I’m especially writing this for my cousin Jess who is due in a couple of weeks and I’m guessing she could use some good labor and delivery vibes sent her way. I know that every pregnancy and delivery is different, and there are certain advantages to having a small baby come early, but nonetheless it’s a major physical and emotional experience that women share with each other, including the good and the bad.
And I’m giving you fair warning that this truly is almost three weeks in the making, with no detail left undocumented. It’s the “It’s My Blog and I’ll Write a Novel if I Want To” entry. Once I got a few pages into the story and we hadn’t even left the house yet to go to the hospital, I realized I could either start over with an abbreviated version, or continue with the level of detail that I am known to share. I continued with the unabridged version, in part, to have this to share with Webber when he’s older. And I wanted to capture as much as I could while everything was still fresh.
So put on a pot of coffee, pour yourself the first cup, and hunker down for some good blog readin’.
Thursday October 18th I woke up at 2 in the morning to pee. Nothing new. It was at least the second time to do so that evening thus far. A fun common pregnancy side effect: frequent peeing. So, I peed. Returned to bed. Laid down. Felt a bit more of a trickle down there. Hmmm, I thought. This would be pretty embarrassing if anyone else was awake to notice it. Glad that I escaped a public display of another fun common side effect of pregnancy, that being the loosening of the pelvic muscles that lead to extra fun things like peeing yourself.
Returned to the bathroom. Peed some more. A considerable amount, actually. Even in my groggy state I realized this was weird. But again, brushed it off as pregnancy-related.
Returned to bed. Laid down. This time, it was between a trickle and a gush. OKAY then, this is NOT normal.
Returned to the bathroom. Clear fluid coming out with abandon. Absorbing fluid with handful after handful of toilet paper. Could this be…? Is this really how it’s all starting??
I stepped into the bedroom and woke Nate by saying, “Um, my water has broken,” smirking while delivering this news. This felt surreal.
A two second pause on his part before sitting up and coming into the bathroom to see the wet toilet paper I had made. And the puddle on the floor. “You’re sure that’s not pee?” he asked. I kind of wished it was. Were we ready for this? I was still smiling. Yes, we were. Guess we weren’t going to work that day. Or for the next several weeks, in my case. Oh WOW.
I wasn’t having any contractions, but knew that generally once your water has broken, a delivery should happen within 24 hours or so to decrease the risk of infection. So we called the hospital to let them know we’d be coming in. “We’ll see you when you get here,” I was told by the nurse who answered my call. “No rush.” Ooooh… dangerous words to say to a woman who feels fine and wants to wrap up “just a few loose ends” before heading in for a long day at the office. I knew I was probably looking at some Pitocin-induced contractions, which are famously stronger than ones that happen on their own. No, I wasn’t motivated to rush into that.
I recalled a birth story of a friend who delivered her first child 3 weeks early. Her water broke, and she also wanted to avoid Pitocin. So she made herself some blue cohosh tea and went cross-country skiing. Contractions eventually started and she delivered her son within the next day or so. I didn’t have blue cohosh tea, but I did have red raspberry leaf tea, which is also supposed to help with uterine tone. I figured it was better than nothing. I had Nate make a cup of it with two tea bags.
I sipped my tea while putting together the necessary bags, which we, of course, hadn’t done yet. We had just been told the Murphy’s Law in our last HypnoBirthing class that packing your bags was a sure way to go past your due date. Do with that information what you will, Jess!
In addition to packing the bags, I made a fabulous bowl of oatmeal, emptied a few trash cans, and took pictures of the nursery in its not-quite-done state, as well as my to-do list, and Nate holding our cat Toonces, the one who likes to be held like a baby.
Nate installed the car seat, rounded up CDs to help energize/relax/comfort me/us as needed during labor, and parked himself in his recliner while I finished my bustling. He looked like he was cramming for a test in college as he read the affirmations from the HypnoBirthing book that came with our class. I considered this list “All the Right Things He was Supposed to Say to Me During Labor.” Well, it would be worth a try.
