Birth story!

[rivka]

I started having regular, long, noticeable but not painful contractions at 2am on the morning of my due date. By 6:30am, the contractions had become stronger and painful - although not severely so - and they were continuing to arrive every 5-7 minutes. They seemed like textbook early labor. I dropped Alex off at school, ate some breakfast, made my practical arrangements for the hospital trip, and baked Colin a birthday cake. I had called the midwife to give her a heads-up earlier, and she called back around 10 to remind me that if the contractions started coming 2-3 minutes apart regardless of how painful they were, or if they got much more painful regardless of how close together they were, I should go to the hospital.

At 10:30, I called Michael and asked him to come home. The contractions were starting to come closer together, 3-5 minutes apart, and I felt better having him nearby. We ate a light lunch and around noon decided that we should probably go to the hospital.

When we got to L&D, there was no tub room available. One was being cleaned. The midwife on call (Kate) wanted to check me in to triage to wait and to have an initial evaluation. I dug in my heels; we'd spent a lot of time in triage when I miscarried, and I didn't want to go back in there. Emily, my dear friend and doula, went out of the room to confer with Kate and explain why I didn't want to go to triage. She came back with a compromise solution: Kate would bring a portable fetal monitor to the waiting room to check the baby's heart rate there.

She had a hard time getting a good monitoring strip in the waiting room. This turned out to be foreshadowing.

We waited more than two hours for the tub room to be cleaned. We hung out in the empty waiting room, plugged in my CD player and listened to music, chatted, paced around. Periodically Michael and Emily timed my contractions - still every 3-5 minutes, lasting about a minute and ten seconds each. We waited.

Finally the room was ready. I changed into a gown and Kate examined me: 4cm, 75% effaced. She tried to get fetal monitoring while I was standing and couldn't establish a good baseline - she finally had to have me lie down on my side. Niblet was showing a low-ish baseline HR, which was mildly worrying but not cause for immediate alarm. It did mean that much, much more frequent and intrusive monitoring was in my future.

I felt incredibly restless and wanted to pace the halls. We went around and around the U-shaped L&D floor, looking out the 16th-floor windows at the city views at either end. When a contraction hit, I had to stop and focus on breathing through it. They often came coupled together - one contraction, then another one about 15 seconds later, and then the more usual 4-minute break before the next one. From time to time I tried resting in my room, sitting on a birth ball, or using a rocking chair, but I kept being driven back to the halls. I only stopped when Kate wanted to monitor me. At length. Annoyingly.

Around 5 or 5:30 I started feeling shaky. Michael and Emily brought me cups of hot chicken broth to drink, and that settled me down. Then there was the longest and most frustrating monitoring period of all. Kate was noticing some fetal HR decelerations, and wanted to make sure they were harmless, but she was having enough trouble getting a fix on his heart that it took freaking forever. I wound up in bed again, where I didn't want to be. In bed it felt like my contractions were coming further apart and feeling less intense. I couldn't tell if that was because I was turning so far inward (which I was) or if there was a genuine change in the frequency. It was a frustrating, unhappy, anxious period that seemed to last a very long time.

At the end of it, at 6:30, Kate checked me again. To our shock, she announced that I hadn't progressed since 2:30 - I was still at 4cm, 75% effaced. And who knew when I'd dilated to the initial 4cm - it could've been a while before, not during the day's labor at all. Kate went to consult by phone with the senior midwife, Kathy, and then came back and announced bluntly,

"We don't think you're really in labor."

She said that labor, by definition, progresses. I wasn't progressing, which meant that despite the intensely painful contractions she thought I was just in prodromal labor or prelabor. I said I thought that having to lie down for all that monitoring was stalling my labor. She said that if I were really in labor nothing would stall it. She also pointed out that I had been up all night and was probably exhausted.

Things got very tense for a while. It was clear that my contractions had in fact slowed way down. Kate said some monumentally unhelpful things, including remarking, for no apparent reason that I could see, that if I hadn't already had an eight-pound baby she wouldn't think that I could, with my weird pelvis. And saying that "you should dilate a centimeter per hour," which infuriated me because that's the kind of inflexible metric you go to a midwife to avoid. I finally told Michael and Emily that I wanted Kate to stay out of the room for a while because her negativity was making me upset.

