Birth Story

She's here. She's amazing.

My daughter is one week old today. I've fallen off the blogging wagon in the last week. Understandably. I hope to continue this blog, continue to use it as a place to record my thoughts and feelings and hopes and dreams and fears about parenting the way I've used it to record these emotions about both getting and being pregnant. And I know I still have the whole second half of the alphabet to get through! But I also want to spend every waking moment with her, staring into her dark grey (blue? brown?) eyes, and the moments she sleeps seem to disappear in a fog of napping, catching up on emails, laundry, and somewhere fitting in meals for myself. Blogging has just dropped off the wayside.

But for today, I just want to get down her birth story. It was such an incredible day. Such an incredible day. And already some of the details are fading, worn soft around the edges by sleepless nights and days filled with more smiles and laughs than I knew possible. I want to have a place I can come back to and remember it. The day my daughter was born.

I had my last doctor's appointment the morning of my due date. I had been having contractions all weekend, though they weren't painful. Just tightening. The morning of 9/14/09, I awoke to a bit of spotting on the toilet paper. I knew enough to know that this was not something to be worried about; this was something to be excited about! At the doctor's appointment, I got hooked up to a monitor, and TH and I could actually see the contractions as they happened, a series of little mountains spread across the paper. The doctor said he gave me a 5-10% chance of actually making it to my induction date of Friday the 18th. TH looked at me with wide eyes and we agreed we had better finish packing our hospital bag that night!

I went to work for what would be my last day, and the contractions gradually got a little more uncomfortable as the day wore on. I wrapped up all my loose ends--my boss and I had agreed I would work from home for the rest of the week, so one way or another I knew that would be my last day in the office for a long time. TH took me out to dinner--Chili's--for our "due date." We came home and walked around the neighborhood. As we walked, I noticed that the contractions were coming a little more consistently. I started glancing at my watch whenever I felt one. Five minutes apart. Seven minutes. Four minutes.

We got home and packed the hospital bag. Then, with nothing left to do but wait, I fell asleep to the sound of my husband reading our last chapter out of our pregnancy week-by-week book.

I was woken up by a painful contraction around 11 p.m. Another about 40 minutes later. Another about 20 minutes later. By 1:30 a.m. I had had enough and got up to start timing them. They were about 3-4 minutes apart and about 45 seconds long. I used Contraction Master, a website that helps you time contractions, and seeing each one consistently follow the previous one was surreal. Was this actually happening. I didn't want to be that woman, the woman who goes to the hospital only to be sent home again (and again?? Did anyone see Father of the Bride 2?), so I kept a healthy dose of skepticism about me. But after seeing the contractions come, one after another, for about an hour and a half, I woke TH.

We called the on-call doc, and he said to come on in. Still holding onto that fear of getting sent home, or perhaps to my incredulity that I was actually in labor, I asked if we could labor at home for a while instead, and he said we were more than welcome to. Around 3 a.m. I baked cookies for the nurses at the hospital, and we put the finishing touches on the hospital bag. All the while we had contraction master pulled up on TH's laptop (which he kept with him as he moved from room to room in the house). I would yell "Spacebar!!" from wherever I was in the house when a contraction started or ended, and TH would yell back "SPACEBAR!" from wherever he was in the house. We laughed a lot, overcome by excitement.

By around 5:30 a.m. my adrenaline was wearing off. I realized how tired I was. I sat down in the chair in Ali's nursery and tried to relax/sleep a little. We played her lullaby CD, which was already set up in her CD player, waiting to be used for real. As I relaxed, the contractions spaced out to about 6-7 minutes apart. Somewhere between uncomfortable and painful, they felt like intense menstrual cramps.

TH insisted we go into the doctor's office when they opened at 7 a.m., so we packed the car, me still half-expecting to be sent home. On the car ride there, I still didn't feel like "this is it!" I knew I was IN labor . . . I just didn't know how "in" I was.

We were quickly seen at the office and low-and-behold I was at 4 c.m. and 70% effaced. My doctor gave us a couple of options: go and walk around the grounds for a bit and check into the hospital later, or just go check into the hospital now. I had to make him repeat himself, sure that he had simply forgotten the third option: go home and come back when you're closer. Nope! Going home was not an option. One way or another I was staying to have a baby. It was at that moment that the enormity of the day hit me: I was having my baby!!

After being assured I was not going to be strapped to a monitor and held captive in bed, we went and checked into the hospital. It was about 7:30 a.m. I knew that there were only a few wireless fetal monitors and squat bars for delivery, so I wanted to get checked in early to try and get access to these tools. One serendipitous detail: our labor and delivery nurse's name was Ali!

After getting my initial assessment (baseline fetal monitoring of heartrate and contractions, etc.), we were allowed to walk the halls. And walk we did. The L&D floor was essentially set up in a big rectangle, so TH and I simply walked, lap after lap, hour after hour. (TH knows me so well, in fact, that he suggested that we time how long it took us to make one lap and then challenged me to beat that time on our next lap. I love that man.) We learned that six laps around the loop equals one mile; by my calculations, we probably walked five or six miles by the end of the day! I had to get back on the monitor every 30 minutes or so just to check on baby girl, but other than that, we had the freedom to labor however we desired.

