Crucial Minutiae

No tears. No screams. And all I had was half a glass of Prosecco eight hours before my daughter, Francesca, showed off her pipes and I had her little naked body in my arms. My doctor told our doula (childbirth coach), “This is rare, isn’t it? You don’t see births like this.” Cindy, who calls her practice Gentle Birth Doula Services, attempted to convince the doctor that she had seen births like this. The RN added, “Still, I bet you wish you had filmed it.” Cindy, just shook her head, smiling. “If I had,” she said. “No one would believe me that she wasn’t on drugs!”

Evidently I smiled before each push.

The RN suggested that I not tell other women about my experience. “They’ll hate you,” she told me, only half joking. So here I am, two weeks later, telling every woman who happens to read Crucial Minutiae that by the time I got to the hospital, after laboring at the mall, my friend’s party, our bathtub and bedroom, I was fully dilated and all I had to do was to push.

Do you hate me for believing that our bodies were designed to have children? Thisis just to share how birth can be– a contrast to its usual portrayal as a nightmare on film and in the mouths of women who weren’t as fortunate as me. I do believe that luck was involved. Two days before I went into labor, my baby was facing the wrong direction, the result of which would have been excruciating back labor. To my own amazement, I was able to turn her around.

We only discovered the posterior head position when my doctor ordered a sonogram because she was worried that I was measuring too small. (By the way, had she not been facing this way, we never would have seen that she was a girl!) I called my friend who had given birth to a beautiful baby girl just a few days earlier, after 14 hours of back labor, and she suggested that I call our doula. Perhaps she could help me turn the baby before labor.

“You’re not due for another week. You can definitely turn this baby around,” Cindy assured me. And then she gave me the prescription: Get on all fours. Press your chest to the ground and keep your hips in the air. Stay there for 10 minutes and repeat twice a day.

I didn’t have to repeat it. The first time I got into what I think is the equivalent of “puppy pose” in yoga, I felt the strange sensation of the baby’s head moving out of my pelvis. When I stood up, my belly was high like it was before she dropped down. I called Cindy again. “She’s back up. Now how do I get her to face the right direction?”

Next prescription: Get on all fours. Stay for 10 minutes. Repeat often. The logic here is that the back is the heaviest part of the baby’s body. If you’re on all fours, gravity will send her spinning around to face the ideal direction. Cindy also assured me that you can tell if the baby is in an anterior position if your belly is round. If it flattens at all around the navel, the baby is still posterior.

Sunday morning, I was certain that Francesca was in the right place, and perhaps that’s why she decided it was about time to make her entrance. I was using Evening Primrose oil and raspberry leaf tea to encourage her, and my close friend, Shana, was in town hoping to catch the little one’s arrival. Shana took my swollen feet for a pedicure (another reported method of labor induction, perhaps because of acupressure points), and then we went shopping for baby clothes. Macy’s was happy to exchange the boy clothes that were a result of the first sonogram, and to my surprise, said that “this happens all the time.”

On our way out, by the perfume girl I gently rebuffed, I had my first real contraction.

2:30 p.m. “Oh,” I froze. “This is nothing like a Braxton Hicks.” — those squeezes and hardening of the stomach that I had felt for a couple of months.

Shana’s eyes lit up. Maybe she really would be here for the birth. “What does it feel like?”

“A cramp.” Here’s another moment when I realized that our doula had given me a great tool. When I filled in her questionnaire, checking that yes, I had always had severe cramps, she said, “Then you’ll be totally prepared for labor. It’s the same thing, just a little more intense, but it comes and goes.”

Like waves, I thought. And I noticed that the release after a contraction felt wonderful. So off we went to get Joe and go to a party.

I had been narrating every experience of my pregnancy to Joe for months, so he may have been a little surprised when I waited until we were in the car to say that you know, these contractions really did feel different.

4:00 p.m. My eyes widened every time a contraction hit me, but I continued chatting with strangers that I met at the party as if nothing in the world was different about this day. Joe pulled out his cell phone and began timing them.

6:30 “Don’t you think we should go home?” Joe asked. But it was such a great party. I conceded.

7:00 We called Cindy to ask if I’m really in labor. I had heard that if you go to the hospital too early, they either send you home or hook you up to Pitocin to speed things up. I refused to go until the last second (which is exactly what ended up happening). Cindy told us to take a walk and then go to bed, since it sounded like I was in early labor. I might not go into actual labor until the next day, but she had a feeling that we’d be meeting her at the hospital in the middle of the night and I should reserve energy and get rest.

It was the most exciting walk I’ve ever taken in my life. Just a spin around our neighborhood for about 40 minutes, but all I could think was, this is it, she’s coming. And then I’d stop for a contraction.

8:00 p.m. I didn’t go to bed. It seemed absurdly early, and I suddenly realized that I hadn’t called my friend to wish her a happy birthday, I hadn’t create a labor playlist for my ipod, and I hadn’t created an e-mail list to send the announcement of the baby’s birth. I accomplished all of this through contractions, thanks to deep breathing and having my friend Shana there. Since she’s a musician, we delegated the playlist making to her. She also sacrificed her iTouch to the labor cause so that we could use an application called Labor Mate that allows you to track contractions. Yes, there’s an application for everything. By the way, I don’t recommend leaving the e-mail making to when you’re in labor. Clearly distracted, I left one of my best friends off the list.

10:00 p.m. We tried to go to bed. I was relaxed enough, but as soon as I approached the edge of sleep, a contraction pulled me out of it. Joe wanted to tell me how closely my contractions were coming, but I insisted that this was just early labor and that I was staying at home. I tucked my big belly into child’s pose and he applied pressure to my back and hips like we learned in class.

