for those of you reading this on monday morning with your coffee (ahem) and donut, you may want to put that donut down if things like poop and amonitic such and such make you woozy. then again, you know me, so you should know better.
this is part two of my labor story. you can read the prequel here and part one here.
at this point i’ve just gotten to the hospital and i am contracting heavily and regularly. we’d arrived at the hospital at 2:45 a.m. and i was three centimeters dilated. two hours later, at 4:45, the contractions got even more intense and closer together. there seemed to be very little time to recover from the contractions, for me, emma, and tom. i sat upright in the bed and i did not want to move. everything that i thought i would want and need to provide relief sat packed in my bag. i did not want to sit on the exercise ball, i did not want to change positions, i did not want to listen to music, suck on jolly ranchers or popsicles, look at flowers, nothing. by 5:45 i started vomiting with my contractions. there was very little left to throw up since i’d gotten most of it out at home. when i felt i was going to be sick, i would tell tom and emma. emma would get a pink plastic basin and i would throw up. tom would wet a washcloth and wipe my face and mouth. it was ugly, rough, it was labor. and i was at my breaking point. by this i mean i was beginning to lose control, not stay on top of my contractions. i was screaming and wincing instead of breathing and relaxing. and i was letting the door in my mind open to the idea of an epidural. i did not say it at first, though. i said things like,
-i don’t think i can do this much longer.
-i don’t know how much more i can take this.
-i am losing control.
tom and emma heard me but they did not respond. if i was going to get an epidural it was going to be me that had to speak the words. i wanted so desperately for them to offer so that i could pin the decision on one of them.
they did not.
the knew what my birth plan was, to have a natural childbirth, and that i did not want people offering up medication. as it was i was had to be hooked up to a fetal monitor because of my VBAC (the first sign of a uterine rupture is decreased heart rate in the baby) and i had an IV antibiotic because i had tested positive for group b strep. it would be no trouble to just add another drug.
soon after i felt the need to go to the bathroom again. i knew i had to poop. i made the short but excruciating trip to the toilet and tom and emma held my hands while i both pooped and contracted on the toilet. the nurse was afraid i’d completely dilated since needing to push feels like needing to poop.
-christy, are you sure it’s not time to push? we don’t want a toilet baby here!
i answered:
-i’m sure!
i asked emma to leave while i wiped. i don’t know why it was such a big deal since everything else had pretty much been laid out at that point. then i made my way back to the bed. this whole trip to the bathroom, though seemingly insignificant, was enough to really sway me towards the epidural.
a midwife came in to check my cervix. i was hoping for some real progress. i was hoping to be told that i was in transition, somewhere between seven and ten centimeters, the most painful but shortest lasting phase of labor. but in fact i was found to be at four centimeters. four. just four. not seven, eight, nine, or ten. just four.
i asked for the epidural. i’m sure tom was relieved. i could see that emma was disappointed. i cried. i felt i’d given in, let everyone including myself, down. getting the epidural was very painful because i had to stay so still through the contractions. i was sitting on one edge of the bed, tom on one side of me, emma on the other, the nurse in front of me. i looked at emma:
-just tell me what to do.
-hunch your back, just push your back toward the doctor. good, that’s it. just breathe. you can do this.
by 7:30 i was resting with the epidural. all of a sudden the mood changed. tom and emma took breaks from the room. the tv went on. someone read a magazine. they told me to sleep but i could not. the epidural was not working on the left side of my pelvis, so for the remainder of labor i had to keep requesting extra medicine. even then, though, nothing was as bad as i’d had it earlier so i really couldn’t complain. the epidural still allowed me to have feeling from my knees to my feet, so i kept moving my legs while in bed. i had a catheter put in because i obviously couldn’t get up to go to the bathroom. with the exception of a few ice chips, i’d had nothing to eat since about 7:00 the previous night. it had been about twelve hours since i’d put something in my stomach. at one point when emma was checking on me, i was crying.
-i’m disappointed inmyself. are you disappointed?
she said,
- i think you did what was right for your situation. i’ve never seen contractions like that.
and then she comforted me with her personal birth story and her hopes and dreams for her family’s future. let me be clear that i was not in this to impress my doula. i felt a strong bond with her, as if we were good friends, and the fact that she shared her stories with me made me feel so amazingly calm and comfortable in that room. i hope that she and i will continue to keep in touch.
at 8:15 a doctor came in to explain that we might want to consider breaking my water to speed up dilation. we wanted to think about it and discuss it with emma. we knew that once the water was broken that there was only so long that they would allow me to go without delivering. and even though we had insisted on having a midwife deliver, the doctors from our practice we hovering like sharks near bait down the hall, waiting to perform a c-section at any time. because i had in fact been progressing, albeit slowly, we decided to let them break the water. at 9:45 a midwife named karen came in to do it. at that point i was five centimeters dilated. i did not feel her break the water, but i did feel a warm rush of what felt like gel between my legs. they all marveled at the amount of liquid that came out. the liquid was clear, a good sign. thirty minutes later i had soaked through all of the pads laying under me and through the sheets on the bed. i was amazed. the nurse changed the sheets and put down new pads.
