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My Birth Story: Illustrated – Part 3

The pain surged, eased up a bit then surged again. I yelped each time a contraction hit. Adam stood behind me as the pain rose and leaned his full body weight into my sacrum, as though he were trying to close and overly full suitecase. It was the only thing that brought relief. Katie, our Doula, entered through our front door and watched me quietly at first then stated matter-of-factly,  “You are in the late stages of labor”.

The contractions came crashing down on me like waves, one after another, and I leaped from the floor every time. She got down on the floor with me and coached me to channel the sound from high in my throat to deep in my pelvis and to be fierce “like a mama bear”. It worked. My voice broke open and became a deep moan. Suddenly I felt a surge of power I had not experienced before.

BirthStory-Spirit
She whispered something to Adam. I heard him frantically running around the house. (He told me later it was “get the stuff ready for the car, now!”) We all knew what this meant. There was a moment of calm and then a moment of panic as we scrabbled down the steps of our apartment to the car.
Even Katie, despite her calm demeanor, appeared frazzled and accidentally locked her keys in the car just as we were about to leave. She was forced to ride with us, which was a godsend. I got on my hands and knees in the back seat and she pushed on my sacrum while I moaned as Adam drove. The contractions seemed fast and unpredictable.

Birth Story-What we PLANNED 2

Normally the hospital is a 20-minute drive from our house. But at 8:15am we found ourselves gridlocked in rush hour traffic. I moaned and breathed as we lurched along. At one point I felt the overwhelming urge to push. “Are you pushing?” Katie asked. She sounded almost accusatory. “Don’t push!” She held my bottom as though to keep the baby inside. Then her voice became composed and she spoke quietly as though to herself “It’s alright. I’ve never delivered a baby by myself before, but if it happens before we get to the hospital, we are going to be alright.” Adam leaned on the horn and I felt the car jump forward.
When we arrived at the hospital the on-call nurse took us into a back room instructed me strip, put on a robe and get on the table and push. I hopped on the bed on my hands and knees and gripped the metal rails. My OBGYN who was also caught in rush hour traffic arrived 2O minutes later and gave me a quick check.
“Fully dilated and I can see the head coming though. He’s got a full head of hair.”
She instructed me to lie on my back and I protested. I did not want to work against gravity. We compromised and I agreed to lie on my side so she could see. For the next hour and a half she and a chorus of nurses encouraged and applauded me while I tried to bear down. Medical staff came in and out of the room, chatting amongst themselves.
“what have we here?”
“A natural birth. She came in fully dilated. Says she doesn’t remember her water breaking. Her underwear was soaked when she got here.”
“Second child? No first, but it’s behaving like a second. Very exciting. Did you record the show last night?”
I felt the slippery head slide out an inch from my body with each push, and then frustratingly, slide back in once the contraction was over.
“Will you guys kindly shut up, I’m trying to concentrate here!” I snapped.
“One more push” My OBGYN whispered over and over again. She addressed my doula “She’s got an incredible amount of control, it’s as if she’s taken Pitocin.”
“She’s a yoga teacher” my doula answered by way of explanation. “She’s been practicing for more than ten years”. I chuckled to myself. Yes, yoga probably helps, but in a sense my whole life had been a practice for this moment: Long walks in the Santa Cruz Mountains, hours of drawing and dancing, authentic movement, years of therapy, and overcoming my fear of singing and speaking in public, and probably most importantly: the ability to trust the process and let the chips fall as they may, regardless of what life has in store for me.
At 10:58 am our baby “Z” emerged from my body and into this world, tiny, red and alarmed. He had the softest cry I had ever heard. They laid his slippery, wet body on my chest and covered him with a blanket. After a minute he grew quiet. His wide, grayish blue eyes surveyed the surroundings: the nurses, me and Adam, the room of bright florescent lights. Then he rested his weary, head back down on my chest and practiced breathing.

My Birth Story: Illustrated – Part 2

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Where did I Leave off? To start from the beginning go to: My Birth Story Illustrated – Part 1

One thing I’ve learned is that if you want to have natural childbirth, you must be willing to be wildly uninhibited. It helps to have an exhibitionistic streak. Plus, a large dose of stubbornness.

Both my OBGYN, doula and prenatal yoga teacher confirmed this suspicion when I asked.
To practice I imagined screaming profanity at the top of my lungs while lying on my back in our living room with my legs wide open. I practiced animal noises in the car while driving. I imagined surrendering completely to the pain as it washed over me. 

Birthstory YOW

No one ever mentioned that natural child birth was a lot like having kinky, unorthodox sex.

