PRE-BIRTH STORY

I had my first child, Damian, at home with a midwife assisting. I am glad that Damian's birth was a homebirth, but I could have done without the assistance of the midwife. We did a poor job of communicating our expectations to her for the birth - I had thought that the midwife would be a good source of labor support, but she thought of herself as a baby catcher and nothing more, with the result being that I spent 12 hours of active labor with no knowledgeable support and could not for whatever reason rely on myself for instinctual help.

The midwife jump started the labor by stripping my membranes - I had 4 hours of light, painless labor, followed by broken waters and an intensely painful 12 hour active labor with contractions coming every 2 minutes. There was joy when Damian was finally born, but I did not enjoy the labor at all. And in fact, the joy of Damian's birth was marred a bit by the fact that I tore very badly and had to go to the Emergency Room. My guesses as to why the labor was so horribly painful are that I was tired, I was hungry, I was very much dehydrated, and I only peed once during the entire labor, so that my body was pushing the baby's head up against a full bladder (which makes for very painful contractions).

My goal for the second pregnancy and labor was to have a successful unhindered homebirth. Jim and I found an obstetrician who supported our birth choice. I was not too keen on getting prenatal care (or, as I call it, prenatal "scare") but it was a requirement of Jim's before he would agree to having an unhindered homebirth. Jim and I compromised on the prenatal care to the point that I agreed to see an OB for 3 checkups with a minimum of interventions (i.e. no blood tests, no doppler/ultrasound, no vaginal exams).

At my third and final checkup, the OB was concerned because the baby was not head down and anterior. Unfortunately, he was unable to tell me exactly what position the baby was in at the time. He told me that he wanted to see me again, but I ended up canceling the 4th appointment the following day. I spent much of the next week in fear, fearing that I had made the wrong choice by canceling the appointment, fearing that the baby would be born breech, or worse, transverse.

But I continued to have faith that God had designed my body and my baby so that both of them knew what they were doing without any involvement from my petty brain. It wasn't until I was in my 40th week that the baby finally settled down and quit moving from breech to transverse to head down and vice versa. Up until then I had been fooled every few hours - first I would be happy that it was head down, but then it would shift position and I'd be back to thinking it was transverse or breech. Most of the time I just wasn't sure what position it was in. I was 90% sure that the baby was head down by the 40th week but was prepared to deal with a breech birth if need be, as I believe that it is safer to have a breech baby at home than it is in a hospital. It turned out that my baby decided to not only switch to a vertex presentation for the birth, it was anterior as well. (Damian was born posterior.)

In addition to my goal of having an unhindered homebirth, I had some hopes, some of which I dared not voice. I hoped that I would not tear. I hoped that it would be a short labor. I hoped that I would not feel pain (this is one that I never said aloud - I honestly didn't think it was possible for me to ever have a painless labor, or that I ever deserved one).

Well, I ended up with a tiny tear - too tiny to have stitched. I had thought I would be devastated if I ended up tearing, but the reality of it was that I was so overjoyed with how the rest of the birth went that the itty bitty tear was really of no consequence at all. The labor was a strange one - I had three days of prodromal labor and 6 hours of active labor. Which is just about perfect, it turns out. But while I was going through the prodromal labor, Jim and I were thrown for a loop by it because neither of us were expecting it or had any experience with it.

And as for the pain? That was the most surprising aspect of all. Except for two different times when I experienced pain, the rest of the labor and delivery was painless. I'm writing this story at 11 days postpartum, and I have spent a little time every single day for the past 11 days wondering why it was painless, and haven't yet come up with a definite answer. But here are some guesses:

1) I visited a hypnotherapist and listened to a birth hypnosis tape while pregnant.
2) I made sure that I ate when I was hungry, drank water when I was thirsty, and most importantly, emptied my bladder frequently throughout the prodromal and active labor.
3) During the last few contractions before the birth that were the most intense, I used visualization techniques to imagine how my body and baby were working together (i.e. "it feels like the baby is turning just a little bit, and getting just a little bit lower"). That helped to "identify" the feelings that I was feeling, if that makes any sense.
4) I relaxed, relaxed, relaxed!

You may notice that "lack of fear" is not listed as a possible reason for the painless labor. On my childbirth mailing lists, fear is listed as the number one reason for pain in labor, but after my labor with Max I can't agree. The fact is, I felt all kinds of fear throughout this labor, yet my fear did not contribute to any pain. Perhaps it does for some women, though...

So, without further ado...MAX'S BIRTH STORY

MONDAY - BABY TIME IS A LONG WAY OFF

On Monday, May 8, I was working on an essay after dinner and retreated to the bedroom so that I could think and write in peace and quiet. As I sat on the bed writing, I realized that I was getting Braxton Hicks contractions that were rather frequent. Timing them with the bedside clock, I realized that they were 3 minutes apart. I told Jim that there was a slight chance that he would be taking paternity leave the next morning, but that since all I was getting were Braxton Hicks, there was a chance this was false labor. So we went to bed to see what would happen, if anything, during the night.