She came back after a while to present options: I could go home and take a sleeping pill, which is what she recommended. I could stay at the hospital for a short period longer to see what happened. Or we could try Cervidil as a mild induction option, which she didn't recommend and I didn't care for either. I asked about breaking my waters, and she said that she didn't want to commit me. She shared the inspiring story of a woman who had come in last week in my exact condition, labored in vain, and was sent home. "And she's still pregnant."

Emily, Michael and I decided on this plan: Emily would go home. Michael would go out and get some dinner. I would stay in the hospital and try to nap for an hour or so, and see if that made any difference to either my condition or my perspective. I declined the Ambien, thinking of naomikritzer's experience, and everyone darkened the room and cleared out to let me sleep.

Less than five minutes after the room emptied, my water broke.

I felt a moderate rush of fluid. Because I was so discouraged, I felt unsure that it was actually my membranes breaking - it might've been pee. I shifted position and felt a little more water leak out. So I got up to summon Kate, and it was like Noah's flood. Water poured all over me, all over the bed, pooling on the floor, making quite a slip-and-fall risk. Water was everywhere. It was clear, I was relieved to see - no meconium, just a little blood on the bed.

I didn't know how to call a nurse or midwife, so I went out to the nurse's station and told them what had happened. When I turned around to go back to my room, I heard a collective murmur at how drenched I was. Kate came in shortly thereafter and tried to clean me and the room up, but I continued to pour out amniotic fluid. I couldn't believe how much there was.

"You have seventeen hours to go into labor," she told me, before they would start worrying about infection risk from prolonged ruptured membranes. At that point I wasn't contracting much at all. I called Michael and told him my water broke - "but go ahead and get your food, because nothing's happening."

Perhaps ten minutes later I was hit with a hard, hard contraction. And then another, two minutes later. And another. I called Michael in a panic because the contractions were too much for me to cope with on my own. He had left the hospital and was at a restaurant - he had to abandon his order and come straight back. Waiting for him was agonizing. I felt utterly helpless in the face of the contractions - they were coming so hard and fast, without the normal ramp-up that prepares you for the most intense part of labor. I had gone from almost no contractions to transition in about fifteen minutes.

Michael came in and tried his best to help me through them. I couldn't find a position or strategy that felt tolerable. I whined and complained and did a lot of unproductive moaning - I couldn't really direct my voice or breathing. I asked to get in the tub and Kate stalled me because she didn't want my labor to slow down if I got in too early, but eventually she was convinced that it was indeed transition and started running the water.

An hour after my water broke, 45 minutes after the contractions started with a vengeance, I had dilated to 7cm. I begged for the tub - it was the only thing I could imagine might possibly help me tolerate the contractions - and she let me get in. It was clear that nothing was going to slow me down at that point. Emily came back a minute or two after I got in the water. The tub didn't help as much as I had hoped, but it did help some and the jets on my back felt really good in between contractions.

Just a few contractions later, I felt something I'd never felt before. With Alex I had never felt "the urge to push" that people talk about - I pushed because I was 10cm dilated and people were telling me to push. And it took two hours to push Alex out. This time, just ten or fifteen minutes after I was measured at 7cm, I felt my whole body overtaken by an all-consuming and intolerable pressure. I literally felt as though I would die if I couldn't push. I said so, at length, and Michael ran to get Kate.

"I have to push I have to push I have to I have to!" I said. Kate reached down with two fingers and said, sounding very surprised, "Yes, he's almost crowning." We hadn't planned for him to be born in the tub, but it was clear that I wasn't going anywhere at that point. I waited for the contraction to build and then gave in to the enormous pressure to push. It hurt like hell. I pushed with all my might. Waited for the next contraction. And then bellowed at the top of my lungs for as long as I had breath as I pushed his head right out.

