1 week ago today, baby Crowe was born on December 6th at 10:09 AM- 8 lb, 1 oz!
The nitty gritty:
My due date, December 2nd came and went without incident. Thursday, December 3rd I met friend/co-worker Nicole at Starbucks with her adorable twin 8 wk-old boys and walked around, enjoying the 70 degree weather.
That night, while at my computer I felt a huge rush of oxytocin- just an incredible sense of well-being and tenderness. It was extremely powerful. A couple of hours later, I had a contraction. Before I went to bed I felt two more, but they were mild.
Laboring at home
At 4 am, Dec. 4th I woke up realizing that I had been having contractions and they were getting stronger. I tried to go back to sleep to no avail, and had a powerful urge to get ready for the hospital. While Josh slept, I finished packing the hospital bag and got something to eat. At 7:30 I laid back down and was able to doze for about an hour until Josh got up and I told him that things were starting, but slowly and asked him to put the carseat in the car before he went to work.
Throughout the day, the contractions would get more consistent, and they die back down. I was able to sleep for another 2 hours but when they went from 8 minutes to 20, I got a little discouraged. Josh checked in throughout the day and I told him I was ok and would let him know if anything sped up.
That night, they hit every 4-5 minutes, the milestone I was waiting for, but after 45 minutes of that, they went back to every 8 minutes. It was getting much more uncomfortable however, so I called the midwife at 2 AM, hoping she would tell me to come in. She didn’t. She said stay home and wait.
I was able to doze a little Friday night and Saturday, they went back to every 20 minutes for much of the day- however, it was like a dial was turned up and they were much more intense. I practiced my relaxation techniques and they helped about 75% of the time, but some of the surges were so strong, I couldn’t breathe through them and would vocalize my pain. I tried to eat- I would go from having incredible nausea to feeling famished. It was a very uncomfortable day. I tried laying on the bed, I tried leaning over pillows on the bed, I laid on each side in the recliner and just sat on the couch. When the strong contractions would come, I felt like I was trying to crawl away from the pain and would squirm around, trying to find the position in which they subsided. They didn’t. We listened to music and comedy podcasts and eventually my hypnobirthing cd’s. The intensity of the contractions was increasing, but the time wasn’t. I used the stopwatch feature on my blackberry to keep a record of the timing and it stayed steady at 8-10 minutes between. Around 10 PM Josh, seeing my pain and not being able to help said, “This isn’t how I thought it would be” and I said “Me either.”
Around 11:00 it began to snow with force and I worried about the drive. Josh dozed and I sat in the recliner, practicing my breathing. At 2:00ish I woke him up and asked him to draw me a bath. When I got in the tub, a contraction came just 3 minutes after the first, so I sat in the tub for an hour timing and each one was 3-5 minutes after the first– I had finally met the threshhold.
I got Josh up and told him it was time to go. He packed and cleaned snow off the car and I continued to try and escape the pain by standing, walking, and sitting on the edge of the bed. At 4:30 we got in the car, an hour-long car ride I was dreading (though it had stopped snowing at least). Throughout the day, I found sitting straight up to be the most uncomfortable position, so I got in the car, grabbed the Jesus Handle with my right hand and the back of Josh’s headrest with the left and held on. I’m nervous when Josh drives on a good day, so I’m sure he wasn’t looking forward to the ride either, especially when I started off by making him get out and clean off the side mirrors properly. I asked him repeatedly to go slow- the speed seemed to make the contractions more uncomfortable. When we were on the main road I called the hospital to say we were on our way so they could alert the midwife on call. Pressure on my belly increased the pain significantly so while at home I had been sitting with the drawstring on my sweatpants completely undone and shirt pulled up, having the seat belt touch me was a whole new level. Through it all though, I continued to back seat drive with Josh, telling him which way to go and lanes he should be in. At one point he began to turn. ”Where are you going?!” I yelled as the contraction hit. ”I’m getting on the highway!” he yelled back. ”No you’re not! This is is friggin’ parking lot!!”
