Tex’s Birth Story, Part Two

Back to our story.  Our driveway inclines a bit up into the garage.  It’s not an elevation change you would even normally register.  When the entire thing is a sheet of ice, however, it’s a whole different kettle of fish.  I stood at the garage door, surveyed the 10 feet of steeply inclined ice skating rink between me and our suddenly so-very-distant 4WD car, and almost turned us back to the house.  But the Professor put himself in front of me, I tried to put my arms around him as best I could despite the huge belly, and we awkwardly skated down the driveway, a precarious pair.  The effort spun me into a bad contraction, and I had to crouch on the ice for a minute and cry before I could compose myself, and then lever my humongous body into my seat.  At that point I closed my eyes and kept them closed the whole way to the hospital.  I didn’t want the stress of backseat driving the icy commute to make me clench and potentially stop the labor.  I just visualized “letting go.”  I swear to you, I relaxed myself right into a couple of contractions during that drive, no lie.

We arrived at the hospital, where Meredith, our lovely L&D nurse, checked us in and immediately checked my dilation – exactly what I thought they should have done first the prior time I was in.  Oh glorious day, I was 3 cm with a laboring cervix – the nightmare was over, I was not leaving the hospital this time without a baby in arms.  I felt such relief, I cannot tell you.  Even staring down the agony that was to come, knowing full well what I was about to have to do, I was ecstatic.  I had to rein in my excitement to keep up the relaxation visualization.

I had a very simple birth plan written out – I do not plan to use pain meds but reserve the right to change my mind . . . I prefer to walk around while in labor . . . I prefer intermittent fetal monitoring, from a standing position if possible . . . that was pretty much it.  Meredith, bless her beautiful heart, honored every one, without me even having to ask.  She got me hooked up to the fetal monitor but took me right off after getting a read on his heart, she fetched me a birth ball, showed me where I could walk around, and didn’t give me any childish lectures like the last L&D nurse did.  I felt a lot of autonomy this time around, which was great.

Ah, but there was one intervention that I was not permitted to refuse, given hospital policy: the hep-lock.  In prior labors, despite usual hospital policy, my midwives let me go without, but I “gave” that one to my OB this time, as it wasn’t a hill I was prepared to die on.  They told me the plan was to put the IV in, give me some fluids, and then unhook it and tape it down so it wouldn’t bother me and I wouldn’t have to trail a bag of fluids around everywhere. We wouldn’t use it again unless I went into an emergency crash C-section – about as likely as a hole in the head, but it made the doc happy to have it in place just in case.  Meredith placed the IV on the top of my arm on the left side, and somehow the thing went all the way through, and in no time IV fluids pooled under the skin and formed a huge goose egg on my arm.  She apologized, pulled it out, stuck it in the other arm with more success . . . it was no big deal, but just one of those unnecessary interventions that causes stress and pain.  And boy, looking at that goose egg gave me the willies.  It went down pretty quick, but it looked just awful at first, and I spent the first bit of labor worried about bumping it.  *shudder*

After that, I was unhooked from all accoutrements and permitted to pace.  We shuffled up and down the hall, and I leaned into the wall with each contraction, while the Professor rubbed my back.  I was feeling pretty great at this point, as you can imagine – even the painful contractions could not dim my smile.  My doctor, Dr. Max, came in to check in with me, early on, just seeing where things were.  He offered me an epidural, pitocin, and to break my water.  I declined the first two, but asked him to break that amniotic sac – I see no harm in a mechanical intervention that speeds up a labor already in progress.  He broke it at about 8:30 am – a surprisingly completely painless, if somewhat awkward, experience.  And hoooooo boy – it started me on a downward slope to pushing the baby out only two hours later.  It was an excellent decision.  My contractions immediately started coming more quickly, and got much more intense.  We walked a bit more but eventually came back to the room, where I labored standing by the bed for a while, until it was time to curl up in the fetal position and retreat into the glorious pain.

