Saturday, September 20, 2008
Every mother's birth experience is different, as unique as herself and her child – that may seem obvious, but I find myself being reminded of it over and over; every birth story is both a part of the ageless cycle and as new as the minutes-old baby. From adoption to c-section, there are as many ways to have a baby as there are mothers. Isn’t that wonderful? Yet I often hesitate to share my own story, because I don’t want it to be compared to others’ (especially when it comes to the length of labor – yes, mine was long!) – I want it to be appreciated in its own right, and I want to appreciate others’ stories separately as well. I also feel that labor stories can often be like “war stories” – which in some ways is good, i.e. stories shared to deepen and validate the experience, to come to terms with the struggles/triumphs and to give others a glimpse of what we have “gone through” – but I want to avoid the competitive aspect, the “macho” posturing (yes, women can be macho :). So please read what follows in that light…
Sunday, April 20th was my “due date”, the EDD (estimated delivery date) in medical-speak. I was very certain of its accuracy – I had been keeping careful track of my body’s cycles and – ahem – the necessary steps to achieve pregnancy. Of course, as I kept reminding myself throughout the pregnancy, it is still not set in stone – the human body does not operate on a deadline (particularly not mine); biology is not technology. But when April 20th came (and went), I was ready for Naomi to be breathing the atmosphere of 
Monday, April 21st, at 6am, I thought my water broke. One of the things I worried about while pregnant (and believe me, there were plenty!) was that I would not realize it if/when my water broke (contrary to what happens on TV, the bag of waters does not always break at the beginning of labor, and it is not always a big gush). So I was perhaps looking a little too hard for this sign of impending labor. I was having very minor contractions, so when we called, the doctor told us to go in to the hospital to get checked. We called my family (all of whom were anxiously awaiting Naomi’s birth – my sister was hoping the baby would come before she had to go back to school), and drove the 5 minutes to the hospital, where I was informed that the amniotic sac was, in fact, still intact. They also told me I was way too cheerful to be in labor (and looking back at the pictures, I would agree!) So they sent me home, dilated approximately 2.5 centimeters (10cm is the goal). We walked and waited, and the day passed relatively uneventfully – some minor contractions, averaging about 20 minutes apart. Until…
Tuesday, April 22nd, around midnight (this would be Monday night, just to clarify). Contractions woke me up, and kept me awake. I was having them about every 5-15 minutes, lasting at least 1 minute, usually longer. This is what I count as the beginning of my labor. I let Adam sleep until about 5am. Eventually, we called the doctor again, explained the situation, and were told to come into the office and they would check me. I was a whole 3 centimeters dilated!! (Sarcasm doesn’t translate very well in print – but that was a sarcastic “whole.” :) Again, they sent me home, telling me to wait until the contractions were considerably more intense before calling again. By this point, I was getting frustrated (and tired) – but resigned myself to the idea that labor was going to have to get a whole lot worse before it qualified as “the real thing,” at least in the eyes of the medical professionals. I thought the contractions were already pretty uncomfortable, but resolved to see if I could up the intensity factor with more walking…
Tuesday afternoon was pleasantly spent visiting with family, with short pauses as I relaxed through contractions and they told me that I really should call the doctor again. By the evening, I considered the contractions to be much more intense, requiring all of my concentration – I was longing for the hospital Jacuzzi tub! And they were coming pretty steadily about 3 minutes apart, so when we called the doctor (again), they told us to head on in to the hospital. So we did (‘we’ being me, Adam, my Mom, Dad, sister, Gramie and Aunt – I think – my memory starts to get a little fuzzy at this point…). The midwife on duty was becoming pretty familiar with us now, and sounded genuinely sorry when she told me that I was only 3.5 cm dilated. What?! She said I could stay at the hospital if I really wanted to – but all the labor rooms were occupied, so I would have to spend the night in the little curtained-off examination bed and none of the family could visit. She recommended that I go home, take a warm bath and go to bed. I was very tired, and very disappointed, and couldn’t imagine being able to sleep through the contractions; but I decided I would rather be at home than in the claustrophobic bed available at the hospital. So home we went. I think Adam had to tell the rest of the family – I was on the verge of tears.
Tuesday night was, without a doubt, the worst part of my labor. We came home and Adam, pretty tired himself (waiting is stressful, too!), went to bed. I got in the tub and tried to relax. The contractions were still coming steadily, 5 minutes or less apart, lasting 2-3 minutes. When I had turned into a prune, I got out and tried to get some sleep – but the contractions were much worse lying in bed, listening to Adam snore, and the possibility of sleep was laughable. So I got back in the tub, and spent the rest of the night alternately showering so the water could spray my back, and laying in the tub with the shower spraying on my belly. I counted the seconds during contractions, and I counted the seconds between contractions – 2 minute contractions, 1 minute between, 3 minute contractions, 30 seconds between, 1 minute contractions, 2 minutes between – and so on. Why, you might ask, did I not wake Adam up and tell him to take me to the hospital? Three reasons: the contractions, while terrible, did not feel very much worse than they did before; so I was afraid that if we went to the hospital I would only have dilated another half centimeter and they would send me home again; and even when I convinced myself that the contractions did feel worse, I thought that maybe it was just because I was so tired. Being sent home by the medical professionals so many times had been embarrassing, not to mention disappointing – if I couldn’t control the physical turmoil, at least I could avoid some of the emotional rollercoaster.
