Tuesday, May 28th, 2013
Erica Bovino, a Southington, Connecticut mother who was days away from her due date for her second child, found herself laboring at lightening speed and delivering her baby girl right on her bathroom floor. Today.com has more:
She drew herself inward and did not panic. Summoning all of the relaxation and breathing techniques she knew, she chanted and moaned and stayed calm through the pain of labor.
Somehow, she managed to do what many would find unthinkable: Bovino delivered her daughter with her own hands while her 3-year-old son lay sleeping in a room nearby and her husband was rushing home from his overnight shift as a police officer.
“There was no time to be scared,” said Bovino, 34, of Southington, Conn. “You get into a primal mode. If I had an ounce of fear, I wouldn’t have been able to have a healthy outcome.”
Little Stella was born in the couple’s bathroom early on May 6, five days before her due date.
The birth was not without complications. The umbilical cord was severed during delivery and there was a lot of blood loss, Bovino said. But Stella did not require any special treatment at the hospital where mom and baby were taken after the birth for monitoring.
“I’m blessed that everything turned out the way it did, that she was healthy and I was healthy because, who knows, any number of things could go wrong in childbirth,” Bovino said.
Still, Bovino said, she hopes her unique experience will inspire pregnant women “to trust themselves and trust their bodies. For thousands of years, women birthed naturally. Now women don’t trust themselves and they fear the unknown of it.”
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Thursday, May 23rd, 2013
The amazing stories of survival abound in the tornado that devastated Moore, Oklahoma on Monday, and now Shayla Taylor’s remarkable story of how she endured active labor during the worst of the storm–in a hospital that took a direct hit–is among those stories. NBC.com reports:
The blow devastated the hospital, as news photos plainly show, ripping away the roof and walls.
After the chaos, Taylor said she heard not the freight train sound described by so many witnesses, but the absolute silence of the storm’s center. Then she opened her eyes.
“All of a sudden I could see daylight and the wall was gone,” she said. “I look out and I see I-35 and part of the Warren theater,” which later became the triage center for victims of the tornado that killed 24 and injured more than 230 people.
She had been dilated to 9 centimeters, nearly ready to deliver the baby, when nurses gave her a quick shot to slow labor during the height of the storm.
Taylor was quickly reunited with her husband, Jerome Taylor, 29, who had taken their 4-year-old son, Shaiden, to wait out the tornado with others in the hospital cafeteria. With the help of hospital workers, she was carefully carried through the destroyed building and out to a waiting ambulance, which whisked her 5 miles to another hospital in the Norman Regional Health System.
Three hours later, after doctors determined that the petite Taylor would need a cesarean section due to the baby’s size, she delivered Braeden Immanuel, a healthy 8-pound, 3-ounce boy.
“His middle name means ‘God is with us,’” said Taylor. “The name had been picked out for months. Now I know why.”
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Thursday, May 9th, 2013
The drug Pitocin, which is used to induce labor or keep labor going when it has slowed or stopped, has been found in a new study to have adverse effects on newborn babies. The study, which was presented this week at the Annual Clinical Meeting of The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, was the first to report a negative effect of the widely-used drug.
The study was based on data collected from 3,000 women who gave birth between 2009 and 2011. The results showed that women who were given oxytocin (Pitocin is the most common brand name of this type of drug) were more likely to deliver babies who were unexpectedly admitted to the NICU after birth, and that those babies were more likely to remain in the NICU for more than 24 hours. Babies born from Pitocin-augmented labors were also more likely to score less than 7 on the Apgar test, the standard test that evaluates a newborn’s physical condition at one and five minutes after birth based on appearance (skin coloration), pulse (heart rate), grimace response (medically known as “reflex irritability”), activity and muscle tone, and respiration (breathing rate and effort). An Apgar score of 8 or higher is generally regarded as the standard for a baby in good health.
Researchers insist that they are not advocating for Pitocin to be eliminated from the labor room, but instead that the drug should be used only when strongly indicated, not, for example, for an elective labor induction.
“We don’t want to discourage the use of Pitocin, but simply want a more systematic and conscientious approach to the indications for its use,” Dr. Michael S. Tsimis, the study’s primary investigator, said in a statement.
Image: Woman with IV in hospital, via Shutterstock
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Thursday, January 3rd, 2013
Aimee and Ashlee Nelson, 19-year-old identical twins from Akron, Ohio, welcomed the new year in remarkable fashion–by each giving birth to a baby within hours of the other on New Year’s Eve. From Cleveland’s FOX 8 News:
The twins say they were born just 15 seconds apart themselves, but learned about two days apart that they were both expecting.
Their due dates were five days apart in early January.
On Monday, the two sisters ended up at Summa Akron City Hospital.
Aimee, whose expected due date was January 6, got to the hospital at 3:30 a.m.
Ashlee, who was due on January 1, was still at home.
“My mom told me that she was here and when I got up to go to the bathroom, my water broke so I had to come in too,” said Ashlee.
At a little after noon, Aimee was the first to deliver, welcoming a 7lb, 2oz son named Donavyn Bratten into the world.
A little less than two hours later, it was Ashlee’s turn, giving birth to an 8lb, 12 oz girl named Aiden Dilts.
“We didn’t think it was going to be this close at all,” said Aimee, admitting that they hoped it would turn out this way.
“We tried getting induced together but they wouldn’t let us. That was like two weeks ago, but it happened anyway,” added Aimee.
“We’re best friends,” said Ashlee of herself and her sister, who adds “Now our babies are going to be best friends.”
Image: Two pregnant bellies, via Shutterstock
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Thursday, August 2nd, 2012
Twin boys were born this past week on the road…two different roads, in fact. ABC News has the amazing story:
Siobhan and Bryan Anderson expected to welcome their twin baby boys next Friday, but Siobhan’s water broke at about 5:30 a.m. Saturday morning — nearly a full week early, Bryan said.
Heeding their doctor’s advice not to rush or panic, they took their time and got into the car at about 7 a.m.
Siobhan said she felt a big contraction, and suddenly felt the baby’s head, a few minutes after they pulled onto Southern State Parkway. She told her husband he was going to have to deliver the twins right there on the side of the road.
“She kept screaming, ‘The babies are coming,’” he said. “I was like, ‘I think we have time to at least get to the hospital.’”
They didn’t.
Siobhan told Bryan to pull over near Exit 30, where he called 911….
“They were helping her out of the car and into the stretcher and that’s when Gavin was born,” he said. “Born right there on Southern State Parkway….”
Once Siobhan delivered the first baby, EMTs got her in the ambulance. The plan was to drive to the nearest hospital in time for her second son to be delivered.
Meanwhile, Bryan got back in his car and followed the ambulance, calling his brother-in-law to himself calm down.
“You don’t think at the time that this is the way they used to do it back in the day,” he said, adding that seeing his wife go through a surprise birth without pain medications was “very scary.”
But less than 10 minutes later, the ambulance pulled over on Wantagh State Parkway.
Confused, Bryan said he jumped out of the car. EMTs told him “baby number two” was coming, and let him in the back door of the ambulence.
At 7:46 a.m. Declan was born at 5 pounds, 15 ounces.
Image: Pregnant woman in car, via Shutterstock
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