Laboring together with TH was one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had. It was incredibly intimate. He was there for me in every way I needed him to be. He did everything right. He used all the coaching techniques we learned in our class. He supported me, encouraged me, made me laugh, kept me distracted, and basically made me feel like I was the most amazing woman in labor who had ever existed. We walked. We bounced on the labor ball. We swayed side to side. I used his shoulder for support and breathed into his neck. I can honestly say my labor experience was awesome.

My doctor arrived around 12:30 to check on my progress. Once you are in active labor, "they" like to see progress of about 1 cm per hour. It had been five hours since we checked into the hospital (when I was at 4 cm), and roughly 12 hours into my labor. I was only at 5.5 cm and 80% effacement. Not the kind of progress we were all looking for. We decided to break my water to try and encourage my body to pick up the pace.

After the doctor broke my water, I could tell that my contractions did not, in fact, increase in frequency or strength. In fact, the opposite happened. They spaced out and got easier to handle. My periodic checks on the monitor confirmed this; the mountains spaced out to six or seven minutes apart again. I had handled the lack of progress fairly well, but this change in pace was frustrating to me. I wanted labor to progress, not get set back!

When I was checked again at 3:30, I had only progressed to 6 cm and was still at 80%. So, three hours later and only a .5-cm change. Boo. I had now been in labor about 15 hours.

We talked about other ways of encouraging my body to pick up the pace. The next step after breaking my water was starting pitocin. I was wary of this step, as it had often been badmouthed in our Bradley class as the first step of a slippery slope. Pitocin made contractions unnaturally intense, so most people moved from there to an epidural. And epidurals, statistically speaking, made c-sections more likely. So pitocin was like the gateway drug of the L&D world. We decided to hold off and see if my body didn't pick things up on its own. But the doctor expressed concern over my slow rate of progress and we agreed to revisit the topic at the next check if I hadn't made good progress.

When I was checked again at just after 5 p.m., I was at a 6.5 and still 80% effaced. I was so discouraged by this. I had been in labor now for almost 17 hours and had only progressed 2.5 cm. We started the pitocin on the lowest setting possible.

Pitocin lived up to its reputation. The next 2.5 hours were not like the 17 hours I had experienced up to that point. The contractions became very painful and were starting to come with greater and greater frequency. Because I was on pitocin, I had to be continuously monitored. There was a wireless monitor, so TH and I could have continued to walk the halls, but I honestly didn't think I could just walk through these contractions the way I had the others. The best thing I found to do was to stand and sway back and forth, from side to side. I started moaning through the contractions, unable to last through them without vocalizing some of my discomfort.

Then baby girl's heart rate started to be affected. It wasn't picking back up the pace after each contraction the way it was supposed to. I had to get into bed and lay on my side. Then they gave me oxygen. Though it helped her hear trate recover, experiencing pitocin contractions in bed was honestly the worst part of my entire labor. I could no longer sway for relief. TH started to apply counter pressure, pushing his fist as hard as he could into the small of my back with each contraction.

I knew I couldn't last through hours and hours of this. What was more, I didn't want to. I didn't want to be so miserable through the end of my labor after having such a positive experience through the beginning. On the other hand, surely the hours of intense, painful contractions coming one after the other meant something. Surely I was now making progress and the end would be in sight. I decided I would wait for my next check; if I had made significant progress--I was hoping for around 8 cm dilation--I would continue to soldier through. If not, I was getting the epidural.

The doctor checked again at 7:30. I was still at 6.5 cm. Zero progress. I was shocked. Discouraged. Disappointed. Upset. Scared. Scared that things were not happening as they should. In the last seven hours of hard labor, I had only progressed 1 cm.

The epidural was ordered and I counted each minute, each contraction, until the anesthesiologist arrived.

Getting the epidural was scary to me simply because of the horror stories I had heard and because of the side-effects they talked about before giving it to me. Spinal headaches, paralysis . . . things that only affect .01% of the people who get epidurals. I was still in the throes of pitocin contractions, too, so staying perfectly still for the doctor was a challenge. There was a point when I felt a sudden pain to the left of the numbed area and I jumped. "Don't move!" the doctor ordered. Oh shit, I thought, I just screwed something up! I apologized again and again and kept asking him if I had messed anything up. He assured me that everything was still fine.

After I got the epidural, I had only two unpleasant side-effects: I started shaking, and my rectum started hurting with each contraction. I tried to ignore the shakes. Baby girl's heart rate was dropping again, so I had to stay on my side and keep the oxygen mask on at all times.
Tthe nurse encouraged me, saying that the rectal pain I was feeling was more than likely baby girl's head moving down into position. This was what really made me feel like we were finally making progress. Surely the epidural helped my body relax. We were cranking up the pitocin since I couldn't feel the pain anymore, and surely my body was finally being forced to progress! With each contraction that hurt, I simply pushed the little button and gave myself a little more medicine. Soon, I could feel the pressure of the contractions but no pain at all. I relaxed enough to be able to sleep a little.

