1 Month

Dear Samson,

Today you are one month old. A whole month has already passed since you gave me the most amazing day of my life. In some ways--many ways--it feels impossible that that much time has already passed. In other ways, it seems impossible that you've only been with us for a month. Life without you is already hard to remember and seems very, very long ago.

You are such an incredibly sweet baby. You started smiling so early--just two weeks old! Your favorite things to smile at are the ceiling fans, the wrought iron on the living room wall, and when my or your dad's face comes suddenly into view. You face is a pool of amusement and delight, and it makes my heart explode with my own pure delight. What a gift to feel all the pure emotions of infant love, unclouded by anything the world throws at us.

Your favorite thing in the entire world is snuggling. You bury your face into the corner of my neck and shoulder and breathe in heavily and sigh. I will never forget the feeling of your face in that spot. And no matter what time of day it is, no matter if it's time for a diaper change or a nap or it's the dead of night after a 3 a.m. feeding, I always, always, always stop and savor your sweet snuggles. I know now how fleeting this time together is. I know how short a time it will be before you are crawling and walking and talking and wanting to do your own thing. I know that every sweet snuggle is a moment in time that will soon be gone forever, that I will never have a chance for that particular snuggle ever again, so I stop and I smile and I tilt my head onto yours and we sit and breathe in each other and the world stops, just for us, just for a moment.

You are proving to us that we got your name exactly right. You are such a strong little man. The day you were born you were already trying to hold your head up, and you are always kicking and pushing your legs against me, trying to stand up and bear your own weight. You are growing so quickly and are proving to me that I can trust you and not worry about how much you're eating or how much weight you're gaining. You are calm and observant and always easily soothed. You love your warm baths so far, only crying when it's time to come out of the warm, relaxing water. And you are a wonderful sleeper. We only have to get up once a night to feed you, and you go right back to sleep until the morning. Your dad and I are really, really appreciative of that.

Your big sister dotes on you and is already so protective of you. You are the first thing she asks about when she wakes up in the morning and when she gets home from school, and she always insists on kissing you good morning and good night. When she hears you crying (usually during a diaper change), she says, "Baby Sammy's mad. It's okay, baby Sammy. It's okay." And she loves to sit next to us while I nurse you, drinking her own milk. She points out that both you and her are drinking milk, and then nods and smiles, as if satisfied in your shared moment together.

I was nervous about what the first month would be like. Nervous about what you would be like. Nervous about how we'd handle life with a newborn and a toddler. You have made our first month so wonderful. So easy. So full of joy. So full of love.

Already I can't remember life without you, and already I feel like you're growing up so fast. Thank you for being who you are, a chill little man, a sweet, sweet snuggler, the perfect baby for letting me relax and soak up the wonder of the newborn days before they're gone for good.

Love, love, love you,
Mom

Why I Don't Nap

I'm a bad napper. I've always been a bad napper. For the most part, I would rather get a great night's sleep and then be up and enjoying the day. Short naps are awful--I wake up feeling groggy and cranky. And long naps leave me feeling like I've missed a great part of the day. Lose-lose.

When I brought baby girl home from the hospital, everyone (EVERYONE) told me, "sleep when the baby sleeps." And you know what? Babies sleep a lot! Newborns spend like 20 hours a day sleeping. There's no way any new parent should ever be sleep deprived, right? The only problem is that all that sleep is broken up into tiny little chunks throughout the day. I would lay her down for a nap and then climb into bed myself, only to be woken 30 minutes later. SUCK.

And now here I am, with little man, and I would love--LOVE--to be able to take naps during the day. Yes, he's a great nighttime sleeper so far, just like his sister was. But I'm still up for an hour at a time when he wakes at night, and I still have a toddler to love on in the mornings and evenings, and I'm still TIRED. We have the house to ourselves during the day. So why am I sitting here, blogging while little man sleeps instead of sleeping right along with him?

Because napping with a newborn is more trouble than it's worth. It's way, WAY worse to expect a nap, to hope for sleep, and to have that cut short, than it is to just expect constant tiredness and stay awake.

I tried to take a nap just now. I really did. I rocked little man to sleep. Put him down in his crib. Turned on the monitor and white noise machine. Climbed into my own bed. Closed my eyes. And about four minutes later heard a fuss. And then nothing. And then a grunt. And then silence. While I didn't automatically jump up to go get him, I can't sleep knowing that he may or may not be awake. I had to stay up to see if he'd settle into sleep on his own.