As someone who has dabbled in community theatre, I was not immune to taking social risk, was even looking forward to the “performance” at the hospital. Still, we were warned that the labor process was long and mostly an endurance sport. In our hospital ready bag we had prepared playing cards, drawing pads, pens, and music. If my labor was really long we might we considered going for a hike or seeing a movie. I felt vibrant and healthy throughout most of my pregnancy, right up until the very end, and so was game for just about anything.
In the end we could have left the bag at home. In birthing class we learned that labor can look like anything, but in the end there is only one thing you can depend on: it will not turn out the way you planned. This truism is supposed to prepare us for parenthood. And I guess like any parental clichés (of which there are many) there is some truth to it.
In the end my labor was either three days long, or pretty damn quick, depending on how you look at it. Three days before Z was born I experienced Braxton Hicks contractions. Often called “false labor pains” these muscle spasms feel like labor though they are not. I thought they felt like menstrual cramps, and was not particularly bothered by them, except that they seemed to come on only at night when I was trying to sleep. Looking back, this was a ominous foreshadowing and preparation for the profound lack of sleep I would experience as a new mom. 

Birthstory-pain

Uncertain if the pangs I was experiencing were the real deal, I called my doula at 3am.
“I think I might be in labor…but I’m not sure.”
“Are you having contractions?”
“I don’t know. What do contractions feel like?”
She let out a long sigh. “You’ll know when you have them.”
She told me to get some rest, call her if anything changes and then politely hung up. I felt stupid. How could I be so close to labor and not know whether or not I was actually in labor? I felt like I had flunked some sort of pregnancy test. I tried to think back to my child birth preparation class, clearly there was something that I missed. But I don’t remember the actual sensory experience of contractions being discussed in childbirth class, only the annoying blanket statement “it’s different for every woman”.
The uncertainty and the contractions lasted three long days.
The pangs would come on at night and disappear by morning only to appear again the next evening. I affectionately referred to them as Dracula Contractions.
By the third evening I was sick of it. We had just made a plaster cast of my torso to immortalize my swollen belly and I was standing in the middle of our living room encased in a cocoon of plaster to let myself air dry when I felt the sudden and unbearable urge to pee. The feeling was so intense I had to sit down.
“Help get this Fr*ckin cast off me” I called to my husband as I began to flail around the room trying to break free of the cast. From the outside I must have looked like a strange and slightly obscene fifth grade science project. Like one of those volcanoes you make with baking soda and vinegar to watch explode.
He grabbed ahold of a seam and started to pull but I quickly swatted him away. I realized I could control the pain more if I did it myself. Again, more foreshadowing. In the end my husband could help, but he could not do labor for me, only I knew what needed to be done and could do it. The cast was stuck on some parts of my body more than others and rather than simply ripping the cast off, which would have been quick but painful, I opted for a more gentle but still excruciating shimmy. After what seemed like eternity, I broke free from the cast and waddled hastily to the bathroom.

birthstory-Toilet

I felt like giant water pitcher ready to tip over at any minute. A trickle of water came out. How could this be? I looked again. It was slightly pink and glistened.
“I think my water just broke,” I told my husband, “but I’m not sure”. Not sure? How could I not be sure?! But I was not sure of anything anymore. None of this fit the experience of birth I had read about or heard from others. Welcome to parenthood.
He suggested I call our Doula and ask about the trickle, but I did not want to bother her again with another false alarm. Besides I had an appointment the next morning with my OBGYN, I would ask her then.
I flopped belly up on the couch as the Dracula contractions began to take over and prepared myself for another night of no sleep. I was seriously irritated.

BirthStory-Draculas

Everyone emphasized how important it was to get a good night sleep before the baby came, but it was proving to be impossible! Stubbornly, I refused to let these false labor pains deprive me of one more night’s sleep. I piled the pillows high on our couch and tried to find a somewhat comfortable sleeping position. (At this point our bed had become too uncomfortable so I had succumbed to sleeping in the living room.) When that didn’t work, I decided to practice the relaxation and pain management techniques I had learned in childbirth class to prepare for the real thing.
Whenever the pain subsided, even a little bit I tried to rest and relax fully into the experience. When it rose again I did not resist or try to manage it. “Surrender. Surrender” I kept repeating to myself over and over again. I drifted in and out of consciousness for what seemed like forever.
The night before my little one arrive I did not sleep a single hour. Instead I lay belly-up on our couch, observing my breath as I drifted in and out of consciousness. This pain will go away I thought just like the other ones had the nights before. At approximately 5 a.m the sunlight began seeping through our blinds. Feeling a little defeated I got up and began preparing myself for another groggy day. As I steadied myself from the couch a new pang rose and then fell. It was still here?! It seemed a little more intense then I remembered. Could this be it? Naw.
Just to be sure I waited. The sensation came and left quickly. Was this a pattern? Maybe I was just delusional from lack of sleep. Reluctantly I woke Adam. “I don’t think this is labor, but can you measure the time in between these things, just in case?” He did. They were 2-3 minutes apart.
“I’m calling Katie,” he said, and marched into the bedroom to get his phone.
“You’re wasting your time,” I called after him. I was still not convinced.
By the time he came back into the living room I had thrown up on our hardwood floor and was on my hands and knees in pain. My low back throbbed. Maybe I really was in labor!