The players:
Mama - Lina, 39 weeks and 5 days pregnant, reluctant to admit she was in labor because she had a hair appointment the following day and REALLY needed it
Dada - Sebastian, aka Saby, who had been trying to get Mama to agree to go the hospital since about 5pm Friday
CNM Midwife - Neva, a Family Beginnings nurse from our first birth who had told us (back in 2008) that she was studying midwifery... AND SHE DID! Now she's our super awesome midwife!
RNs - Sarah (from Triage), and Judy and Brooke (in Family Beginnings)
The Scene:
Miami Valley Hospital, and the Family Beginnings Birth Center at MVH (the only accredited birth center in Ohio)
The Day:
the evening of Friday, December 2nd and the very early morning of December 3rd, 2011
the evening of Friday, December 2nd
When I went into labor with my first pregnancy, I had no doubt that it was the real thing. But this time around, on Friday morning, my crampy uterus was being a little more mysterious. I made a few phone calls to family saying that something "miiiiight" be happening, but probably not. Naw. Went about my business. Made a grocery list. Wrote about my baby shower. Laid down to take a nap around noon while my toddler slept, and... could not sleep. I couldn't sleep through the cramps. The oddly regular, increasingly uncomfortable cramps. Oops. Contractions.
Well. Not being able to sleep through the cramps/contractions made me realize this was probably the real thing. But I didn't want to alarm my husband at work earlier than necessary, so I kept it to myself. The kid was still napping, so how to take advantage of these (potentially) last few quiet hours of one-kidness? I went into the craft room thinking I'd be all crafty and throw together a homemade rice bag to warm up and put on my aching contracting back. My nesting efforts resulted in me destroying a spool of thread and a bobbin.
Epic nesting fail
When my hubby got home, things took a turn for the... irritating. Sebastian timed a few contractions and wanted to head to the hospital right away. Our 3-year old daughter was getting agitated by Dada's anxiety and her mama's new, slightly cranky, dealing-with-discomfort persona, which we'll collectively call "our agitation", and our agitation was spiraling out of control. I didn't want to be in labor because I had stuff to do - a haircut! a movie with the family! shelves to fix! - and my denial was not helping quell Dada's mounting panic. We reviewed the "stages of labor" information from the birth center, and confirmed that Sebastian seemed more "in labor" than me, with his "growing seriousness, apprehension, increased backache, uncertain if she can do it" vibe.
When I related the tale of my failed attempt to sew myself a rice sock, and my husband found solace from his agitation in action. Two stray pairs of socks and a couple cups of basmati rice later, he had made me one, right there on the spot. We microwaved that baby for 3 minutes and it was beautiful heat on my crampy bits, providing quite a bit of relief. (I knew from experience not to put it on my belly. Hot baby = higher heart rate. That had earned me a solid reprimand from the nurse during our first delivery.)
I called the midwife to let her know something was up, and then the birth center. This is when the emotional roller coaster crested that first big hill: the birth center was full. This destroyed me. I was mature enough to know that "yada yada, birth can take any turn" but any turn I'd even remotely anticipated still involved Family Beginnings. So I called a friend crying and she reassured me that everything would go well, no matter what happened. I decided to stall - if I wasn't actually in labor, I might have better luck with one of the three birth center rooms being open later - wtf, was there a full moon or something?!? I took a shower, we loaded the car, and we headed to a friend's house to drop off our daughter. If I was indeed going to have a baby that night, that is where she'd spend the night; so we thought we'd hang out for a bit and see what happened.
Folks gave me a huge amount of encouragement in reply to this, mixed with a few cheers of "who needs a hospital! Have baby at home!" But my home doesn't have room service and a giant hot tub...
