7:40 pm on saturday--started having contractions...different from others; rhythmic and dare i say enjoyable? i knew that this process was starting for real (i had lost my mucous plug the night before), and i enjoyed visualizing myself on top of the “wave”. i was calling upon so many resources i had over the last months....remembering an email from deidre and the idea of the time and space of contractions, thinking of them mathematically (and somehow, that did make them seem less powerful). i recalled the idea of riding a wave, and pictured myself floating atop them (and never tousled under), in a lotus position, looking peaceful. hippie, but true. i yoga’ed. i focused on my breath. i also thought- through every rush- of my zen friend, karen, and the idea that once i have the contraction, it is in the past and gone forever.
so i labored. i made soup. brian installed the car seat. i finished packing. i did everything but what i should have done, which was to get myself into BED!! i called karadean, i called my mom. i called deidre (my long distance doula and natural birth mentor!) who recommended that i call my midwife, have a glass of wine and get to sleep! she reminded me that i was about to run a marathon and would need to gear up.
sandy, my midwife, was glad that i called and also recommended that i get some rest. of course, rest was impossible. my contractions became more intense. i recall wanting to head in to the birthing center around 5 am, but brian was very instrumental in keeping me focused on our goal of not leaving until my contractions were four minutes apart....so i continued to labor. somewhere within that time my water broke (only as a trickle).
at about 11 am, we called sandy again and told her that we were thinking of coming in. she was surprised that she hadn’t heard from us earlier, which made me feel like i was doing well. we gathered up our things and headed down to fetch our friend joyous, who was caring for the biscuit and also riding along with us to the hospital. i had fewer intense contractions in the car, and recalled that being discussed in our childbirth classes: the tendency for contractions to get further apart and less intense as you move to new environments. this was evident throughout the process.
as we made our way to the front door of the hospital, i had a very intense contraction in the doorway. with my eyes closed, i leaned against the door and a stranger came up to me and said, “oh honey...you can do it” and touched me on the shoulder. a small thing, but a big part of my experience and the thread of connectivity i felt to women who had gone before.
we were welcomed by the nursing staff, one of whom was the wife of one of brian’s friends, adam armstrong (adam was the first musician brian met in new york who demonstrated to him how one can be both a successful musician and father). we were brought into the room, which looked more like a hotel room or a comfy bedroom than a delivery room. i was hooked up to a fetal monitor (which was required for just twenty minutes), and i labored there in a rocking chair while the nurse drew me a warm bath.
contractions:
i felt comforted, loved, and supported. i made my way to the bath, we put on music....the nurses gave brian a hair band and he tied up my hair. brian kept telling me that i was a jedi, and fed me pieces of a power bar. i felt so safe and loved, free to express my emotions, to cry, to let go.
the birth partner:
at my first cervical check, i had dilated to 7 cm, which is unusual for a first check!! we were thrilled. at the second check i was 9 cm, and right around the corner from pushing time. sandy offered me sorbet and ginger ale. everyone was so encouraging. at the third check, i still had a little “lip” of cervix to go.
the transitional stage was tough. i was feeling the baby’s head corkscrew down into the birth canal. sandy suggested that we walk the halls, and that i lean against her and pull on the rails of the walls when the contractions hit. i didn’t like the positions in the halls. i had to pee terribly, yet my bladder wouldn’t empty. i felt exposed. unsafe. with every reassurance that i wouldn’t push the baby out while in the hallway or on the toilet, i remained unconvinced.
we returned to the room and i tried, unsuccessfully, to push. my bladder just felt too full, so i was given a catheter (unmedicated), which hurt like hell and terrified me. there was a changeover of nurses, and my awesome little coven of faery wood nymphs split up and left. they were replaced by a nurse who was simply uninterested in assisting us with the process in the same way (she seemed more interested in what everyone was ordering from the takeout menu, myself not included). the instructions for pushing were overwhelming: “elbows out! pull on your legs! push! chin down! eyes closed! push! no-- not with your face! push!”
