Birth Story

I need to write your birth story down here, today, before it washes away in a sea of oxytocin and breast milk.  I'm giving you all the details, even though many of them are pretty boring.  I'm giving you the narrative of "and then and then and then" so all the scraps are here, somewhere, before I forget them.

On Tuesday, July 30th, we went in for my 38 week appointment.  I was 3cm dilated, 80% effaced and at +1 station.  I've almost forgotten all those numbers already.  But in the two weeks before I'd been thinking about them constantly.  Googling to see when women with similar numbers had their babies.  At the appointment, Doctor Ripley swept my membranes.  That kind of sounds like a Pink Floyd album title.  Swept Membranes.  Anyway.

Then I went to Blue Monday and drank a latte and ate an English muffin with peanut butter and read Red Moon, a book about werewolves.  Every time a werewolf attacked and ripped the flesh off someone's face I hoped a contraction might couple the scene, that the graphic nature of the lycans might cause my uterus to contract in disgust.  But not so much.

By 3:30, though, I started having contractions.  About 7 minutes apart.  Grandma Ricki (aka GAK) was already in Northfield playing with Thisbe.  She stuck around to see if the contractions would get stronger.  Gave Thisbe a bath.  But the contractions drifted away.  So I sent her home.

I sent her home mostly because the week before (37weeks), I'd had six hours of contractions that lead nowhere.  I even went into the clinic and the Norweigan doctor looked inside my hoo-ha and reported that "something's cooking."  Meanwhile, an incompetent nurse who was training another nurse in incompetence said things like "well, I've never used THIS machine before!  Let's see if I can get it to work!" and "at this point you should ask the patient how she feels and then reassure her that everything is going well."  Then she would look at me and say "how do you feel? everything is going great!"  Maybe you refused to come out that day because you sensed the level of stupidity hovering in the air.

The contractions came and went throughout the evening.  Some stronger.  Then long breaks without any contractions.  Daddy bought me a peanut buster parfait.  We watched Law and Order.  I called Bonnie and mentioned I might be in labor and she said she'd keep her cell phone by the bed.  I slept from 10pm-1am and then woke up to even stronger contractions.  I texted the doulas (Meg and Cassie) and Meg asked if I needed help managing the pain.  I said I didn't.  I still wasn't sure I was in labor.  The contractions still weren't close together but the ones that did arrive intermittently were strong.  Breathe and clutch the pillow strong.  I thought about waking up your dad but he's fairly sleep dependent and I figured if you were going to be born today then I wanted him to be awake for it.  I thought about calling Gak, to let her know I might really be in labor, but that seemed pointless too.  So from 3:30-5:00am I slept, but woke every 25 or 20 minutes with a contraction that made me breathe and clutch.

Finally, at 5:30 I woke your dad.  I called Gak.  I still wasn't sure I was in labor but I knew that given the strength of the contractions I was going to be pretty pissed if I wasn't.

I took a shower.  I went for a walk around the park.  The morning was foggy.  A caul creeping over the town.  I remember seeing spider webs stitched over the grass, little square hammocks of white web.  I remember two pigeons or doves on the telephone wire.  I couldn't see them clearly, just the outline of their round gray breasts against the white sky.  I wore gray yoga pants and a green tank top and black sweatshirt.  It had been (it still is) unseasonably cool.

Gak arrived with Lunds bags full of food.  The contractions still weren't regular but the ones that came had me stopping to breathe, had me leaning over the dining room table on my forearms.  Finally at 7:30 we called Dr. Ripley at home.  She said I should go get checked out at the hospital.  We told Gak we'd probably go out for breakfast afterward.

We arrived at the hospital at 8:00am.  I didn't bring my bag.  Your dad took a picture of me in front of a statue of a ring of people floating/dancing in the air.   I struck a very awkward floating/dancing pose, cell phone clutched in hand.

The nurses hooked me up to monitors and checked my dilation.  I was 6cm.  They told me I wasn't going anywhere and your father left to get my hospital bag.  I texted the doulas and told them that now would be a good time to come.  Now and quickly.

While your father was gone, before the doulas arrived, your heart rate dropped during a contraction.  Within 30 seconds I had an oxygen mask over my mouth and the hands of two nurses on my body, trying to turn me to a position that would take you out of distress.  I was on my knees, then on my side, then on my other side.  All I could think was that I was going to have an emergency C-section and I was going to be all alone.  I was thinking how very ironic that would be.  Also that I was terrified.  Also that it would all likely be OK.

And it was.  Your heart rate bounced back up again.  Your father returned.  Then the doulas.  Then Amy.  I was 7cm.  On my hands and knees in a black skirt, black sweatshirt, head pressed into a pillow.  I don't think I opened my eyes for the next hour, until you had emerged.  It was a weird, deep place of pain I was burrowing into.  I remember the Taize chants on the I-pod.  I remember Cassie's hands on my sacrum, her gentle touch.  I remember Meg telling me, as the pain got worse, to vocalize it.  And then those weird animal noises came out of me, the low, long groans that belong to birth and mourning alone.  At some point I asked if an epidural would help your heart rate issue.  Amy said it would likely make it worse.  I went back to burrowing.

Then my butt started to hurt.  There's no elegant way to say that.  The butt hurting is the sign it's time to push the baby out.  So they checked me again and I was at 10cm.  They turned me around so I was on my back.  There was a pop and a gush and my water broke.  Then Amy was saying hold your breath and push through your butt while I count to ten.  Now again.  And again. 

And I did.  And after 8 minutes you were born and on my chest.  And the euphoria started up because you had a face and a blue writhing body and fingers and toes and red pouty lips and a round chin and an overbite and sweet blue eyes.  You were in the world.  Your father bent close and kissed us both and cried.  We were in the world together, all of us.  9:43am on July 31st.