TUESDAY - NO BABY IN SIGHT

On Tuesday morning, I woke up with Braxton Hicks still coming three minutes apart. Jim went to work with a warning that he would probably not take his paternity leave that day, but to watch his pager just in case.

Before too long, the Braxton Hicks turned into prodromal labor - that is, light painless labor contractions that were more intense than a regular Braxton Hicks contraction, but less intense than active labor contractions.

When Jim came home for lunch, contractions were still 10 minutes apart and lightly intense, but soon after he left to go back to work, the contractions intensified to the point where I had to pause through them. I needed to go grocery shopping, and would have paged Jim to come home and do the shopping for me, but he had accidentally left his pager at home (!! of all days!!) so I could not reach him. I stayed at home for another hour debating whether or not to go grocery shopping, and to see if they would grow stronger. The contractions stayed the same, so I packed up Damian in the car seat and off we went to the grocery store. I'm sure the sight of a fully pregnant woman stopping every 10 minutes to lean over her cart must have been an interesting one to passersby. The contractions were still painless, but I was beginning to fear that they would soon hurt.

When I got home from the store, I noticed that Jim had come home too, to get his pager, and had then gone back to work. What a relief! A few minutes later after a particularly intense contraction, I paged him with our secret code (a.k.a. "Come home NOW! It's baby time!") because I wasn't sure how much longer I would be able to function, and, well, I just really wanted him home. This was a surprise to me, since I had always envisioned that I would labor alone and not really need my husband's presence.

Right after Jim got home, I began to feel intensity to the point where I needed to hang onto him and moan. But before long, he and I made a shocking discovery! At one point during a contraction, I was looking up at him for some reason, instead of looking down. Right then and there, 90% of the intensity faded, and the contraction was much shorter. Jim and I looked at each other in shock, and then theorized that perhaps the act of looking up aligns the spinal cord with the uterus, or something crazy like that. From thereon, the contractions were a piece of cake, as long as I held my head up and looked at the ceiling.

That evening I was still hoping that I'd have a baby before too long, but was beginning to get a little bored with just sitting around and waiting. I took a nap in the "birth room" (an extra bedroom where I had set up all of the birthing supplies) and popped in the birth hypnosis tape. As usual, it sent me right to sleep, only I did not feel any contractions during my sleep like I did at other times during the prodromal labor when I slept (I thought that was very interesting).

WEDNESDAY - STILL NO BABY

On Wednesday morning, Jim and I woke up a bit disappointed and even a bit worried. The contractions were still 10 minutes apart, at the same intensity. Why wasn't the baby here? Why was the labor taking so long? Was this labor? If so, why didn't it hurt? At that point I would have almost welcomed pain, because to me it would have meant that the labor was real and that a baby really would be coming soon.

We decided to go for a walk to see if we could speed things up. To our chagrin, the walk turned the contractions topsy turvy - they were now bouncing all over the place, from 2 minutes apart to one long 15 minutes without a single contraction. I didn't know what to think. But sometime around that afternoon, we decided to sort of give up and call it a normal day. Jim even asked if I wanted him to go back to work, but I didn't feel at all comfortable with him leaving me, so I insisted that he stay and keep me company. We went out that evening to the video store to rent videos. I got a delicious shiver up and down my spine every time that I had a contraction in the store, knowing that I had a little secret that no one else in the store except for my family knew - that I was in labor and would be having a baby soon (but WHEN??!!)

That night as we were watching a movie, Jim took over the timing of the contractions. I started noticing that they were coming a bit closer now, but was afraid to ask him just how close they were because I didn't want to be too disappointed if it turned out that they were not closer. I noticed that I needed to use the bathroom more frequently, and I even felt the need to take a couple of showers. The first shower I took was an annoying experience because the contractions were so frequent that it seemed that I was constantly sticking my head out the door to yell "TIME" to Jim so that he could write down the time of the contraction. And there were times during the shower when I would put my hand on my belly and feel a contraction happening, but not feel it elsewhere in my body like I could for the other ones. Once again, I didn't know what to think about this very strange labor. (It turned out that around that point, the contractions were getting closer and closer, from 7 minutes to 5 to 4 to 3 to 2...)

Right around midnight I started feeling a little tired, so I went to bed. Jim stayed out on the couch sleeping (he fell asleep watching TV).

THURSDAY - IT'S BABY's BIRTHDAY!

Born May 11, 2000 - 8 lbs, 6 oz.

