Birth

Birth, again.

/ sugaronsnowmom / Leave a comment

March 14th, 11:30 PM.

I’m awake again. Every night for the past several weeks it has been the same—exhaustion, early bedtime, then two to three hours of sleeplessness in the middle of the night. Pregnancy is the worst, I think to myself as I attempt to heave my massive body out of bed. But before I do, a twinge hits me in the lower abdomen. A cramp of sorts. It’s in my back, too. I pause. Could this be it? I am past my due date so it might be. . . No, I tell myself. That’s just wishful thinking.

I hobble downstairs and sit on the couch. A cramp again. That’s strange, I think. Again, I dismiss it. I turn on the television. Frozen II. Let’s see what the fuss is about.

Twenty minutes go by. Ow. Another pang. I go to the bathroom.

Blood.

Oh my god, so much blood.

My heart sinks. My mind immediately flashes back to my miscarriage. The cramping, the bleeding. Just like this. Just like this. Oh my god.

I go wake my wife. “What’s wrong?” she asks, panicked as she reads my face. I tell her about the blood. She tries to calm me by telling me that it might be the “bloody show,” or the start of labor. “No,” I say. “There was too much blood for that.” We text the midwives.

Over the next several hours, I monitor the blood loss. It slows a bit, which brings me some comfort, but not enough. The cramps continue. My mind whirls.

More hours, no blood. Thank goodness. But cramping. Painful cramping. Patterned cramping. Labor! This is it!

As night transitions to dawn, my worry begins to transform into excitement. We are going to meet our baby today. March 15th—Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s birthday. I love it.

The contractions start coming every four minutes. Despite the pain, I try to do everything I’m supposed to. I eat well. I hydrate. I go for a walk with my family. I can do this, I tell myself. I’m ready.

The day continues and the contractions progress. By 5:00 PM, they’re coming every minute and they are intense—nothing like I have ever felt before. I move between the yoga ball and the tub. I am on my knees a lot.

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My wife works to keep me hydrated and as comfortable as possible. Pidge has been precious all day, and continues to be. Earlier in the day, she bathed with me, pouring water over my back while singing, “Oh my doula” to the tune of “Oh my darling, Clementine.” As I bent over the yoga ball, she rubbed my lower back and kissed me sweetly. When I began to get more audible during contractions, she grabbed her headphones. Naked, wearing only a bag to hold her music and donning large blue headphones over her ears, she gave me a little pat and explained to my wife about what was happening. “She having a birf, Mama.” Adorable.

We text the midwives. I worry that we’re texting them too early. I worry that we’re texting them too late. I have no sense of time and no sense of how much progress I have made during labor. All I know is that after this many hours of labor, my wife had already had Pidge.

The first midwife arrives and begins arranging the supplies. She checks baby’s heartbeat—all good. She checks my blood pressure—all good. Good, I think. Things are good.

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Labor continues. And continues and continues. A second midwife arrives. A third arrives.

March 15th, 11:30 PM.

24 hours of labor have passed and it’s not looking like we’re having this baby tonight.

The contractions intensify. Pidge is asleep now, and honestly I have no idea how she is managing it as I am completely unable to control my volume. I start throwing up. A little at first, but then I realize that it’s happening with every contraction. We start keeping bowls next to me.

March 16th, 4:00 AM.

How much longer will this continue? My body is sore, I am exhausted. My throat is hurting from persistent vomiting. One of the midwives tells me that they rarely do cervical exams during home births, but that she can perform one if I want to know where I am. Do I? If I’m far along, that will really help me. But if I’ve hardly made any progress. . . I decide I want to know. I lay back on the couch and the midwife reaches in. She feels around. Then she smiles. 9 cm.

Nine. NINE. I’m so close!

I continue to labor. I feel my body start to push. I remember when this happened with my wife. She gave birth two hours later! Maybe I only had two hours left. . .

Two hours roll by. Three.

The midwife does another exam. I’m told that she can feel her head, right up against the cervical opening. However, the bag of waters has not yet broken. “It is possible,” the midwife says, “that the bag is preventing her from moving down. Without the bag, her head might be small enough to make it through the opening. We never recommend this, but if we break the bag, there’s a chance she could be born very quickly.” I weigh my options. I don’t really want to start interventions, but the idea of labor being over soon is too appealing to dismiss. I agree to have the midwife break the bag.

SPLOOSH! Amniotic fluid gushed out of my body. Not just a little—a lot. And when I would think it was over, more poured out. I could not believe how much water was inside me! Then the vomiting came. Not just a little—a lot.