He didn't. 10 minutes later I was back in his room. He fell asleep immediately when I picked him up, his face nuzzled into my neck. Alright, let's take a nap together then. I love me some snuggly newborn naps. I settled into the chair in the nursery, little man resting peacefully on my chest. Closed my eyes. And about two minutes later, he grunted and turned his head over. And then silence. And then he sighed heavily. And then silence. And then he smacked his lips. And turned his head back over. And grunted. LORD HELP ME, JUST SLEEP PEACEFULLY, CHILD.

I tried holding him in a different position, but upon realizing that his face wasn't buried into my neck, his favorite position, he opened his eyes and stared at me. I tried shushing him. Patting him. Cajoling him. Nada.

Okay.

I hoisted him back up to my neck, stood up, rocked him back to sleep, and put him back in his crib. He was still. Praise God.

But by now there are only 40 minutes 'til he has to eat again. Which means I have to wake him up in about 30 minutes. There's absolutely no point in me trying to sleep for 30 minutes.

And now, 20 minutes after laying him in his crib, I can hear him over the monitor. Grunting. Sighing. Squirming. And now a squawk.

Eff.

At least I didn't try and nap.

Birth Story

My little man is here.

He came in his own time.

He ignored his due date. He high-stepped just ahead of his eviction date.

His first lesson to me was trust. To trust in him. To trust my body. And to never give up on myself, on my dreams.

Sunday, May 22--my due date--came and went without excitement. That is to say, it came and went with no baby. My sister was in town visiting and kept asking if I was going into labor, if I was having contractions, etc. She was hoping for me to give birth over the weekend so that she could meet her nephew before having to return home Sunday evening. I was less enthusiastic about this possibility as, even though it was my official due date and I had no desire to go late, my doctor was not the on-call doctor that weekend. All of the discussions we'd had with him about the VBAC, all the plans, even our wishes for specific things to do differently should things go to a c-section again . . . all of that seemed in jeopardy if I had another doctor doing the delivery. So while I wanted to go into labor on my own so, so badly, and while I didn't want to go late and have to deal with all the worry that goes along with that, I also wasn't thrilled with the idea of having to go through it all with a doctor I didn't know and trust.

Turns out I didn't have to worry about that after all. Sunday came and went, and other than a few teasing contractions, didn't bring anything along with it.

Monday morning, one day overdue, we had our 40-week appointment. We had one last ultrasound done to check on little man's size (which was still in the wonderful 50% range) and I got hooked up to the machine that measure's heart rate and contractions. In the 20 or so minutes that I laid there, clicking the little button any time I felt him move, I had one measly contraction. The rest of the contraction line spread along the tape, flat.

I got checked. All the random contractions I'd been having, all the crotch pain, danced through my mind. Surely they had been doing something.

I had zero progress from the week before. Zero. None. Still 1.5 cm dilated, and a "maybe" 40% effaced.

And then there my doctor was, giving me his kind, sweet, "let's talk about how this isn't looking so good" look. I stared back at him, unblinking, and listened to the odds, listened to him tell me that they wouldn't even break my water with a cervix that wasn't doing anything, listened to him tell me to go ahead and get the c-section scheduled for Thursday or Friday and to keep on hoping something happened before then. We told the nurse Friday, planning on giving me as much time as possible to make something happen. She called a couple of hours later and said the hospital was booked for Friday, and that the repeat c-section was officially on the books for 7 a.m. Thursday morning. Goodbye 24-hours worth of chance.

My parents had come into town the night before and set up camp at a nearby hotel. With TH still working, I knew I would go crazy at home by myself all day every day, wondering when and if. So for the rest of the day Monday, my mom and I walked lap after lap after lap around the mall. I set up an acupuncture appointment for the next day.  That evening, TH and I took a long walk around the neighborhood. He asked me how I was feeling. I told him I didn't know.

I had come to terms with the VBAC possibly not working. I had not considered the possibility that I might not even get to try.

I didn't want to give up on my goal of having a VBAC, but I also had a hard time keeping hopeful at that point. When does hope become a bad thing? When does hope give you something to pin everything on, when your chances of that thing happening just keep going down and down? One of the hardest parts of having the c-section the first time around is that I felt like my body had failed. All the planning I'd done for a vaginal birth, all the hours of preparation, had been for naught. So really, why was I making the same mistake again? Why not just accept the repeat c-section on Thursday and avoid all the heartache?

