Our birth story starts Friday night, when David, Scott, and I went crib shopping (we own a crib; it's still at the store. But we'll get it eventually) and then out to dinner. "I'm ready for the baby to come," David said. "Let's have it tonight."
I said, "Tonight's not good. I didn't sleep well last night, and have had a long, hard day. Tomorrow morning, after a good night's sleep, would be better."
I went home and slept a glorious nine hours with only one bathroom break, and woke up at 7:30 having contractions, much as I had on previous occasions. But when I was in the bathroom around 8:15, something came out my vagina. Something wet. "Hmm," I thought. I took a towel back to bed with me to protect the sheets, lay down and waited for David to wake up. Which he did, shortly. "Honey," I said, "I think my water has broken." We talked for a little while, and when we got up, David came around to my side of the bed to hug me. As he hugged me, this enormous gush came out; I told David he had squeezed the juice out of me. "That was definitely it," I said, "which makes this the baby's birthday" (once your water has broken, you have to have the baby as soon as possible to avoid infection, since there is no longer a barrier between the baby and the world). As it turns out, I was wrong about that because Eric was born after midnight. But close enough.
We woke Scott up. He grumbled that when we told the baby "after a good night's sleep," we should have specified a good night's sleep for everybody, even the more nocturnal members of the household. But Scott bore it well.
We're more than a little convinced we brought labor on by saying Saturday morning would be good. Scott missed a conference he had wanted to go to over Memorial Day because we all felt it was too close to the due date for him to be gone. One of his friends said, "Good thing you didn't go, you'd have missed it." Scott replied that, while he was grateful to Eric for coming during that weekend and thereby lessening Scott's regret about missing the conference, he's not convinced the baby would have come if he hadn't been here. I think so too. Call me flaky.
We spent Saturday morning puttering around getting ready to go. We packed our bags, got things ready for Carrie to take care of the animals later in the day, ate breakfast. I did my relaxation. My contractions speeded up, and we left for the hospital when they were about five minutes apart, around noon. They were quite manageable, not very strong. On the way to the hospital, we decided we had better eat lunch, so instead of checking in we went to the cafeteria. During lunch, the contractions seemed to come faster and faster, so we headed up and hit Labor and Delivery triage about 1:00.
They put me on a hard narrow exam bed type thing and hooked me up to an external monitor, which monitored the baby's heartbeat and the contractions. We spent a couple of hours in triage because my contractions stalled. The resident wanted to push Pitocin to get them going again, but we resisted. I got quite cranky. First, they all kept saying repeatedly for a long time, "If your water has really broken..." Which it had, of course. But the resident kept saying things like, "Well, some women, if they have a bladder infection, might be incontinent...." I wish I had said, "This came out my vagina. There may be women who cannot tell the difference between their vagina and their urethra; I am not one of them." And then the first thing they wanted to do was medicate me. The resident did not like it that we resisted. But when our OB came, we agreed that they would let me up off the table to move around and see if that got things started again, and that in a couple of hours, we would talk about a suppository of a hormone, that could be placed up against my cervix to "ripen" it (help it thin and efface), which can also stimulate contractions. But before Dr. Maney showed up, I was frustrated and crying and wishing I could just go home.
Here's what made me mad: As were were being moved out of triage, the resident acknowledged that it is very common for women's contractions to stop or slow when they come to the hospital, and that lying around on your back is not the best way to get them started again, but rather than unhooking me from the monitor and letting me walk around or something, he was ready to go the drug route. I'm so glad we didn't agree to the Pitocin.
They moved us, not to Labor and Delivery, but to a room in Special Obstetrics, which is where they put women who are pregnant but not in labor. There followed a couple of hours of waiting around that felt exactly--but exactly-- like being at the airport when your flight is delayed. We chatted. We read magazines. I listened to CDs. I had no contractions.
