Campbell Nichole Fleming

Jolie just gave birth to our new baby girl!

Vitals

Name: Campbell Nichole Fleming
Weight: 8 lbs. 13 oz.
Length: 21 inches.
Apgar: 8 (1st minute) and 9 (5th minute)

Name Etymology

Campbell: My father's mother's (grandmother) maiden name.
Nichole: For Jolie's maiden name Nicola.

The Delivery

Jolie started having contractions at about 10:00am and they were approximately 10 minutes apart. The contractions were about 30 - 60 seconds in duration and were strong enough that she had to "pause" conversation while they happened. Several of her co-workers would tell you that she would say something like "Please hold, I'm having a contraction.. [30 second pause].. okay I'm back.." Thankfully Jolie works from home on Fridays, so she was both close to the hospital and only interacting with colleagues via the phone and email. I had gone to work at my usual time, but was planning on coming back home after my 10:00am meeting. I got home at about 12 noon to find that Jolie's contractions were now 5 minutes apart with varying degrees of intensity (some were bad).

We had a 1:00 doctors appointment, where they were going to check fluid levels, cervical conditions, etc but ended up going straight to the hospital instead. When we got to the hospital, the resident assigned to us quickly determined that Jolie was indeed in labor (duh!) but was having trouble feeling the head because the bag of waters was so bulbous. Out comes the ultrasound machine, so that she could check on the baby's position.. and the baby was actually in a transverse (sideways) position!

There are only two options available at this point: 1) caesarian section and 2) turn the baby. Jolie and I are fairly anti what I like to call the "jack the stomach" (turning) procedure.. and the resident concurred with a reasonable explanation. Since Campbell was in the position where her belly was facing downwards.. the umbilical cord was dangling near the (dilated) cervix.. if the bag of waters were to break, the cord could prolapse, get compressed, and cause depletion of the oxygen supply to the baby.. not good.

So we opted for door number one.. the c-section. Since Jolie was in labor already, the doctors wanted to get to surgery ASAP. Ten minutes later, Jolie was being prepped for surgery.. and I was given some nice hospital scrubs. The c-section was a pretty cool operation to witness, but it was a little strange talking to someone (Jolie) while you could see their internal organs at the same time. The operation was interesting...

Jolie had told the anesthesiologist that she had not eaten anything for about 24 hours. We all found out after the spinal was administered, that the statement wasn't entirely true. Jolie confirmed that she actually had eaten a really tiny amount of left-over pasta, but didn't think that the amount she had consumed "counted" as eating anything. Jolie, of course, was just thinking ahead.. our last experience lasted a good 20 hours, culminating in 2 solid hours of pushing; she wanted to have a little bit of energy. The food diaspora combined with the cold operating room and anesthesia made Jolie feel pretty awful.. she got the cold sweats and then felt extremely hot and nauseous.

Once the doctors had made the incision and opened the uterus, they started to manually turn the baby so that her head would face the opening. Dr. Gupta did this by putting her arm up to the elbow inside Jolie, crazy sight.. but she couldn't get Campbell turned in that direction. The best the she could do was to get the baby into a breech position. So the first part of Campbell that I saw with my naked eye was her foot. The doctor then pulled out the rest of Campbell but couldn't get her head wouldn't come out.. After a couple of anxious moments (it felt like an eternity) and a call to get the prenatal intensive care team into the room, Dr. Gupta got a pair of surgical kitchen shears and made the hole a little bigger. Campbell came out after a couple of more "pulls" and instantly started crying.. the prenatal team was called off and Campbell was born.