If you missed part 1, you
can read it here. When we left off, I had just been laboring
through 8 hours of hard contractions every 5 minutes.
And then they stopped.
I don’t know if maybe in all of my anxiousness and
excitement, I’d psyched myself our or what, but I was beyond frustrated. How could this be happening again?? I thought
for sure I was going to have a baby this time.
I’d done 8 hours already! For what?? For nothing??
It was about 12:30. I
texted the doula to let her know it wasn’t happening. We watched a little more
tv. I decided to do the dishes that were
in the sink. I unloaded the
dishwasher. Then I got the laundry out
of the dryer to fold and put in another load.
“I guess it wasn’t meant to be on the 17th after
all,” I told my husband.
“It’s ok. It will be
soon,” he tried to reassure me. “Are you
hungry?”
We ate our leftover pizza from the night before. I was
having about one contraction an hour, but that was nothing compared to what I’d
had earlier in the day. My good friend’s
mom even stopped by for a short visit.
About 5:00, I called my mom and told her that it didn’t look
like I was going to have the baby after all, so she should keep Little
Spaghetti another night. Maybe I’d
really go into labor the next day.
I was sitting on the couch after I hung up the phone, looking
out into the late afternoon sun that was pouring through the open blinds. I
wanted to cry. “We need to do this,” I
told myself. “It’s just time.” The tv
was on in the background, but I wasn’t paying attention.
I’d never really fully believe in the power of positive
thought. It was a nice concept and all,
but I just never actually believed it worked.
I put my reservations aside, though, and in my head – or maybe under my
breath – I started saying to myself, “We
are strong. We are safe. We can do this.”
I kept repeating it. “We are strong. We are
safe. We can do this.”
I felt a contraction.
I kept going, believing myself more and more each time I said it.
“We are strong. We are
safe. We can do this.” I felt
another contraction. And then another. By almost 6:00, the contractions were feeling
pretty regular again. And pretty
intense. I decided to get back in the
tub because it had been so much easier to deal with the pain.
My husband started timing the contractions again. 5 minutes apart. Then 4 and a half. “If they stay under 5 minutes through a few
more contractions, we’re going to the hospital,” I said.
After 15 minutes or so, I convinced myself that I’d felt my
water break. I wasn’t sure, since I was
sitting in a tub full of water, of course.
“I think we should go,” I told him.
I wasn’t 100% sure I was in labor; it felt just as it had that morning,
and that obviously hadn’t been it. I
just knew that, emotionally, I was done. I couldn’t take any more starting
and stopping. I knew if we went to the
hospital, I’d have a baby one way or another.
“Ok,” he said. “Let’s get out of the tub.”
I started crying. Sobbing.
“Oh, honey. What if I can’t do
this?” I said through my tears.
“You can. And you
will,” he told me. I believed him.
We are strong. We are
safe. We can do this.
We got in the car about 6:45. I texted the doula to let her know. We were
checked in at the hospital and up in the room by about 7:30. The nurse came in to get us situated. “Have you thought about what you’d like to do
for pain management?” she asked right away.
“I want to try to go without any medication,” I told her.
“Oh, ok. So just the
IV pain meds, then?” she said.
“No,” I reiterated, “no pain meds at all.”
“We’ll see about that,” she said.
The midwife came in to check me. I was a little terrified I’d still only be
dilated a centimeter or two.
“You’re at about a five!” she said. That was total relief.
She said they’d monitor me for a while, and she wanted to
start an IV because I looked dehydrated.
I thought it was pretty unnecessary, but I also wanted to pick my
battles, so I agreed to the fluids. Then
– after a while – she said we could take out the IV, and I could get in the
shower if I wanted.
A little while later, the nurse came in while I was having a
contraction. I was still in the bed
because that’s where they told me I had to be so they could get the IV in and
everything. As I stopped breathing and
opened my eyes at the end of the contraction, she said to me, “So, you decided
to get the epidural now, then?”
“No,” was all I said.
Shortly after, I told them I was getting out of the
bed. I don’t think they would have let
me if I hadn’t insisted, and they definitely wouldn’t have suggested it. I stood by the bed and mostly rocked through the
contractions. They were getting more
intense and closer together. Even still,
between them, I joked and talked with my husband. The spaces between the contractions were such
strange times for me.
At one point, I was breathing through a contraction, and my
hand started to tingle. I was wiggling
my fingers, and my arm felt kind of numb.
The nurse smirked at me from the corner where she had been
mostly keeping to herself. “You have to
stay still for it to get a good reading,” she said, pointing at the blood
pressure cuff. “Otherwise, it just keeps
inflating.”
I must have looked at her sort of bewildered.
“You can’t be rocking
like that,” she insisted. “You have to stay still.”
Oh, right, my bad.
I’m just trying to give birth! I’ll
stop my silly rocking nonsense so your blood pressure cuff doesn’t cut off the
circulation to my entire arm.
An hour or so later, I had dilated to about a 7. It all seemed to be happening so fast. Mr. Engineer texted my mom (the first she’d
heard since the 5:00 we’re-not-having-a-baby-today message). Never
mind. It looks like the baby’s coming
today after all. We’re at the hospital. At
some point, moaning through the contractions started to feel really good. I tried to say “O” sounds because I
remembered reading somewhere that keeping your mouth open would help you relax
and open the rest of your body.