They put the suppository in at about 3, 3:30. I had to lie there for 45 minutes to let it dissolve, then we went for a walk. We went across the skywalk to the professional building across the street and walked the labyrinth in the Healing Garden. In the middle of our labyrinth walk, the contractions hit me. Only they weren't contractions yet; they were a constant steady ache. No one had told me that the contractions brought on the the prostaglandin would be, like the contractions caused by Pitocin, more intense and closer together than regular labor contractions. We walked back to Special Obstetrics (a long hard walk for me), and once there, my contractions settled into a regular routine of coming about every 3 minutes. Very strong. What followed then was a another couple hours of hanging out in this icky hospital room, having strong contractions very close together, and being told repeatedly that we could not move to L&D (where the birthing tub was set up and waiting for me, and I was thinking it would have been mighty nice to get into it), because I was not in "active labor," meaning my cervix was not yet dilated 4 cm.
One reason they wouldn't move us was that this was my first baby and "it might be 18 hours. Another women might need the room in the meantime." On the other hand, they kept telling me I had to deliver within 12 hours of when my water broke (only 3-4 hours away at this point) because of the infection risk. My time in Special Obstetrics does not live in my memory as a happy time.
It was also in Special Obstetrics that Scott got some very weird vibes from a nurse, who seemed--seemed hell, she said as much--uncomfortable with him being present. I had wondered at various times how anomalous I would be taking two men in as my support people but it hadn't crossed my mind that there would be people who would question his being there. He caught some attitude from folks off and on, and one thing we loved about Mita, the nurse who was with us for the birth, was that she was perfectly matter-of-fact about it. When she took over from our previous nurse at shift change, I introduced myself. "And this is my partner David, the baby's father," I said, "and this is Scott... " and I sort of hesitated about how to introduce him because of the earlier weirdness with the S. O. nurse. Mita said, "Your other support person." Exactly.
They finally moved us to L&D about 7, but not into the tub because they wanted to put the baby on an internal monitor. His heart rate had been dropping during contractions, coming back up slowly, and not getting higher in between. Variable heart rate means the baby is engaging in healthy activity. Not seeing that variaiton means--well, potentially bad things. I wasn't crazy about having an internal monitor because they restrict movement. An electrode is put on the baby's scalp for his heartrate, and another monitor just sort of lays there in the uterus monitoring contractions, and all the wires were taped to the inside of my thigh, so it's not easy to move around once the thing is in place.
As it turned out, though, I didn't mind the restricted movement at all. There was only one position I wanted to be in, lying on my right side. If I wanted to try another position, David, Scott, and Mita would help me get rearranged. I would have one or two contractions in the new position, and they would be icky, and David, Scott, and Mita would haul me back into the preferred position.
After monitoring the baby internally for a little while, they put me on an oxygen mask. It helped the baby be more active and alert, and I wore it until he was born, except that I ripped it off during every contraction because it suffocated me, and then David would have to remind me to put it back on afterward.
The monitor was kind of fun. It measures the strength of the contractions. Way back in triage, we had developed a joke that watching the numbers to up was like that carnival strength test where you hit the thing with a hammer and try to ring a bell. For much of my labor, if the number got up between 90 and 100 (from 4 or 5 between contractions), we would say, "That one was a real bell-ringer." And then we hit the transition stage, during which the cervic contracts the final 3 cm very fast. During transition, I was getting numbers on the monitor like 140 and 150, and David said, "That was the one where the bell flies off into the air!"
The end came very fast. At 11 p.m., I was dilated to 7 cm. Sometime later, I told Mita I was feeling pressure in my vagina, she did a quick check, and I was still at 7. At about midnight, she made me get up to go to the bathroom (trailing my IV and monitor tubes). When I came back, I tried a couple of contractions standing up beside the bed. It was a good position to have contractions in, but I didn't feel I had the stamina to keep standing there in between, so David, Scott, and Mita put me back to bed. I was about halfway into the bed, lying very awkwardly on the edge of it on my side, when a contraction hit. "I really feel something in my vagina!" I said (and later, one really cool moment during the pushing stage was when, between contractions, I could feel the baby's head completely in my vagina. I think he came out on the next push. It was kind of amazing). Mita had me lift my upper leg, and said, "You're fully dilated. Do you feel like pushing?" So I did. But it was quite a feeble effort, what with me lying on my side half on the bed and being taken a bit by surprise.
