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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