Because I couldn't. It's just not in me to give up. I knew, beyond all the roiling emotions, that I would continue to do everything I could to go into labor. So I took evening primrose oil supplements in a Hail Mary attempt to soften my cervix. I bounced on my yoga ball. I ate spicy food. TH and I had sex. All afternoon and evening, I had contractions. Nothing timeable. Nothing painful. But they were there, and more plentiful than they'd been previously.

I went to bed Monday night and they stopped. I slept great. I woke up Tuesday still pregnant.

Tuesday brought with it a sense of resignation. Somehow my conflicting emotions had reconciled themselves. I no longer really thought about going into labor on my own. I focused on my son's birthday being Thursday. I prepared for a cesarean recovery. But I also knew that I would feel good going into that surgery having done everything I could to go into labor on my own.

You see, Tuesday was our Hail Mary day. I knew that I only really had Tuesday to try all my last tricks because, if they worked, I would probably go into labor Tuesday night and deliver sometime on Wednesday. While it's true that my c-section wasn't scheduled 'til Thursday, and technically I still had all day Wednesday to try things as well, I didn't know what would happen if I went into labor Wednesday night. If I was in the early stages of labor Thursday morning, would they let me forgo the surgery? I didn't know, and I didn't want to find out. Tuesday, I knew, was our last real chance to make something happen. Tuesday was our full-court press.

The one last thing I hadn't tried yet was acupuncture. So I did. I went to a special reproductive acupuncture business and had needles jabbed into me and tweaked 'til they tingled. I laid there in the dim room and rested. I did feel a single contraction while there, but that was it. No different than any other day. But I emerged feeling happy that I had given it a shot. Then I got a massage. And I walked some more. And ate some more spicy food. Took more supplements. Welcomed every random contraction with happiness and relaxation. Told my body it was time. That everything would be okay and that it was time. TH and I had sex one last time. We tried nipple stimulation. In short, we did everything we could think of. I had given it my best shot, and at the end of the day, once again, I'd been having contractions all afternoon and evening.

There was only one thing left to do. That was to NOT go to bed the way I'd done every night before. Rather than lying down on my left side and getting cozy with my body pillow, I propped myself up in a sitting position and let my knees fall to each side, soles of feet touching. I knew the pattern all too well. Contractions to end the day that disappear when I lay down to sleep. If this was going to be my last night to hope to go into labor on my own, I was not going to fall into that same pattern again. Gravity could help me out all night long for all I cared.

I dreamed of contractions.

I dreamed of my uterus cramping, intense, menstrual-like cramps rolling through. I dreamed of myself moaning and smiling and telling my body that it was okay, that it was time.

And I awoke at 12:45 in pain.

Pain that returned about 4 minutes later.

And again 4 minutes later.

And again. And again. And again.

I didn't ever really get excited. I was too wary, too wary of getting my hopes up only to see my contractions dissipate once again. So I focused on relaxing, on welcoming the contractions.

30 minutes later, my husband came into the room to go to bed.

"I'm so sleepy," he mumbled.

"You'd better get over that," I told him.

He took one look at me. "Contractions?"

A nod.

"Real ones?"

Another nod. "We need to start timing them," I told him.

And so began the same song and dance we'd engaged in only 20 short months ago, when I was in labor with baby girl. We pulled up contraction master on the laptop, and as we finished packing our hospital bag and baked cookies for the hospital nurses, we timed the contractions, one after another, for over an hour.

I called the after-hours number for my OB. When the on-call doctor called us back, I told him about the contractions (every 3-4 minutes for over an hour now) and the duration (only 30-45 seconds each or so) and the fact that I was attempting a VBAC. He told me to head on in.

We called my parents at 2 a.m. My mom answered her phone on the first ring. "Hey sweetie!" her sleepy voice trying to keep her usual pep up. "Do you need us to take Ali to school?"

"No, Mom. It's only 2 in the morning. But . . . I'm in labor. They said to come on in to the hospital."

We cheered together and 25 minutes later, my parents were at our house. I finished baking the cookies, stopping every few minutes to relax through a contraction or to bend over in pain as they became gradually more intense.

I hugged my parents goodbye and we headed to the garage. On the way by, I paused momentarily and put a hand on my sleeping daughter's door. My only child. My sweet girl who was dreaming the night away, blissfully and innocently unaware of what was happening. It was the end of our time together, the end of everything we'd known. In that touch, I told her that I loved her, that I'd always love her, that even if our family changed, my feelings for her never would.

We pulled into the night and headed for the hospital.