After that one, we discussed what position I wanted to get in. I was interested in squatting, but also felt I didn't have the stamina or strength in my knees to keep it up. I had flopped from my side to my back, again very awkwardly--it was definitely an "on my way to some other position" position, and sort of off-center and low in the bed. But the next contraction hit, they came one on top of the other, and the baby was out in less than 20 minutes, so there was never a chance to get me into a better pose.
So there I was in this high-tech birthing bed with your choice of 27 different stirrup and leg support configurations plus squat bar option, and I might as well have been by the roadside. Likewise the beautiful, homey labor, delivery, and recovery room, which I took one look at upon arrival, said, "Nice," and never saw again. I was either too busy or I had my eyes closed. It was wasted on me.
I pushed the baby out with David and Scott on either side of me, each of them holding my hand with one hand and my foot with the other, and when I pushed they would pull with me. I wasn't quite on my back; Mita had me roll a little to the left to take pressure off the major arteries. It was quite awkward but the whole thing happened so fast I suppose it doesn't matter.
Mita called for the doctor, and learned that she would arrive in 5 to 10 minutes. "Don't dawdle," Scott joked. "This baby isn't going to be born in 10 mintues," Mita said. But it practically was. Dr. Maney barely made it. But we were in good hands with Mita; she was not just a nurse but a certified nurse midwife, and we trusted her. Our nurse on the earlier shift, Brenda, had been a bubbly, chatty, joky type person, and it took us a little while to warm up to Mita's quieter style, but we soon knew we could count on her. And in her quiet way, her compassion for me was clear. As was her no-nonsense attitude. One of the things I remember most about the pushing stage was Mita coaching me, telling me how to breathe, how long to hold a push, how to push. At one point, I responded to an instruction by saying, "OK," and she said, "Don't talk! If you can talk you can't push!" I loved Mita, and didn't get a chance to tell her so in the excitement of the birth.
Pushing the baby out was glorious. I was really good at it. I made primal noises. I have not yet found the words to describe what it felt like as the baby came down and out, but it was--it was so incredible I'm crying now remembering it. And David and Scott holding me the way they were--I don't have words for that, either, and when David and Scott and I try to talk about it, about how it felt to do that together, we cry too. I felt so held by them. The three of us together during the baby's birth--during the pushing stage--with my hands and feet in their hands. It was a new intimacy for the three of us, a shared something. Maybe someday I will find the words.
I tried, when I was pregnant, not to buy into the rhetoric that giving birth could be a transcendent physical and spiritual experience for the mother. I thought that was a lot to live up to, and beside the point--isn't the point to get the baby out, rather than to provide self-fulfillment for the mom? But giving birth was a transcendent physical, emotional, and spiritual experiece for me.
David and Scott held my hands during all my contractions, usually one per hand but sometimes one or the other would be with me while the other ate some food or something (did they ever go to the bathroom? I don't remember). After I had been moved to my post-partum room (the last available private room, thank you God), I finally slept briefly toward morning. Once I woke up holding the bed rail in one hand and a fold of the blanket in the other, but in my dream-mind I was holding Scott and David's hands. Their hands in mine were sometimes the only connections I had to anything outside myself. And this was no gentle hand-holding! This was getting into an arm-wrestling grip and squeezing and giving me something to pull against. The two of them holding my hands is one of my clearest memories of the whole experience.