It was dark and chilly as we got into the car at 4:30 in the morning. Nate drove a very paternal 64 mph on the way to the hospital. We mused over the ironies of this timing:
We had JUST done our prenatal intake appointment at the hospital the day before, in which we toured the maternity unit, made sure insurance information was up to date, and answered the very crucial 196 questions that you must answer in order to have a baby, such as how many daily servings of caffeine you usually consume, and whether or not religion plays an important role in your life. Seriously.
Also, Nate was supposed to be gone the day of the prenatal intake and overnight, working up north and not always reachable by phone due to poor cell reception. But he had a last minute change in work plans and was able to meet me at the hospital to see where we would be delivering our kid.
As we drove home from the intake appointment, we decided to eat out that night since Nate would actually be around and we wouldn’t have to dine separately - him up north, me in the living room. We enjoyed a delicious meal at our favorite brewpub, and I remarked how nice it was that we could take the opportunity to have such a date night, you know, “while we can, in these last few weeks.”
And because Nate got to come to the prenatal intake appointment, he also got to have his fatherly question answered of exactly where he should drive up. We were told that if it was between 9pm and 8am, to use the Emergency Room entrance. Yeah, sure, good to know. Like we would need that dramatic middle-of-the-night entrance.
But there we were, arriving at 5am, walking through the ER doors. We passed a row of wheelchairs. Nate asked me if I wanted him to push me in one of them, you know, like the movies. I told him emphatically NO. I felt fine. Still no contractions. The only thing out of the ordinary for me was the occasional gush of fluid in my underwear. I used up all of the pads that I’d had laying around in my bathroom since January.
So we strolled up to the nurses station, gave my name as the patient who had called a few hours before, and were brought into the “Treatment Room”. This was the room that I remember being told on the tour the day before that was used for any special monitoring or procedures that needed to be done due to complications or something. I just remember that it was essentially the “Special Room.” And it was our room to start with.
A nurse had me change into a very sexy hospital outfit, get into a hospital bed, and she asked me how everything started. I told her my fluid trickling/gushing story, which ended with a riveting “…So here we are, but no contractions.” She hooked me up to a monitor to get a baseline of the baby’s heartbeat and track any contractions that may have started. That needed to be on for at least 20-30 minutes, so she left the room for Nate and I to look at each other and say things like, “It’s a good thing I did the dishes yesterday.” And, “I’ll call work after the nurse comes back and unhooks you. How long did she say she’d be?” The adrenalin of our early morning was slowly wearing off.
After some time, I was unhooked, free to roam the halls in said sexy hospital gown, since walking can help contractions start. The midwife was called and would be in at 7:00. We made calls to co-workers. I called my mom to catch her before she planned to leave for Vermont for the next 2 days and would have been unreachable since she didn’t have a cell phone. I told her I was not calling to say come in right now, since we were looking at a long time before anything would really be happening, but that Nate would be in touch as things progressed.
We returned to the Treatment Room. Our midwife arrived, bubbly as ever. I’d also just had a prenatal appointment with her the day before, during which she remarked, “Isn’t it fascinating to think that this little one knows when his or her time will come, and we’re all just along for the ride?!” Fascinating indeed!
She reviewed the monitor printout, checked my cervix, which in case you didn’t already know, Jess, is done by FEELING the cervix with their fingers, not by looking inside to measure the centimeters, which, for some reason, is what I had always thought. She told me I was 2 centimeters dilated and 80% effaced, and that, are you ready for this, SHE COULD FEEL HAIR. Like, Baby-Head-O-Hair. To which I beamed, "Get OUT!"
I was fully expecting her to say that I wasn’t at all dilated and that we were going to have to start from scratch with Pitocin.
