Birth Story

Well, I think it's time I add my account of the birth. Sorry it's taken so long, somehow I've found myself to be a little busier than usual!

WARNING: 1) This is long. Don't say I didn't warn you. 2) It could gross you out. I think I left out the most personal and gorey parts (e.g., "There was blood everywhere!"), but if medical stuff makes you queasy, you might want to skip it. That said . . .

Waiting to see if you're in labor is a lot like waiting to see if you're pregnant. The last few weeks before Brie was born reminded me of those last few weeks in October, waiting for a positive pregnancy test, noting the different signs that could mean that Adam and I were parents, or could just mean that I was having weird PMS.

I was having Braxton-Hicks contractions about seven to fifteen minutes apart for two weeks straight before I went into labor. Braxton-Hicks are contractions that don't hurt, they just tighten up the whole uterus, giving you that hard abdomen everyone wants, only without the six-pack. So, since I was having these all of the time, I stopped paying much attention to them until, on Thursday night, they started to hurt.

Normally pain isn't anything to get excited about, but I did get excited that night. "Hey Adam, I think, um, maybe . . ." turned over a couple of hours into, "No, I'm not imagining things, that really did hurt!" said in an excited tone of voice. The next couple of times I went to the bathroom, I saw some of what's aptly named "bloody show", and knew that, within a day or two, we'd have our baby.

So Adam and I spent the evening playing Boggle, and I beat the socks off of him. If you know Adam, you know how very strange this is. I think I've beaten him once, maybe twice, before in my life, and we've played Boggle a lot. The other time I beat him, it was only by a few points. This time I was so far ahead by the end of the first turn he never even came close to catching up. I mention this just because it's one of the labor signs they never tell you about. "1. Contractions start hurting. 2. Bloody show appears. 3. You beat your husband at board games he
usually excels at." Put it under the category of useful information.

After deciding that it was real labor, we decided that we would try to sleep through the night at home, and think about going to the hospital in the morning. Everyone told us that first labors are long, and we wanted to do as much of it in the comfort of home as possible. I wanted to do it where I could get something to eat, unlike the hospital, which would only offer me ice chips.

So we went to bed. Adam slept, and I dozed between contractions. Around six in the morning, I woke Adam up, not really wanting to labor by myself anymore. Whoever said that misery loves company was right.

By eight or so, we'd decided we wanted out, so we took a walk up the cul-de-sac and down the next street. Upon discovering that walking made the contractions closer together and harder, we decided, once again, that this really was the real thing. We further decided that it probably was time to go to the hospital. So we walked back and called my mom, who was to be my assistant labor coach, made plans to pick her up, and did the whole last-minute-run-through-the-apartment thing, picking things up, making sure things were turned off, and all of that.

We picked my mom up and headed to the hospital. I discovered that roads are bumpier when you're having contractions than when you're not. Spurning the maternity parking spots (because Adam would have to go move the car later if we used them, and I felt like I could handle the walk from the normal parking lot), we parked the car in the normal lot and walked into the hospital, and took the elevator up to the maternity floor. The first nurse we saw took one look at me and pointed us toward Labor
and Delivery without us asking her anything. We laughed and she smiled and said, "Just a guess."

At L&D, they checked us into a room and had me change into a hospital gown. I got hooked up to some monitors, and then got an ultrasound done. The funny thing was, I was supposed to have gone to the hospital that morning anyway to have an ultrasound done, so they decided to do it anyway, even though I was there for a different reason.

The ultrasound determined that I was going to stay in the hospital, even though I was only two centimeters dilated, because it showed that there wasn't much amniotic fluid left, and the placenta was calcifying. In other words, our baby was ready to come out. The womb wasn't holding her much longer.

At this point in the narrative, I should give you some information to help you keep track. By our calculations, I was in labor for about 27 hours, from 8 pm Thursday night, to about 11 pm Friday night. So when we got to the hospital, I'd been in labor for about fourteen hours.

The next few hours were pretty boring. Because the baby's heartbeat went down (and then back up) at the end of each contraction, they decided that I had to stay monitored the whole time, which meant I had to stay in bed the whole time. Not just in bed, but in the same position in bed, so that I wouldn't jerk the monitors around. Booo. This made lots of the pain-reliving, labor-speeding, distraction-making techniques we'd studied inapplicable. No walking the halls, no squatting, no standing and leaning against Adam for support. Some techniques were still useful, mostly the relaxation ones. And as the contractions got harder and harder, I became more and more grateful for those.

In the beginning of my labor, I felt fine in between contractions. So fine that I felt like this couldn't possibly be labor. But as the day progressed, the contractions took more and more out of me, so that the in between times were just barely enough to catch my breath and recover. By mid-afternoon, I was still about two centimeters, and in came our doctor. He decided to break my water, and to start me on a pitocin drip, to speed the labor.

Pitocin is interesting stuff. It doesn't make contractions harder, it just makes them peak faster and makes them closer together. So they feel harder, but they aren't.