"STOP SCREAMING because you have to deliver the shoulders," Kate started to say, and then looked down and corrected herself. "Never mind." Colin's shoulders had already slid out, and then his body slipped into the water, all on the same contraction. Kate caught him and kept just his head above the water's surface, resting his head on my chest and keeping the rest of his body underwater for warmth. I reached down and held him. He looked blue - babies born in the water don't pink up right away - but everyone said he was fine and well. I could feel him wiggling and grunting under my hand. He was born twenty minutes after I got in the tub, an hour and a half after my water broke, and two and a half hours after we were assured I wasn't in labor. "Is he really born?" I asked dazedly.

She cut the cord underwater and covered his upper body with towels right there in the water, to keep drafts off him. But the water was cooling quickly, so we all got out. First a nurse carried Colin off to the warmer to be dried and weighed, and then Michael helped me out, holding on to the clamped cord with one hand. I moved to the bed to deliver the placenta. I got to hold Colin for a while, but then came the interminable process of getting me sewn up - I had three small but awkwardly-placed tears that were apparently hard to stitch because she was sewing on me forever, and it hurt. During that time they did Colin's routine newborn stuff, and then Michael held him and talked to him and lulled him into a quiet alert state. Then, finally, I got to nurse him for the first time. After a few false starts, he did beautifully.

It was such a strange experience. It was really like two separate labors, one slow and frustrating and the other frighteningly fast. I don't feel that great about how I coped, or didn't cope, with it - but I'm delighted with the end result, my beautiful baby boy.

Comments

[ratphooey.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for sharing that with us!

[carbonel]

Wow. I see what you mean about two labors. Good thing you didn't go home.

No issues with positioning for delivery this time?

I'm so glad everything ended well, though it sounds frustrating as hell during the slow parts.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

No issues with positioning for delivery this time?

No, isn't that funny? No "let's carefully work your baby around the obstruction," no prolonged descent. Just POW, baby!

[eeyorerin]

Wow, it must have been so discouraging to hear that they thought you weren't in labor after all that time and effort. I'm glad things changed so quickly and you got such a lovely result at the end.

[aloha-moira.livejournal.com]

Yikes, that sounds intense and frustrating. I guess all's well that ends well, though... thanks for sharing!

[redbird]

The end result is excellent and as it should be.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's intense even to *read* about it. So glad it went well in the end. It sounds like your body just totally knew what to do.

[geminigirl]

What an amazing story! Some of it...the "seven to baby in no time" is very much how my labor with Naomi went.

Congratulations.

[tammylc.livejournal.com]

Wow, what an amazing story! Thank you for sharing it, and congratulations on the outcome.

I *loved* the "stop screaming... oh, never mind" line. LOL'd at that one.

[lizardling.livejournal.com]

Wow. Thank you for sharing the story with us.

[spiritdancer]

The end part (an hour and a half from the waters breaking)? Sounds more or less like what I did. Although my husband claims he timed it from when I asked for an epidural (2 births, requested each time, delivered within 20 minutes of the request) :-) With #2, the OB didn't _quite_ manage to catch the boy before he hit the table. Oops.

OB stated that if I had another, she'd just go ahead and schedule me for an induction, since if I waited until my water broke, I'd not make it to the hospital before delivering :-)

Congratulations on your baby boy!

[naomikritzer]

That's an awesome story. I worry sometimes about my particular idiosyncratic experience with Ambien scaring off people who would benefit from taking it, but in your case, sounds like it's a damn good thing you didn't take it! :-D

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow. That sounds... intense. And amazing.

And I'm afraid that I had the last names in your family all mixed up...

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Girls have my last name and boys have Michael's. I borrowed the strategy from one of my grad school professors.

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

I like that idea! I'd kind of figured that you'd have kept your name, but adding Alex into the mix made me wonder (and guess wrong).

[bosssio.livejournal.com]

what a great story! It sounds like you coped amazingly well, especially with the "in labor, oh, no not in labor, oh wait, HERE HE COMES!" aspect of it call.

I did read in Ina May's Guide to childbirth about how sometimes dilation and contractions don't always match up - and that the "1 cm per hour" is an average, not a speed. Hell, with both I dilated FAST (6 cm in 1 1/2 hours with Ant on pitocin and 4 cm in under 2 hours with Liam).

