Tony Sneed's Blog

Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 2005: Four years ago today Zuzana and Tony were married at Blessed Kateri Church in Santa Clarita, California. Today we are celebrating both our four year wedding anniversary and also our first Thanksgiving as a family of three. Check out our Thanksgiving Photos.

They say parenting is one of the greatest challenges a couple can face. But it’s not the first time it’s been done, and there is a fairly reliable blueprint. God knows what it takes to make us happy, because he made us and knows our nature. He also knows what it takes to raise children in such as way that they will have a solid foundation upon which to build their lives. Why re-invent the wheel? As it says in the book of Proverbs: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Prov 22:6).

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Even though my wife and I got pregnant fairly early in the year, we were still both working and focused on all the things that made up our lives. It wasn’t until August that we really started to prepare for our birth in earnest, when we began our Bradley classes. We had no idea the volume of information we needed to ingest and the degree of preparation required.

Once we had gone through half of the 12 classes included in the Bradley course, we realized that we not only needed to get ready for the birth, but we also needed to know what to do once this bundle of joy arrived at our doorstep.

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So enough theory. What about our experience of labor and delivery? What was it like? What did we do right? What did we learn? What would we do differently?

Here is a quick rundown of what happened:

Friday November 5th
9:00 pm Zuzana’s parents arrive from Slovakia
9:05 pm Zuzana’s water (amniotic fluid) starts to leak
9:10 pm Zuzana experiences nausea and wants to throw up

Saturday November 6th
2:30 am Zuzana starts having contractions 15-20 minutes apart
6:00 am Zuzana catches some Z’s, getting some valuable sleep
7:00 am Our friend Nori arrives to take Zuzana’s parents
9:00 am Contractions resume at about 8 minutes apart
11:00 am Took a long walk to help her labor progress
12:00 pm Convinced Zuzana’s parents to leave us alone
4:00 pm Yvonne, our doula (labor assistant) arrives at our house
7:15 pm We leave for the hospital with contractions 3-4 minutes apart
7:30 pm We arrive at Henry Mayo Hospital, Santa Clarita
7:45 pm Zuzana is 6 cm dilated
11:00 pm Zuzana is fully 10 cm dilated and starts pushing

Sunday November 7th
1:00 am Dr. Nishiguchi helps guide her pushing
2:00 am Zuzana has been pushing 3 hours and is exhausted
2:10 am I start giving Zuzana various Scripture verses
2:20 am Kerrigan’s head starts to crown
2:41 am Kerrigan’s head is delivered, then his body emerges

What went right? All our study, training and exercises paid off. Zuzana possessed and applied the skill of abdominal breathing together with deliberate and deep relaxation to get through each contraction. We hired a labor assistant (called a “doula”) who gave me a much needed break after about 12 hours of my coaching Zuzana through her contractions. She also met with us several times and answered our many questions. I don’t think I could have physically endured the process without her invaluable help.

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Now that Kerrigan has arrived safe and sound and is fast asleep in his hospital crib, I would like to take a moment to tell you about the manner in which he made his appearance. That is, I want to share with you our experience of natural childbirth using the Bradley method (www.bradleybirth.com).

Have a baby without anesthesia, or any type of pain relief other than natural breathing and relaxation, is an exhilarating and awe-inspiring experience. The reason is that it requires you literally to prepare months in advance, and it affords the husband a central and essential role as labor coach. Rather than sitting on the sidelines while the professionals manage your wife’s labor and delivery, you are smack dab in the middle of the action, helping your wife through each contraction, applying your training and education, and making critical split- second decisions that will affect your wife and impact the welfare of the child being born.

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What better time to start a web site and blog than the birth of our first child, Kerrigan John Sneed, on Sunday, the 6th of November, 2005, at 2:41 am?

It is a time of new beginnings, a time to pause, take stock and reflect. A time of change, bringing life and hope and a promise of good things to come.

I leapt into the world of blogging almost a year ago, only to quickly retreat when things sped up and I became incredibly busy. My work as a C# programmer at Disney continued at a somewhat steady pace, but the growth of our church group, Koinonia John the Baptist (www.koinoniajb-usa.org), ramped up with the arrival of our present pastor, Claudio Antecini. Then my wife Zuzana and I got pregnant in February and we started preparing for natural childbirth using the Bradley method ( www.bradleybirth.com).

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