Midnight. I was up now, for sure. And I was determined to take a bath, having heard a friend describe how wonderful it was to labor in a tub. I’d put a lot of thought into this too– how I was going to feel comfortable bathing in our cracked tub from the 1930’s. I had a brand new eco-friendly bath mat at the ready. I’m tempted to tell you the story about how a customer at Bed, Bath and Beyond asked her daughter, “Who would spend that much time choosing a bath mat?” just feet away from the excessively pregnant woman who was trying to picture how she would bathe herself and her future toddler in a deteriorating tub. But this post is already epic.

I let the shower fall on my belly as I lay back in a few inches of water and breathed through contractions. Funny, I didn’t even notice the cracks in the tub.

2:00 a.m. Joe no longer believed me that I was in early labor and called Cindy. I guess she no longer believed me either, because she told him she was headed to the hospital and that we should leave in 15 minutes and meet her there. She wanted me to eat something, but I was besieged with nausea every time these newly intense contractions were coming every, yeah, less than two minutes. I started to see Joe’s point about how staying at home was no longer our best option. I didn’t let him know that I was seeing his point though. Instead, I told him that he was rubbing my back completely the wrong way.

This is called Transition. You know in the movies when the laboring mother yells obscenities at the man who impregnated her? It’s the part that comes after labor and just before pushing, and it’s true that the man seems to be of no help at this moment. Joe says he knew when he became useless. The fact is that had he not gotten me out the door and driven me to the hospital (oh, and gotten my favorite red shirt/dress at my bequest as we were leaving), I would have had our baby on the kitchen floor. I’d call that useful. And I never yelled or called him anything, I swear.

2:15 a.m.The weekend before, I had wanted to go to Ithaca to see our friends in RENT at the Hangar. If you know me, you know that I live/love to travel, so keeping me in one place even weeks before my due date was a challenge. I didn’t feel as though I was being irresponsible. I had looked up a birthing center in Ithaca just in case something were to happen. Joe, however, did not want me to have our baby in the car. “It’s the last place you’d want to be in labor.” I didn’t see why. Until we were in a car and I was in labor. “Slow down!” He was going 10 mph. “Slow down, slow down, slow down.” Luckily the hospital was five minutes away, albeit down a road that was under construction. And our doula was a welcome sight at the entrance to the ER.

2:30 a.m. There’s some NY law that you have to go into the hospital in a wheelchair if you’re going to have a baby (and leave in one too). I obviously wanted to walk, but the security guards couldn’t care less. And would you believe that they gave me a wheelchair that was missing a foot pedal? I had to lift one leg up in the air while a woman in a not very pleasant mood pushed me to Labor and Delivery. That may have been the worst part of the entire experience. See? Not so bad.

3:00 a.m. They tried to find my doctor. Oh, yeah, I never called her, because I didn’t think I was actually in labor. Had we not had our doula, Joe and I would have been left alone in the triage room with no real advice except to get into a hospital gown. Instead, we had Cindy’s calming voice. When a contraction got particularly strong, I would hear her say, “Think of this as a hug you’re giving to your baby. We’re going to see her soon.” I closed my eyes, gave the baby the most excruciatingly tight embrace, and breathed, and it was over.

An RN put an IV in my hand and a fetal monitor around my belly. These were two things I thought I really wouldn’t want, but I didn’t even notice them or the blood running down my fingers when they missed a vein. I asked Joe later, “Why were they cleaning my fake wedding ring?” (The real one didn’t fit after month 8). “Because you bled all over it.” Huh. You miss a lot of things when you’re closing your eyes and breathing. I even missed the nurse telling Cindy, “Don’t you let that woman have that baby in that toilet.” I really didn’t know how close I was.

4:00 a.m. The resident checked me and said, “You’re nine, maybe ten centimeters. Let’s get you into the next room to push.” Joe and Cindy practically high fived. I was in shock. Already time? So much for the ipod playlist, the massage lotion, and the exercise ball. And no chance for an epidural at this point. I had said that I would get one if I needed one, but I missed the opportunity to assess whether I did or not. I guess that means that I didn’t.

The delivery room was filled with women, except for Joe of course, and silent for most of the hour and a half that I pushed. Silence as I lay back on the table and closed my eyes and then cheerleading as I curled forward and worked to push out the head that I could already see in a full length mirror. (A mirror is about the last thing I thought I would want, but when asked if I wanted to see my baby, I was so excited, I would have gotten off the table and found a mirror myself). I will say that laying on your back without room to breathe into your ribs or an ounce of help from gravity to push the baby up through the birth canal is less than ideal. Many people agree that there are easier positions, but those are not often used in a hospital setting. In the moment, I didn’t care. I just wanted to see her.

For most of the hour and a half that I pushed, I felt as if I were having an out of body experience– like I was looking in on the scene as if it were a movie and that it couldn’t possibly be me there, doing that. Then, the resident told me that she wanted to put a monitor on my baby’s head because they couldn’t get a reading of her heart rate when I pushed. No kidding, you have me curled forward on top of the monitor every time you want me to push. How could it get a reading? I declined. There was a buzz among the residents and RNs. They were clearly worried. Luckily, my doctor came in and supported my decision. “The baby looks great. It’s not necessary.” So, back I went into my mind cave of breathing.

I had no sense of time or of how many times I pushed, but everyone told me that I was so close. One more. Just one more. And then they would say it again, calling me by name and saying this is the one.

5:28 a.m. Somehow that push was the one, and her head was out. My doctor untangled the umbilical cord from her neck and told me to push again. And there she was, with a beautiful cry and a beautiful head of hair. She looked at me with big, blue eyes and a concerned expression. Are you sure this is where I’m supposed to be? Yes, yes it is.

Tags: childbirth, doula, epidural, labor, natural childbirth

This entry was posted on Monday, August 31st, 2009 at 10:54 pm and is filed under All The World, Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.