I didn't know how it was going to end. I didn't know if I'd get my VBAC or if I would end up in surgery again. All I knew was that either way, I'd be okay. My body had done it. It had gone into labor on it's own at 40 weeks, 3 days--a mere 30 hours before my scheduled c-section.

One way or another, was I getting my shot.

When we got to the hospital, we were sent to triage. A nurse took all my vitals, checked my progress (3 cm and about 75% effaced), hooked me up to the contractions monitor, and reported all my stats back to the on-call doc. An hour later, we had the official word: we were being admitted.

A few minutes later we were transferred into our labor and delivery room and I could feel the excitement start to sink into every pore, every cell in my body. This was my LABOR and DELIVERY room. This was MY labor and delivery room. This was where I would get my shot. 

Around 5 in the morning, we met our nurse, Nurse Gaye. When she walked in the room, I felt my heart sink a bit. She was an older lady--likely in her mid-50s. I worried that she would be too old-school, that she wouldn't support or understand our desires for a VBAC, that she wouldn't be able to connect with me and motivate me. In reality, Nurse Gaye turned out to be our biggest asset of the day, and I credit a large part of our success to her. But we'll get to that later.

Around 6, the on-call doctor came in to examine me. TH asked the doctor something--I can't remember what--and mentioned that we were attempting a VBAC. The doctor looked at us the way I imagine he would look at a couple of his kid's knucklehead friends when lecturing them on the stupidity of their teenage shenanigans. That is to say, there was no love lost in this expression, no softness, no tolerance, no understanding.

"Let me be open," he began. "I do not support VBACs. I think they are dangerous for the mother and dangerous for the baby and I don't think there is ever a situation in which they are a good idea. I think attempting a VBAC is a bad decision. Okay?"

We stared at him, not really sure how to respond. Here I was, in the middle of labor, and he's telling me that we made the wrong decision.

"I don't support VBACs. I do, however, support the doctors I work with, so I'm going to care for you accordingly." And with that he walked out.

Far from feeling doubt in myself and my decision, I felt nothing but anger. What an insensitive prick. I can understand not agreeing with our decision, but to know that I am in labor, know that we have decided, along with our doctor, what we feel is best for us, why could he not have spared us the lecture and just treated us for the next couple of hours until my doctor arrived and relieved him of his burden? Douche.

When he left, Nurse Gaye clucked her tongue and soothed us. "He's one of the nicest, most genuine doctors I've ever known. He just doesn't know how to approach this. So, how do you want to labor?" She knew getting my mind of the doctor was important, so we started discussing yoga balls and squat bars and walking vs sitting vs standing vs rocking back and forth vs lying down as she once again checked my progress. She asked me about my previous labor, about why I had stalled out. When I told her that baby girl had been posterior and had a huge head and just never descended, she got a thoughtful look on her face and responded with a "hmmmm..." as she felt little man inside me. Then she snapped off her glove and helped me out of bed.

I started on the yoga ball, and for the next couple of hours, I bounced and rocked my way through my contractions. TH used lines from the hypnobabies training we had done, and I focused on relaxing, on using my light switch, on breathing my anesthesia down into my uterus. My contractions were noticeable but not unbearable by any stretch. Time does funny things when a woman is in labor. The minutes somehow melted quickly into hours and before I knew it, it was 8 a.m. and my doctor was walking into the room, grinning from ear to ear, congratulating me on going into labor on my own and asking me how I was feeling.

I climbed gingerly off the ball and into bed to be checked: 4 cm and at -2 station. Little man had actually dropped a little!

And then my doctor was recommending an intrauterine pressure monitor be inserted. This device would be able to tell us immediately if there was any problems (like a uterine rupture) and was, he said, ultimately the safest way to approach a VBAC. Of course, that got my husband totally on board. It did, however, involve breaking my water. And that's where I paused.

It was the breaking of my water during my first labor that actually stalled out my contractions. I was worried about doing it again. Worried that things would start to go down hill again, just like they did last time. Though I was nervous, the will of my husband and the recommendation of my doctor won out and my water was broken. My doctor gleefully announced it was totally clear, a good omen for someone 3 days overdue.

He said he'd be back later to check on me, and I resumed laboring on the yoga ball. About an hour later, Nurse Gaye came in and said the thing I had feared: it looked like my contractions were actually starting to space out.

Shit.

But this is where Nurse Gaye started taking my labor into her own, skilled hands, something that had never happened my first time around. She told me to get up off the yoga ball and try a different position. She recommended standing. "Gotta get gravity to do more for us," she said as she left the room.