Breaking my water did the trick. I started dilating quickly at that point, two or three centimeters and hour. And the contractions got harder and harder. I have a whole new scale for pain now. But mom was there, reminding me to loosen my jaw (it relaxes the rest of the body), and Adam was there holding my hand and watching the monitor for me, to tell me when a contraction had peaked. We found that I squeezed his hand tightly during contractions, which made me tense up. So, instead, he squeezed my hand during contractions, which let me relax, but still gave me a point of tension to concentrate on, taking my attention away from the much worse pain in my belly.

Ah! I shouldn't forget to mention the heroic efforts of the rest of my family. Waiting downstairs in the lobby almost the whole time were my brother, my dad, my sister and my brother-in-law. Dad, Josh and Laurel came up and switched out with Adam and Mom to give them a break. It was good to see them, and it meant a lot to know that they were there the whole time, praying for us. (It also meant that they got to meet the baby right away, but more on that later!)

It was about 23 or 24 hours into it that we decided to get an epidural. I'd gone into it wanting to try for natural childbirth, but acknowledging that I'd never done this before, and that I wouldn't be disappointed if I ended up having pain medication. And I wasn't. 24 hour into it I was exhausted, and just couldn't justify enduring pain for the sole purpose of enduring pain. Epidurals sometimes slow down labor, and I didn't want that to happen, but as I was on pitocin, I knew that it wasn't going to.

The epidural was lovely once I had it, but getting it was nightmarish. I had to curl up into a tight ball on my side, and stay that way for awhile. We had a wonderful anesthesiologist, who got the thing in in record time, but it was still too long to do an abdominal crunch while my insides were trying to turn themselves inside out. Again, Adam was wonderful, helping me stay curled up, and giving me a steady, loving presence to concentrate on. And Mom was wonderful, reassuring me that I'd made a good decision.

And it was a good decision. After the epidural, I was able to relax for the next two hours as I finished dilating. I think that relaxation was the reason that pushing went so well. And, thanks to doing karate, birth class exercises, and just generally staying in shape, I was able to control my muscles even though I couldn't feel them. The nurse was really surprised and what I was able to do while I had an epidural. I think karate gives you a great sense of where all your muscles are, it's just a general bodily awareness that I don't think I'd have if I wasn't in Tang
Soo Do. After all, I joined because I was a klutz and didn't want to be one anymore. (Okay, so that goal hasn't been completely met yet . . .)

Did I mention our wonderful nurses? Cathie, night nurse extraordinaire, kept coming in and checking where I was at, after the doctor had announced that I had a bit of a cervical lip left, and was to wait through the next few contractions for it to go away. Finally, she made her own announcement. Dismissively she snorted, "There's no lip! There's just a baby's head floating in there. You're going to push!" So, before the doctor even made it back, I was pushing.

And, wow! this was the best part! After 24 hours of just lying through pain, and a couple more of lying through (mostly) not-pain, I finally got to do something! I felt an amazing rush of competence. I don't think I've ever felt like that before in my life. I thought, "I know exactly what I'm doing, I know exactly which muscles to use, and I'm going to do this." It was great.

And I did! Mom and Adam helped me hold my legs back, the nurse did a mineral oil massage and I pushed. In just a few pushes I was able to reach down and feel the top of a fuzzy little head.

That was still all I could feel about twenty minutes later, but I could tell we were getting closer, even through the epidural. Then Cathie said, "Okay, let's make this the last push, okay?" I drank in her confidence, and though the baby's head didn't come out that time, it did the next. That's when finally, finally, it felt real. All day long I'd been feeling pain that felt utterly unconnected with having a kid. A cramping abdomen just feels like a cramping abdomen. Every once in awhile someone else's new baby would cry down the hall and I'd remember why I was there. But
when Brie's head came out, I could tell that it was a baby's head. And with the next contraction, I felt her shoulders and arms and legs slither through, and they felt like shoulders and arms and legs, and I knew that it was real, that we had done it and that we had a baby.

The doctor put her on my chest, and I got to see her, this little one I'd been living with for nine months. And honest to God, she was gorgeous. I rubbed her back, and she started to cry, and I cried and Adam was there loving on both of us and it was all worth it, completely worth it. Brigid Elizabeth was born, and we loved her, and love her and will love her.

There was more, lots more, and way too many procedures to get through before we three were allowed a well-earned night's sleep, but eventually it was all over, it was done, and our new family, we THREE, spent our first night together. Thanks be to God!

EPILOGUE: My mom and dad got to hold Brigid, and it was great to see them as grandparents. They, and my brother Josh, went on to test for new karate belts the next day, surprising everyone in the dojo, who didn't expect to see them there after such a trying night. Laurel and her husband (the other Uncle Josh), came in and held her too. The next day her paternal grandmother and great-grandfather got to meet her, along with her Aunt Jenn and Uncle Micah, and about fifteen other people. Fr. David came and blessed her, and the wonderful Kat, who worked on the floor, got
to peek in all day. Thanks to everyone who prayed, it was an amazing, blessed, healthy, good experience, and the outcome beyond all imagining. Thank you all so much, and especially, again, Thanks be to God!