At our friend's house, Sebastian had a well-deserved drink, and I just hung out. I'd had a glass of wine before we left, but felt dirty having it. Damn Health and Human Services and their "pregnant-women-should-never-ever-drink" billboards for screwing up my first glorious glass of wine in 9 months! I tried to relax and sit down, not sure what all the night might bring, but felt better on my feet. Sebastian put an app on his phone for timing contractions, and we did better timing now that it wasn't my sole responsibility. I called the birth center back to ask what the deal was with getting a tub into a regular delivery room, and sea change: Nurse Judy tells me matter of factly "Oh! We'll get you in... we just need enough time to bounce someone else who's recovering out and down to regular post-partum. So why don't you just take a nice hot bath... try to go to sleep... and if your contractions continue to the point where you can't sleep, give us a call and maybe we'll see you early tomorrow." (I like how they either never think I'm actually in labor, heheheh)
WELL THEN! That was great news! Talk about a horrible miscommunication! We decided to head home and try to follow Judy's instructions, but only after stopping for some adult diapers. (the best advice you never want to hear: wear adult diapers instead of the mesh panties after delivery. Comfy, easy awesomeness!) It was a cold, calm night, and Rite Aid was closed so we headed further out to the 24-hour Kroger. It felt odd and secretive, like sneaking out of the house in high school to just walk around, to be randomly driving around in the middle of the night, in labor. I waiting in the car while my poor sweet husband went in to try and find an appropriate adult diaper for me. He was armed with information about my current massive size, and my more optimistic pre-pregnancy size, and was putting his Engineering degree to work trying to formulate some happy medium that would fit. "Carry On My Wayward Son" was playing on the labor cd we'd burned just before leaving the house. My contractions were still coming, and getting stronger and making me think in Tarzan language. Husband spotted trotting across parking lot, car doors unlocked. I turn down music and ask go home.
But poor hungry Sebastian needed food, because the shopping trip we'd planned to do that evening had been abandoned in all the hubbub. So we decided to drive through the McDonald's by our house for a sandwich. The drive-thru line was blissfully short, with only two cars in front of us: big, shiny white matching sedans, with out of state license plates, that immediately set off my husband's douchebag radar. Possibly a convoy of D-grade rappers on their way over to Columbus? (Dayton probably only gets F grade rappers, fyi) They had strategically positioned themselves as to not quite allow enough room for our car to pull up to the speaker. Frustration. Saby ordered, and then the white cars repeated their trick at the pay window. Sebastian muttered profanities about inconsiderate, unaware bastards as we inched towards the cashier, who smiled at us and shrugged. He leaned out to take the credit card from Saby's outstretched hand, and I clapped in a pantomime of encouragement. As he handed it back, Saby played his trump card and yells casually across to the cashier:
"My wife?"
[He points to me. I smile, wave, and grimace]
"She's in labor."
BOOM!
Cashier gone. Cashier back. Sandwich handed out of window. Our car zooms out of line past the douchemobile convoy, and we head back home.
Our bags had been thrown into the car in the earlier stages of chaos, so once home we just watched The Office and timed contractions. I sat on a yoga ball, really wishing I had been able to poo properly before things had taken off. Sebastian was unfortunately having similar issues, not at all helped by the McDonald's. Midwife called me back as he sat in the bathroom, and she repeated my options: "labor at home for about two hours until a room opens up in Family Beginnings, or go to Labor and Delivery at the hospital where they'll verify you're in labor... then wait for your room there." I asked her to hold on while I repeated that back to my husband, and put the phone on my shoulder. I hadn't gotten much past "wait two hours" before a stream of incredulous profanity issued forth from Dada, and from my shoulder I could hear Neva say, "I can tell he's not comfortable with that. Why don't you just come on in?"
So off we went.
1:45am L and D Triage at Miami Valley Hospital
Our nurse Sarah was quite the cheerful sweetheart, despite my thinly-veiled crankiness at being there in "regular" hospital labor and delivery section instead of Family Beginnings. I suppose I was harboring birth-snob issues, and in my head, "regular" meant vaaaaaastly inferior. But my misgivings with the whole "regular" hospital evaporated when she saw my name and said, "oh, Family Beginnings called down and said you were coming." Ooh! Color me impressed with the communication between FB and the "regular" hospital staff. I was also relieved that the birth center was so aware of my rather frantic desire to get in there.
Look ma! I'm in labor!
For a Friday night, the place was a ghost town. Well... this was labor and delivery triage, not "da club." Still, there had been a surreal stillness as we pulled exited the highway into the industrial area near the hospital, and that stillness carried through, all the way from the entrance of the Berry Women's Health wing straight up to triage. We were in "bed" (bed meaning the little curtained off area) 3 of 5, and the only people there. A boom box on a shelf by the door was tuned to the local 24/7 Christmas music station. Nurse Sarah's cheery, confident demeanor and our lack of neighbors made it less unpleasant as she hooked me onto a fetal monitor and then "checked" me - "four centimeters, super thin [cervix], and a nice bulging bag." Ha! Well that dispels any doubt about me actually being in labor...