And do more it did. Over the next hour, my contractions became more and more intense. I started not being able to talk through them. Some of them were so painful they took my breath away, and I felt like I couldn't breathe at all, like I was suffocating through the contraction. I tried leaning down on the bed, hanging onto TH's neck, rocking back and forth. Nothing seemed to help. And then I started feeling them in my back. With each contraction, my hands massaged my lower back as hard as I could. TH tried to step in and help, but I suddenly didn't want anything or anyone touching me. He tried to remind me to relax, and at some point, I remember telling him that "relaxing isn't going to work anymore!" I didn't know it at the time, but I had entered back labor. And it sucked.

At 10:30 my doctor came back to check on me. Nurse Gaye happily announced that I'd lost my mucus plug as I climbed into bed, and I momentarily glanced at the floor to see what she meant. My doctor happily announced I was at 5 cm, 90-95% effaced, and a -1 station, and I could barely muster the concentration to be excited by the progress. A contraction rolled through me as I lay in bed, and I clamped my eyes shut--it was so much worse lying in bed than it was standing beside it.

"You're doing great!" my doctor chirped, and I smiled weakly at him as he left the room with a promise to come back to check on me soon.

I tried rocking through a few more contractions and that was it. I had picked my fight: a VBAC. Doing a natural VBAC was not a goal of mine. I couldn't conquer everything. I told my husband to tell someone to go ahead and order the epidural. A short 20 minutes later--the longest 20 minutes of my life--and the anesthesiologist came into the room. I glanced up long enough to register that, interestingly enough, it was the same doctor who had done my epidural for baby girl. I really need to send that man some cookies or something.

I was either much more prepared for the process of getting the epidural or I was in much, much greater pain this time around, because I don't really remember it at all. I remember nothing but the cloud of contractions, and the mental exertion it was taking to get through them. I winced slightly through the needle pricks, the lightening bolt that bloomed just left of my spine. Just then another contraction hit and I braced myself for the suffocation. But it wasn't a bad one. It was much shorter than the others had been. Praise God. And then the next one came, and it was even shorter. And I realized it wasn't the contractions getting shorter, it was that angel of a man who had given me the medicine. It was the epidural, working in just seconds. I smiled a huge smile and relaxed onto the bed.

I had done it. I had made it through 11 hours of med-free labor, the last few hours of which were back labor, to get to a 5 cm, my minimum dilation amount before I wanted an epi. I was proud of myself and thrilled with the relief I was feeling. I had a big fight ahead of me still, and I needed all the help I could get.

That's when Nurse Gaye told me something I wasn't expecting. "I want you to try to lay on your side," she said. "He's posterior, just like his sister was, and we need to try to get him to rotate."

If I had learned this earlier in the day, I would have been scared. Scared that this labor was shaping up to be just like baby girl's. I may have tensed up. I may have been anxious. Things may have changed my labor pattern. Who knows. All I know is that by the time Nurse Gaye decided to tell me, I was mentally tired and physically feeling wonderful relief. I merely nodded and rolled onto my side. I had decided that I really like Nurse Gaye. She was sharp and thoughtful. She was constantly checking on me and getting me to try different things to help me along. She was actually managing my labor, something that had never happened with baby girl.

I lay on my left side, and TH and I both slept.

A couple of hours later, Gaye came back in to check on me. As she felt little man's position, I saw a look of concern on her face. "If I didn't know any better," she said, "I'd swear he has actually moved back UP to a -2 station. That shouldn't happen." She clucked her tongue and I saw the wheels turning. She muttered to herself as she checked the contractions and heart rate tapes. Eventually, she told me to turn over to my right side. "We'll see if he just needs some help rocking back and forth to settle down into the birth canal."

I tried to sleep again, but gradually I started feeling pain with every contraction. It wasn't in my uterus, where I had felt it before, and it wasn't in my back. It was down low, in what I can only describe as the bones of my girly bits. It felt like my vagina was in pain with every contraction. My vagina and rectum. I hit the epidural button several times, but that didn't really seem to take the pain away. So I settled back into my relaxation exercises and tried not to think about it.

At 3:30, my doctor's ever-cheerful face appeared at my door again. Time for a progress check. I had now been in labor for going on 15 hours, and this was when we started really noticing that things were not going well with baby girl's labor. I had never heard a number higher than 6.5

I held my breath.