Go Colin! A friend of mine birthed her baby in her tub, and his nickname is Aquababy torpedo! So you have a little aqua baby there!

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Wow! Intense, and confusing. I have to admit that I would have wanted to kill Kate and her negativity, but I'm glad it all worked out in the end.

Does Alex have Michael's surname as well? I thought she didn't, but maybe you're doing the tradition of girls get the mother's name and boys get the father's name? And why did you decide to call the Niblet Colin?

Also, you have a couple of bizarre anonymous spam comments which appear to have been translated from some other language, possibly several times :)

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Alex has my surname and Colin has Michael's. You can just remember that the Nutts are the ones who have... yikes, I confess that didn't occur to me before we decided on a gendered naming strategy.

We just like the name Colin. His middle name is the same as Michael's father's middle name, though. Alex's middle name, Calvert, is a surname in Michael's birth mother's family. If we have another, we'll use a surname from my family as a middle name, like Nesbit or Kingsley.

[treadpath.livejournal.com]

WOW!!! Congratulations and welcome, Colin! :D

[roozle.livejournal.com]

Congratulations and welcome, Colin! Thanks for sharing the story.

[ex-serenejo.livejournal.com]

You have a baby. You did fine. :-)

You have a baby!!! Yay!!!

[beaq.livejournal.com]

This is probably the first time I actually feel like I could *imagine* having a baby. Whew.

Look at you go!

[firecat]

The Rosie the Riveter icon is definitely completely apropos. Congratulations!

[ailbhe]

Crikey. That's... intense.

Well done you. I'm very impressed you were able to ask to have Kate kept out of the room for a bit.

Women are strong.

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

WOW! Congratulations :) I've read a few stories like this one now... I'm glad you stayed where you were, and trusted yourself, and got the things you asked for (like Kate leaving for a bit, and all that).

N.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you stayed where you were,

No kidding! I think my water would've broken in the car if we'd tried to go home. And then I probably would've hit transition in the hospital parking garage. Not fun.

Nice-lookin' baby you've got there, by the way. :-)

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

*beams*

N.

[fairoriana.livejournal.com]

What a wonderful story, except for the unhelpful midwife bits. Yay for Colin coming! And yay for tubs -- I thought it wasn't helping me until I got OUT and discovered what the water was doing for me.

[kate_nepveu]

Woof.

I'm glad you didn't need surgery and everyone is fine and well now.

She said that if I were really in labor nothing would stall it.

I and my C-section scar would beg to differ. WTF, seriously?

So, I kinda hate Kate-the-midwife, but I'm sure I'm projecting, so don't mind me.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

No, no, I'm also pretty unhappy with Kate-the-midwife, and trying to decide whether to provide her with feedback.

[kate_nepveu]

Since you have good relationships with other people at the practice, perhaps make a followup appointment with one of them and bring it up then?

(I meant to mention the deeply erratic bedside manner of the doctor who delivered SteelyKid to my regular doctor, but just plain forgot by the time I saw her specifically again.)

[ailbhe]

Unless you feel it would be too upsetting for you, please do it. I have Very Strong Feelings on the treatment of women during labour and can imagine the effect Kate's pronouncements might have had on a less experienced, less well-supported, or less awesome mother.

[lynsaurus.livejournal.com]

Welcome, Colin!

Go you for speaking up about your feelings, needs, and preferences. I'm so glad Michael and Emily were there.

[perceval.livejournal.com]

Oh what a lovely and inspiring story. Welcome to the world, Colin!

[lizzibabe.livejournal.com]

[Laugh!] Now I'm thinking of a Doctor Who episode: Colin and the Two Labors!

That's an amazing story. I feel privileged to hear it.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

Wow. That sounds intense. As far as how you coped -- I'd say you did as well as I would have under the circumstances, and in any case it's the end result that matters : )

[tendyl.livejournal.com]

Wow! That reads, intense. I'm glad you and Colin came through it fine. I think I also would've been annoyed with Kate.

[kassrachel.livejournal.com]

"Is he really born?" I asked dazedly.

OMG!

Wow: two amazing stories, completely different. I can only imagine how different they were to experience.