M's birth story

Alright, folks...here it is, in all its detail & length. I'm glad, too, because I keep having things I want to write about, but won't allow myself until this is posted. :-)

I have felt guilty that I haven’t written this out yet. The biggest reason I’ve neglected the task is because M allows me very little two-handed typing time. But then, as time passed, I became less and less driven to do it. Yesterday, I was reading my friend Caitlin’s birth story, and realized so many details of M’s were already becoming fuzzy; my time was limited if I wanted a detailed recollection.

I give this preface because I’m still not feeling motivated, and I’m 50% the writer I should be when I’m not motivated. So if I bore you with this, I’m sorry.

I will say that the things I loved most about M’s birth were the parts where I knew things before they happened. Some people would call it intuition, and that may be correct, since I think the whole process of labor and birth puts you in a spiritual and animal/instinctual position that could easily heighten all your senses, including the sixth one.

My take on it is a little different. I think M and I were communicating very clearly, and that I heard what she was telling me through an intuition or sixth sense. We still communicate pretty clearly now, but it’s so obviously different. All of our communication is now external communication, which includes my observations, her language (vocal & non-verbal), and my past experience with babies. Within a couple days of her birth, however, I realized I felt like my inner advisor was gone and that while my maternal instincts were still strong, my intuition was greatly decreased. I still had lots of strong hormones having their way with me at that point, so if my way of knowing things were simply a side effect of hormonally-induced heightened awareness, then you’d think I’d not notice such an immediate difference.

It probably doesn’t matter one way or the other. Regardless of the science behind the phenomenon, I feel very connected to M and very calm about her birth and her person today. We still have quite the little love affair going on.

I’ll start with the fact that although she was in an optimal, head-down position throughout the entire 3rd trimester, she flipped breech on me at 38+ weeks. And I chose not to turn her. Tracey (my midwife) and Dr. Bowen both told me that sometimes babies turn because of a cord issue and that turning them back can actually be harmful. But that they were both willing to try while she was under close monitoring if that’s what I wanted.

I felt that if M turned on her own all the way at 38+ weeks, then that’s what she wanted. I half-heartedly tried turning her one night in the birthing tub. I talked to her, I put gentle pressure on her, I told her I trusted her judgment, but that if she could turn, that would be best.

She didn’t turn. So I decided to go ahead with the plan and leave her as she was. In my mind, she was as much a lucid individual capable of making individual decisions as I was. Perhaps she knew best. After all, she had the best (only) view of her environment in there. Tracey requested that I look into the dangers of birthing breech so I could make an informed decision of whether I was still comfortable with my homebirthing plan. I promised I would look into it. I didn’t. I just wasn’t worried at all. I look back on that decision now & think, “I was crazy!” But at the time, I strongly believe M herself let me know it was okay.

I had only one somewhat persistent fear, and that was that I would birth her all the way to the head and then she would get stuck & I would have to transport to the hospital to get her out, with her body hanging out the whole time. I now know that would probably be impossible – she would have almost certainly died in that situation. But that was my only fear.

I started having widely spaced, noticeable contractions on Thursday afternoon. They continued through the night, but weren’t terribly regular and I was able to sleep through them. They picked up again to about every 15 minutes Friday morning. I had a chiropractor appointment that morning and on the way there, I called Jeff to tell him I didn’t want him going to Indiana the next morning as he had planned. I didn’t tell him I thought I was in labor or anything. I’d been having contractions for a couple weeks that were irregular and noticeable. They had even been every 15 minutes for several hours at a time on many nights. I didn’t know if this was it or not, I just knew I did not want him going to Indiana.

He protested that it had to be done and that he would only be an hour away, so if anything happened he could come right home. At that point, I broke down and cried and sobbed on the phone, yelled at him, told him to just do whatever he wanted, I would find someone else to be with me! I hung up on him. I said to myself, “Screw him, he’ll be lucky if I even LET him be at MY birth. I have other people! I don’t need him!” I cried big heaving sobs all the way to the chiro’s office. When I got there, I thought that I was having an awfully strong reaction to this fight. I wondered if maybe I was really in labor.

At Dr. Lang’s, she asked how I was doing. I told her about the spaced-out contractions. She said, “You look like you’re in early labor. I think you are. I think this is it.” Later she told me I had that faraway look of a focused mother about to give birth. Maybe Dr. Lang is just intuitive herself. I think she is.