From about four months onwards in this pregnancy I could not lay flat on my back. It gave the painful sensation of my hips popping out of alignment, and even more so when trying to get up from a supine position. I could immediately see why the on-your-back, hooked-up and constantly-monitored hospital birth would be miserable; each contraction I had while being monitored was made ten times worse by not being able to move through it. If I squirmed around to relieve the pain in my hips, much less to bear a contraction, the fetal monitor would lose the baby's heartbeat. I was cranky about the whole situation because I didn't know how long I would have to sit like that, but luckily it wasn't very long. Maybe 3 contractions worth.
Oh, and my blood pressure was still low enough to make Sebastian jealous... 122/70 or something ridiculous like that. I would have liked to have seen his at that point, though he seemed much more relaxed now that we were at the hospital.
Dada with the rice bag says, "I'm the one that needs some stress relief!"
2:20am - Dada heads out to forage for food
We grilled Sarah on the availability of food, as I hadn't really eaten anything since the afternoon, and was slightly worried about getting hungry and not having anything available either further into labor or afterwards. She said the cafeteria would be open in a few minutes (for some bizarre 2am-3:45am shift, apparently) and Saby headed off with orders to procure enough yogurt, apple sauce, and gluten-free protein to sustain him and I until we could order breakfast.
(Let me interrupt here for a second - isn't it cool that I could eat? Whatever I wanted? No restrictions, beyond what sounded good to me? Well, think about it. Would you like to go into the most laborious chore of your life nourished with clear liquids and ice chips? HELLS NO. I had a hot dog, baby. If you can call that "nourishment", heh heh. That's just one of the many fabulous things about choosing a more mother-centric birth.)
With nothing else to do, I started lock stepping around the triage to pass the time. I was alone... but alone with the twenty-four hour holiday hits station, baaaay-bee! Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree. Walk walk, wiggle wiggle, twirrrrl, and then sloooooow it down for a contraction. George Michael's Laaaast Christmas... I gave you my heart... waddle waddle squaaat swiiing! Vince Giraldi's stuff from the Charlie Brown Christmas. Swaaaay, swaaaay... twiiiiirl... and again a contraction. I updated a few Facebook statuses, thanked folks for their encouragement, and tried unsuccessfully to get my Twitter account back up. (I'd vowed to "tweet" as much of my birth as possible, but alas the hospital Wifi had other plans)
I would occasionally wander out into the hallway, past a well-staffed desk full of nurses sitting in, what seemed to me, the dark. They offered to get me water, which they did, and I had them warm up my rice sock a few times too. At one point a nurse said to me, "you appear to be getting a little more uncomfortable." I growled "no shit" smiled and nodded, and kept my mouth shut while tweeting my amusement. In hindsight, I think the "Social Networking During Labor" method could be the next big thing in the natural birth community - move over Bradley and HypnoBirthing! Coming to a birthing class near you...
Really I felt all the more awesome to be there, soldering-on through what I was pretty sure was the beginning of some serious, cervix-rending labor, on my feet and still ready to bear much more. Yeah beyotch!! Yaaah! I wandered like a drunken grizzly down the hallway towards Family Beginnings, all the while keeping an eye on triage since all our stuff was in there, and encountered nurse Judy. She (if I remember correctly) recognized me, gave me a hug and told me we could bring our stuff to the birth center's common area, and even stay there and wait if we wanted. Sebastian was getting back with the food at that point,so I told him how things were going (good/painful/fine/I'm a drunken grizzly bear) and we headed down the hall. We passed a member of the janitorial staff, and she gave a wary glance at my belly, so I said, "thank you... I think you just cleaned our room." That got a smile.