by 11:45, when the next midwife came in to check my cervix, i had dilated to seven centimeters. harper’s head was at zero station. (zero station means the baby has dropped or engaged well into the pelvis and that his head rests right at the level of the ischial spines.)
things were moving along and by 1pm i began to feel a low pressure and some pain. my cervix had dilated to nine centimeters. i asked for epidural medication because the pain on my left side was becoming more and more intense. the nurse and midwife told me about how i would eventually feel a very low pain with a feeling like i needed to poop (again!) and that at that point i could push. they explained how they prefer to let the baby “labor down” which meant that i would not just push when i got to ten centimeters, rather i would wait for my body to need and want to push. i appreciated this opportunity to have a small connection with my self again despite the fact that i’d had an epidural. for the next hour and a half i kind of wriggled around in bed, very uncomfortable, unable to stay still. i was trying to listen to my body, pay attention, so that i would not miss that “feeling.” oh i didn’t.
at 2:30 p.m. i felt it. a panic, a need to poop/push/make some kind of move. things were different. emma had been explaining to tom how the pushing stage would work, how they would each hold one of my legs while i pushed, and let me rest by lowering them in between contractions. at this point many midwives had come through but i was now with the one that would deliver harper. her name was angel. angel checked my cervix and explained that i was pretty much fully dilated but that there was a little bit of cervical lip still in the way. she was able to just move it back so i could start pushing. she lowered the bottom half of the bed a bit and sat down on it, getting comfortable while i was getting more uncomfortable. and that was when it began. she said,
-it’s time to deliver this baby.
tom starting to cry immediately. sobbing really. i gave him a look and said,
-you better pull it together.
at the next contraction i pushed. if you’ve ever been constipated and had a huge mound of shit that’s been sitting inside you for days without budging and you’ve been afraid to push it out but are finally done with having it just sit there, then you now know what it feels like to push. naturally, given my past experience with colon issues, i was a pro at pushing and they let me know right away. thank god!
i was so afraid while pushing and i felt a great deal of pain. my epidural had finished off at that point and they weren’t going to give me more medication. i really felt as if i could not get to the point of pushing out a whole baby. they kept telling me to “push through it,” which was exactly what i needed to do, it just was very hard. i wanted to stop, give up, go about it a different way. with every contraction i gave three to four hard pushes. i asked someone to count for me, which made it easier. i asked people to stop chatting (they were really chatting.) i grunted, groaned, i cussed, cried, but i also pushed. i asked angel if i could squat and she told me that i only had a couple of pushes left. and twenty six minutes after i had started pushing a head came out. i relaxed. i gave another push for the shoulders, and then out she slipped, just like a wet peach. angel held her up so that tom and i could see and say for ourselves that she was a girl. and then she put her right into my arms.
prior to this day i had wondered if i would mind all the blood and amniotic fluid and general cheese and messiness that comes stuck to a newborn when she was handed to me. not for a second. all i wanted was to hold her. she was huge and warm and wet and all that i ever wanted in that moment.
-hi harper. hi. it’s mommy.
i had torn from the pushing and her size. she weighed nine pounds seven ounces, four ounces more than amelie. i had a first degree vaginal tear and a second degree perineal tear. they cleaned amelie up and did her apgar tests while i continued to contract and push out the placenta. i asked to see it a little later. they handed her back to me while they sewed me up. i did feel that a little. not so great but i really did not care. you don’t care. you really don’t care. i began nursing her right then, an opportunity i did not have with amelie. and then i asked for a coke. god help me all i wanted at that point was to hold my baby and drink a coke. and believe me they produced a coke within seconds and it was the most delicious thing i had ever tasted.
the room was buzzing with four additional nurses. there were a good 8-10 people in the room at this point. things were hectic, i was lost in love, tom was sending out texts and twitters, and that was our birth story.
today harper is four weeks old and i’m so glad i’ve written this down because it has already started to fade from my memory. like so much of our children’s lives, the details come and go and we are lucky if we are able to recall even a fraction of what happened. so i’m thankful for this memory, this story.
i am so thankful that we had emma there. she was so comforting, so exactly what tom and i both needed in this new and scary situation where things so easily slip into crazy. she was there for me, and i dare say that only a few people in my life have really ever been so unselfishly there for me and i will never forget her support.
and tom. my husband, the father of my children, my best friend. i know that this birth was an entirely different experience for him than it was for me. i know that it was painful for him and that his pain may have been worse than my own. because there is nothing that grabs and twists and slices at your heart more than seeing someone you love suffer. and that is exactly what he had to see. me suffering, hour after hour. and he survived it. and he helped me survive it.
i love you, tom. we made it. we made her.
we. made. her.
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