as hubby has a stomach bug.
9:30pm my water breaks and it's tinged with blood
10:30 pm arrive at hospital, hooked up to an IV and given antibiotics. I'm 2-3 cm dilated
April 23, 2013 5am I'm given a tiny bit of pitocin
6:30am (ish) I get in the shower = sweet relief
7:30am I'm 4cm dilated and moved to the tub for better baby monitoring
8:30am I'm 10cm dilated and involuntarily pushing, I must get out of the tub and I move to the bed to push on my hands and knees and then in a sort of squat
9:10am my baby boy, badly bruised from having slid back in several times during crowning, is laying on my chest covered in blood, lanugo, and vernix. He has two knots in his cord - something the midwives haven't seen before (and the head midwife has been at it for 25 years!) I try to put him straight to the breast but he has no interest.
9:30 (ish) the placenta is delivered, his cord is clamped and cut,
He weighs 6lbs 5ozs and is 20.5inches tall
He scores well on his APGARs
I dilated from 4cm to 10cm in one hour and then pushed for 40minutes. I had a second degree tear which ended up getting the stitches removed because of infection. So my labour is considered to have been 1 hour and then 40 minutes of pushing. time from my water breaking to baby born was just under 12hours.
We have a one day struggle with blood sugars, he is lethargic and has to be woken up for feeds which are expressed milk given to him by syringe as he struggles to latch, he's found to have a tongue tie, which is clipped revealing another tongue tie further back.
April 24 3pm we get to go home!
April 25th 10pm readmitted to a different hospital, his jaundice levels are dangerously high, they say he made need a blood transfusion, we are sooo relieved when the lights have brought his levels down enough that he doesn't need the transfusion but still he spends several days in and out of the bili bed with his levels fluctuating
April 29th we get to go home, with follow up blood work to be done in two days
May 1 9:30pm on our way back to the hospital as his biliruben levels are up dangerously high again, he spends the night under the lights again.
May2 We get to go home again! Yay, no more blood work as they have no idea why his levels went up and couldn't find any causes. They say it is probably breast milk jaundice.
May 8 two week check up THREE posterior tongue ties clipped, no more pumping, no more bottles, begins nursing with a nipple shield
May 22 Clancy is gaining well and still nursing with the shield, trying to get him off it but not having much success. Switch to cloth diapers.  He is still jaundice but the midwives are no longer concerned.
June 12 He weighs 10lbs .5oz and is 22inches tall. He still requires the nipple shield although we are having a little more success without it.
June 27 He weighs 11lbs and is still 22inches tall. He seems to want the breast without the shield but he still struggles with his latch, and so the journey continues.


My plan had been a home birth with no drugs and certainly no augmentation. I was going to exclusively breast feed and have nothing but breast milk enter his body before he was 6months old. I ended up being given pitocin to speed up my labour. Having to deliver at the hospital as I didn't have a home and he was premature. I did use what I believe to have been completely ineffective useless laughing gas as it was offered mid contraction when I was in transition. He was given formula against my will because his blood sugars dropped and they made me feel like I'd be killing him not to give the formula. What I don't understand is why they didn't just give me the pump earlier as they kept commenting that I had a great supply! So these are some things that I am still working on coming to terms with,