The Birth Story

The idea of writing down a birth story is something I never would have thought of without Ina Mae Gaskin, a nice weird hippie lady who is probably the most famous midwife in America, and who has suggested that women think of contractions as "interesting sensations that require all my attention" vs. "painful." I distinctly remember at one point during labor saying "Interesting sensations requiring all my attention my foot!"

I think I said "foot." (The Husband kept laughing at me for my inability to swear under duress.)

Anyhow, Gaskin includes a bunch of positive birth stories in her midwifery books, on the principle that everybody always tells pregnant women horror stories about birth and that they could use some encouraging stories to balance it out. So here's my birth story, for the record (and the curious). Pictures first:

(Me, glad to have my IV out, holding Brother and looking slightly less dead than I did earlier.)

(Me, directly after birth, looking dead as I mentioned previously. The white bundle is Brother. The only reason I post this picture is Miss Boo's face.)

On Friday I began having Braxton-Hicks-ish contractions, at about 4am, except they were a bit uncomfortable. I called the grandmas and put people on baby-alert. The contractions, of course, proceeded to slow down, but did not stop all day or all night. I had Grandma stay at the house, just in case, but I thought things would probably stop.

(Brother, Padraig, and Miss Boo adjusting to each other. Padraig is still mad at us that we made his babysitting job harder, and is unsure what he's supposed to do when the kids are not both in the same room. He settles for positioning himself halfway between them, and anxiously looking from one to the other.)

Things did not stop, even though I cleaned the bathroom and went to Costco to distract myself. (Grandma was with me, in case my water broke in the frozen aisle. I was less tolerant with checkers and traffic than usual, however.) By Saturday night I was bouncing on the exercise ball for several hours to distract myself from the contractions. I still wasn't buying this was real labor. After all, I could read through the contractions and talk through them.

Sunday morning, before we got out of bed, I told the Husband "I don't think we'll go to church today." "Ya think?" said the Husband. Contractions were, by 6am, uncomfortable enough that I had to pause when I had one and breathe through it. The Husband declared for me that we were going to the hospital; I insisted on eating breakfast first. And a good thing, too, since it was the last real food I was going to eat for the duration.

(Brother, taking his sunbath as prescribed for his orange color {mild jaundice}. Babies are the only people who tan to get lighter.)

We got to the hospital around 9am and were checked. I was only at 3cm dilation and was all for going home, where there was food and a recliner, but the midwife thought I might have a rapid (HA!) labor this time and wanted us to stay at the hospital. By the time all this was decided it was lunchtime and I was told I could have a clear liquid tray. In case you're curious, a clear liquid tray is jello, juice, broth, and decaf tea or coffee. There are only three variants of jello, juice, and broth.

(Another sunbathing shot. He's not real fond of being naked, thus the bink; he's not terribly fond of the bink either and eventually demanded that I sit in the sun and nurse him for the rest of his session.)

So I cheerfully labored and starved and looked jealously at the Husband's cheeseburger, and walked the halls. Things went on at a fairly slow pace for the rest of the day. For the menfolks and the ladies who haven't had babies, imagine getting charlie horses every three to five minutes all day and you've got a pretty good picture.

On the upside, the hospital had the most awesome tubs I've ever seen. They were about four feet deep and seven feet long and you could stretch completely out and float in them, which was excellent pain relief at this point. We were chatting about whether the baby would be born by midnight or whether he'd share a birthday with his Opa. We thought he'd probably be born before midnight (HA!).

At midnight I was still only dilated to 5cm. The nurse said that the midwife said if I wasn't progressing by morning, they'd need to start Pitocin (aka, the Devil's Drug). She meant, I found out later, that I should rest during the rest of the night and try to gather my strength, but what I heard was that I'd better find some way to dilate quicker. Therefore I got one hour of sleep that night (the Husband got three), and spent the rest of the time walking and bouncing on the birthing ball and leaning over the windowsill, wishing the baby would get a move on.

By morning I wasn't progressing (6cm) so they started Evil Pitocin, which makes contractions get longer, stronger, and closer together, and a bunch more painful. My coping strategies lasted five more hours or so, as the Pitocin kept getting turned up higher and I kept s-l-o-w-l-y dilating, until it got to the point where nothing was helping and I was rapidly reconsidering my commitment to doing this without pain medicine. (I hadn't had any up to this point, even with the Pitocin.)

First I decided to try Stadol, an IV narcotic that hadn't helped when I was having Miss Boo. I thought maybe this time it would be different. It wasn't; I just felt drunk and I was still in pain. I was getting tired and I couldn't relax enough during contractions for them to do their work. I decided that I needed spinal anesthesia.

The Husband dutifully tried to talk me out of it for an hour, as I had instructed him to do beforehand. When I finally told him that I was worried I would get so tired I wouldn't be able to push when the time came, we called in the anesthesiologist.

(Interesting side note: I found out that the reason things were going so slowly and that I couldn't relax through the back pain that happened with each contraction was that Brother had his nose pointed toward my left hip, instead of toward my spine like it should have been. The midwife managed to get him to turn just before the anesthesiologist appeared, and had I known she could do that, I might have not gone for the spinal. However, I'm still glad I did.)

It would be indiscreet to tell you the anesthesiologist's name, but I have to--you'll understand why when I tell you the guy was called Dr. Stitch. Seriously. It was enough to make me forgive him for saying I could have nothing by mouth from now until the baby was born. (I'd had only clear liquids for the last 30 hours, remember.)

It took about 60 seconds to place the spinal, which was much faster than I thought it would be, so when the told me to lay down I wasn't expecting the sudden and divine relief that washed over me. I lay happily for the next couple of hours, not really feeling contractions, still mildly stoned from the Stadol. By the time the spinal started wearing off enough for me to feel some sensation (and the stoned-ness wore off) it was time to push.

Pushing was great compared to the rest of labor; it took about four contractions and the baby boy was out, and I had impressed the nurse and midwife with my pushing prowess. (Can you tell I like having something to do besides just wait?) Baby boy appeared and was laid on my chest, and immediately began looking around in an offended fashion. He had a scratch on his nose from where he'd been smashed against my hipbone, the stinker. And thank the Lord, the spinal didn't wear completely off until AFTER all that excitement was over. Baby boy was born at 2:15pm, on Monday.

They told me I could then have anything I wanted to eat. I ate a spicy chicken sandwich, fries, a chocolate milkshake, someone's leftover potato chips, a piece of chocolate pie, and then I ordered dinner when I could an hour and a half later. :D It was awesome.

All told, we were officially in labor for 32 hours, and since there were several emergencies in other rooms while we were there, we ended up having 9 different nurses. Now that it's over, it's kind of cool to have the bragging rights, honestly.

Brother, as Miss Boo calls him, is a champ eater and pooper and has his father's ears and toes, and my fingers. He also has, in my opinion, his Opa's forehead, which would make sense since he appropriated his Opa's birthday after all.

Now he's here to stay, thank the Lord, and I can start adjusting to the idea that I've got a baby in arms instead of kicking me in the ribs. God has been so good.

That was a VERY long blog post, so I will stop with that.

Cheers,

Breanna

P.S.

And yet we still want more kids, Lord willing. Go figure. Must be the amnesiac effect of the labor hormones.