I just realized while talking to my husband the other night that my memories of the details of my labor and delivery are starting to slip away into the mists that have become my brain, so I wanted to get it on on "paper" before they're gone completely.
WARNING: I WILL NOT SPARE DETAILS - IF YOU HAVE A WEAK STOMACH OR EMBARRASS EASILY STOP READING NOW AND SKIP THIS POST.
Ok, that said - onto the birth story. I feel I must warn you that this is 5 pages long in Word - so this might be the longest blog post of all time. I thought about doing multiple posts, but I'm going to try it this way first - if it sucks, I'll chop it up into 3 or 4 posts.
If you know me, you know that I was in labor for a grand total of 282 hours. That doesn't include the Braxton Hicks contractions I started having around 30 weeks that landed me in L&D for a shot of Terbutaline - but hard labor lasted 'only' about 35 hours with 6ish total hours of pushing.
Our journey begins on the evening of September 9th, 2008. I was riding home with DH, painfully aware that my due date was in 4 days, and nothing had happened yet. We pulled into a gas station to fill up and wash the car when I realized that the contractions I’d been feeling were getting stronger and closer together, so I started watching the clock to see just how close together… well look at that. 10 minutes apart! I tell DH that I’m feeling something happening, and we both get excited. We decide to drive home and wait awhile to see if things start feeling like they’re progressing. I labored at home for a little while, timing contractions, and trying to relax, and when they got to around 5 minutes apart and a minute long, I called my midwife’s office to speak with the doctor on call. He called me back (fairly quickly), and said that it sounded promising and that I should go ahead and go into Labor & Delivery to get checked out. I remember telling DH that it didn’t feel quite as dramatic as I had thought it was going to be, but we dutifully packed my bag into the car and headed over to the hospital.
When we got there I was put into the triage room (where I’d already been about 9 weeks earlier due to pre-term labor), where the nurses checked me, asked me to rate my pain (I was pretty uncomfortable – I think I told them I was at around a 5), and pronounced me 1-2 cm dilated, about 60% effaced, and -3 station. This was progress from my last midwife appointment, when I’d only been about a fingertip dilated and 50% effaced. I started to get excited again, and the nurses said they’d call Jodi (one of the two most wonderful midwives to ever walk the planet) to come in and check on me since she was there for another patient anyway. After she showed up she and I talked a bit around my contractions, and she suggested I walk around the birth center to see if that got things moving. They gave me two hospital gowns to wear (so my ass wouldn’t be flapping in the wind – God Bless ‘em), and Spencer and I walked up and down the halls, stopping every so often so I could breathe through a contraction (just FYI – the word “contraction” is going to come up an awful lot from here on out). After about an hour, they checked me again, and found that nothing had changed. What?? All this work and nothing? I was starting to get frustrated. Little did I know just how frustrated I was going to be…
Jodi gave me a couple of options. The first one was that I could keep laboring there at the hospital, but since she knew that I was hoping for a low-intervention birth she said I might be happier at home, because I could take things slowly and not worry about them trying to rush me. When I picked home, she said to come on back if things started to get intense, and that she’d most likely see me the next day anyway (though technically it was the next day, as it was around 1:00am at this point). DH and I checked out and headed home, and I wrote an email to the gals at the office letting them know that I was in labor and wouldn’t be at work on Wednesday. I went to bed soon thereafter (they gave me a dose of Ambien before we checked out of the hospital, and it knocked my butt out cold!). When I got up the next day it didn’t really seem like anything had changed. I was still contracting regularly and painfully every 5-6 minutes, but they weren’t getting any more intense and they weren’t getting any closer together. DH kept busy by doing my “nesting” for me – he even cleaned out the freezer! I, on the other hand, sat on my butt until it got too intense, and then I would get up and move around. I kept springing leaks, too – it’s like my boobs were hooked up to some sort of colostrum faucet over which I had no control. That afternoon the contractions slowed to 7 minutes apart, and stayed that way for the rest of the day. I was started to get a little worried, and confused.
