On July 11 at 8:32 in the morning our little Owen – all 9 pounds, 21 inches of him - finally busted his way into the world, with his head cushioned by a still-intact bag of waters.
There is nothing like that instant when an unknowable fetus that has been floating and squirming within you for nine months suddenly becomes your baby boy – so human and perfect and full of personality even in that first wide-awake hour of life.
Rob immediately agreed – after all the name games – that Owen suited our son just fine. And he pointed out that it was a fitting name to describe this past-due-date baby who had been teasing us with increasingly more convincing bouts of false labor for two and a half weeks. As in: “Oh When?”
But it was that last night of labor that became the real emotional roller coaster. After a morning power walk, a potentially labor-inspiring dilation check at the OB office and spicy Thai takeout for dinner, some regular contractions began to kick in. They weren’t too painful, but enough to make me pause and appreciate a back rub, and they stayed steady at four minutes apart even after a bath. Given my first fast labor, the doctor on call and my certified nurse midwife, Melissa Terry Flynn, thought it made sense to go the hospital and see if I was in labor.
So Rob and my mom (who was filling a sort of unofficial doula role for us) and I set out for the hospital, chatting the whole way. That was the first sign – I just wasn’t uncomfortable enough in the car. This labor’s almost fun, I was thinking. At the hospital I checked in at 5 centimeters dilated with contractions still about 4 and 5 minutes apart, so they sent me walking the halls to try to push things into high gear. We’d get the contractions revved up to 3 minutes apart but as soon as I sat down for monitoring they’d space out to pathetic 8-minute intervals.
Even the close-together contractions weren’t too much to bear and my mom started joking about how she was sort of a useless doula with no real role in this labor, which was beginning to look less and less like real labor after all.
Finally Melissa asked me if I’d like to go home and try getting some rest or try to spur things along by letting her break my bag of waters. We all discussed the risks of that plan and decided against it.
I’ve always wanted a natural birth – and it was important to me to let this one begin naturally, even if I was going a bit nutty after all the false starts. On the way home, Rob, mom and I all found ourselves in exhausted hysterics, laughing through tears about the fact that we were hospital rejects. And some of my tears were real – I didn’t want to have to wait for yet another day and I felt somehow silly for showing up at the hospital only to be turned away.
But after 45 minutes of sleep back at home, real labor kicked in. These were contractions like I remembered with my first-born Will, and they grew closer together over time. We labored at home - in the bath tub, walking and side-lying, even catching five minutes of sleep here and there – for a few hours and waited until we were all 99 percent convinced this was the real thing before we called Melissa.
Then it was off to the hospital again: “This feels like doula vu,” Rob joked. But this time it was real labor and I needed lots of help. Rob rubbed my lower back as hard as he could through each contraction, and my mom would begin modeling deep breathing – rather than telling me to breathe – when she noticed me losing my focus. (Later Rob would tell me that he had to suppress a joke about mom as “Doula Vader” when she was doing that heavy breathing. He was lucky he did because I was not in a lighthearted mood by the time Doula Vader arrived on the scene.)
In any case, this was real labor that felt at moments manageable, at moments very uncomfortable, and in a few of the worst moments – as I was transitioning toward pushing -- nearly unbearable. It was then that I told the nurses, as Rob rubbed my back in the shower, that I thought I needed to push.
“You can’t push yet,” they said. “Melissa’s not quite here.”
I felt a wave of fear hit me, but then, by some minor miracle, it was a matter of seconds before Melissa arrived on the scene.
We soon discovered I was fully dilated, fully effaced -- and the pushing began. A couple student nurses observed quietly (they witness natural births relatively rarely so I had agreed to let them watch the birth) as I worked on making my body do what seemed like the impossible. Melissa – who had coached me through Will’s birth three years before – now had to coach me into a good pushing position, coach me through my breathing, coach me through everything at that point – I’d forgotten all my Bradley lessons about how to push well. Her wise, calm voice provided steady reassurance that this was work I was capable of doing.