So we get into Family Beginnings, and find... we get the same room Elena was born in! It was like coming home. (Except home had been upgraded and redesigned since our last stay) The nurses, Judy and Brooke, were just setting up a few last things and so we started making ourselves comfortable. I asked for the birthing ball and sat on that for awhile, but soon after our midwife Neva arrived, and suggested I lie down on the bed so she could check me. Four centimeters, nice and thin, with a bulging bag? At this point I was "a good 7... no, I think 8... and I can see that baby's got HAIR." Saby congratulated himself on another win for his bizarre "how-dilated-are-you" clairvoyance (he had said 8 or 9), and busied himself texting our doula/friend Tabby to let her know how things were progressing. Neva, the nurses and I all chatted about whether we knew the baby's gender - no - and the consensus in the room, from heart rate and general vibe, said our baby was surely a girl.
I was in the midst of trying to tweet that I was probably in transition, but predicative text and autocorrect just do not understand my penchant for streeeeetching out wooooords, so the tweet was never twat (isn't that the past tense of tweet?) due to a few pretty massive contractions. I was sprawled out parallel to the headboard of the bed, and squeezing Saby's hand, and I believe he was pressing somewhere on me - my back, my legs, my shoulders? I was only vaguely aware of what all was happening at the time, much less trying to remember it now! Seemed Saby was talking to Tabby, and then she and I spoke while I was still sprawled all sideways on the bed. The poor dear had been excited to be a part of this birth, and we'd been excited to continue the tradition of having her help out, but she was a solid 30 minutes south of the hospital and it looked like I might have a baby before she could even reach the parking garage.
Neva had started filling the tub after checking me, and announced that it was ready. "You can get in, I'll break your water, and you'll have a baby." Sounded good to me.
3:35am Family Beginnings Birth Center.
Transition is over, the tub is full, and so is my, errr... colon. So here I am, sitting (and laboring) on the toilet in a double effort to a.) not get in the tub too early and decelerate progression (and if you're keeping track of the time, you'll see how silly I was on that) and b.) finally take the crap that I've been unable to do all day so that I wouldn't poop in the tub! Alas... no poop. None in the toilet at least.
Try and pretend I'm not sitting on a toilet... "CHEESE!"
I'd read in a couple Ina May Gaskin birth stories how the mothers would stop progressing because of some real or perceived subliminal issue, like "my partner and I aren't married" or "I was sexually abused" or "the guy who bagged my groceries yesterday said natural birth was stupid" or "I forgot to unplug my curling iron." So on my way off the toilet, I announced that I felt getting into the tub during my last birth had slowed my progression down and that's why I took so long to pop out our daughter . I do not remember if anyone even said anything to my "monumental" admission, but hell... I'd said it, so I was at peace. Time to get into the tub and have a baby.
As I lowered my hulking mass into the water, it was just midwife Neva, my husband and I in the bathroom. Nurse Judy popped in at that point and asked Neva, "Did you check if she's at 10 yet?" Neva, in all her awesome-est of awesomeness, shrugged and replied, "she's close enough." I wanted to kiss her on the mouth for trusting her own experience and my instinct. It also meant no more "checking" - yay!
I'm a turtle. I am Zen. And... damn this water's hot!
3:39am In the tub! It feels so good and hot and warm and I'm suddenly BUOYANT! Brilliant feeling. I think this may have been part of that "eye of the storm" break between transition and pushing urges, because I was chatty and cheerful. Well, honestly I was chatty and cheerful throughout, as long as I wasn't having a contraction. There was some discussion as to what color of lights to put on under the water... blue, red, or green? Green won, in the spirit of Christmas, and the spirit of "hey we don't know what gender your baby is."
Hot tub party!
3:49am This must have been right before Neva broke my water with the medical knitting needle. "Nice clear water," she said. We never saw my mucus plug at any point during labor, home or hospital... which was kind of a bummer, because it had been such a monumental thing in my first delivery and I'd been, oddly enough, looking forward to it.
(Flashback to 2008: We'd been at Family Beginnings for probably about an hour, and I decided waddle into the bathroom to pee... and lo and behold, out comes my mucus plug, floating in the toilet, all gigantic and... mucus-y! I got my phone and called my husband to proudly proclaim it's loss. He was slightly distracted, and not just because he'd been sent out of the hospital by a wildly pregnant wife to buy some Gatorade, but because the convenience store where he'd gone to purchase said Gatorade had just been held up at gunpoint about 5 minutes prior. Nothing but excitement surrounding that first mucus plug, baby!)