It was also determined by the monitor that I have had a few mild contractions, unbeknownst to me. I mean, if I had really paid attention, I guess I could have said it felt like I was having mild period cramps. But with a gradual start and stop time,– not like “OH MY GOD, HONEY, START TIMING THIS CONTRACTION NOW!”
So, because things were poking along on their own, and because I was negative for Group B Strep (which would have meant the need for antibiotics), she asked us if we’d like to spend one last morning together, out in the world, maybe having breakfast, going for a walk, taking a nap…versus watching the clock in the Treatment Room while wearing my sexy hospital threads and counting the hours and minutes until they give me Pitocin. She said that sometimes, contractions start on their own in the hours after water has broken, especially with the help of walking. She said to meet back at the hospital by noon or 1:00, and we’d reassess my progress, and make more of a plan from there.
I am now aware that, at the time, I did not fully appreciate what a gift she was giving us. But it’s a huge part of the magic of Webber’s birth story.
Needless to say, we opted for the scenario that involved me wearing my own clothes for the next several hours.
I fully admit that another thought that crossed my mind was my to-do list, and all the things I could accomplish that would help make me feel like I could actually, really, feel like a prepared parent. A parent with a few less loose ends hanging over those first days and weeks of my new child’s life. You know, like finding a pesky missing TV remote control to return to my step-father, hanging curtains that I had purchased a few weeks before, and organizing our storage system in the barn.
I expressed this train of thought, which I’m sure was not a surprise to Nate. He told me firmly, “NO – we are going to stay focused on three things, and three things only: Eating, Walking, and Sleeping. Not necessarily in that order.”
Bless him for protecting me from myself. “I know, I know,” I said. Okay, I could do those three things.
We decided to have our “last meal” at the Senator. Of course it contrasted from the meal the night before because we KNEW this was our last meal as… just a couple. We didn’t exactly blend in with the businessmen/leaf-peeping tourist brunch crowd that otherwise made up the dining population that morning. I was wearing my maternity overalls and a bright pink top that accentuated my delicate condition. Now used to the inquiries from strangers due to the obvious rotund-ness of my midsection, I said to Nate how funny it would be to get a question from someone between now and the delivery about “when I’m due.” Sure enough, the waitress asked if we were expecting a baby, to which we answered, “Yes, we're actually in labor right now!" I added that my water had broken earlier that morning. Well didn’t that throw her for a loop. She gave us a weak, confused smile, said congratulations, but to my disappointment did not give us any kind of “being in labor” discount when the bill came.
I’m not sure when I’d say I first felt my contractions. Maybe on the ride to breakfast. The first one Nate witnessed the effects of was while I was eating my corned beef hash. I just kind of took a deep breath, looked down at my plate, and had to pause from whatever I had been saying at the time. But I think I was in denial that that feeling was actually a contraction. There was no monitor confirming it for me, just this familiar “period cramp” feeling. It gently came, and gently left.
I must also say that I wasn’t really expecting the contractions to start on their own. At least not until I put in some serious walking time. I thought it was very nice of our midwife to give us a few last hours together, and to express hope that there was a chance of it happening naturally. But I was still pretty sure that we were going to drive back to the hospital, still be 2 cm, and get hooked up right away.
Nonetheless we continued with the “Three Things” plan and started out on our walk around the streets of Hallowell. It was an amazingly perfect morning for a “last walk”. I have always loved the fall, and this was peak foliage season on day that was unseasonably warm. A crisp breeze helped make sure things felt like October instead of August. I remember that everything seemed golden. I don’t think there were any clouds in the way of the sun, and most of the leaves around us were a bright yellow-orange.
I wanted walk up the steep hill that I usually do, but Nate shot down that idea, citing a concern about conserving my energy for long hours ahead of us, hours of stronger contractions and pushing. I was, in fact, beginning to have surges that were causing me to slow down and instinctively hold my breath. But they were still just “sneaking up on me,” then slipping away rather than hitting me all of a sudden, then turning off like a switch. During these crampy times I took baby steps, looked down at the ground, and concentrated on breathing in and out slowly. Nate knew when I was in the middle of one when my speech would drift off, sometimes putting my hand up to let him know that it would be a minute until I could come back to the conversation.
