B is for Little Z's Birth Story

To start our blog we thought we might as well get right to it: the birth story. I prefer to joke about things, to tell stories in a hyperbolic way. Whether the initial event was fun or not, finding humor in the retelling helps me to find the joy in it. When we laugh at something together, we all share in the experience. ​ My birth story, however, is not something I can yet laugh about. It was long and painful. When I say we labored for nearly three days, I am not using hyperbole as a storytelling technique. When I say there was a point at which I thought I wasn’t going to make it, I am not exaggerating. I am speaking honestly, however, when I say that I would do it again if asked to, in a heartbeat, in exactly the same way, because I would do anything for this boy. (I know that sounds like crazy mom hormones talking, but falling in love with your child is something incredible.)

Our labor signals started on a Saturday, early evening, after a massage. I needed help with my hip pain, but the real purpose was for the therapist to push all the trigger points that might send this baby out into the world. I really did envision a pressure point triggering a waterslide action and the baby shooting out. Alas, this isn't exactly how it works. After I left the massage, I had a trickle of water that was not incontinence, and I felt that this must be game on. ​I had significant cramping that kept me tossing and turning during the night, but I was sleeping in 30-45 minute increments anyway at this late stage in the game, so this wasn't totally different from the norm. In the wee hours of the morning, the cramps felt pretty regularly spaced, like a ticking time bomb, and increasingly painful (which by the way was so very exciting at this point) so I pulled up my birth app timer. I lay there for an hour, excitedly punching the clock when a cramp started. My contractions were one minute long, eight minutes apart! I did my best to sleep, and not disturb my husband because the video in our birth class gave an example of a woman working way too hard in early labor when you are supposed to just chill. So I did. (Well, I may have spent the last hour just watching my husband sleep, but I didn’t wake him!) Finally I got in the shower, did my hair, and put on a stretchy maxi dress because it was our anniversary and I WAS IN LABOR. We could have this baby today. On our anniversary! How magical! (I say this with a spoonful of sarcasm now, though.) When my husband started to wake, I crept over to the bed and lunged at my husband (the best a giant pregnant woman can, more like slow motion falling), and I told him we were in labor. He smiled, held my hand, and I will never forget what he said . . .

“Don’t be too excited, my love, so-and-so’s wife was in labor for 10 hours and then it turned out to be false labor.”

WHAAAAAAAAAAT. WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT TO ME?!?!!? ​ I see now, as a less hormonal, not-in-labor being, why my husband didn't want to get too excited about the potential of us having a baby that day, but I’d been saving up this information forever, I mean HOURS. This baby might just pop out!*

*I take back what I said about finding humor in birth story. This concept of the baby “popping” out is painfully hilarious to me now.

I had an induction acupuncture appointment scheduled, and while I considered cancelling, what if we weren’t in labor? This may sound like overdoing it on the induction techniques, but every hour after baby’s due date is the mathematical equivalent of four years in the real world, and this boy was already over a week late. The acupuncturist must be able to do something to help, and we could get Starbucks on the way. I actually considered driving there, but my valiant husband took me, and I recall yelling at him for every piece of gravel in the road because the contractions, while 7 minutes apart at this point, were not “pre-labor” cramps or something, they were full on, hip-breaking contractions. When we got home my mother-in-law and sister-in-law wanted to come by for a visit for our anniversary. The pain was already starting to make me pissy, but I had two arterial motives for this visit:

1) I needed my new mama book back with the recipe for homemade labor-aide: (The First Forty Days: The Essential Art of Nourishing the New Mother has ginger lemonade labor drink recipe that probably saved my life.)

2) ​​We had not yet taken a family photo: the bump, our dog, my husband and I suppose me too. I was excited for someone to get a good shot because I couldn’t fit the bump in a selfie. Although my husband had to hold me up so we could get outside to take the picture, and I may have been aggressive when my sister-in-law suggested we take three steps to move out of the shadows of the avocado tree, we got a lovely family photo. Everything was good, we could now have this baby.