That afternoon, I had been planning to go to Dana’s for a playdate. As the time got closer, my contractions were still the same. Jeff agreed he wouldn’t go to Indiana the next day, but we both were still wondering if it would be a trip missed for no reason. As I prepared to go to Dana’s, I kept thinking I should take a change of pants in case my water broke. As I worked through all the stuff on my list to take, the pants kept getting put off, and I kept reminding myself to grab them – just in case. I walked out without them.

It was a shame I left them at home, because when I walked into Dana’s, I went to the kitchen to make my green drink & get some water & I felt something different that made me run to the bathroom. It turned out to be my mucous plug. I know this because I made my friends come up and examine it. I have good friends.

I was very excited, but I knew it could still be days off, so I went downstairs & planned to stay for our playdate. I got down to the living room and was standing there when all of a sudden, here came the big gush of fluid all over the living room floor. Dana gave me towels and dry clothes. I’m so glad my labor started with friends in that environment instead of, say, Kroger.

Well now there would be no relaxing. I could barely even carry on a conversation. I called Jeff to come pick me up and bring dry clothes. Now we knew cancelling the Indiana trip was a wise choice! When Jeff showed up, he had that excited, which-way-do-I-turn look about him. It was cute. Sassy stayed at Dana’s with Caroline offering to bring her home when I called for her. We didn’t realize that would be Sunday morning!

For the next 24 hours, I had the same every 15 minute contractions. They were uncomfortable enough that I couldn’t sleep. At 2:00 a.m. I was up digging out curtains and fabric from the basement so I could cover all of our windows. I did not want to give birth if any of my neighbors could see inside. When Tracey came to check on me, she said that the baby was posterior and was probably trying to turn herself before active labor would start. All day Saturday, Jeff and I waited for the contractions to pick up. We had just discovered we had a bunch of free cable channels, but I couldn’t stand the TV on. I couldn’t focus on anything except the labor. But strangely, I wasn’t as bored as I’d have expected. We just talked and joked about stuff. We ate food. We sat around. Sassy was still at Caroline’s. She had just had her first sleepover!

Around 3:00, we decided I should get into the birth pool and try to get M to switch to anterior so we could get this show on the road. We both talked to her, me from the inside, Jeff from the outside. Jeff tried to do some hands-on energy work with her. Afterwards, he said he felt she was scared and nervous about what was going on. He said her environment had changed and wasn’t very comfortable and she didn’t know what to do. He said it would be like going from a swimming pool to a wet, warm garbage bag, and it scared her. He talked to her quite a bit over the next hour, telling her how brave she was, and how she could do it, she could turn for us. He told her we were so excited to meet her, but she had to be strong and turn over first. We kept monitoring my belly, and within about an hour’s time, she had made the flip.

My contractions picked up to about every 6 or 7 minutes then, but I was getting tired and knew that I’d already lost a full night’s sleep. Plus, it was Caroline’s birthday (and my due date – the due date I chose for myself, at least), and I wanted to have her that night. Tracey had extensive dental surgery scheduled for Monday, and she was nervous that the labor could go on into that time. We had talked of resorting to castor oil if things were still stagnant by Sunday morning.

Jeff told me I should try to take a nap around 6:00, but I didn’t want to go upstairs by myself. He said he’d come up with me if I didn’t want to be alone. As I laid there trying to sleep a little, I remembered all the induction stuff I’d read and I joked to Jeff that we should mess around and “get the show on the road the old-fashioned way.” Besides, I told him, that’s all he’d be getting before the long drought ahead. He said, sure, why not.

I didn’t think much would come of it. I certainly didn’t expect that my contractions would pick up from every 6-7 minutes to every 1-2 minutes in the span of 10 minutes. Honestly, after all that gradual build-up to labor, going from zero to sixty in 10 minutes time was very overwhelming.

I came down and got into the pool, and by now, I couldn’t keep quiet during contractions and had to actively manage the pain with them. I knelt in the pool with my hands against my back and swayed with each one. This helped the pain. We called Tracey in at this point. I think she was relieved!

By 10:00, the contractions had become so intense and long that no pain management techniques seemed to help. I made Jeff follow me around and press on my back with each contraction. I don’t think it helped the pain so much as distract me from it. I remember very little of this time-warp time except a few random images.

I remember walking around the house, just pacing in a big circle through the hall, through the kitchen and dining room, around through the living room, back through the hall. I joked about it to Tracey and she said all her ladies did the “labor walk.”

I remember getting in the shower on my hands and knees which helped for some indecipherable period of time.