We returned home, and I had Nate make me another cup of red raspberry leaf tea with two more tea bags. While the waves of contractions were coming more frequently than they were at 7:00 that morning, I still felt like they were manageable. They were just like bad period cramps. The kind that make you double over, feel lightheaded, hold your breath, and wait for them to pass. I was feeling tired from having started the day so early, and really wanted to nap if at all possible. Especially since my vision of the day’s proceedings included being up till midnight due to accomplishing the most incomprehensible, physically demanding feat that I would ever survive. I had heard about the benefits of working through the early stages of labor at home as much as possible. I figured I was either going to be doubled over here at home, or doubled over in a johnny at the hospital. But Nate was getting anxious as he watched me react to the waves of cramps. He was not used to seeing me doubled over regardless of my attire, and I think he wanted to know that someone was closer than a half hour away who knew how to deal with a woman who was doubled over. “Come on,” he said. “We’re GOING to the hospital.” He was, as we say, putting his foot down. I put my shoes on and we were off.
Nate drove a very paternal 79 mph to the hospital this time. We arrived at about 11:30. This time we were lead to an actual labor and delivery room. Tonda, the nurse who would be attending to us introduced herself, and said that she had gotten a call from Carol, a co-worker friend of mine who used to work as a labor and delivery nurse on this unit. When Carol got called in to replace me for work that day because my water broke, she called the unit to “make sure we got a really good nurse.” And a really good nurse we got.
She said she understood from our intake form that we were planning on using HypnoBirthing for our labor and delivery. We explained that that was our original plan, but a HypnoBirthing class had not been offered until very recently, so we had only attended two classes so far. I had been doing the relaxation exercises daily since the beginning of class a couple of weeks before, but was not exactly achieving the desired hypnotic state that is intended. I usually did the exercises at the end of the day, and managed to fall asleep about two thirds of the time. Hey, at least it had been a nice lesson in forcing me to relax.
I hadn’t realized how new HypnoBirthing is, and was told at the intake the day before that while the nurses were starting to see it being used more lately, most of them were not experienced in assisting women with this method. Tonda told us it was relatively new to her, but that she’d do whatever she could to help us. We told her not to worry because we’d probably be using our own methods of laboring anyway. What these methods were I wasn’t quite sure yet, but I knew it wouldn’t have worked for me to follow one strict approach. She mentioned that one woman who recently used HypnoBirthing there had the clock taken down from the wall in her room. That sounded good so we asked Tonda to do the same for us.
She hooked me up to the monitor again to check the progress. It was interesting to see that the machine made different noises and drew different lines when a surge would come. Our midwife was called, and while we waited for her, we began what felt like more officially working through labor. We talked, I paced, we listened to Phish and the Who. Nate went down the list of “All the Right Things to Say”. It felt foreign for me to hear him say high-school-track-coach things like “You can do it,” “You’re doing a good job,” and “Stay focused on slow, deep breathing.” Well, you know what I mean. I wondered where the Everyday Nate was. I had never seen Helping-Someone-Through-Labor Nate. I knew he was doing his best. Lord knows I have no idea how I would be at helping someone through such a monumentally challenging physical experience, especially if I had never experienced, let alone witnessed, it myself.
Our midwife arrived at about 1:00 and checked my cervix again. This time I was 4 cm, which was encouraging. She also stripped my membranes, or, “gave my cervix a little what-for” as Nate described what the process looked like. She said that stripping the membranes could also help speed things along. Based on what the monitor had recorded for contractions, they weren’t as frequent and regular as she would have hoped by this time. So she suggested giving things another half hour in hopes of contractions that increased in frequency and regularity. If they didn’t, she explained, just a LITTLE Pitocin could help move things along, so that we could maybe have this baby by 8:00 or 9:00pm. She expressed her concern for my energy level in the case of having a labor that lasted into the wee hours. I agreed that that didn’t sound very appealing. There was something to be said for getting things over with, so that we could meet our baby after all these months!
