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When did you realize you were really in labor?
Our long awaited baby arrived in the wee hours of Thanksgiving morning! Tuesday evening, two days past my due date, I felt the familiar tight contractions that had been coming and going, and getting gradually stronger throughout the dark November evenings. It was the night before my husband Evan’s Thanksgiving break, and we watched The Empire Strikes Back, and I thought about how Yoda had a lot of wisdom about labor and not giving into fear. After the movie ended, I passed what I thought might be my mucus plug, and texted Candace, my sister-in-law and doula, to let her know. And as with all early labor signs, like how I had been 2 cm dilated and 50% effaced the day before at my prenatal appointment, it could mean I was going into labor that day or in two weeks. But that night the contractions didn’t go away. I went to bed at 9 and slept until midnight, but could still feel the waves of tightness coming and going. It would be the last three hours of sleep I would get for quite some time.
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What was the most challenging thing about going natural?
The length, and not sleeping for so long, but particularly the four hours of transition, 24 hours in, before 1 1/2 pushing! :
A little before 8, we decided to try the labor tub. I had been pretty excited about this whirlpool, starry twinkly light experience, but as soon as I got into that tub something shifted. I couldn’t put my right hand in the water (this was the really annoyance of the beta strep antibotic IV) and felt like I could not get comfortable, and I started to feel out of control. So out of the tub I came, only a few minutes after getting in. Shivering made the contractions worse and we struggled to get me dry and decent enough to walk the halls back to my room. I didn’t know it then, but Candace says that is when she thinks I started into transition.
Back in the room, my sweet but overly meticulous nurse, had me lying down (I did negotiate lying on my side rather than my back) with the monitors strapped on around my belly, a new dose of penicillin dripping in little stingy drips from the IV pole, and my doctor checking my dilation progress (6 cm).
The next four hours are a bit of blur. Nothing was distracting my contractions now! Lying down was really tough, and it felt like I was sort of wildly thrashing about. I remember opening my eyes and seeing Candace looking at me, and in a firm voice, calling me by name and telling me I could do this.
Transition was by far the most altered spiritual and physical state of my labor. I would moan my way through a contraction, and then sort of pass/out-fall asleep until the next one. I could hear people asking me questions, but if they were complicated (like more than yes or no) then I couldn’t answer them. (This was one of the hardest parts for my husband, to have me not answer him or the doctors.)
But I also felt like Jesus was really present with me during that time: that my pain and suffering were for a purpose, and that He was with me in it. At one point I remember thinking (or receiving?) the phrases “I am the breath of life” when I would breath in on a new contraction, and “I receive your gift of pain, and it’s beautiful” as the contraction peaked. (This is pretty weird-sounding to me now; it seemed weird at the time, but that is what I remember, overly transcendent and mystical as it seemed.) And while the contractions were intense, very, very intense, they never again overwhelmed me.
It was also a strange feeling to realize I wasn’t really thinking anymore. I wasn’t really even trying to relax, my body simply was sleeping and working and my mind wasn’t really involved very much anymore. That was a strange relief too.
Around 11:45, the on-call doctor came into check my dilation progress. I was still lying on my side, and she that I was completely dilated (10 cm) on one side, but still 7 cm on the other –a rather bizarre situation. I was at this point sort of pushing already, but I was so out of it, I didn’t really know to tell someone that.
After the dilation check, my doula and the nurse left the room for a few minutes, and it was just Evan and me and baby in the room. He noticed that I was in, fact pushing, at the end of my contractions. And in his shining birth partner and new dad moment of labor, called the nurse back and insisted that something had changed, and I needed help. I had no idea how much time had passed, but evidently only 10 minutes after I had been checked the first time I was being checked again. I remember the doctor saying that normally things didn’t change this quickly. But I moved to my back, and low and behold, I was fully, on both sides, dilated. (Candace thinks I was probably fully dilated 10 minutes before, but that it’s hard to check someone on lying on their side.)
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First-Born-with-Mama
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What was the most helpful thing you did to prepare for childbirth?
I read a lot of books, practiced a bit of yoga and hypnobirthing, walked 5 miles a day, ate dates and red raspberry leaf pills the last 4 weeks, made a birth plan with my husband (including how much I wanted Christmas music and Christmas lights), saw a chiropractor all of third trimester, and hired an awesome doula, and kept asking my doctor hard questions even when I felt embarrassed or overbearing.
Most of it I used the morning of my labor:
After midnight, I tried to stay relaxed in bed and let Evan sleep. I listened to a hypnobirthing meditation, and then I started timing contractions on my phone. They were erratic, short, and close together: a pattern that would last throughout most of my labor. I tried to not get excited, but it was a little bit hard to be simply serenely happy that this might be the day that I would meet my baby!
At 3 am, I got up and made myself breakfast, eating bites of egg scrambler between contractions—my last meal until breakfast the next day. Evan got up then and we spent the next 5 hours just hanging out. We put on Christmas music, and draped some Christmas lights on a bookshelf.