At 4 a.m. I woke up to the most intense contractions I had ever had throughout this whole labor. I got up right away to go to the bathroom, thinking that the reason they were so intense was because I hadn't emptied my bladder in a while. But after using the bathroom they were still intense (and now back to 10 minutes apart and still painless). I looked longingly at Jim on the couch, wishing he were awake to keep me company. Instead of waking him, however, I retreated to the dark birthing room to sit by myself and labor. The contractions were getting so close to the edge of pain. They were still painless, but it took every ounce of concentration I had to stay relaxed enough to keep the pain away. These contractions also needed my vocalization in order for me to get through them. I was afraid, so afraid. I was afraid that pain would be upon me soon, and afraid that I would feel that pain for hours and hours. I cried tears of fear and bitterness, afraid that I hadn't enjoyed the labor so far as much as I could have, and bitter that I would (seemingly) soon have to feel pain. I was afraid of pushing the baby out, afraid of doing this alone (because of Jim being asleep), afraid of waking up Jim.

And while I was in the birth room being so afraid, I remembered something I had once read in Jeannine Parvati Baker's book Prenatal Yoga. She was telling the story of her first labor and delivery. She was having some pain, and her husband told her that she was in the posture of a martyr. She realized he was right, and moved out of the position of a martyr (whatever that is - she never did say exactly what the position was) and into a different position, and voila! the pain disappeared. Now, I was still not experiencing pain, but was having great emotional turmoil, and I realized that I was playing the role of a martyr. Here I was feeling sorry for myself, refusing to help myself by waking Jim, refusing to feel joy that at least I had enjoyed a long and painless labor. I decided to get out of the birth room and get myself something to eat, and then I would wake up Jim. While in the kitchen, I vocalized my way through another contraction, and that woke Jim up! He came to the kitchen to see what was going on, and I hung on him through another contraction. He was concerned about my tears and vocalization, and wanted me to go into the birth room and listen to the hypnosis tape. But that was the last thing I wanted - being in that dark little room all by myself. I told him I wanted to be in the living room where he was, and that I wanted him to move all of the birth supplies into the living room as well.

The difference between being alone in the birth room and being out in the living room with Jim made all the difference in the world. Suddenly contractions were much less intense and no longer needed vocalization. Jim and I read through various books and web site printouts dealing with the emergency delivery of a baby. I was reading Laurie Morgan's article "Just the Facts" which outlines the steps of the birth process when I realized that I was going through second stage labor that very moment. Most birth books define "second stage" as pushing and nothing else, but I could see that Laurie's definition (as in, the contractions that lead up to and include the pushing process) was much closer to the truth. I told Jim that the contractions were getting a little more intense, and he suggested that I visualize what the baby was doing. When I closed my eyes, I could tell that the baby was turning just a little bit, and coming down just a little bit more. It was an amazing feeling. I now regret not videotaping that part of my labor to prove how possible it is to be calm even up to right before pushing. Suddenly I felt a need to sit across the room in front of the video camera. Right after I sat down, I felt two huge contractions come right on top of each other. My mouth was hanging open in amazement that they were still painless. I knew that I was very, very close to giving birth and couldn't believe I'd made it this far without pain. Ironically enough, with the very next contraction I fought it with all my might. I don't know why I fought it, but I did, and I found it to be extremely painful. That was the second time that I felt pain in the labor (the first time being two days earlier when I was looking down through the contractions instead of looking up).

Jim decided to check my dilation. Attempts by the both of us had been unsuccessful so far - my cervix was either too soft or too posterior to be felt. Once again he could not tell how dilated I was, but he found my mucus plug, which lightened both of our spirits immeasurably. I proclaimed myself to be at least 5 or 6 cm dilated with the appearance of that plug.

After that, I needed to pee again, so I hopped in the shower. I spent a long time in the shower, and let the hot water beat on the small of my back. The contractions were all in the front of my belly (and had fortunately gone back to painless), yet the water felt so good on my back, as if I was having back labor. I remember thinking to myself that that was strange. Right after I got out of the shower, my water broke all over the tile. Looking down at the water on the floor, I saw that it was light green and that there were bits of vernix on the bathroom mat. I was unconcerned about the meconium for some reason - somehow I just knew that I did not have to worry about it, and I knew that a baby would be here very soon. I stayed in the bathroom through one more contraction, and then...

IT'S TIME TO PUSH!

...ran to the living room and instinctively got down on hands and knees to get ready to push the baby out. Meanwhile, Damian had woken up and Jim had gotten Damian set up to watch "Tarzan" on our computer while I was in the shower. Then Jim set up the video camera and turned it on.

While on my hands and knees, I began to feel extremely hot. I had not a stitch of clothing on, yet began to grow hotter and hotter. Pretty soon I saw some drops of sweat roll down my arm, and felt my face break out in a sweat. Jim told me later that he saw my back get all sweaty, too. When I felt a uterine surge, I screamed. Now, the last thing I wanted to do in front of the video camera was scream - I hate to give the impression that birth is a painful event. I remember asking myself, "Now, do I really need to be screaming?" but I knew that it was something I could not stop, that it was very instinctual. (And by the way, what I previously called "contractions" I will now call "uterine surges" because once Max started coming out, the contractions changed in such an amazing way - they were now pushing out the baby with an incredible amount of force that no vacuum extractor or intravenous bag of pitocin could ever hope to match.)