We got to Anna Jacques and I realized I wasn’t sure where to go. There was no parking for the Emergency Room entrance so we had to go into the regular parking lot and turn around. Josh pulled up to the entrance to go in and ask where to go. A nurse came out with a wheelchair and I got out and looked at the bags of stuff to decide what I should carry. The nurse and Josh told me not to worry about it and just get inside. I declined the wheelchair as standing and walking felt better than sitting and we made our way through the hospital to the Birth Center. A nurse met me as soon as I walked in and brought me to a large room where I would stay for the next few hours.
Almost immediately the birthing experience was probably different than the traditional hospital birth. I was hooked to a fetal monitor, but only for 20 minutes and it was the only time during the whole stay that I was hooked to it. It was sort of cool though for others to just watch numbers and be able to tell when my contractions were coming and when they were ending. I felt like pointing and saying, “See, it’s real! I’m not making this up!” I was asked the standard set of questions and waited until the midwife arrived. When she did, I got nervous- I was so afraid she’d check me and we’d find out I hadn’t dilated and I still had a long ways to go. When she said, “Well look at who’s been working hard! 7 cm and 90% effaced!” I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I was so grateful that the pain and discomfort was actually doing something and I was in real, active, soon-there-will-be-baby labor.
The next 3 hours are somewhat of a blur. I was very aware during the whole process and time seemed to move very slowly, but the contractions got progressively worse and it was harder and harder to remain in a calm, relaxed state. I spent time in the tub, trying to get the jets to blow on my back, but soon I just got cold and uncomfortable. Josh and I had been practicing massage and light touches that were supposed to help, but during a contraction, I didn’t want anything touching me so we didn’t use much of that. I’m thankful I didn’t have any of the “back labor” I had heard about. My back was sore from laying in weird positions, but that was it. My overall impression of labor was that at least it built fairly slowly (too slowly in my case) so I had time to adjust each time the dial was turned up. In those couple of hours which were the 8-10 cm dilation mark, the few contractions I had that hours before had made me gasp, now seemed positively tolerable. I was reminded of a video game’s learning curve, and it was set at a nice pace- it wasn’t 0-60 with no warning.
Midwife Jessica checked me a total of 3 times- once when she first got there, once to see that I had moved to 8 cm, and once towards the end when I was at 9. When I was at 8 she suggested she break my water to get the process moving a bit quicker and I immediately nodded, as I felt a contraction come on. She had to do it during the contraction, which was uncomfortable, but I didn’t feel anything in terms of the actual instrument that broke the water. I did feel the gush that I had read about, and for about 20 minutes afterwards, whenever I’d rock my hips or move to a new position I felt sort of like I was peeing myself, but that whole sensation was exactly what I was expecting. This artificial rupturing of the membranes was the only “intervention” I had.
Most of the time I dealt with the pain by moaning, and was a bit shocked when I heard myself uttering the guttural moan that our birthing instructor had said would happen, but there were a few times I cried out. I felt like a bad hypnobirther when I did that, but everyone kept encouraging me and telling me I was doing a good job, so that helped. Josh and his mom, Beth were a great support and I feel like they really helped me through the process.
I wish I had been more prepared however as to how to deal with the pain at this point since it was so much worse than before. I had talked with people and read a lot and rewatched “The Business of Being Born” the previous day and had heard that most women going through a natural birth reached an altered state- I did experience that, but the state wasn’t nearly far enough away. I was still intricately aware of everything, I just didn’t want to participate in the conversations that were happening around me. I also continued to try to escape the pain when I should’ve been embracing it. It was so counter-intuitive, I would squirm and hyperventilate when it would get bad when I should’ve been finding the positions that were uncomfortable because those were what my body needed. Midwife Jessica had me kneel on the bed which hurt my knees and was much more painful, but was what needed to happen right then. This was also finally the point where I let the pain wash over me and tried to ride it instead of escaping it and could feel an almost immediate difference. (Though I did call out “Oh Shit!” at one point- again, bad hypnobirhter)
About this time I tried to give up. The pain just kept getting worse and I didn’t know how much more I could handle. If they had offered me drugs at this point I probably would’ve taken them. This is something that I’ve read too- a lot of women hit a wall where it gets to be too much, and then viola, baby. I think it’s because the ramp of pain kept increasing and I had no idea how close I was to the end- if it had been another 2 hours of ramp, it would’ve been too much. In retrospect, however, it really wasn’t too long where the pain was at a level that I really didn’t want to experience it at all.