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Then things got really real. The contractions intensified and I started throwing up with each squeeze. My husband made me homemade “labor-aide” to keep me hydrated and my electrolytes at an appropriate level. In the early evening, our contractions reached three minutes apart for a few hours, and we called our doula, ready for the hospital. We were stoked. We were having this baby. And then the contractions slowed, and slowed some more, and were back to five minutes apart. ​ We labored through the night, not sleeping, while my husband texted our doula for advice. Since pushing a start button on a contraction timer app and watching the seconds slowly click away until I reached a full minute of uterine hugs was beyond my physical and emotional capacity, my husband was not only timing the contractions in between cooking batches of this labor-aide, and rinsing out my throw up bowl, he also had to rush over and push my hips together through every contraction while I screamed and moaned. When he told me the moaning was using up energy I needed for labor, I almost killed him, and then realized he was right, and tried to stay mum.

My husband held my hand, held my hips, drew up hot baths, and ok, I’ll say it, helped me in and out of adult diapers, because my water didn't break, it was just leaking the whole time (at least that is what I think.) A friend was recently told by Labor and Delivery that she wasn't in labor and her trickle was most likely bath water. Damn, I must have had a lot of bath water up there, friends. By late afternoon Monday, I was running out of steam physically and emotionally. I wasn't excited. I wasn't optimistic. I didn't know what else to do. We had done lunges, squats, and sat on the birth ball. We had stretched and sat in every position the internet and our doula suggested, including on the toilet, in mind splitting pain, while my husband held my hand trying to softly convince me to stay for one more contraction because sitting in this posture helps open you up. My husband had slept for maybe a twenty minute stretch Sunday night, while I tried to labor alone, and both of us were, to say the least, tired. Our doula came over and the energy immediately softened. She softened the lights and lit some candles (well, turned on some candles which my husband had tried to light earlier not noticing my screams were not labor pain but an attempt to tell him they were battery operated candles with a fake wick.) She put on soft music, massaged essential oils onto pain pressure points, and we talked about my labor so far. (Admittedly, my husband did. I think I was gesticulating through contractions and pointing at my back.) She had me perform a “circuit” of moves to help swish the baby, because of the intense back labor, she felt he may be sunny side up. She warned me that she did not deliver babies at home so if I felt the need to push, we needed to get to the hospital. We live a few miles from the hospital; my husband joked I could roll down the hill to the delivery room in the worse case scenario. Before midnight I felt this extreme and urgent need to push, and we elatedly loaded up the car with that birth bag that I packed weeks before but never organized, a stool to keep my feet up in the car, sunglasses (because hospitals are bright) and a towel to sit on, just in case. ​ I definitely arrived at that hospital like a boss. Taking baby steps into the Emergency Room with my doula on one side and my husband on the other, sunglasses on, not needing to ask for directions because it was clear where we were headed. A great guy whisked me onto a wheelchair and took us up to L&D. I channelled a vision from my Hyno-Birthing audio meditation of the woman arriving at the hospital so calm, cool and collected that people didn't know she was in labor. Instead the calm and cool vibes were only coming from the receptionist, who was moving like molasses in a Montana winter, while I tried not to shout expletives as she collected my information like a disinterested and underpaid Abercrombie and Fitch stock girl. We were shown to a triage room to wait for someone to check me over and confirm that I really was in labor and ready to be admitted. We waited. And waited. Two hours. No baby, no doctor. Just me in a paper gown, no pants, throwing up into my trusty Pampered Chef steel bowl with a rubber travel lid. When I was finally examined, she said there was a note in my chart about concern for the size of the baby, so she palpitated around my stomach and said no worries, “Seven pounds, I would be surprised if he was seven and half.” (*This is foreshadowing. Sometime in the next twenty-four hours I will ask my husband to bring me this woman so I can personally threaten her in a Princess Bride Inigo Montoya way.) The good news was, we were in labor! (Insert giant eye rolling emoji. Wow, we’re in labor?!? I had NO IDEA.) I could hear the woman in the room next to us, a woman that I had watch WALK into triage, answering questions in a natural tone, not speaking in my stilted, guttural responses that ejected from somewhere in my body. Nurse? Maybe you should go check and see if she is in labor, because we feel pretty clear on our own situation. When asked if I wanted to be checked to see how dilated I was, I gave a hard pass because I just wanted to get up to the room and have this baby. Things get foggier here. I think a midwife checked me, but there was a shift change, and then doctors were performing C-sections, so it wasn’t until maybe 8:00 a.m. that I remember speaking to anyone other than our labor nurse who checked my vitals. The first thing the doctor said when he walked in was, “I am looking at the size of you, your belly, and the size of him,” pointing at my husband, “and I am concerned.” Well me too, bucko. I’ve been concerned since this baby was measuring big 21 weeks ago. Out loud, though, I told the doctor although I did not want a cesarean, they were welcome get this baby out anyway they saw fit and I promised to just nod and smile. I didn’t have an epidural because I was going to have this baby any minute, I thought, and I didn't want it slowing down my labor. (Yes, insert a laugh here, because we are at what, hour 50?) I also still believed I had work to do and ain’t nobody gonna tie me down to a hospital bed when I am anxious and delirious. A doula is important here, because people intermittently check on you at the hospital, but otherwise you are pretty much left to hang out in this cold, sterile, little room and wait. Over the hours, we did laps and lunges around the hospital ward, more “get this baby face down” circuits, and squats with the hospital bed with the nurses help, but when the doc measured me, I was six centimeters. I was crushed. Apparently, so was my bladder, so they suggested a catheter. This is supposed to be painful, but friends, while in labor, it was like an uncomfortable pinch of a dry tampon. (Too much? You’re reading a birth story, not my Cabo Bachelorette 2015 recap.)