The 9:30 check came. I want to take a break here and explain that my doctor got off work at 5 p.m. but had stayed around just to be there for me. We had told him how much we wanted him to be the one to deliver our baby. He was the doctor we trusted, and in the face of a labor that was longer and more complicated than we had anticipated, he was the one we needed to be there for our own peace of mind. What an amazing testament to the man and his dedication to his job and his patients that he stayed just to be there for us.

Anyway, the 9:30 check came. I closed my eyes and prayed for progress. Please body. Please do what you are supposed to do. It was closing in on 22 hours of labor now. I was tired physically and mentally. I just wanted my daughter born. I didn't want to worry any more about how she was tolerating such a long labor, about her heart rate dropping, about oxygen, about anything. I just wanted her here, safe, in my arms at last.

I was at 6.5 cm. Still. Zero progress. Despite increasing the pitocin every half-hour. Nothing. In the last four and half hours, I hadn't progress one bit. I was crushed.

We started talking c-section. TH and I asked the doctor every question we could think of, from risks to benefits, both immediate and long-term. It honestly didn't take much. I was tired. I was worried about my daughter. I was nervous about my ability to keep going with enough energy to make it through the actual delivery part, nevermind how much longer it might actually take me to finally hit 10 cm. I was anxious about the physical aspects of delivering a big baby, anxious about what it would do to my body.

Even then, though, I was so disappointed. We had dreamed for nine months about this moment, had prepared for labor and delivery. I had never doubted myself, never doubted my ability to give birth to my child. I cried. I cried from exhaustion and from disappointment and fear and from being overwhelmed with the events of the day. I sent TH to get my mother. I needed to see her smile, needed her to tell me that everything would be ok, needed to hear I was making the right decision.

At 10:15 I was wheeled into the operating room. While TH was putting on scrubs, they transferred me to the operating table. The jostling made me nauseated and I vomited. It was an awful feeling to not be able to move, to have your arms stretched out to your side, to be stapped down, and have to throw up. The anesthesiologist who was at my head was an angel. She was comforting and kind and knew exactly what to do and say to calm me down. I wish I knew her name so that I could tell her in person how much I appreciated what she did for me, how much she helped.

The surgery itself was a breeze. I was told to expect tugging and pressure and to try and relax through it, but honestly after all that I had been through that day, it was a total non-event.

I heard them telling me they were making the incision. I remember looking at nothing else but into my husband's eyes. He was stroking my hair, telling me how proud of me he was.

I remember telling him to take pictures.

I heard the doctor tell TH to get the camera ready.

I saw TH's eyes open wide with a kind of amazement I have never before seen on his face. It was the most pure light I have ever seen. It was joy. I remember hearing him say, "Oh my God!"

I heard a cry.

At 10:35 p.m. on 9/15/09, my daughter was born. She weighed 8 lbs, 1 oz--far from the 9+ pound gigantor baby they were predicting!--and was 20.75 inches long.

I remember hearing her wails fill the room and feeling so thankful.

I remember TH holding her up in my line of sight. I had a hard time focusing, but I remember seeing her face. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

I remember them taking her to the nursery, and I remember telling TH not to leave her side. I knew he would be worried about me, and I remember knowing it was vital that he understood that he needed to stay with her.

I remember the doctors finishing sewing me up, and as they left the room, I remember telling them thank you multiple times. Thank you for giving me my baby.

After that, I was wheeled into a recovery room. I drifted in and out of my medicinal haze. I could have visitors, and one at a time my parents came into the room to greet and check on me.

Then TH came in. I was surprised to see him . . . hadn't I told him to stay with our daughter?? But he had been too worried about me and had snuck away to make sure that I was ok. And he had brought pictures. Pictures of our daughter. I remember saying "She's beautiful!" over and over again, as if it was the only true statement left in the world, as if it was the only thing I could say.

I later learned that Ali was face up, rather than face down as she "should" have been. My doctor explained that this probably played a roll in my failure to progress beyond 6.5 cm. Baby girl never dropped below a -1 station, in part because she was positioned wrong. Even if I had fought through to 10 cm (and who knows if I ever would have made it that far), there is only a 30% I would have been able to deliver her without resorting to an emergency c-section.

So, I left home one day as a wife and awoke the next day as a mother. Were the events that happened in between the ones I had hoped for and planned on? No. It wasn't the birth I had prepared for, wasn't the birth I had dreamed of in my mind. I still struggle with feelings of envy when I hear another friend has dilated beyond a 6, has given birth vaginally. I wanted the experience. I wanted to know what it was like to push.

But all of that is secondary to the end result. Baby girl is here. She is safe. She is healthy. All those months of worry, all those times I held my breath and prayed that she just be ok, all of that waiting has finally come to an end, and I can at long last hold her in my arms and kiss her cheeks and stroke her gorgeous dark hair. The "how" did not go according to plan, but in the end, those are just details. It's the "what" that truly matters.

And here, at long last, is my "what."