So, un-medicated childbirth hurts.  I mean, hurts ya’ll.  I have done it three times now and it is no cake walk.  I do it because, for me, the hurtin’est part is very short.  If it lasted hours, I certainly would not – but it’s quick, like ripping off a bandaid, and therefore manageable.  I also, in case you can’t already tell, loathe being tied down and wrapped up and pricked and poked.  The thought of having an epidural and being trapped in a bed unable to use my legs makes me panicky – walls-closing-in kind of anxious.  I would rather march into the pain like a soldier, to ride it like a surfer on a wave, than to receive it passively like a patient, even when it is dimmed by drugs.  Also, un-medicated births are almost always over much quicker – I’d rather get in and get it done, than linger and possibly have it slow, stop, and require pitocin, maybe a C-section, a “cascade of interventions” as we hippies call it.

But I totally get why most folks do not feel that way.  The longest stretches of my labors were completely manageable, even somewhat exciting.  The last hour before pushing is pain at a 10 on a scale of 1-10, except then halfway through the contraction you realize you weren’t at a 10 yet because here comes something even worse.  If I could magically have an epidural just for that hour, I’d probably take it!  But usually by the time I get there, it’s too late for one anyway, and then I’m stuck plowing through.

Meredith soothingly told me to breathe slow and deep, slow and deep, as I clung to the bed rail and tried not to get that panicky breathing that feels like the place you want to go to hide from the pain, but is actually the best way to spin yourself out of control.  Blessedly, unlike the other two labors, in this one I still had pretty long breaks between contractions.  It is those breaks, during which there is zero pain at all, that made the peak of the contractions bearable.

I started feeling pushy about an hour and a half after my water broke.  My dilation was at a 6.  About two contractions later, I was at an 8.  Three contractions after that and I was at a 10 and ok to push.  It was that fast.  (In a typical first labor, a woman dilates one centimeter per hour.  I was dilating one centimeter about every three minutes.  Third kid and all.)

They called the doc and made me wait with the pushing til he arrived.  It must have been two minutes later but good golly it felt like eternity.  Not pushing when your body wants to push is harder than not sneezing when your body wants to sneeze.  “Blow out the candles, blow that breath” Meredith told me, and I blew out imaginary candles as if my life depended on it while Dr. Max put on his elbow gloves and this big plastic apron.  GET YOUR ASS OVER HERE, I screamed in my imagination, while in reality I was blowin’ out candles like crazy.

I pushed him out in five or so minutes.  Another bonus of medication-free labor, I believe, is that the pushing is more efficient.  Maybe it’s because you can feel your body better and therefore push harder – maybe it’s because it hurts so darn much you are motivated to marshal every resource you have to get it over and done with.  But anyway, a push or two and he crowned, another one and there was his head, one final shove and he flopped out into Dr. Max’s hands, purple and a total mess, poor thing brutally massaged by the five or so nurses who surrounded my bed (were there really all these people in here this whole time? I wondered, suddenly seeing the room again).  Dr. Max had some concern about his clavicle, which had caught a bit during delivery, but it soon became obvious that he had not been hurt.  I was shaky and in a bit of a daze, but feeling absolutely fabulous.  He was the purplest of all my babies, and it took him a while to cry, so I felt a bit anxious until they got him good and wailing.  But it didn’t take long, and the cord stayed attached til he took his first breath, so he was never without oxygen.

“That is a BIG BABY” said Dr. Max as the nurses manhandled my poor son.  “Phoo boy, this is a big one” said all the nurses, too.  I could see that he had triple chins, big chunky legs – he looked like a month-old kid.  They cleaned up the baby and put me back together, and then told us his weight – nine-six, and even more impressively, twenty-three inches long.  The average newborn is only twenty inches long – that extra three inches was what was all up in my stomach these past few weeks!

I didn’t have diabetes, so I’m not sure why he was so big.  He was over a pound larger than both his brothers.  Even though technically he has “fetal macrosomia” – i.e., he is legitimately an over-sized baby, and for medical reasons needs some extra monitoring post-birth – he’s been doing well with all the testing.  His largeness shouldn’t have much of an impact.

Except it helped us choose his name. . .