At the next check-in the doctor was concerned my water had only partially broken, that I had a “back bag” that was squished and somehow blocking the baby’s exit strategy, and suggested we break my water. (My doula had anticipated and warned me about this seemingly hours before.) For this though, I would need an IV before proceeding, and I had refused the hep-lock when we got to the hospital. They make you feel like a crazy, modern science shaming hippie for this, like I was going to start waving crystals and chanting at them in an exorcism attempt to deliver my own baby, but if you labor hard with a needle stuck in your wrist, you are going to be in pain, significant pain separate from the contraction pains, and maybe have a sweet bruise up your forearm for the next two weeks like I did. I also understand why dogs dig a den and hide out to give birth. I still trusted my husband and my doula, but at this point anyone looking in my direction, let alone touching me sent me into mental hysterics. I had a human child attempting a violent escape from my womb but a needle in my arm somehow still freaked me out a little. I remember smiling as much as I could and always saying please and thank you, but in reality I probably looked like a wicked witch from a Disney movie, hunched over, grumbling to myself and occasionally screaming out something unintelligible. Of course I took the IV when it was recommended, and then, things got really real, again. They broke my water and it was a lot. A lot a lot a lot of “water.” With each contraction I thought Niagara Falls couldn't break one more time, but it did. And then my heart rate dropped, they rushed an oxygen mask on my face, pushed some good electrolyte filled juices into the IV, and I was no longer allowed to be just intermittently monitored, I had to wear that giant belt with the enormous heart rate blocks continually. There was meconium when my water broke, meaning the baby had pooped, most likely because he was stressed. The doctor told us this, in a disparaging, reproachful tone. I swear rolled his eyes at my husband like, “I told you there was a problem.” As if we were purposely stalling this labor like some betches at brunch overstaying their welcome at a hot spot restaurant on a busy Sunday funday afternoon. The awesome part, though, is that my cervix opened right up . . . 7 . . . 8 . . . 9, woohoo!!! And then we stayed at nine. After a few hours (maybe two or three, but things are fuzzy) at nine centimeters, the doctor recommended Pitocin. Now of all the labor stories I have heard, my one take home was that I did not want Pitocin. It is something the devil made to ruin lives, not help them. It is a synthetic hormone to strengthen your contractions, which means your body will split open trying to force this baby out. After an hour on Pitocin I was still 9 centimeters, so they cranked it up. Another hour, still 9, crank it up some more. Then another hour . . . This was the point I thought I wasn't going to make it. It was an out of body experience, looking down on myself, curled up on the hospital bed (well, as much as a giant pregnant woman with a heart rate belt can curl) unable to writhe in pain because I am a giant pregnant woman with a heart rate belt wrapped around me, chained to my IV and my blood pressure cuff. Our doula had turned the sound off of the machines, which made a huge difference. There wasn't an incessant beep beep beeping, unless the blood pressure cuff was taking its measurements again, which for whatever reason was insanely painful. Maybe because the Pitocin set my skin on fire. I asked for another catheter. I asked for help rolling into child’s pose.

