When A Birth Teacher Gives Birth - Birth Story

I thought it was really interesting to read a birth story from a birth teacher.  I always feel some performance anxiety during my pregnancies- like if I don't have a natural birth or if I beg for an epidural or for somebody to make it all better, then I will get kicked out of the crunchy- wunchy club.  

Alas- I HAVE wanted an epidural and nobody kicked me out of that imaginary club.  

So, enjoy this birth story, it has lots of interesting lessons and thoughts from a somewhat different perspective.  

(Photo shared from one of our readers.  Not the baby in this story.)

 ~~~

The Birth of Leapgirl

Let the record show, first, that I had been predicting a 2/29 birthday since

the day I calculated EB's due date (which was 3/6). I don't know why this

feels like such a coup when really it's only a coincidence, but all the cousins on my

husband's side were born on either the 10th or the 29th of their months,

including our son EA, and I figured this one (#6 in the family) would fit the mold. Still, I wasn't

totally convinced I was right, even when my husband R informed me that a

low-pressure system would be coming in on 2/28. (Barometric changes, for

those of you who are wondering what that has to do with anything, can cause

the water to break- it's the same principle behind people with fluid in

their joints who can sense storms coming in).

Anyway, I wasn't holding my breath. I'd been having Braxton-Hicks

contractions for many months, some of them pretty regular, so I had a lot of

practice forgetting that I was going to have to go through active labor,

too. On Monday evening 2/27, I had two contractions that were legitimately

painful. I cried as we got ready for bed: "I'm not ready, I don't want to

call the babysitter in the middle of the night and have EA wake up to find

us gone!" R, as always, was a voice of reason: "If we have to leave

tonight, we'll wake him up and tell him. He's a part of this family too."

Once calmed, I had no more contractions.

Still, the next morning before R left for work, he said "I want

you to pack your hospital bag TODAY." I guess he knew something I didn't. I

put my birth art pendant necklace, too, just in case. I also printed out

all the babysitters' phone numbers so R could go down

the list until we found one that was available, when the time came. But all my prep work was sure to guarantee that today was NOT the day, right? After all, I was still a full week before my due date.

Then I took EA to his regular Tuesday music class. On the way in to the building, I

visited the bathroom and discovered that my mucus plug had come out.

"Interesting," I thought. But knowing that it's the least reliable sign of

labor, I didn't think it was very important, except from an educational

standpoint: "Oh, okay, now I know what that's all about."

After music, I stood around the lawn outside the building with

another mom so that our boys could run around in the sunshine. And of course

we talked about birth, and babies, and pregnancy, and after about an hour of

that, I felt my water break. Just a trickle, but it was unmistakable. Do not

pass go, do not collect $200! It was then just about 11:00AM.

After getting over the initial shock that YES, we were going to have a baby

that very day, I hugged my friend goodbye and called R: "I don't want to

alarm you, but my water just broke." I said I'd drive EA home, and that I

wasn't having any contractions yet, but that if they got strong in the 20 minute drive, I

promised to pull over. He, in turn, promised that he wasn't alarmed.

R met us at home, having decided to let his coworkers finish the day's

work. We ate lunch (still no contractions) and started packing.

We tried to put EA down for a nap but it was clear that he understood that

the baby was on its way, so we could not convince him to go to sleep. Around

1PM, I started having some regular contractions, but they weren't painful or

close together. Still, we asked the sitter to come over so that she could

entertain him and we could focus on the labor. I'm pretty sure I tried to

wash some dishes or something; I know I pulled our sheets off the bed and

got clean ones out for the sitter to sleep on. At 2:30 she arrived. Pretty

shortly thereafter, I started to have some emotional hang-ups about labor: I

was afraid that I wouldn't be able to do it again, and I thought for a

moment that if I didn't leave right away, I wouldn't want to go at all. I

thought these were signs of late labor, so by 4ish we headed to the

hospital. This was an eye-opener, and it reminded me why we prepare couples

for this experience. I learned a lot from my time in the hospital and I hope

you do, too.

Upon check-in, we learned that my blood pressure was elevated, which was

totally unexpected. My BP was always perfect during both my pregnancies. To

her credit, the nurse assured me that the diastolic number was low, so there

was no need to do anything except continue to check it regularly (it was

140/80). But HBP is a tricky self-fulfilling prophecy (if you're anxious

that it's high, that anxiety can make it stay high), so it took some mental

effort to forget about it. 

The nurse also asked me what my plans for pain

management were. I gestured to R and said "You're looking at him." She

responded with "Well, you can change your mind. You have the right to change

your mind." R and I shared a private wink. "Do you have any sort of a

birth plan?" she wanted to know. Our students know why I don't advocate

showing up at the hospital with a written plan to hand out, and this nurse

confirmed my reasons perfectly: "Good", she said, when we told her we had no

birth plan. "Because then you'd be headed straight to c-section." HA! My

point exactly: when nurses think you've got a rigid expectation for birth,

they treat you differently. 

I, of course, dug in my heels and defended my

right to have birth preferences, whether or not they are written down. She

conceded this point. (We also admitted to her that we are natural childbirth

educators). It quickly became clear that talking to people was making my

contractions stop. They had been 7 minutes apart and getting stronger at

home, and now I was barely registering them. The nurse wanted the midwife to