I did a birth yoga sequence, but then mostly used the yoga mat and anti-fatigue mat from my standing desk to kneel over my birth ball. I covered the ball with a fleece blanket Evan’s 8th graders had made, knotting each tassel with a prayer for our baby. I sipped chicken broth and nibbled on a blueberry lara bar, but with such little time between contractions, could never get more than a bite in here and there.
At this point the contractions were strong enough that I was vocalizing through them, trying to keep it a steady low moan.
Around 8, Candace came over (we had called her at 6), and we went for a slow walk in the unseasonably warm weather we’ve been having this fall. Even though Candace is one of my closest friends, and trusted family, and an amazing doula, my contractions slowed down when she first arrived. At every transition and entrance of a new person, my labor would slow. On our walk it was amazing to see how I wouldn’t have a contraction crossing a street, or if a dog was bounding along next to us barking wildly. Contractions (especially early ones) are an amazing mixture of something uncontrollable and yet also very influenced by people and the environment.
I had my weekly chiropractic appointment already scheduled for 9:45 that morning, and we all piled into the car for the 1.5-mile drive so Dr. Sara could adjust me, and possibly help speed labor along. Again, my labor slowed down in the car and at the office, but it was wonderful to get adjusted and have Dr. Sara, who has seen me for my whole 3rd trimester once or twice a week, cheer us on.
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What surprised you about your birth?
Honestly what surprised me most about birth was how immediately following it you are plunged into breastfeeding. My son had a tongue tie, and even with the most wonderful of lactation consultants, and a plan to get it clipped on the next business day and a referral to a craniosacral therapist, it was a tough beginning. Everyone says that birth is a marathon, and it is, but with the challenges of the end third trimester and those first few days of motherhood, it's more of an Ironman Triathlon. But I really think going through natural birth prepared me for the challenges of breast feeding, because no matter how tired or sore I was feeding, I thought well I pushed that baby out and that hurt a lot more and I did it on a lot less sleep, so I can do this. It's given me a kind of confidence these first few days of motherhood: I can do hard things, on little sleep, with great love!
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It's given me a kind of confidence these first few days of motherhood: I can do hard things, on little sleep, with great love!
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What pain relief strategies worked best?
Backrubs! Particularly counter-pressure during a contraction on my lower back. But I used vocalization, making the room dark and beautiful (Christmas light, and icon, and Christmas music), and having people I trusted there.
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What position did you end up delivering in?
Hands and Knees! (Well more hands and elbows, and then later hands and elbows in a more vertical position.)
At midnight, I started to push in earnest. My doctors were called, and a whole host of people seemed to be there, the on-call doctor, OB senior resident, my resident (back-up) doctor, and my supervising doctor. I only wanted to push on hands and knees (actually mostly elbows and knees), so I didn’t really see the whole entourage of people who witnessed my hour and a half pushing. There is no dignity in birth, nor did I really care at that point. Actually, one of my great fears going into labor was that I was going to be mean, to say mean things to my husband , like I do when I stub my toe and he’s not paying attention and asks me something (completely reasonable). In the cacophony of many doctors, there was some discussion as to which doctor to write down in the computer chart was my doctor, and I called out in peak of my grumpy labor-assertiveness that I didn’t care who helped me as long as someone helped me.
Pushing was in some ways an easier time, there was a direction to focus and move the energy and pain, but in other ways it was scarier to feel like I might be tearing if I pushed the wrong way. But in the end the only way out was through, and I did tear a little. I think that I might have done better if I had been open to changing positions during pushing (which was suggested, but I wasn’t interested in it), but because changing positions during transition had made everything so much worse, I stubbornly insisted on staying hands and knees because I didn’t want to risk having anything change. My bag of waters broke about half way through the pushing, meaning that the time our little baby was exposed to the dreaded beta strep was very small indeed.
As the baby descended there was a tense moment: baby’s hand was up near the face and there was concern that the shoulder was stuck. I heard a calm but serious voice of one of my (many!) doctors says that an OB doc needed to be called and brought in, but then only a few seconds later, someone said that it was only baby’s hand. (In all the ultrasound pictures, baby loved having that hand up covering our view of the face.)
And then with a great burning push, baby’s head (and hand and shoulders) were out, and the slippery body followed. I flipped over, swinging my leg around the umbilical chord, to see this beautiful bluish dark, elongated head of hair. The chord had been wrapped around baby’s head, tightening just in the last few minutes. The room was quiet while they unwrapped and aspirated the baby a few times, and then there was a breath, and then a cry, and then cheers.
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How did it feel to hold your baby for the first time?
It was really a beautiful moment. I thought I would cry, but I just kept saying "Hi Jackson! Hi Sweetie" I was so glad that he was safe and there, and that we had somehow really done it. Nothing else seemed to matter, I didn't care about birthing the placenta or being stitched up. I just kept marveling that he was (so big!) and really there.
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What advice can you give to other mamas who want to go natural?
Hire a doula, and keep talking about your fears and desires with your birthing partners (spouse, doctor, doula etc.) Read enough books so they contradict each other and you feel both educated and also aware that no one has all the answers, and in the end birth is always a grace and a blessing that requires trust and a release of control.