I finally woke Adam up (calling from the tub) Wednesday morning, April 23rd because I needed some food and wanted him to call the doctor’s office as soon as it opened. (Again, I wanted to wait until the doctor’s office opened to call so that we could go in there first to be checked, just in case. I couldn’t bear the thought of being sent home from the hospital again.) However, as soon as I was out of the tub, I decided that we were going to the hospital whether they wanted me or not. When we called the doctor, they confirmed this decision and told us to go straight to the hospital – they would call ahead and let the midwife know. It happened to be the same midwife from the night before, and she told us that she had decided to admit us this time regardless of the state of my cervix.
Which, as it happens, was 6.5 centimeters dilated! Finally, some progress! We didn’t actually find this out until about an hour after our arrival. But as you can tell by the picture, I was so relieved to actually be checked in to the hospital, I already felt quite a bit better. As soon as I had been properly monitored, checked, and given an IV to replenish my fluids (and hopefully thereby renew my energy), I hopped (figuratively, of course) into the long-awaited Jacuzzi tub.
And there I stayed for the next four, almost five hours. Only to discover, when they next checked me, that I had maybe another centimeter to show for it (bringing us to a little more than 7cm, for those keeping track). I think that made it official: I am the world’s slowest dilator. The next step, the midwife said, would be to manually break my bag of waters, which usually speeds things up. Also, she suggested this might be a good time to seriously reconsider my goal of having a ‘natural’ childbirth. At this rate, if I made it through my long labor without medication, I might very well be too exhausted at the end to push the baby out – and that is, arguably, the most important part. All along, this had been a flexible plan for me, anyway – not having gone through labor before, I didn’t want to set myself any unreasonable standards. And avoiding a c-section was one of the main reasons I had wanted to ‘go natural’, so if the likelihood of a c-section was actually greater for me without medication – then bring on the epidural! Boy, was I glad when they stuck that needle in my back! I could actually feel my whole body relax; I could carry on a conversation – even doze for a little bit (I had been up for over 36 hours by this point). The rest of labor was, honestly, easy. Well, except for the pushing part; but we’ll get to that.
My labor, from start to finish, was a family affair – and I’m so glad it was. It was really special to have the company and support of everyone. I was able to visit with everyone who was there (at various times my parents, sister, grandmother, aunt, uncle, Adam’s parents), and our room had a wonderful view of the 
Adam and I had planned to have my sister and mother in the room with us for the birth – my labor was long enough that everyone shared in part of the experience. All day Wednesday, as I slowly reached full dilation, I was able to share the joy of anticipation (and it was joyful, once the end was in sight) with my family.
Wednesday night, around 11pm, after much monitoring, a brief period of nausea brought on by the epidural, and some Pitocin to get things moving (how slow would they have been without it??), the midwife said that I could try pushing if I felt like it. After almost 48 hours of labor – do I feel like actually getting the baby out? Um, yeah! We woke my sister up (she was pretty exhausted, too, having not slept very well the past couple of nights, waiting for this baby!) so that she could hold my other leg – Adam was already assigned to one, and Mom, while delighted to be in the room and share the experience, wasn’t sure she wanted to be quite that up-close and personal.
Thanks to the wonder that is an epidural, I was ready and able to push. And push I did, with some excellent coaching from Adam, and much needed support from my sister and Mom. (They ended up taking turns holding my other leg – the full sensory experience of birth, in particular the smell, surprisingly made my sister feel a bit faint; and assisting the laboring woman is hard work, too!) I pushed, in fact, for 2.5 hours. But I was so focused, and the end result so motivating, that it really didn’t seem that long to me. That is not to say that it wasn’t the hardest I have ever physically worked in my life – but they set up a mirror so I could watch my progress, and when I could see that little patch of hair that was the head of my baby, there was no physical limit – I just wanted to have her in my arms.
Now, while I was going through this, the only thing I cared about was getting Naomi out of my body and seeing her face as I held her in my arms. And that was all I thought about as soon as it was clear that her arrival was imminent. Upon her arrival, she was all I thought about (and a couple of hours later, only she and sleep). Looking back, however, the actual moment of her birth, and the several moments immediately after, were rather odd. As I said, I pushed for 2.5 hours, and the midwife came in a couple of times to check on my progress. The nurse was there the whole time once I started pushing, and she was very helpful. The midwife (not the same one who admitted me to the hospital – her shift ended just after I got the epidural) was attending another birth at the same time as mine, and the other woman was actually pushing at the same time as I was. Perhaps I should also mention that the nurse was new – this was her first birth since her training ended two weeks prior. All of these factors combined so that when I pushed Naomi’s head out, the midwife was not in the room – and the nurse kind of panicked. She had my Mom frantically call for the midwife (the nurse had called her about half an hour earlier, and she had not yet arrived), who sauntered in moments later. Yes, sauntered is a very accurate description of her entrance. She took in the situation, told the (nervous) nurse that she was doing fine, go ahead and deliver the rest of the baby. So at 1:48am, after almost 50 hours of labor, I pushed the baby’s body out while the midwife got cleaned up, and the nurse caught Naomi and laid her on my stomach. 
All I remember then is trying to memorize Naomi’s face, Adam cutting the umbilical cord, and the midwife suctioning out her nose and mouth (the nurse was a bit too tentative with the nasal bulb). Naomi cried as soon as her throat was clear, and I held her until they had to weigh and measure her and do whatever else needs to be done to a newborn baby. They had all the equipment in the room, though, so Mom and Sarah and Adam were able to go over with her as she was cleaned up and her vital statistics officially recorded. 
Then they gave her back to me, all clean and bundled up, and we got to know each other as the rest of the family was introduced to the new arrival. Eventually everyone else went home, and we were moved into a smaller room for the rest of our hospital stay. But the hospital stay is another story (and as long as this one was, I may or may not post about it!). 
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