What I don't recall over these hours is that, on three separate occasions that morning, the doctor tried to turn my not-so-little baby. I imagine I don't recollect this procedure because I blacked out the pain of someone putting their hand and forearm into my cervix, grabbing my babies head, and twisting. Sometime after four o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, my labor nurse and the doctor walked in with a few attendants, and told me what I had figured hours before: this baby was not coming. He has not dropped down at all. Although I was nine centimeters, I wasn't opening anymore because his head was still wayyyyyy up there, not nearing his exit point in the slightest. He was at -2 when we arrived, and he was still at -2. They would need to take him out the emergency exit, the sun roof as my friend sweetly calls it. When he said “cesarean” I broke into tears, both because we had worked so very hard for so very long, and I wouldn't get to “birth” my child, but also because it was over. I was alive and so was my baby. We were going to meet him. I also was going to have drugs. Maybe ALL the drugs. They said the operating room wouldn't be ready for another hour, so just hang back. I don't recall saying anything but our doula immediately interjected, “Can she have an epidural now?” And I think I said, surely didn't shout, clutching at the bedsheets that I would form into noose at someone’s refusal, CAN WE TURN OFF THE PITOCIN NOW? Oh yeah, sure, sure honey, no need for that now, they said, as if it was a glass of lemonade on a hot summer day that I refused because I was on a beach diet. They did not want to give me an epidural because by the time the anesthesiologist would be able to visit, it would only be half an hour to forty-five minutes before surgery. As if that isn't a long time to have your body split open with Pitocin contractions while your nether regions remain stretched at nine centimeters. My doula asked about some other drug they could put into the IV to help ease the pain of the back labor, and whatever it was, my nurse was gone in a flash and back in a jiffy. The stuff may have helped, kind of like putting a bandaid on a bruise. The intention was soothing at least. You aren't supposed to have food before surgery, and I was beyond excited that the fact I hadn't held down solid food since my dinner Saturday night was finally of some benefit. Poor SB breakfast sandwich didn't stand a chance. When my nurse looked nervous at this fact, instead of enthusiastic like me, I said, “Well, I had a clementine Monday morning, and toddler fruit pouch on Tuesday morning!” She said she would make a note that the squishy food didn't stay down and assured me I’d probably be in the clear for surgery asap. It’s funny, I remember having this conversation while walking over to my stuff, rifling through my bag to get out some chapstick and show her the toddler food pouch, all of these actions being unquestionably impossible at this point. This minor memory is important because it tells me that my mind has replaced inconsequential memories with something more palpable, making this a good time to point out I probably was not the most fun person to be around these few days and my husband is most likely a Herculean demigod. It is unfathomable, otherwise, that he could have tended to my every emotional and physical need, without sleep and little food, and still be alive, by my side, and in love. ​