"HEY, Kelly! This is GREAT! You're at a full 9 cm! 100% effaced! Zero station!" he called out, unable to keep the excitement and joy out of his own voice.

"REALLY?!?!?" I squeaked, my biggest smile of the day breaking across my face. Relief flooded my heart. Relief, joy, excitement, amazement, incredulity. 9 cm!! 100%!! Zero station!! These were normal labor advancements! My body had DONE it! I was one short step away from actually reaching the final stage. I was actually going to get to push. "Dr. Seeker, I could KISS you!" I exclaimed, the excitement and happiness on my face mirrored in his own.

As he stood up, I went to give him a high-five. "Aw, no high five!" he said. "If you say you're going to kiss me, you'd better kiss me!" He leaned over, and I planted a great big kiss on his cheek.

Nurse Gaye slipped in a seemingly innocuous question. "Could you tell his position?"

"Yep, he seems lined up just right!" my doctor announced. "I'll come back and check on you in a bit, but now you're just going to labor down for a while. And don't worry. I'm not going anywhere at all. I will be here to deliver this baby."

After my doctor left the room, Nurse Gaye chatted happily as she made her notes in the computer. "I guess he just needed to back up out of the birth canal in order to get into a better position to settle into it."

And that's when a thought occurred to me. Every night I had been lying down to go to sleep, every time I'd been having contractions all afternoon and evening, only to have them dissipate when I went to bed, I had been laying down on my left side. On the side that actually made little man move back UP, away from the ultimate goal. I don't know what it is about my anatomy or his positioning that made that happen, but NOT laying down on my left side the night before, going to bed sitting up instead, quite possibly was the magic key to getting me to go into labor on the very last night it could have happened.

For the next couple of hours, I "labored down." And the pain I'd started feeling got gradually more and more intense. I kept hitting the darn epidural button, but nothing seemed to have any effect. It hurt. Nurse Gaye assured me that this was just "pressure," and not "pain," so I tried to ignore it.

At 5, Nurse Gaye brought in the night shift nurse. She was leaving us. I was so sad to see her go. She had been the one to get me up off the yoga ball after my water had been broken, which in turn had kicked my contractions back into gear. She was the one who actually checked little man's position and told me different positions to lie in to get him to rotate the way he needed to in order to descend. I had felt comfortable with her. Well taken care of. I don't know if my labor would have ended the way that it did with any other nurse. I will always be appreciative of the job she did with me that day.

The new nurse was young. The kind of nurse I thought I wanted from the beginning. But now I felt like she was too young, too fresh, too lacking in decades of experience. I didn't have time to dwell on it, though. The "pressure" Nurse Gaye had assured me I was feeling was mounting with every contraction and it was taking most of my mental energy to deal with the "pressure" I felt. It hurt. It hurt badly. And slowly, the idea started to sink into my mind that if I could just push a little bit with each contraction, that might actually feel better than not pushing.

The next time the nurse came in to check on me, I told her I felt like pushing.

She checked me. She called my doctor. He came down and checked me. He told me to go ahead and push whenever I felt like it.

Uh.

Seriously?

I realized at that moment that I was there. I had reached my goal. I had just been given the green light to push. I felt such an incredible mass of excitement swell within me that I actually fought to hold it off, lest I explode.

"Okay," he said, "With the next contraction, I want you to tuck your chin into your chest and curl your body into a 'C' shape. Hold your breath and push while we count to 10."

I had a moment's hesitation as something from our Bradley training back in the day came to mind. Don't hold your breath while pushing. Breathe out with your pushes and make low, guttural sounds. I looked worriedly at my husband, and he nodded and told me that it was okay.

Okay then. I trust him. I trust my doctor. Let's try it his way.

With the next contraction, I pushed.

I had no idea what I was pushing. I just pushed. I tensed my stomach and my arms and my shoulders and probably all the rest of my body as well. I have no doubt that my first push to deliver my child did absolutely nothing. I was a pushing rookie, a novice. But even so, I pushed with all my might and somewhere in the depths of my mind, exploded with the happiness of the action. My very first push!

As ineffectual as it might have been, it seemed to satisfy my doctor. "Okay, you know how to push!" he exclaimed happily. "I'll be back to check on you later!" And with that he left and my husband and I looked after him, bewildered. What? I'm pushing! Aren't you supposed to stay here and cheer me on? Monitor my progress? Hold my hand? Something???

When TH asked the nurse, she smiled and said that all the pushing would be with her. The doctor just comes at the end to catch the baby.