I tried to picture the contractions opening my cervix, and I
worked really hard at relaxing my body instead of tensing all of my muscles
during each contraction, which is what my body wanted to do. I’d drop my
shoulders and force my muscles to release as I breathed.
The midwife was concerned that the baby was starting to
rotate face up, so she told me I had to get into the bed and lay on my side to
encourage her to turn back the other way.
This made the contractions almost unbearable. This is also about the time the doula
arrived.
Lying on my side was nearly impossible. I couldn’t put my upper leg down
because…there was a baby’s head in my pelvis.
So I was holding my leg way up in the air in a completely ridiculous
position. The doula helped gather up
five or six pillows to put between my knees to give my leg muscles some much
needed rest.
At this point, I’d mostly stopped talking, even between
contractions. But even then, after the
pain would subside, I had a healthy internal dialogue going. I remember making jokes in my head throughout
the whole process. And mentally rolling
my eyes at the nurse on occasion.
I felt a contraction coming on, and just then, I also heard
the machine kick on to inflate the blood pressure cuff. I could. not. take it. “Take it off,” I growled.
“I’ll get in trouble!” my husband said.
I looked right at him. “Take it off,” was all I could say
again. And he did. And off it stayed.
The midwife came in.
“You’re at an 8,” she said. “I
can break your water or just let you keep laboring. The only thing is that if I
break your water, getting in the shower won’t be an option, and I know you were
interested in that.”
I looked at my husband, and I looked at the doula. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. It was a little after 9:00, and somehow in my
mind, I still had a lot of laboring left.
I didn’t want to preclude the option of getting in the shower if I
needed to.
“Look,” she said, “could you even stand up to get in the
shower right now if you wanted to?” I
looked down at my legs. They – along
with my whole body – were shaking uncontrollably.
“No,” I conceded.
“If I break your water, you’re just going to have this
baby,” she said. I agreed. “If you start
feeling pressure like you need to push, let me know,” she said as she left the
room. The shaking, I knew, was a sign that I was in transition. But I couldn't possibly actually be in transition yet, could I?
The doula was on one side of me, my husband on the
other. I moaned louder and louder
through the contractions. I heard them
telling me it was ok, and I was doing great.
We are strong. We are safe. We can
do this.
I remember thinking to myself after one contraction, “I want
to ask for the epidural, but it’s probably too late for that. I don’t want to be that girl. It’ll be
ok.” My husband looked at the clock and
said, “Well, there’s still two hours of the 17th left.” 10:00.
It seemed like the midwife had just left the room, and I
felt like I needed to push. It was so
strange that the contractions felt different all the sudden. It was like they went from feeling like they
were ripping my body apart to feeling like they were crushing my body into
itself. I wasn’t sure, though, so I
figured I’d wait for one or two more.
After two more, I was sure.
“I have to push,” I managed to say.
Someone went to get the midwife.
Sure enough, I was at a ten and ready to have a baby.
“Do you want to turn over onto your back?” the midwife asked
me. I was still in the ridiculous
position with my leg flying in the air.
I looked around. I thought about it. I knew I could handle the pain in my current position; I’d been doing
it. But I wasn’t sure if the pain would
be worse if I moved, so I was afraid to change. “I don’t know,” I said.
“Ok, here’s the deal,” my midwife said. “You’re going to
turn onto your back, and you’re going to push out this baby.” In that moment, I was really glad she made
the choice for me.
The time came to push.
Pushing wasn’t as easy this time around, but I still didn’t push for
more than about 15 minutes. Throughout
the entire thing, I remember having conversations with myself inside my head.
As the baby was crowning, I said (or shouted),
“It huuuuuurrrrts!!!”
“No duh!” I said to myself in my head. “You don’t think they
know it hurts?”
Finally I felt her he
ad come out. Little Spaghetti had pretty much come out all at once after his
head was out.
She didn’t.
I had to push again to get her shoulders
out.
I felt them come free and slide out,
and I smiled with the anticipation of that huge sense of relief you feel when
the baby finally comes out.
But I didn’t
feel it.
“Open your eyes!” the midwife said. “Look down at your
baby!” I opened my eyes and looked down
at my half-emerged baby, her squished purple face with eyes closed sitting on
top of a yellowish torso.
“Do you want to finish delivering her?” the midwife said. “Noooo!
Just get her out!” I shouted. She looked
at my husband, “Do you want to deliver her?”
“NOOOO!” I said even louder. “Please just get her out!”
In retrospect, if I’d been expecting the question, it might
have been a beautiful moment. At the
time, though, all I knew was that I’d been expecting a huge wave of relief as
the baby popped out, and I wasn’t feeling it.
I wanted to feel that relief!
She finally let the baby slide out, and I felt my whole body relax. She brought her up to my
chest. “Hello, my girl. Hello, my
beautiful girl.”
It was an incredible and intense birth, but I am so happy
for the way it turned out. She was
bright-eyed and nursed right away. I
remember all of it.
Just about three hours after we’d checked into the hospital,
we welcomed her into the world.
Turns out she was an October 17
th baby after
all.