The contractions intensify. The pushing becomes unbearable. The vomiting continues. I begin experiencing extreme soreness. Why hasn’t she come yet?

More hours go by. I ask the midwife to check again. I watch her face drop. “This isn’t what you want to hear,” she said. Baby’s head did not slide through the cervix. Instead, her head dropped at a slightly incorrect angle and had begun ramming against my cervix. In response, my cervix hardened and started swelling. I was now at 7 cm.

No, I cried. No. I had to stop pushing in order to relax and re-dilate my cervix. But how can I stop something that’s involuntary? I get back in the pool, hoping the warm water could soothe me. With every contraction, pain sears through my body. 34 hours of labor. I cry. I vomit. I try to breathe through the contractions. I collapse with exhaustion. Our friends come over and pick up Pidge.

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At hour 36, the midwife checks my cervix again. 10 centimeters, and the head is close. Oh my god, thank you. I gather my strength and prepare to push.

With each contraction, I push with everything I have in me. I moan and growl and yell and turn red in the face and burst capillaries in my cheeks and push and push and push. After each contraction, I vomit.

My wife offers encouragement. “You’re so close,” she says. “I can see the head!” She shows me a photo she took on her phone. But as I look at the photo, all I see is the teeniest bit of the baby’s hair. I want to be encouraged, but I can’t believe that was all I had pushed out so far! With all the pressure, all the pain, I really thought I had made more progress. Ugh!

I keep pushing. I change positions and push again. You can do this, I tell myself. You are so close. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and repeat the chant I had been thinking but not saying throughout the whole labor: I’m breathing her down. Down through my pelvis, and into my arms.

After three hours of pushing, she finally emerges. She comes out with her hand up by her face, resulting in three separate lacerations that tear through skin and muscle. But I don’t even notice. I am so happy she is born that I burst into tears.

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The midwife places the baby, who I will refer to as Peach, on my chest. Her tiny, hazy eyes gaze up at me. She latches immediately and begins to suckle. My baby. Our baby. My wife is crying, too.

We did it.

 

 

Birth.

/ sugaronsnowmom / 4 Comments

I woke up to the sound of my wife’s voice. Groaning. Moaning. Repeatedly catching her breath.

“You okay?” I asked. “Do you think this is it?”

“I’m not sure,” she replied.

It made sense that it would be labor. My wife was two days past her due date. Still, we were both intensely aware of the fact that most expectant parents with first-time pregnancies think they’re in labor before they actually are. We weren’t going to be those people, we told ourselves.

But the pain continued. My wife described it differently than she did the Braxton Hicks. Lower. More intense; more consistent. I sent my boss an email telling her I would not be working that day. “We think my wife’s in labor. . . .” I sent our midwives a text.

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A week prior I had built a birthing tub and set it up in our living room. I hooked up the hose to the sink and began to fill it. I was trying not to get my hopes up, but I was excited. My wife grabbed a yoga mat, spread it on the floor of our living room, and got on her hands and knees. “Ohhh,” she groaned, arching and bowing her back.

I ran around the house, trying to make everything perfect. I hung the rainbow lights my wife loved above the birthing tub. I fed the dogs. I let out the cats. I brought her breakfast, coffee, water. Lots of water. Tea. I got my Birth Partner book and propped it open to the chapter marked “Labor.” I checked the water temperature.

“Is the tub ready?” my wife asked. I looked at the water. It wasn’t even a third of the way full. I looked back at my wife and shook my head. I felt the hose—cold. Damn our little water heater, I thought. I turned off the water to wait for it to reheat. My wife reached over and ran her fingers across what little water filled the bottom of the tank. She stripped down and got in.

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I texted the midwives, who told me that my wife could labor in that state for quite a while. Days, even. Really? I thought. They said she/we should eat. They said that while the tub’s relaxing for her, I really should try to get her on a walk if she wanted to “get things going.” I looked over at my wife, her face scrunched in agony. I wished myself luck as I asked if she wanted to go for a walk. She looked at me like I was nuts and said, “No way.” Eventually we did get her to walk around the yard, but that was about as good as I could get it. I never could get either one of us to eat.

For the next several hours she was in and out of the tub. I was running water over her. Rubbing her shoulders. Rubbing her back. Asking questions and getting snapped at (my fault). Watching helplessly as she suffered. Hearing her desperate cry of “help me” and not knowing what to do.

Early afternoon, it sounded like my wife was in pain every second. Maybe I should time the contractions, I thought. I got a chart I had printed and asked my wife to tell me when the contractions were starting and when they were stopping. “They don’t stop,” she said. “They just get slightly less intense.” I opened the stopwatch feature on my phone and recorded the times as best I could. They were really close together.