I didn't have time to dwell. I could feel another contraction coming on. "Can I push again?" I asked her. She smiled and said sure, and so it began.

I started pushing to deliver my son at 5:20 p.m. And I relished it. Not only was I finally, finally, finally pushing, finally getting a shot at delivering a child the way I was meant to, but it was a concrete action, something I could dig in and focus on putting effort into. My athletic background, my stamina, my determination, my work ethic all came into play at the perfect moment. Far from the rigors of laboring, in which I really had to focus on not doing things--not tensing up, not holding my breath, not letting the pain play with my mind--this time I could focus on actually doing something. This part of delivery was right up my alley and I gave it my all.

With every contraction, I curled my chin into my chest, curled my body into a 'C' shape, and pushed with all my might for a 10 count, and then took a deep breath and did it again for another 10, and then again for another 10. Every contraction got 3 solid pushes, and sometimes, if I was feeling particularly focused, I was able to power through a fourth 10-count. About three or four contractions into pushing, TH asked the nurse what the average time pushing was for a vaginal delivery. "For a first time vaginal?" the nurse said. "About three hours."

THREE HOURS?!?! I was about 10 minutes in, and already feeling the exhaustion, the physical toll the pushing would take on me. THREE HOURS!?!?!

I shut them out as I felt another contraction come on and pushed again. And again. And again.

Sometimes I tried not holding my breath. Sometimes I held my breath. For a while I pushed on my right side, knowing how effective that position had been at helping baby boy descend properly. For a while I pushed on my left side, when the nurse had me rotate over and gave me the oxygen mask, calmly mentioning that it would help the baby to get some good, straight oxygen. I was so focused on the act of pushing I didn't give this a second thought, only realizing later, after he was born, after I had slept, that it may have meant something scary. TH held whichever leg was in the air, depending on which side I was laying on, and told me with every contraction, with every 10 count, with every push, what a good job I was doing. We brought out the leg stirrups and I began resting between contractions, resting every muscle in my body, resting so deeply I may have actually been sleeping. Between contractions, I didn't notice what people around me were doing, if anything was said, or how much time passed. I only knew when I could feel a contraction coming on, and I would rouse and say "okay" and my husband would appear back at my side and the nurse would be back at my feet and the counting would begin again.

Eventually I rolled to my back. The nurse praised me on my progress. She said she could see the baby's head during my pushes. We were at the "forward and back" stage, where I would push him forward, into view, and then he would pull back when I wasn't pushing, back out of view. I asked for a mirror. I don't know what made me do it. I had thought all along I wouldn't want to see anything that was going on down there, but now the moment was here and I wanted to see. I heard a dim warning that there would be blood, and then heard my husband tell me okay, that the mirror was there if I wanted to look. I tilted my head up, and yes there was blood, and in another moment, another frame of mind, I may have been horrified by it. But in that moment all I could register was a glimpse, in the dark reaches inside me, of dark, wet hair.

At one point, the nurse put her fingers inside me during a contraction and told me to focus on them, on pushing them out. Finally, finally, I had something physical, something concrete on which to focus my pushing muscles. The first time I pushed while focusing on her fingers, she exclaimed, "Great job!" and I knew I had finally figured out the "right" way, the effective way to push. From then on out, I focused on her fingers, on the pressure I felt where they pushed. I turned all my mental energy to them and tried to push them out of my body with every 10-count. She asked me if I did yoga, if I was up for trying a different pushing position that might help open my hips and cervix even more. As instructed, with the next contraction, I grabbed both ankles, turning the soles of my feet to each other, touching them, and letting my knees fall out to the sides.

My doctor showed back up to check on me. I did another set of 10-counts with him, and he told the nurse to go ahead and break down the bed. On some dim level I knew that was momentous, I knew we had almost reached the end, but that level was far away from where I was at that moment. I was gone, lost somewhere in the world of contractions and sleeping and exhuastion and elation and focus and pushing.