I watched in a mirror as first the bag of waters started to emerge and then little Owen’s head began to peek its way into the world, and – with the power of seeing that progress – I was able to prod his big head and shoulders out of me with relatively few pushes and everything else was an afterthought. It was incredible, unimaginable pressure but it was over quickly and the pain washed away completely.
There was Owen in my arms. Nine pounds of serenity and well worth waiting for.
There is nothing like that instant when an unknowable fetus that has been floating and squirming within you for nine months suddenly becomes your baby boy – so human and perfect and full of personality even in that first wide-awake hour of life.
Rob immediately agreed – after all the name games – that Owen suited our son just fine. And he pointed out that it was a fitting name to describe this past-due-date baby who had been teasing us with increasingly more convincing bouts of false labor for two and a half weeks. As in: “Oh When?”
But it was that last night of labor that became the real emotional roller coaster. After a morning power walk, a potentially labor-inspiring dilation check at the OB office and spicy Thai takeout for dinner, some regular contractions began to kick in. They weren’t too painful, but enough to make me pause and appreciate a back rub, and they stayed steady at four minutes apart even after a bath. Given my first fast labor, the doctor on call and my certified nurse midwife, Melissa Terry Flynn, thought it made sense to go the hospital and see if I was in labor.
So Rob and my mom (who was filling a sort of unofficial doula role for us) and I set out for the hospital, chatting the whole way. That was the first sign – I just wasn’t uncomfortable enough in the car. This labor’s almost fun, I was thinking. At the hospital I checked in at 5 centimeters dilated with contractions still about 4 and 5 minutes apart, so they sent me walking the halls to try to push things into high gear. We’d get the contractions revved up to 3 minutes apart but as soon as I sat down for monitoring they’d space out to pathetic 8-minute intervals.
Even the close-together contractions weren’t too much to bear and my mom started joking about how she was sort of a useless doula with no real role in this labor, which was beginning to look less and less like real labor after all.
Finally Melissa asked me if I’d like to go home and try getting some rest or try to spur things along by letting her break my bag of waters. We all discussed the risks of that plan and decided against it.
I’ve always wanted a natural birth – and it was important to me to let this one begin naturally, even if I was going a bit nutty after all the false starts. On the way home, Rob, mom and I all found ourselves in exhausted hysterics, laughing through tears about the fact that we were hospital rejects. And some of my tears were real – I didn’t want to have to wait for yet another day and I felt somehow silly for showing up at the hospital only to be turned away.
But after 45 minutes of sleep back at home, real labor kicked in. These were contractions like I remembered with my first-born Will, and they grew closer together over time. We labored at home - in the bath tub, walking and side-lying, even catching five minutes of sleep here and there – for a few hours and waited until we were all 99 percent convinced this was the real thing before we called Melissa.
Then it was off to the hospital again: “This feels like doula vu,” Rob joked. But this time it was real labor and I needed lots of help. Rob rubbed my lower back as hard as he could through each contraction, and my mom would begin modeling deep breathing – rather than telling me to breathe – when she noticed me losing my focus. (Later Rob would tell me that he had to suppress a joke about mom as “Doula Vader” when she was doing that heavy breathing. He was lucky he did because I was not in a lighthearted mood by the time Doula Vader arrived on the scene.)
In any case, this was real labor that felt at moments manageable, at moments very uncomfortable, and in a few of the worst moments – as I was transitioning toward pushing -- nearly unbearable. It was then that I told the nurses, as Rob rubbed my back in the shower, that I thought I needed to push.
“You can’t push yet,” they said. “Melissa’s not quite here.”
I felt a wave of fear hit me, but then, by some minor miracle, it was a matter of seconds before Melissa arrived on the scene.
We soon discovered I was fully dilated, fully effaced -- and the pushing began. A couple student nurses observed quietly (they witness natural births relatively rarely so I had agreed to let them watch the birth) as I worked on making my body do what seemed like the impossible. Melissa – who had coached me through Will’s birth three years before – now had to coach me into a good pushing position, coach me through my breathing, coach me through everything at that point – I’d forgotten all my Bradley lessons about how to push well. Her wise, calm voice provided steady reassurance that this was work I was capable of doing.