The morning of the 11th I emailed the gals at the office again to let them know what was happening (or *not* happening), and called my midwife’s office when they opened. After I got off the phone, my wonderful, amazing, darling husband came into the living room with a funny look on his face. When I asked him what was up he handed me a little box and said “I was going to wait until after the baby was born to give this to you, but you’re in such a frustrating situation right now, and I’m so in awe of you that I wanted to give it to you early as a pick-me-up.” I opened the box and was shocked to see a gorgeous pair of white gold earrings, each with a baby blue sapphire and a diamond in it. The sapphire is his and the baby’s birthstone (September), and the diamond is my birthstone (April). He said it was a thank-you gift for being the mother of his son – how incredible is that? I, of course, put them on immediately, but took them off again because I didn’t want to lose them in my labor-induced stupor (or forget I had them on and wear them to the hospital). His words and wonderful gesture helped shore me up, and I was ready to face my contractions with renewed vigor. Yeah, I know, it sounds cheesy, but it’s really the way I felt. So shut it.
I went into my midwife’s office at 11:00am (I guess being in labor gets you an appointment pretty darn quick!), they hooked me up to the NST machine, said “Yup! You’re having some pretty strong contractions!” and when my midwife (Lauren, the other most wonderful midwife to ever walk the planet) came in she checked me (I’d made a teensy bit of progress – I was 2 cm, 70% effaced, and -2 station), attempted to strip my membranes, and dubbed me in “prodromal labor”. Not ever having heard of such a thing, I asked her to elaborate, and I think I probably cried at some point (ok, fine, I cried a lot). She said that it’s known as the latent stage of labor (or early labor) and exactly what was happening to me was highly unusual. Normally women who go through this get some sort of break – their bodies contract for awhile, and then everything comes to a screeching halt and they resume their daily lives. Or they contract regularly, but they’re spaced really far apart. For me to be having strong contractions every 4-8 minutes non-stop for as long as I had was rare, and she gave me lots of sympathy (cue the waterworks again). I asked her how long it was going to last and she didn’t have an answer for me, but she did give me a couple of natural ways I could try to speed things along. The first one was for her to strip my membranes – which she tried to do, but Clay's head was pushing down so hard on my cervix she couldn't get her finger in there to do it. The best she could do was sort of poke at the sac and try to separate it from my cervix that way. Um, ouch, by the way. The second one was to take lots of walks – which DH and I had already been doing. We discussed induction, but I wasn’t ready to go there yet – I wanted the baby to come out when he was ready, and was still hoping to have my low-intervention birth.
After the appointment DH and I went shopping, and ended up spending a boatload of money on things we didn’t really need, but wanted. We bought a coat tree, a new comforter set for our bed, an IPod dock, a new teakettle, and a bunch of random things we actually did need (a new bras for me, for example). I think we were both just trying to keep busy, and since everyone was telling me I needed to walk, we decided to walk around the store! A little later that evening I started feeling nauseous which I took as a good sign, but it just came and went.
On the 12th I went in again, where she checked me and said that I may have made a tiny bit of progress, but really nothing to speak of. She suggested that I start taking evening primrose oil supplements orally and as a suppository to try and soften my cervix, so we bought some on the way home. Yes, I clipped open gel capsules of evening primrose oil and shoved them in my vagina – I was getting desperate. She also told me that she would fax a note to my office putting me off as of the 10th (the first day I missed) so I wouldn’t have to worry about going back, and just like that I was officially out on maternity leave.