check me before she'd admit me, in case this was not active labor. In a

first-time mom, this pattern would not necessarily have warranted a hospital

admission, but I was certain I'd progress quickly. 

ML was the CNM on call,

and she agreed that I should stay, or at least not go too far away. We decided to have dinner at

the cafeteria before they closed at 6 (seriously- Mercy makes pretty decent

food, for a hospital). Soup and rice for me, grilled chicken sandwich and

fries for R. And fries for me. And peanut M & Ms. Hey, a girl's gotta

keep her strength up, you know? We headed down the hall to the orthopedic

massage clinic where I work, because I

knew my friend would just be finishing her shift. 

Her eyes got wide

when she realized why we were both at the hospital in the evening. She

laughed at how calm we were, but I recognized that my contractions were

slowing again during the visit. This made me a little nervous, so we went

back to the room. Time was now somewhere around 7PM. More walking. More

talking, too- this time to a mom whose 1-month-old was being treated in the

NICU for breathing difficulty, and to a dad whose wife and daughter I knew

from EA's gym class (their second baby had been born the day before).

Again, my contractions became lighter and less frequent each time I stopped

to have a conversation.

And so time passed, until 9 or 10ish. Time for another round of fetal

monitoring. And again, something unexpected: the nurse said baby was "having

some variables," meaning that the heart rate was decelerating and staying

slow for a while after the contraction was over. My worst fear, and the cause of many,

many unnecessary c-sections. At the very least, it was another reason for

anxiety, which can slow labor; at the very most, it might have truly been a sign of distress.

Again, this nurse was a voice of reason. She

reminded me that it could be caused by the umbilical cord being in a bad

spot, a simple issue which might be solved by changing position. 

But oh, the

power of the electronic fetal monitor. I moved a little bit, but it was

impossible to stop listening to that slowing heartbeat. It took up my entire

consciousness and I stopped paying attention to what position would feel

best for my body. I asked the nurse if my 20 minutes were up yet, and could

I be unhooked so I could get back to walking the halls (I figured that baby

would like being upright the best). But alas- when heart rate decelerations

are detected, the monitor stays ON. No walking about. "And by the way," she

said, "walking won't make you go into labor. When we tell couples to walk

around the floor, it's just to kill time."

WHAT WHAT WHAT? Was she seriously trying to tell me that walking won't

progress labor? If I weren't ALREADY in labor, I'd agree with her. Walking

won't cause labor to start if the body and baby aren't ready. But I'm here!

We're doing this! And gravity is a constant: at the very least, getting out

of bed will help the baby put more pressure on the cervix, which will help

it to open. Which is what labor is, lady. Imagine, though, a first-time mom

with no preparation hearing those words. Do you think they might have an

impact on her ability to take an active role in her baby's birth? 

At that

point I put a lot more effort into finding a better position in the bed. And

I will forever be grateful that I found one; rolling over one more time, the

heart rate stabilized, and after a while I was able to be unhooked from the

monitor and put my attention back to laboring. ML came back at

around midnight and confirmed that the heart rate was nothing to worry

about; she also checked me and said I was 3cm dilated.

Even with so little dilation, I quickly entered late, active,

take-all-my-concentration, difficult-to-change-positions labor. I didn't

walk around after that. R reminded me to vocalize through the

contractions, and my moans kept getting louder and louder. In fact my voice

was very hoarse the next day.  I feel terrible for any other moms laboring

at the same time who might have heard me! I wanted R's warm hand on my

belly and I was very short with him: "NO, not pressure, just warmth. NO, not

in that spot; down here." 

He was a trooper; the best coach I could have

asked for. I also shook violently with chills, and they had to put warm

blankets on me. I think this phase lasted for several hours; Rick thinks it

was maybe only 10 contractions. I think it was much harder and lasted longer

than the end of my first labor, with shorter or no breaks between

contractions. R thinks I was expecting this labor to be easier, and it

wasn't, which is skewing my memory of both of them. He's probably right. In

any case, at some point between 2:00 and 2:30 I was transitioning. Lots of

shouting "NO NO NO NO!" (as if I had a choice in the matter; this baby was

getting pushed out with or without me). I remember the time because I had

been on my side, and when I turned face up to get into a pushing position, I

glanced at the clock.

Pushing must not have been too difficult, because looking back, the time of

birth was 2:39AM. Pretty quick. I had a lip of cervix that hadn't quite

dilated, but ML got it out of the way when she checked me. But I

wasn't in a great position- I didn't think I had the strength to pull my

knees up to my shoulders, even though everyone in the room was telling me to

do that. Even though we teach all our students to do that. ML asked me if I

wanted to feel the baby crowning and I

shouted "NO THANK YOU!" 

I still can't believe I was so polite at such a

moment. She said I was sitting on my baby and I needed to push harder to get

the shoulder out. That felt like it took forever, but it was really only one

or two more contractions. And all of a sudden it was over and there a was a

baby on my chest! "What is it, Dad? What did we have?" I asked R. And he

answered "It's EB!" which is his mother's name, a name we had chosen

for a girl long before we even got married. We just held onto it until we

needed it. And I kept saying over and over "A girl! We made a girl!" She was

7 pounds, 1 ounce and 19 1/2 inches long. R had his shirt off right away

for some skin-to-skin contact. And just like that, we were four.