I watched in a mirror as first the bag of waters started to emerge and then little Owen’s head began to peek its way into the world, and – with the power of seeing that progress – I was able to prod his big head and shoulders out of me with relatively few pushes and everything else was an afterthought. It was incredible, unimaginable pressure but it was over quickly and the pain washed away completely.
There was Owen in my arms. Nine pounds of serenity and well worth waiting for.
I love to hear the birth stories of other moms. If you have one to share, please post. (It's a good excuse to record those memories before they start to fade.) Other comments are welcome too.
2 comments:
Annie,
I loved reading about your birth story and am looking forward to reading future posts to your blog. I think it was a great idea for the Ledger to have you take on "the mother load."
I hope you and the boys are doing well. Having two sure does change things, doesn't it?
Sophia, Isabel and I look forward to future playdates with Owen, Will and you.
Hope you are getting some rest.
-Jennifer
I just found your blog yesterday, so I know I'm really late commenting here. I thought I'd share my vbac birth story (November 22, 2006) It does have a religious tone to it. Hope you don't mind :)
I am mother to two precious little children. I have much to be thankful for—thankful beyond measure. How perfect, divine even, that my baby boy’s first birthday should fall on this Thanksgiving Day. After the devastating birth of my daughter the year before, I trusted the Lord that my son’s birth would be different. We planned an hbac (home birth after cesarean). I never, not for one second, had any fear that my uterus would rupture or that my vbac would in any way be unsuccessful. I trusted the Lord so completely that I did not even pack a bag for the hospital “just in case” I should need it. I trusted my Lord.
My labor was not what you see on television. I was not in a public place, with amniotic fluid soaking the floor around me, clutching my stomach and doubled over in pain. I was sleeping comfortably in my bed and I very gently, very slowly, became uncomfortable. At the worst part of my labor, I would only describe the feelings as intense. Truth be told, I was so overwhelmingly grateful to be given the privilege of laboring and that I, in turn, was giving my son the gift of birth.
After many hours—more than 40—we made the decision to transfer to the hospital. I did not make this decision lightly. My faith at this point was severely shaken, because everyone knew that I was going to the hospital to have a repeat c-section. I was a mother with an “unproven” pelvis, who had been in labor for more than 40 hours who also had a previous c-section. I thought, “where are you Lord?”
…and you know what? I gave up. On that drive to the hospital that I never dreamed I’d be making, I resigned myself to the knife that was awaiting my abdomen at the hospital.
At the hospital, all “signs” pointed to a c-section. We had to enter the hospital by walking under that huge, red emergency sign. Upstairs on the labor and delivery hall I went straight to the room marked “recovery”, where they take women after their cesareans. There, I was immediately prepped for the c-section. I signed the forms stating that I understood the risks of c-sections (death of mother or baby, hemorrhage, hysterectomy, infection, etc).
Then, a miracle. The doctor came into that room, examined me, and he gave me a choice. He said, “well, you can push this baby out or we can go ahead with the cesarean”. Honestly, I was mad. I had given up. I wanted nothing more at that point than to lay on that cold steel table and let the doctor do all the work for me. How dare he give me the choice? Didn’t he know that I couldn’t push my baby out? No, I gave control of this birth to the doctor and what does he do but give the choice right back to me.
Yet even when I had given up on the Lord, He had not given up on me. As badly as I just wanted this birth to be over, as badly as I wanted to hear the words, “I want a c-section” come out of my mouth, that’s not what happened. Instead I heard myself saying, “okay, I’ll push him out”. The Lord knew that the section wasn’t what I wanted and it wasn’t what He wanted for me or my baby. So at 11:27 the night before Thanksgiving, only by the grace of the living God in Heaven, I pushed my son into this world.
From them will come songs of thanksgiving and the sound of rejoicing. I will add to their numbers, and they will not be decreased; I will bring them honor, and they will not be disdained.
Jeremiah 30:19
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