The next few days pass with more contractions coming 5 or 6 minutes apart, roughly a minute long each, continuing day and night. DH and I took walks every day to try and get things moving – I don’t know if they helped or not, but we enjoyed getting to get out of the house and spend some leisurely time together. During one of our walks DH mentioned that he really liked this one maple tree, so I bought the baby a pair of wool pants with a maple leaf appliquéd on the leg, and gave them to him as a reminder. On the 13th, I lost several noticeable chunks of my mucus plug, which meant I was dilating, but excruciatingly slowly. At around 4:00am one morning I came up with the analogy that it was like Chinese water torture, only painful. I had another midwife appointment on the 16th where she checked me again (yup, still in labor), and told me I was still 2cm, but had made it to 80% effaced. I was indeed progressing, but at a bizarrely slow pace. She asked me how I was still sane, and honestly I’m not sure I was. I was so frustrated at this point that I kept spontaneously bursting into tears, and wondering aloud what in the hell I was doing – my poor husband was at a loss as to what to do for me. My midwife decided that I would come back on the 18th to get checked again, and at *that* appointment (after she stripped my membranes for the third time) we decided that if I hadn’t given birth by 5:00 on Tuesday the 23rd, I would check into the birth center and they would induce me by inserting a Foley catheter into my cervix and inflating the balloon to try and get my cervix to open. Generally when they do this procedure things kick into high gear sometime between 2 and 12 hours later. We wanted to try this before Pitocin because it was obvious that my body already knew quite well how to contract, it was the dilating part it was confused about.
The evening of the 19th, I decide that I’ve had enough with the little chunks of sleep I’ve been getting, and I decide to take an Ambien to try and knock myself out so my body can actually rest. I went down hard for a few hours, and then woke up at 2:15am in extreme pain. I thought Clay had found a butterfly knife and had decided to hack his way out, but no – I think by taking the Ambien I allowed my body to fully relax enough to get things kick-started and push me into hard labor. At first I tried to just relax and breathe through the contractions, but laying down was not where I wanted to be. Trying to be quiet so DH would keep sleeping, I got out of bed and went downstairs where I walked around, rocked in my glider, got down on all fours, hung off of the kitchen island, and tried to breathe. A couple of hours later I went to the bathroom and encountered “bloody show” – it was bright red and snotty, but settled into being pinkish and snotty after awhile. I got back in bed at around 5:00am to see if I could get more rest, but DH woke up and asked what was going on. When I told him I thought I was finally in active labor, his eyes got really wide and he jumped out of bed. He started getting things ready for us to go, while I kept walking around, rocking in the glider, and generally trying not to fall over (side note: he took a picture of me laboring in the glider that has become one of my favorite pictures of me of all time – I’ll see if I can find it to post). I finally decided that 5 minutes apart was close e-freaking-nough, and we headed to the birth center – again. They put me in the triage room (this was the third time if you’re keeping score), where they checked me and pronounced me 3 cm dilated. Hooray! Progress! A full centimeter since the last time! They let me labor for another hour or so, and then checked me again. I’d not dilated any more, but my cervix was moving into the anterior position where it needed to be, so they put me in a real birthing suite. Phew – finally! Or so I thought.
Enter Jodi (she always seemed to be on call whenever something started to happen with me), who yet again gave me the choice of staying at the birthing center, or going to home to labor and avoid unnecessary interventions because I wasn’t progressing as quickly as they would like. After starting to cry for the umpteenth time I picked home (again), because I’d already made it this far and figured I could do this at home as easily as I could do it there. I got home and kept moving from my glider, to the floor, to the wall, to the kitchen island over and over again until I started having trouble breathing, moving, and talking. DH put me in the car, and back we went to the birth center. This time I got checked into a birthing suite for the duration – yeehaw!
Now that I was in such extreme pain, I started using the accoutrements they had available at the birth center. I used the tub, I used the birthing ball, I used DH, I walked, I used the hang bar on the bed, and all throughout the process, Jodi basically just watched to make sure everything was going ok (which is what I wanted, I just didn't know it until she did it). At one point she checked my progress and said that my bag of water was bulging, so she was hopeful that it would break soon and things would move a little faster. Taking matters into my own hands, I went to the bathroom (to pee), and pushed really hard during a contraction while I was on the toilet and broke my water myself. Jodi laughed and exclaimed “You did that on purpose!” and I said something along the lines of “I want to get this show on the road!” I didn’t realize that your water breaking wasn’t just a one-shot deal – after every contraction for awhile more and more water kept gushing out. I have never been so messy in my entire life, and I didn’t care – I wanted my baby out of me as soon as humanly possible. After laboring (and doing some pushing) for God knows how long (18 hours?), Jodi checked me again, and said that I was almost 10 cm dilated, but there was a "lip" of cervix that won't move out of the way. She wanted me to breathe through the pushing sensation, and not push (yeah freaking right - that was one of the hardest things I've ever done) until I literally could not control it anymore, and then we’d assume that I was complete and could push safely (she didn't want my cervix to be weakened by my trying to push the baby past the “lip”). So after several hours of that (we're at a grand total of 24 hours at this point), she finally said "Ok, this is not something I would ever recommend lightly, and I know how much you wanted to do this without intervention, but I think you should get an epidural. There's no way you're going to have the strength to push this baby out if you don't get some rest." She warned me that I was going to have to be monitored continuously, and would probably end up needing Pitocin to help the contractions - in other words, all the crap I didn't want. I was so exhausted at this point that I agreed (anything to get some rest), and we started that process.