But it probably wasn't ten minutes before I went from solitary frog-woman floating around the tub to contraction-beast, flipping over and announcing through clenched teeth that "I think I want to push... yeah I want to push... I NEED TO PUSH!" Somewhere here Neva told Saby that he needed to get behind me, in the tub. He had not been prepared for that - though he did bring shorts, he hadn't intended, EVER, on going beyond being the supportive loving husband sitting on the edge of the tub. Suddenly, he was there behind me, submerged up to his shoulders, in a polo shirt, in (still) piping hot water that was soon to have poo floating in it. I asked for the "pulling thing"; my birth plan has specified my desire to use the "tug of war" method in order to have a focused and purposeful push. A nurse put one end of what was essentially a dog's rope toy into my hands and positioned herself at the other end. I put my legs up against the side of the tub and puuuuulled.... which made me PUSH.
I was conscious of a couple of things at this point:
Pushing your second baby out, even in a tub, still is hard work
It was going to take a little longer than I'd expected/hoped
My poor hubby must be boiling like a lobster behind me in the hot water
The nurse we'd handed our camera to was still snapping photos
and
I'd pooped
Going into this birth, I had been interested in the whole concept of "pushing only when you get the natural urge" - and boy did I get the urge. I wasn't going to endure enough of these urges for my body to get to that magical Ina May orgasmic hairy hippy birthy stage where it would just expel the baby on it's own, though; all magic aside, I was still in a great deal of "discomfort" and I just wanted to push that kid OUT. I could tell there was a bit of progress with each push, but it still didn't happen as quickly as I'd (perhaps naively) expected. After maybe five pushes I imagined we ought to be crowning, but instead Neva began holding down the lip of my cervix. (Wow. Just wow. I didn't know that could even be DONE!)
Intermittently, someone would Doppler the baby's heart rate and it was still good and healthy, and I'd let go of the rope and take a break. I lost all circulation in two of my digits from such concentrated pulling on the rope, and at one point Saby said he was sure I was going to haul the poor little nurse Brooke over the tub's edge into the water with us. (There was room... those tubs are big!) This was working well, but I was ready to be finished anytime. I whispered an apology to Sebastian for pooping in the tub, and he simply replied that I was doing great.
4:28am or so - After what seemed like a nice productive push, Neva announced "she" was in the birth canal... "she" meaning the baby, not Neva, though I think Neva was still holding something down by my baby exit sign. I shifted in the water and Neva told me "your instinct is to snap your legs shut when something's coming out of them, isn't it?" Yeah, I tried to shut my legs. In all the burn-y discomfort, it felt better to do what would apparently have held the baby in. So I splayed my chunky thighs further apart, planted my feet against the tub's sides, and pulled that rope. Saby was even pulling my shoulders at that point. Someone was using a little goldfish net to scoop "stuff" (poop, sigh) out of the water in as subtle a fashion as possible, while Sebastian tried his best to pretend he'd seen nothing. I wondered when it would be over, but I still knew we were almost there. The midwife and nurses were urging me on...
4:30am so I pulled... and pushed, and even as I'm nearly crowning, I can hear that nurse taking pictures and in some of the most primal moments of my life I still managed to have enough conscious brain to think to myself, "totally. inappropriate. timing!"
4:33: With Neva and the nurses calmly encouraging me that "she's almost here!" I deliver the head.
4:34: "Push her out... c'mon, she's almost here..." Head is out, and "oooh, she's got lots of dark hair."
I curled my body around my belly and gave one laaaaaast push.
"Here 'she' comes, your baby is coming, and here she is..."
and here's her penis!?
My husband was the one who first voiced the fact, in a subtle, shocked sort of way... "that's not a girl!" I was vaguely aware that a baby had just come out of me and was being spun up through the air by the midwife to land safely on my chest. If I remember correctly, I asked again and again... "it's a boy? Really? A boy?" I was flabbergasted by, well, EVERYTHING. I'd just delivered a baby, in a tub, with my husband behind me, in record time, and the baby was a boy. (We'd never found out, but we never expected a boy. We'd mentally played Sebastian up as a Last of the Mohicans kinda guy.) But there he was... our boy. A man-cub! And such a sweet little thing, though not terribly little... not terribly big either. Perfect. Big eyes. Lots of hair. I recall waiting to hear him cry and thinking he seemed a little floppy. "Ohhh, baby! Hello baby!" was about all I could say. It was a tender moment, and such a fabulous surprise to have my heart in my arms finally... and with a wiener. We made a man cub!