Jessica checked me once more and said I was at 9 cm and the Doppler to listen to the baby which they did every 15 minutes throughout the labor showed she was much further down than before. To get to the last stage, Jessica told me to sit on the toilet and try to pee. I had read about this technique too and at the time wished she had told me the whys behind instead of offering it as a causal suggestion- realizing that even in a state like this I want to know details. It made a huge difference- muscles you don’t even think about relax naturally when you sit on the toilet and I could feel myself opening up. Josh sat with me and though I very much focused on keeping my jaw and hands relaxed in encouragement to the rest of my muscles, I did grab onto him a couple of times. When during a contraction, I felt my body (without consent from me) pushing, I opened my eyes wide and said, “What was that??” The nurse came in to check on me right at that moment and rushed to get Jessica to tell her I was pushing.
When I came out of the bathroom, I sat on a birthing stool- which was just a metal 3-sided frame that they had wrapped in the blue pads for a little bit of comfort- and pushed. It was again amazing how the pain changed again. The contractions didn’t hurt at all anymore, instead I could feel the stretching as she came down the birth canal. I was also surprised at how relaxed I could get between pushes- it was like a brief reprieve of all pain. When I began to crown, I heard the nurse and the midwife comment that they could see a lot of hair on her head, which was encouraging. I pushed about 4-5 times on the stool and then got in the bed to finish, pushing another 4-5 times.
This phase I was also unprepared for. I’m not sure what I expected, but I guess I thought I’d just feel “pain” but instead I kept thinking to the scene in Knocked Up when Katherine Heigl’s character screams out, “I can feel EVERYTHING!” because that’s exactly what this was. I could feel exactly where everything was, including the midwife’s fingers because I said that something was poking me. I couldn’t really feel the baby moving down, though when her head came out I definitely felt a huge sense of relief. I tried to slow down at Jessica’s insistence, and I knew if I went too fast at this point I might tear, but on the next contraction my body took over and I finished pushing my baby out.
Meeting Baby
She went right to my chest and my first, immediate thought when I saw her was, “Who’s this?” I felt almost like I didn’t recognize her- a strange sensation. I then noticed how pink she was, how big she was, and how she was looking around in wonder. I was still intimately aware of everything still going on with my body and hers- including the umbilical cord that was attached to her and still inside of me. I had worried about the “what happens next” phase and was very grateful when I expelled the placenta without any pain- it was like a braxton hicks contraction with the tightening and I felt it exit, but it wasn’t unpleasant. I got to look at it afterwards and it was much larger and there was more stuff than I pictured a placenta. It was really interesting. The pushing on my stomach and getting a couple of stitches (not on my perineum but on my vaginal walls) WERE unpleasant however, and definitely distracted me from the bonding process. When it was done pulsing, Josh cut the cord (he wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to do it) and I nursed Baby for the first time. We were able to relax as a family for about 20 minutes before the nurses took her to weigh her and smear her eyes and do the normal newborn stuff.
Happy Daddy
The neonatologist gave her a 9/10 on her Apgar which means she got an A+ on her very first test. I ordered lunch and Josh’s father and brother came to visit on their way back to Maine from Boston. Soon after my mother arrived so the room was full of family meeting the newest, nameless member.
Josh asked me later if I was glad I went through the process without any drugs and I said yes, mostly because I felt energized and besides the pain in my vagina (which I also wasn’t expecting though I don’t know why), fine afterwards and if I had had any drugs, it probably would’ve been very different. Her high Apgar score was also due in part to the drugless delivery. Now that I’ve experienced it, however, I’m not sure I’d do it for #2, but then again, maybe having an idea of what to expect would make it easier. Or is the satisfaction that I’ve “been there, done that” enough? I have plenty of time to decide.
Our Outside Baby!
See more pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.com/meghan.mcginleycrowe/BrandNewBaby#