And then I heard my doctor telling me "okay, Kelly, here we go, push push push!!!" and I knew it was too early, I couldn't feel the contraction really gearing up yet, it wasn't time yet. But he was yelling at me to push and I did, I pushed against his fingers, yelling in my head at them to get out of my body, listening to someone counting to ten and someone else saying, "Gooood! AGAIN!" and I pushed again with everything I had, and I felt him pulling at me, felt myself stretching, heard someone say, "Here he comes!" and then my doctor was telling me, "AGAIN! Push-push-PUSH!" and I knew that was the third set of the contraction so I gave it everything I had, pulling my ankles to me and pushing and feeling the pain of my son crowning, of my doctor stretching me to help him out (holy hell why can I feel that, why can I feel everything???). I heard someone counting the 10-count, "8!...9!..." and I readied myself to collapse back onto the bed, readied myself for resting, but then my doctor was saying "AGAIN!!" (what?? Again?? I'm supposed to get to rest now!) and I summoned all my strength and pushed again, no longer registering the counting or the encouragement, focusing only on the pain and the pushing. And then "AGAIN, KELLY! PUSH!!!" and I don't know if I was yelling out loud or just in my head, but I heard myself yelling and thinking "Doesn't he know that's the FIFTH set!?!" but I gave in and pushed. And then, "AGAIN!! Here he comes!" and I pushed again, no longer knowing where I was pushing from, no longer thinking of effort or rest or anything except doing what I was told, doing what I had to do.

And then I heard my husband say "oh my god!"

And then I heard my doctor say "Okay, don't push! His head is out! You did it! Don't push anymore!" and on some level I rested, collapsed, and yet some deeper part of me awoke, rose up, and I asked if I could touch him, could feel him. I reached a hand down and touched my son's head, and the only thing that registered in that moment was soft. His head, warm and wet and covered with downy brown hair, was the softest thing I had ever felt.

Then I heard my doctor telling me not to push, to breathe through the contraction, and I hadn't even realized the contraction was almost upon me already, and I listened to him tell me just to breathe through it, to breathe and not push, and I fought against the urge to push and blew out all the pain, all the urges, through my mouth, blowing again and again until I felt something ease from me and I heard my doctor tell the room "It's a boy!" and I heard my husband say "oh my god! oh my god!" again and again, and then he was there.

Here. On my chest. My son. They laid him on me and I embraced him and stroked him and told him hi and what a strong boy he had been, what a strong, strong boy. And he quieted from his initial angry squall and looked up at me, no longer angry, but calm, relaxed, comforted.

And I held him.

I have no idea what was going on around me during all this. On some vague level I felt myself still contracting, heard my doctor say the placenta had been delivered. I didn't notice. My son was lying on me, and my arms were stroking him, and I was telling him it was okay, and what a strong, brave boy he'd been, and the world around me no longer existed.

My son was born at 6:57  p.m., after 18 hours of labor, after only 90 minutes of pushing . . . just 12 hours shy of his scheduled c-section. He was laid on my chest immediately upon birth. My husband got to cut the cord after it stopped pulsing. Every birth preference we'd had for our daughter's birth two years ago, every hope and dream for this birth today, was fulfilled.

They came to take him to the warmer to get measured and wrapped. As soon as he was off my chest, I suddenly noticed my doctor was stitching me up. With no son in my arms to distract me, I realized I could actually feel my doctor stitching me up. I winced and tried to tell the room that I could feel that, and my husband shushed me (in the comforting way, not the brush-off way) and told me that it was okay as I winced and shuddered my way through the stitching.

And then my son was back, wrapped, and I put him to my breast to nurse, and after a few minutes of just holding the nipple in his mouth, he figured it out and nursed.

There were pictures taken, there were congrats and hugs shared, and then the room cleared and it was just us (and maybe a nurse . . . but in my head, it was just us, just the three of us, and nobody and nothing else).

He was here.

I had done it. WE had done it. My husband and my son and I.

Together we had waited and trusted and coached and supported and encouraged and cheered and cried and willed our way through it. Together.

And my doctor, who supported my decision and encouraged me when I was nervous. Who gave me four extra days to go into labor, even though I only ended up needing three.

And my nurse, who actually managed my labor, whose sharp eye spotted potential problems and who worked with me proactively to solve those problems.

Without them, I have no doubt this never would have happened.

I'd be lying if I said that, on this side of my second kind of birth experience, I had the ultimate revelation that none of it really mattered, that the way the bridge is crossed isn't nearly as important as getting to the other side. The truth of the matter is I'm thrilled with having given birth vaginally. I felt such a sense of loss, of failure, with the birth of my daughter. Now I know what it's like to give birth the way I was intended to, the way I was built to. I feel empowered as a woman. As a mother.

And now? Now that I'm on the other side? Now that I have a daughter born one way and a son born another? Now I get to turn my back on that bridge that I finally got to cross with a sense of peace and fulfillment. I no longer feel the need to look back, to second guess, to rethink and to wonder.

Now I get to smile at my two children and love them both with everything I have.