During the next hour or so, I continued the pacing and breathing. I really wanted to lie down but knew that being upright would help move things along better. I tried sitting / balancing on the birthing ball. Nate gave me a back rub.
I found that when a surge would come, I would close my eyes and go inward for a minute. I tried to breathe the way I’d read about: long and slow. Doing this when you’re uncomfortable is a whole different ball of wax compared to when you’re laying on a blanket in class listening to new age relaxation music. My breathing was shallow. I had the adrenalin shakes.
I wished we had gotten more than two out of the five HypnoBirthing classes under our belts. I tried to picture the different layers of muscles in my uterus expanding like we learned about.
All I could focus on was how uncomfortable I was. I wanted my mind to be in a different place. I wanted to visualize some peaceful scene and feel my body let go as I went there.
The contractions still weren’t what we had hoped for. By the time the Pitocin IV was actually in my hand, it was about 2:15. (Nate helped me re-create the timing of this, as the time in the hospital was a bit of a blur for me).
The past hour had not gone as I had hoped. I realized that I was feeling reactive instead of proactive. I was not feeling in control of this experience. I asked Tonda for any suggestions she had for comfort measures. She recommended the Jacuzzi. I had heard that women either loved the hot tub or hated it. At that point I couldn’t really imagine that it would help, but my current plan of panicking wasn’t really working, either. I paced and breathed as the water filled the tub. Nate told me “Once you get into the tub, you’ll feel relaxed and rejuvenated.” That was a nice thought.
I was still feeling a bit desperate. If the hot tub itself didn’t work, maybe relaxing my muscles with laughter would. I remember reading in Ina May Gaskin’s Guide to Childbirth that humor can play a very helpful role in moving labor along. I had felt a distinct sense of relief when I read this, after having read the bulk of her text, which describes some pretty touchy-feely new age stuff, some of which was feeling a little too far out there for Nate and me. Using humor in labor, now this we could do.
I asked Nate to set up our laptop with the DVD of America’s Funniest Videos that we had brought. It was a gift at my baby shower – a special edition of “Motherhood Madness”. Nate knew of my plans to bring this DVD. Although, when I suggested it now, he looked at me, surprised, and asked if I was sure. I think he thought this labor was a little too advanced to resort to the AFV. I said why not, it was worth a try.
I got into the hot tub at about 3:00, still hooked up to the IV. The water was on the hot side of warm, just the way I like it. My shaking stopped, and the warm water was a distraction in and of itself. Nate set the laptop on a chair a couple feet away. With the tub jets on, I couldn’t hear the show at all, but it was a fine additional distraction. I watched the show in between surges, and remember thinking that it really wasn’t as funny as I usually think it is. All those guys being hit in the crotch – why do I normally think that is so funny? I mean, I HOWL at this show.
When the surges came, I closed my eyes and tried to breathe, while making my tense muscles loose and heavy. The waves still felt like really heavy period cramps. It was only mid-afternoon. They were only going to get more intense, I thought. They still weren’t the earth-shattering-I-think-my-body-is-going-to-break kind of painful that I had heard about. I had to stay strong for those kinds of contractions that were surely awaiting me.
At about 3:45, Tonda returned to hook me up to the monitor again to check my progress. I’d had this heavy feeling, like gas, for a couple of hours. Before she attached the belts to me, I asked if I could use the bathroom first. She followed me in, wheeling the IV stand, which is a good thing because I wasn’t at all concerned with that piece of equipment that was attached to my hand. I told her I just felt like I needed to… well, if we’re going to tell the story accurately, “go #2”. That’s what I felt like. I had these waves of uncontrollable urges come over me that compelled me to tense my abdominal muscles, hold my breath, and bear down. As I stood there in front of her, unable to resist doing so, she said something to the effect of, “let’s bypass the monitor for a minute – come over here to the bed.” She checked me like the midwife had done, and said, “I don’t feel your cervix.” Meaning: I had reached full dilation, and this urge to push was the real deal!