my contractions petered out. they were still intense, but few and far between. i knew that there was an emotional block for me with the pushing--what was i afraid of? i think i was afraid to parent, afraid that i wouldn’t love my child enough, afraid of who he would be and who i was becoming. sandy discussed my options with me, and told me that i would need to ramp these up. she suggested pitocin (and we had tried everything---black and blue cohosh, hours of nipple stimulation, squatting, bouncing, walking). i said that if we were transferring to labor and delivery and i would be getting pitocin, than i would be getting an epidural as well. to me, the dream was over, and to sandy, this meant that perhaps i would sleep and get my strength back up.
i knew as i was wheeled onto the elevator and brought to the next floor up that i was going through another transition, from a natural, normal birth to a medical one. i was immediately strapped to a continual fetal monitor, put into bed, given a blood pressure cuff (from which i still bear the marks on my upper left arm), brian was shoved aside. the attending doctor came in and gave me an internal exam--he seemed disinterested in my requests in general. it seemed that my nurse and sandy were at odds.
i was prepped for the epidural, and told that if i had a contraction while the needle was being inserted into my spine i was to hold still and not move. of course, just as i was being given this instruction, i began to have a contraction. i begged the anesthesiologist to wait just fifteen seconds to insert the needle, and was given no response (though i did believe that he waited. brian says otherwise.). this became a point of contention between brian and sandy and the anesthesiologist, and made me sad. it took three sticks with the needle, and i was numbed. numb to the process, numb from the waist down. i was given a catheter again and could have cared less. i was given pitocin and never felt a contraction. i slept for two hours.
i awoke and was asked if i was ready to push. i was. i pushed and pushed. they asked me if i was feeling the contractions and, barely, i was...enough to take advantage of them, to override them, show them who was boss and f@*&ing PUSH.
sandy could see the head and was saying, “all that black hair!” wha? black hair?! who was this little guy on his way out? brian was holding my left leg and breathing with me through every push. the nurse was annoying the crap out of me, kind of half- whining, “cmon. push. you can do it. push push push.” i chose to focus on sandy.
max made his arrival in a swish of poop, much of which was running down my thigh. he was suctioned, he let out the cry of the living and (thank god) was placed upon my chest. this squirmy, squishy, wide eyed little alien baby. here he was.
my body, on the other hand, was unsuccessfully delivering the placenta. it was “retracted”, and not coming out. i was hemorrhaging and passing out. brian was ushered out of the room and he and the baby were sent to the nursery. the attending doctor returned, this time with a resident who had popped in earlier to take a gander at my gaping vagina (without so much as introducing himself....asshole). both of them got to work on detaching my placenta as i began to feel myself getting woozy. the humorless attending found nothing but puzzlement in my interest in seeing the placenta, which i argued to him that i had grown in the past ten months and wanted to see what it looked like. after i was stabilized, brian said that he overheard the resident tell someone in the hall that they “probably wouldn’t need to take [me] up to the OR after all”. gulp.
once i was in order, i rested for a couple of hours with my sweet new boy. we were wheeled up to recovery, and most of the rest of that time immediately following max's arrival is a blur...
the hospital stay on the recovery floor was a mixed bag, but in general a good experience. max was so chill that he was the demo baby for “how to give a sponge bath”. he’s a nursing champ, and his discharge weight was the same as his birth weight! (7 lb 10 oz) . brian was present at max’s circumcision, as he believes that if he is going to have an elective procedure procedure performed on his child, then he is going to have the guts to bear witness to it and not turn a blind eye. so brave, both of my boys.
and as for me, i think it is obvious that i am in love. i feel like there is a magnifying glass on my heart, like in the grinch who stole christmas, and that is it bursting as my heart has grown three times its size. even through the sleepless nights, i cherish knowing that this phase will pass, and sadly i acknowledge that its all a phase, every day a milestone.