An anesthesiologist explained the spinal procedure and medications to me, and I suppose the doctor explained the cesarean procedure but I don't remember that part. I do remember looking at my doula, curled up on her chair with a scarf, trying to snack, and my husband, bent over on his chair, holding a cup of water. It had been three days since that trickle of water after my massage, and while my support team was looking haggard, I couldn't believe they were still there. ​ Once in the OR, I found out why they do not want to give women an epidural when you are too far into labor. For the spinal anesthesia, you are directed to round your back forward and stay very still. I repeat, ROUND your back as if you do not have a 12 ton watermelon in your stomach and STAY STILL as if you aren't having body splitting contractions lasting one to two minutes at 20 second intervals. When they laid me down, put the oxygen mask on my face, the blinder partition up, strapped my arms down, and asked if I could feel anything below my boobs as they poked spots on my belly and legs, I couldn't answer them. I was breathing so hard because we just had the flu the week before and my asthma doesn't allow for a full recovery for a few weeks. I was whimpering and crying. My nurse looked so worried about my pain when I couldn't respond, and tears were welling up, she said something to the nurses or doctors to pause in the poking, asking me about the sensations below my ribs, assuring me the surgery wouldn't hurt, I would only feel tugging, and I barely squeaked out, “I’m just so excited. I’m having a baby!” My husband came in then. As he sat down, he told me, calm and confident, “We’re going to meet our son.” He held my hand, locked eyes with me, and our tears started pouring. Then we heard a cry. I am convinced the world stopped turning, no one can tell me any different. I felt everything freeze and go silent, for just one moment, and then there was this cry that pierced through a force field: our baby. The doctor called out, “Hey Bubba! No wonder you weren't coming out of your mama!” My husband had missed the moment he planned to stand up over the partition and watch our son being born. He had missed an incredible photo opportunity of our baby boy being pulled out of me. He missed witnessing that, but he didn't miss a beat when it came to me. He had held eye contact through the slice, and open, and pulling, and all I needed in that moment was him holding my hand and looking at me lovingly, to know that everything would all be alright. They asked my husband if he wanted to come over while they suctioned the boy’s lungs (the fluid gets squeezed out the baby’s lungs through childbirth, but not a c-section) and gave him his Apgar score (he was a 9 out of 10 but I swear I wanted to fight them on that one point) and then they brought the boy to me, telling me the nurses wanted to name him Hank the Tank for being so extraordinarily big. When the nurse held him on my chest, he looked up at me with these calm, soulful blue eyes, as if to say, “See mamma? It’s all good.” Then he ate, right away, no struggle, latched on, and had what appeared to be, a satisfying meal. ​ ​My husband left with the baby while they sewed me back up. It took longer than expected because my uterus was “tired” and wasn't clotting properly. While packing me back in, one doctors discussed a song one was humming, Electric Love, but who was it by? I chimed in that it was Borns, that I had seen him perform at Coachella, that he was wearing a lady’s lace shirt, but somehow pulled it off, because you know, rockstar status. I think they rolled their eyes, but maybe I only had this conversation in my head. At the end, the doctor did ask me about my tattoo. I started to tell him the story of my best friend and I getting tattoos when we turned eighteen. “Do you know the story of starfish stuck on the beach and the boy throwing them back, when an old man tells him if he cannot save them all, why even try?” “No. I just need to know what it is so I can sew it back together,” he responded. “Oh, its a sand dollar. Like a circle shape. But the tattoo artist added some blue flames that are water -" “Yeah, that’s all I needed to know.” I honestly thought he was trying to make small talk, because it is awkward being wide awake while someone pushes your organs around and sews you up, but in the end it was just a logistical question. The doctors left, and I was laying there in a silent silver OR when two nurses came in to help me to a gurney. Here is when it gets cool. They slide a raft under you, inflate it like a floating air mattress, and the air creates a hovercraft so they can lift you to the gurney, or so I remember. They wheel you to another room to check your vitals while they finish checking your baby. I fed my hungry son again, they drained my bladder and the nurse held up a gallon bucket (ok maybe it was smaller) and said, “Whoa! You already filled this, I need to grab another!” I remember that catheter we tried hours ago hadn’t worked and started to worry about living a life with a stretched and weakened bladder. Once cleared to head to our hospital room around 8:30, they covered me up so my breasts weren't exposed, they would be wheeling me through the hospital and up to our room now. I cannot fathom caring about my tits being out after 60 hours of out of body (and out of clothes) experiences, spending the better part of the past day pantless on a hospital bed, as attendants came in and out, many of them checking on my hooha and most seeing my lady bits either way, but I guess the breast modesty was for other hospital patrons. ​ Back in our hospital room, which although old and simple, may have well been the Four Seasons to me. I got to eat a packet of saltines and drink water, and even though I wasn't allowed food until the morning, I convinced the night nurse to bring me a jello. A jello! I couldn’t be happier. My baby sleeping in his basinet, my husband sleeping in the next bed, and me with real freakin food and pain meds that hadn’t worn off yet. I slept for a gorgeous, luxurious 30 minutes and then began the every two hour rotations of nursing our baby. Five days later we packed up our little life in that hospital room and took our son home.

The craziest part of this whole story is that if a time traveler offered to take me back, to erase what happened, and get a redo, I do not think I would change a thing. I didn't understand the importance of a birth story before, but I do now. Enduring that level of physical pain was only possible because I was doing it for someone else. Those days of labor, and the ones that followed in the hospital, forever changed my relationship with my husband, creating an indescribable bond, a strength in our love that was so unexpected it was shocking. This doesn’t mean that I do not whine consistently about my current state of limited mobility and chronic pain, or that I do not still struggle with resentment over my cesarean and bitterness towards others who were able to deliver their baby in a way they wanted. Bringing a human being into the world is no small feat, however it is accomplished. This was my first lesson in being a mom: no matter how you became a mom, vaginal birth, cesarean, IVF, adoption - there is magic there. Retelling my birth story has helped me take ownership of my choices and my feelings, and recognize how magical this whole thing is. Despite the length of our labor, it still feels like this child just appeared, out of no where. Maybe I missed the stork in the OR? By whatever means people bring a child into their lives, it is amazing, in the truest sense of the word. I have the privilege of waking up to my baby’s smile and his bright blue eyes every morning and I just think: magic.

#baby #birthstory