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I sent the midwives a text with all the information about her contractions: duration, interval, observations, notes. They asked if we wanted them to come over. Just as I was about to respond that we were fine, my wife’s water broke. “We’re coming.”

“Ahhhhhhh!” my wife shouted. The pain was increasing, and my ability to be useful was decreasing. I tried to think of everything I could do to make my wife more comfortable. Music. My wife loves music. She has her phone hooked up to a special Bluetooth speaker and creates all sorts of playlists. However, she’s always the one who puts the music on in our house, and I had no idea how to work her devices. I picked up her phone and tried to figure it out. I pressed a button that looked like a music note and then I pressed play. Mariah Carey blasted through the speaker. I cringed. I looked at the playlist – something about “liked” or popular songs. I had no idea how to change it. Apparently this baby would be born into a 90’s dance party. Oh, well!

My wife was on the floor when Midwife 1 arrived. She took her blood pressure. She took her pulse. She listened to the baby’s heartbeat. Strong. I stroked my wife’s back while the midwife placed various items around our house, pausing every so often to ask me where certain things were. As she distributed her belongings, she swayed to Mazzy Star. She boogied a little to N*Sync. She jammed to Phish. I shook my head at the ridiculous hodgepodge playlist. “Sorry!”

Midwife 2 arrived. Together the three of us helped my wife to the bathroom. She labored backwards on the toilet for what seemed like hours. The midwives stopped her every so often to listen to baby’s heartbeat. You could hear the heartbeat echoing off my wife’s pelvic bones. The baby’s descending.

I walked out to the kitchen to find Midwife 2 knitting. I offered our guest bed if she needed a rest or if this continued on for a while. She looked at me and chuckled. “Your wife is pushing,” she said. “You’re having this baby very soon!”

Throughout the whole evening, my mind and emotions had been vacillating between focus and fog. In one moment, I was sharp. In another, I was lost. But throughout the entire experience there was one emotion that remained constant: excitement. This was really happening. We were having a baby.

My wife continued to labor on the toilet. Eventually, Midwife 1 looked at me with urgency in her eyes. She whispered, “This baby is coming now. We need to move your wife.” We coaxed and prompted, but were met with resistance. Finally, we got my wife off of the toilet and onto a low to the ground, crescent-shaped birthing stool.

“You can see the head,” Midwife 1 said. She held the flashlight as I looked in. There it was! A little brown swirl of hair. My heart skipped a beat and a huge smile spread across my face.

“Do you want to see it? Do you want to feel?” I asked my wife, but she was so lost in her pain that she couldn’t do it. All she could do was push. I positioned myself between my wife’s legs as INOJ’s Let Me Love You Down pulsed through the speakers in all its teenage glory.

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She pushed once, and a head began to emerge. “This hurts like hell!” she screamed.

Second push, and the head was out. There was a pause between the contractions. I cradled the head in my hands, the first person to ever touch this little being outside of my wife. My daughter. This is my daughter.

Third push, and a little body slithered out of my wife and into my arms. The umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck and body, and the midwives and I twisted and turned her around until she was untangled. We heard her sputter and then we heard her cry. It was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard. I lifted her tiny body up to my wife’s chest as she cried, “My baby, my baby, my baby. Oh, sweetheart.” I wrapped my arms around my wife and began to sob. I was overwhelmed with love and admiration.

Blood poured down between my wife’s legs. The baby had pulled part of the placenta off the uterine wall when she came out. The midwives ran about, attending to all my wife’s needs. They gave her a shot of Pitocin to contract the uterus, the first drug my wife received throughout this whole process. They gave her herbs. It felt like a movie where my wife, my baby and I were in focus as the rest of the world moved around us in a hurried blur.

We moved over to the couch where my wife continued to cradle our child. We stared into our daughter’s little face as my wife birthed the placenta. “Oh, you’re perfect,” I repeated. My eloquence long lost to overwhelming emotion, I showered my daughter and my wife in short statements of adoration. I reached out my finger, which was quickly grasped by the tiniest hand I had ever seen. I thought my heart would burst out of my chest right then and there.

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The midwives took care of everything as my wife and I held each other and snuggled our baby. We could not stop staring at her, touching her, kissing her wet new skin, telling her how loved she was. I pulled myself away long enough to cut the umbilical cord. The midwives stepped away to cook us food, clean our house, and eventually help us up to bed. After several hours of snuggling in our bed-nest, Midwife 1 performed the new baby exam. 8 pounds, 6 ounces. 22 inches long. Born at home at 7:38 PM.

Perfect.