I didn't watch the birth; feeling it was enough for me. But I saw David's face when the baby's head became visible, and it was transformed. And I saw Scott's face right after the birth, and he was crying. They were both very moved by seeing the baby come down and out (though David described the head, when it was the only thing out, as "like a mounted trophy"). Scott said that when he first saw the top of the baby?s head, he thought, "Oh, this won?t be too bad, it's tiny." But then it just kept coming and coming--Eric was something of a banana-head.
During the pushing stage, the baby's heart rate dropped with contractions and never came back up. So in between, the doctor would reach up in there and rub the baby's scalp to wake it up and stimulate it, and its heart rate would go back up. The rubbing of the baby's head was pretty uncomfortable for me, and meant I didn't get much rest between contractions during the pushing stage. This was in contrast to the earlier stages, especially as labor got more intense. I had heard that women could "sometimes doze off between contractions," but I was going into deep REM sleep as soon as a contraction ended. I would be dreaming and far away, and when the next contraction woke me, I would feel I had been asleep a long time. I think once I even asked whether the contractions had slowed down, because the time in between felt so long, but I was reassured that I was still having contractions every 2 1/2 to 3 minutes. And they lasted 60-75 seconds or so, so you see I was making good use of my nap time.
The baby came out blue and floppy; the cord was wrapped twice around his neck. But he pinked up very quickly. They put him on my chest, and I kept saying over and over, "Is the baby OK? Is the baby OK?" Nobody paid any attention to me; the doctor was busy helping me deliver the placenta and then stitching up a small tear I suffered. The resident showed up at some point and she was teaching him to do the stitching. I didn't care. Scott asked me just last night how I felt about the stitching, and the truth is I had no attention to give it at all. I was just lying there thinking about the baby and couldn't have cared less, although at one point I did say, "I can feel that" when I was able to feel one of the needles, but I was almost surprised when the doctor responded by giving me a little more local anesthesia. Scott said he remembers me saying, "I can feel that," and he said I didn't sound concerned about it. As they were giving me the additional shot, it did cross my mind that they were sticking a needle into a very tender and private place, but I couldn't bring myself to be concerned about it.
Anyway, it finally crossed my mind that if the baby weren't OK, they wouldn't just leave him there on my chest (they did put my oxygen mask near his face for him to breathe). Scott says he went through a similar train of thought. Dr. Maney told me later that as many as 30% of babies are born with the cord around their necks. It was still scary for us but apparently the medical folks had seen it all before.
What else? One of the most uncomfortable parts of labor was that various medical types would come in to talk to me about various things. These people would want to talk to me between contractions, cutting into my happy drifting somewhere-way-north-of-this-laundromat time. During the anesthesia consultation, I kept thinking, "Can't you just talk to David about this?" But the worst part was when I had a contraction, and the person talking to me at my bedside would put on this detached look and wait it out. I know it's not, for instance, the anesthesiologist's job to help me through a contraction, but having someone there observing me who was not actively involved in the process was icky for me. I'm glad it didn't happen too often.
If I were going to give birth again, I would be even more committed to not having an epidural. First, because I would not have wanted to miss any piece of the pushing stage and the baby coming out. Second, because Eric was having trouble. Epidurals slow down the pushing stage, and I'm not sure he could have tolerated a longer one. Third, because I'm convinced not having the epidural is one reason my recovery has been so effortless; I told Adrianne "recovery" is even too strong a word. It's like I have nothing to recover from. I feel way better than I did 10 days ago; my nausea is gone, I have more physical energy, I can walk better. When I came downstairs this morning I _trotted_ down the stairs. None of the discomforts I had been told to expect post-partum have materialized, except some tenderness if I sit too long in a firm chair.
Speaking of the going-home bag from the hospital, my favorite item in it is the Breastfeeding Success Bag. It's a diaper bag, courtesy of Enfamil, stuffed full of formula samples! Breastfeeding Success indeed. That's like RJ Reynolds giving out Stop Smoking kits with complimentary packs of Marlboros. There oughta be a law.
Posted by Su Penn at June 4, 2003 02:55 PM | TrackBack