I remember going into the bathroom and leaning against the towel rack with each contraction while Jeff pressed on my back for another period of time. Apparently I banged my head against the bathroom wall during these. The next day, I had a bruised sore spot from the head banging.

I remember leaning against the kitchen counter with Tracey on “back pressing duty” for awhile. I was very vocal during all of these contractions. I think a more accurate analysis was that I screamed during every contraction throughout my entire active labor. I was so glad I was at home and not at the hospital. I don’t think I could have been that uninhibited at the hospital and for some reason, the screaming helped the pain. At the hospital, I would have been begging for the drugs.

I remember feeling I had to poop and Tracey telling me I had to “birth my poop” before I could birth my baby. She suggested I sit on the toilet. I did, with my legs up on the tub in front of me and Tracey in the tub. OUCH! OW OW OW OW! That was the most painful of all the contractions. There was NO WAY I was going to be able to “birth my poop” there. I believe this to be one of the worst parts of the labor. When I finally came downstairs after my 6-day bedrest upstairs, I had uncomfortable flashbacks when I tried to use the downstairs toilet for several days. I joked it was post-traumatic stress syndrome.

After I was unsuccessful in birthing my poop, I went back to the birthing tub and hung over the side. Later, I looked up the signs of “transition.” I think this was my transition period. I remember chanting “Come baby, please come. Come on baby, pleeease,” with each contraction.

Tracey taught me how to vocalize low with contractions instead of the high-pitched screaming I was doing. Right about this time, I would start with a low-pitched vocalization, but it started to turn into a grunt. Tracey told me I was wanting to push and I had to “blow it off” (think Lamaze type breathing) because of M’s breech presentation. I wasn’t allowed to push until she was rumping (not crowning, but rumping).

Eventually, they gave me the go ahead to push. The videotape ran out around this time (gotta love the timing), but the second midwife Tracey had brought in, Candace, was snapping pics like crazy. I love Candace for this! And for many other reasons….she was very sweet and instantly likable.

I pushed with each contraction starting around 1:20 a.m. but made very little progress at first. I was on hands and knees at this point, which is how Tracey told me I should visualize birthing breech. I asked if I could flip over onto my back in the pool and Tracey said I could try, but it probably wouldn’t work as well. But, as soon as I flipped, I started to make some pushing progress.

I have so many wonderful pictures to document this part, so I’ll be brief here on the things I remember. I remember that it took Tracey, her assistant Sora, Candace, and myself to hold my legs apart so that I could push better. For some reason, it is nearly impossible for me to keep my legs apart if I feel threatened in any way. And of course, there was a lot going on, a lot of people around, and a lot of pain down there, so my legs were acting independently of my wishes.

I remember pushing being very painful but very satisfying at the same time. I remember being excited that I was about to hold my baby. I remember being excited that it was almost OVER! I remember looking at the (tape run out) video camera square on, and screaming, “F*** ME! THE RING OF FIRE F***ING HURTS!” I remember Tracey telling me to put my legs up on the side of the pool but not to push with my legs. She said to imagine I was pushing a grand piano up a mountain with my vagina. I remember at the next contraction, I screamed, “I AM PUSHING A GRAND PIANO UP A MOUNTAIN WITH MY VAGINA!” And I remember it being a very productive push.

There was a time, longer than the midwives would have liked I think, where M’s rump and folded-up legs down to her knees were out, but I wasn’t making very fast progress past this point. They asked me if I wanted to touch her, and I said no. Jeff said, “I think you should touch your baby. It’s okay.” So I did, and things quickly sped up then. I was so tired feeling, but as soon as I felt her, I got renewed energy. “I’m sorry, baby! I’m so sorry! I’ll do better! I’ll push harder! I’m so sorry!” I don’t remember saying this exactly; Jeff told me about it later.

So with the next push came all of her legs, and then an arm with the next, and the other arm with the next. And then, my contractions went away. Tracey hypothesized later that it was because I felt threatened, my legs were being held open, and my body shut down. Jeff hypothesized that my body thought she was already out. Either way, we had a head inside waiting for another contraction which never came. It was interesting to note in retrospect that this had been my only persistent fear of birthing breech.

For 3 whole minutes we waited. Candace got a dozen pictures of body-out head-in during this time. Tracey checked M’s heartbeat almost continuously. We still waited for the contraction. Then I saw Tracey give a glance to Candace after a heartbeat check, a glance that said, “Now,” very clearly, although no words were spoken. She said something to me along the lines of, “Okay, here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to push, you’re going to push now, you’re not going to stop pushing until the baby is out. I’m going to go inside and help you.” Jeff said, “You can do this, this is for our baby, you can do it.” And so I did.