The nurse anesthetist was really cool, and knew how to do everything between contractions, although I had a pretty strong one while he was inserting the epidural needle - that sucked. Trying to hold still during a pushing contraction because you have a needle in your spine is terrifying. Once the epidural started working I let our family in to see me so they would know that I was still alive, and after a short visit with them I kicked everyone out again and fell asleep for the next hour and a half. Jodi took a nap, too, and I woke up when she came back into my room. We started trying to work with the epidural (they put me on a Pitocin drip since the epidural was slowing the contractions, and they had DH holding one of my legs and a nurse holding the other), and when it became apparent that it really wasn't doing us any favors they said they were going to turn it down to 5 - well, instead they turned it OFF. So, I was in pushing labor again for a few more hours. I did manage to get him down and crowned, but he stayed there for a reeeeeeeeeeeeeally long time. They had the monitors on him and his heart rate was totally fine so they weren't too worried, but the longer he stayed there the more nervous they got. It all gets a little fuzzy at this point - I remember that Jodi told me I was going to have to listen very carefully when the time came to deliver his shoulders, and I agreed, then I gave a herculean effort to get my baby out while one nurse is pushing on my pelvis and the midwife has her entire hand up inside me (Jodi told me later that this actually happened twice), and then all of the sudden my baby is on out and my stomach. His lips were navy blue and he was not breathing, but he was making bizarre little grunting noises, almost like he’d had the wind knocked out of him. I have never been more scared in my entire life - my entire world narrowed down to that little boy, and his navy blue lips. The nurses grabbed him from my stomach and started working on him over in the corner, and then decided they had to take him to the nursery. This was kind of a big deal, because at this birth center they’re all about not separating a baby from his mother unless it’s absolutely necessary. They wrapped him, brought him to me for a kiss, and whisked him away. DH followed because I asked him to, and he had to watch them shove a tube down his baby boy's throat and get all the crap out. After they’d done as much as they could, they asked him to take off his shirt and hold the baby to give him skin to skin contact to try and revive him a bit.
It was what they call a "traumatic birth" (to which I say, no **** sherlock), and it turned out that his shoulder was caught up against my pubic bone, which is why Jodi shoved her whole hand up there – she had to unhook him. His cord was around his neck, he had the most extreme conehead I've ever seen from being in the birth canal for so long, he got a TWO on his Apgars, and I had a tear that extended from deep in my vagina all the way back into my rectum. It didn't actually tear my sphincter, so it was technically only second degree, but I was on Percoset for the pain, and was taking prescription strength ibuprofen for the swelling. Because of the extreme amount of swelling, when it went down I ended up getting an infection in my stitches that required me to be on antibiotics for ten days, get re-stitched in my midwife’s office, and take Percoset for an extra two weeks.
It was without a doubt the hardest thing I've ever done in my entire life, and I was actually sort of famous around the birth center while we were there. Everyone who came in was like "I heard you had a really amazing labor", or "I heard you had a really rough time", or "You're the gal who had the marathon birth, right?". It was nice, though, because they all kept telling me how amazing I was, and how they would have given up, and I'm the strongest woman they'd ever met. It kind of made me feel like Wonder Woman. All’s well that ends well, though, and my baby boy is completely healthy.