At this point she turned into Wonder Woman, advising me on how to breathe, calling our midwife, calling for backup, telling Nate how he could help me. I felt so relieved to know that my body was ready to help push this baby into the world. The room was suddenly buzzing with at least one other nurse and two resident doctors. Our midwife was on her way, but if she didn’t get there in time, one of the residents was gloving up and would be the one to help deliver our baby. I knew that this was not how it was supposed to go, but felt a certain assurance that my baby and me would get through this, no matter who was at the other end of things.
A table was wheeled in with instruments and sterile wrap, and I was aware of a collective sense of everyone in the room praying for our midwife to arrive.
Nate continued saying things on The List. Tonda patted my face and neck with a cool cloth and said other nice things, none of which I can remember now.
The resident was taking his place at the foot of my bed. Just then, our midwife arrived, and I swear everyone in the room cheered. She was breathless and wide-eyed and remarked at how surprising it was that things moved along so quickly. I continued my breathing and pushing when the waves compelled me to do so. I was never told to push when I didn’t feel the urge, and was never told to suppress a push that I felt I needed to do.
I had just made a point at my prenatal visit with our midwife the day before to ask that she call us “Nicky and Nate” instead of “Nicole and Nathan” and she did a fabulous job honoring this request when it mattered most. “Breathe your baby down, Nicky,” she told me. “Breathe your baby down.”
I continued to ride the waves of “pushes”, although it really felt more like my body was doing what it knew it needed to do. At some point I became aware of our midwife telling me to breathe our baby down, which I remembered from the HypnoBirthing lingo meant “push.” I gave it a little more of a concerted effort.
I felt a circle of stinging burn, and instinctively resisted pushing into that. But I knew that the burn meant progress, and there was no going back! I wanted to move forward, and knew we were getting so close. I pushed into the burn.
She asked if I wanted to touch the baby’s head. I had expected that I would want to, or to see the head with a mirror to help make progress feel more real. But in that moment, my eyes were glued shut and my hands were wrapped around three layers of sheets beneath me. Nate says that the baby’s head poked out about 5 times, each a little more than the previous time, until the head was finally out. Then the shoulders followed. The midwife asked, “Nate, do you want to put your hand on your baby?” I remember saying that he didn’t have to do anything he didn’t want to, if it freaked him out. But he’s since said it felt good for someone to give him a specific task to do. So he put one hand out and she placed it on the baby’s body. Then she said to him, “Give me your other hand!” Next thing he knew, he had our child firmly in his hands, the rest of the baby slipped out, and Nate helped put him on my chest.
I smiled and laughed and said “Hi honey! Hey there!” to our baby. Someone asked who we had here, meaning boy or girl. We looked underneath the tiny, warm, wet body, and said it’s a boy. “This is Webber,” I said.
I didn’t cry like I thought I would. I didn’t look to see if Nate was crying. I was just feeling a happy rush of adrenalin, accomplishment, and relief. Nate and I kissed. Someone noted the time of birth was 4:24pm. I think I said within 5 minutes of delivering Webber, “I can’t believe that was it! It really wasn’t that bad!” I was so thankful to have such a wonderful way for this new life to start.
And that is Webber's amazing birth story.I promise future blog entries will be much shorter and contain more pictures of him.
In the meantime, Nate put together a test video clip of a minute of quality time with Webber, taken after his first bath. There's not much sound, except at the end you can hear Nate chuckling, and if you pay close attention you can see that Webber starts to get his famous hiccups. Which he gets several times a day, by the way. And they are already almost as loud as his dad's.
Until next time,
Nicky and Nate and Webber
whatdoyaknow, tomorrow is Webber's due date...