I pushed and pushed. I pushed through what I later called the “tunnel of fire.” I didn’t quit until she was out. Tracey laid her on my chest and was in high-action, concerned mode. M opened one little eye at us, then shut it and laid on my chest while Tracey did her infant resuscitation routine, which she had shown us before the birth. She had warned us that many babies, almost 25%, need a little help after birth from a difficult journey. I still wasn’t very worried despite Tracey’s serious face and focus on the task. I help M, rubbed her feet and arms, talked to her. My only anxious thought was, “I don’t want to have a stillborn and be blamed for it.”

But that thought didn’t stick around long because Candace was listening to her heart rate during this time, and after 30 seconds or less, Candace had a reassuring voice. She said, “Tracey, we have good heart tones. We have 60, we have 80, okay we’re at 100, 120. I think we can stop.” And then, right on cue, M coughed, spit up a little and cried. It’s the only cry she’s ever had that made me happy. We all smiled and Tracey put her equipment away. (She only told me her lowest heart rate later, when I pressed her. She said 20-40, but she didn’t get a good count because there wasn’t time.)

I still wasn’t having contractions, so we didn’t wait for me to birth the placenta in my own time. Tracey told me to just push it out, which I did. Then I really wanted to get out of the pool.

I handed M to Jeff and all 3 midwives helped me to the recliner in the living room. I was shaking & shivering uncontrollably, so they wrapped me in blankets. Apparently, this shaking is common with the post-birth hormonal shift.

Tracey was concerned about my lack of contractions and my pale color, so she was insistent that I latch M right away to stop any uterine bleeding. I was so tired! I felt like I could fall asleep on the spot. I couldn’t pay attention to anything around me and was trying my best to keep my eyes open, since I wasn’t allowed to go to sleep for at least 3 hours. I honestly didn’t even have that much interest in latching M or getting to know her at that point. I was just too tired and out of it.

Tracey’s assistant kept trying to get M latched on for me, but I barely remember it. I just remember feeling like a rag doll, with my breast being shoved into M’s mouth over & over by her assistant while I stared off into space uninterested. I kept thinking something didn’t feel right, that I was too tired, but I didn’t want to alarm anyone.

Finally, maybe 45 minutes later, I told Tracey I needed to use the bathroom, maybe walk around. I needed a break from the weird rag-doll like latching thing; plus, I just really wanted to use the bathroom. When I sat on the toilet, it became obvious that I was bleeding too much, and Tracey started to explain why she thought I should have a shot of pitocin. I welcomed the medicine. I just wanted to feel better.

Within 15 minutes of the pitocin shot, I was a new person! I became assertive enough again to tell everyone to leave me alone and give me my baby. I held her, engaged her finally, and began to bond with her. Within just a few minutes more, I latched her on myself…not because I had to, but because I wanted to. It hurt hurt hurt! My nipples were not toughened at all! But it was still enjoyable & felt just as it should be.

Tracey was called to another labor then, but she wanted to check for tearing first. This was the part I’d feared about a homebirth. If I tore & needed stitches, what would I do? I couldn’t imagine having unmedicated stitches on such a sore area.

Turns out, I did tear, and it was enough for a couple stitches, but it was also small enough that I was okay to heal without stitches if I agreed to stay in bed for 6 days, then only take the stairs once/day for the next 8 days after that. It would be a total of a 2-week healing period where I was allowed to do little more than sit, nurse & watch TV.

It was hard to go for those 2 weeks. I felt like they would never end! I didn’t anticipate that nursing would be as difficult as it was in the beginning either, but that’s for another story. The thing I forgot to factor in with learning to breastfeed was that my birth injuries would make it very hard to maneuver my body. This made latching her on much more difficult.

All in all, though, staying out of the hospital made everything worth it. I have a few regrets…the most notable was that I didn’t vocalize the fact that the extreme tiredness I felt after birth did not feel normal. I feel a little robbed of that first 45 minutes with her. Yes, she was in my arms, but I barely noticed her there.

The next 24 hours more than made up for it though. We were together the whole time, the three of us. (Me, M & her placenta – ha!) I was able to sleep in my own bed without strangers coming in and out of my room, requiring things of me. I was able to eat real food that my dear husband made for me and was able to be nursed by him instead.

And by the next morning, I was securely in love.