When I looked down at the chux pad on the floor, I saw a few drops of blood coming out. Normally this would have worried me, but I had learned not too long ago that sometimes when a cervix dilates quickly, some drops of blood will come out as a result. (I think I had gone from 7 to 10 cm within a half an hour's time.)

The feeling of Max coming down the birth canal was mindblowing, and I began to sob when I thought of the millions of women who choose to go to a hospital and get an epidural. I cried out to Jim, "I feel so sorry for women who have epidurals! They have NO idea how awesome this is!" I was full of grief for the ignorance of our so-called civilized nation, and for the loss that so many women had suffered, but I let the grief go and focused once more on what was happening right here and now.

Despite the joyful sensations that I was feeling in my body, I still had to overcome the greatest fear of all that I had - the fear of actually pushing this baby out. It was such hard work, even though I was letting my body do it all with no help from me. I was so close to asking Jim to push the baby out for me, but I didn't because I knew it would look plain silly on the birth tape.

I had a flashback to Damian's birth - suddenly I heard the midwife screaming in my ear, "MINDY, YOU HAVE TO PUSH NOW!" and gave a wimpy little push, but it didn't do anything, and it felt wrong, so I stopped. My body was doing a good job of pushing all by itself, thank you very much. I will never be able to watch "A Baby Story" without wincing, because every single one of those shows has some form of "purple pushing," where the attendants stand by the mother and tell her when and how long to push. Why? What is the need for that? The (undrugged) body knows best when to push.

Finally, the moment had come. I felt the baby's head come all the way out and stay out instead of slipping back in, and with the next uterine surge, he tumbled out. Suddenly I found myself looking at a little boy, which confused me for a moment because I had been so sure that he had been a girl all along! Jim and I had not even narrowed down the boy names, but he looked at me and told me, "His name is Max." (Short for Maximilian.) I started crying and laughing.

From Jim's point of view, Max had the cord wrapped around his neck twice. No big deal - it was loose and Jim unwound it quite easily. Max started coughing and hollering as he tumbled out, so no need to "get him going" like we had had to do for Damian, and no need to stick a bulb in his mouth or nose. Perfect 10 Apgars.

This had to be the world's messiest birth. We had a king-sized plastic sheet that easily covered half of our living room floor, and on top of that some old tablecloths and chux pads. Yet all of it seemed covered by blood and meconium and birth water afterwards. Luckily it all stayed on the plastic sheet, so it made for easy cleanup.

Damian (2 1/2 years old) did so well at the birth. At my initial scream when my body started pushing the baby out, Damian was scared, but Jim smiled at him and told him that there was nothing to worry about, and from thereon Damian quietly watched with interest. He dealt very well with the actual birth of the baby and seemed to understand that he was now a big brother. We had our dog and cat there, too, although we really didn't intend to have the animals present - we forgot all about them in the heat of the moment. But they did well, too, and can be seen wandering around us protectively in the birth video.

AFTER THE BIRTH

I wanted to do two things very badly after Max was born - First, I wanted the placenta out, and second, I wanted food and a nap. I tried and tried to push out the placenta, but it wouldn't budge. So I took Max to the bed to lie down for a while. I stayed awake, however, and spent time staring at Max and trying to teach him how to nurse. After an hour and a half, Jim called a friend of mine who is a doula to get advice on the placenta. The two of them agreed that I should not fall asleep until the placenta was out, so Jim cut the cord and suggested that I take a shower and try to expel the placenta. While in the shower, I pushed and pushed (wimpily, I admit) but it wouldn't come out, so I pulled on the cord, and finally it came out. Now, any birth book you read will tell you that it is very dangerous to pull on the cord, and I agree. I was lucky that I didn't hemorrhage, probably because the placenta had already detached from the uterine wall by then and just needed an extra "oomph" to come down. (It is more dangerous when the cord is pulled within minutes of the birth, when the placenta hasn't had time to separate from the uterus.)

I was up and around within hours of the birth, and we left the house for the first time the next night to attend a birthday party. For the first three or four days after the birth, I would feel a little weak if I had been up on my feet for too long, but otherwise felt very well, and ended up feeling so well that I wore Max in a sling to my college graduation 3 days postpartum.

All in all, my pregnancy, labor, and delivery of Max went so well that I can only hope and pray that as many couples as possible will have their babies at home and experience the joy of an unhindered "couple's birth." I believe very strongly in the God-given ability of a woman's body to give birth without incident as long as there is no "professional" around her to divert nature from its true intended course.