"Ohhh, baby! Hello, baby!"
4:35am Here I am!
Oh, how we love him already!
Still suctioning him out, as he's not made much noise yet
4:36am And there's some nice baby noise, yay!
4:45am - ten minutes old!
About the time that they were cleaning him up and getting measurements, I was attempting to leave the tub. Oh Lordy. The thing they don't tell you about a water birth is... it's hard to get outta that water. You've been gigantic-yet-weightless for upwards of 45 minutes, and now you're still gigantic and exhausted and responsible for walking 17 feet over to the bed to deliver the placenta? It's all warm peace and buoyancy in the tub, baby, but cruel gravity and cold await you on land. And that first step is over the three foot tall side of the tub. Lordy, Lordy. As I went up over the tub's edge, I giggle to recall that my umbilical cord bounced off of me like a freaky unmanned bungee cord off a bridge, right down to the floor. "Dang, that's a long cord!" said Neva, as she caught the end and lead me towards the bed. Yay! My biological peculiarities impressed my midwife. Mission accomplished. It was the least I could do for the woman who'd held my cervix down for me.
5:31am Vincent and I with my Dream Team at Family Beginnings Birth Center, Miami Valley Hospital
Nurse Judy, CNM Neva, and Nurse Brooke
To make the long story of what all happened after that shorter, I delivered the placenta without much ado, received hellaciously painful stitches for my second-degree tear and had a surgical resident come and stare at my undercarriage for a bit to confirm the tear wasn't actually third-degree. (The atmosphere in the room after the initial hubbub of giving birth is so surreal. About half of your attention is focused on the wonderment of the new baby in your arms, and you're higher than a kite on that cocktail of maternal hormones that is surging through your system. The other half is intently eavesdropping on the small crowd gathered at your vaginal amphitheater while they drop words like "anus" and "only superficial." P.S. "only superficial" is a GOOD thing to overhear, especially when overheard anywhere remotely near "anus"). Neva was surprised at the degree of tearing, especially with how smoothly his delivery had been. She surmised it to have been an issue with his shoulder, and looking back at the cephalohematoma he had on the upper right hand side of his head, maybe that cervix lip was holding him in at a slightly odd angle. (but in hindsight, no big deal, because the recovery from this delivery was easy, easy, easy... epic level easy)
I asked to take a picture with everyone and then they started to disperse... first Brooke, then Neva, and finally as we were settling down, me to nurse and Sebastian to get his clothes into the wash, Judy must have finished her shift because she came in and gave me a hug and a God bless you. We ate our remaining food - a chicken breast and another hot dog, "yay" - and I snarfed down about 4 containers of hospital apple juice. Then we snuggled into bed, all three of us together.
At 7am on the dot, Dr. R arrived and said, "this doesn't look like an 18 inch long baby... they didn't stretch him out." So we never found out exactly what Vincent's birth length was. He was 7 lbs, 7 oz, btw.
Dada could not get out of bed because he wasn't in anything but his shirt (the rest was in the wash), but at some point we got his comfy clothing back and he had a nice snuggle with his son before knocking off to sleep.
Dada, get me a shirt please
by 7:30am, both were zonked. I was high on life, though, and eager to put our breakfast order into room service! I called my sister, texted a few friends, and finally did sleep too.
Notice the goal/plan for the day. Isn't that awesome?
Successful Latch, Get to Know Vincent, and Rest.
I added the activity... and we did that too.
Vincent Mathew...
born 12.3.11 at 4:35am
7 lbs 7 oz.
18.5 (or so) inches long
We love him! And we loved how he came!
7am is apparently a grand time to see the sun rising from the Ambassador Bridge, and I look forward to that and running over the Detroit River to Canada and then running back into the US, under the Detroit River. Windsor Tunnel Anti-Panic Attack training will be as important as regular half training, since vodka (a la Meg Ryan in French Kiss) 
