...And Then He Turned Two

August 22, 2012

August 22, 2012

                                                                
Two years ago right now, I was beginning to think maybe I wouldn’t be pregnant forever.  It somehow feels right to tell the long version of the story now.  That morning I deep cleaned the downstairs of our house—like vacuum hose to the cracks, crevices, blinds, and baseboards kind of cleaning.  Frank and Isabelle took Clarissa to the vet for her itching feet, something that got progressively worse over that summer.  It was Saturday, August 21, 2012.  The best guess dates we had been able to come up with based on conception was August 12-14.  At almost 42 weeks, it was abundantly clear that baby had other plans.

 

My days were paced by meals, walks, playtime, and Isabelle’s sleep.  I let myself notice the tightening after lunch while Isabelle napped.  My first labor was long, so it seemed like a good idea to rest.  Frank and I snuggled up for a nap.  I am a restless sleeper.  He falls asleep a half a second before his head hits the pillow.  I couldn’t sleep, deciding instead that I’d like to start labor being clean if possible.  Frank stirred as I hefted myself plus 50 some-odd pounds out of the bed and reminded me to take it easy.

The shower felt great.  I pulled on these bright green yoga capris and a maternity tank handed down from a dear friend who’d had two inspiring births herself.  I gathered my comforts around me literally, the things that reminded me of relaxing, releasing, hard work, and those around me who believed in me and in birth.

A few days before labor began.

I don’t remember much of the rest of the day.  At some point I called one of my midwives, though my contractions were still 10-12 minutes apart.  I had not had a single contraction in pregnancy, excepting a day of “irritable uterus” around 34 weeks from being dehydrated.  Walking 3 miles in July will do that to a pregnant lady.  I figured at around 42 weeks the contractions meant something was coming.  I also called my parents 3 hours away and suggested they get gas, pack a bag, and start making a plan.

Back to Saturday--it was skin-scalding hot outside.  Isabelle had just really begun to want to watch a kid show here and there, so we all hung out watching Backyardigins downstairs once she woke up.  I wanted her to sit with me so badly.  I made her a mini pizza on flat sandwich bread and grazed on some myself.  The contractions kept coming slowly and pretty gently.  I didn’t have to stop what I was doing, and it was hard to notice the beginning or the end.

I wanted to do the “last” bedtime with Isabelle as our only child.  She was excited about wearing her “Big Sister” shirt, though at 22 months, she had no idea what a baby coming really meant.  We read, rocked, and sang songs.  She fell asleep on me sucking her paci.  We had weaned at 16 months, because it just hurt really badly.  In retrospect, I wish we’d kept going.  I think it would have eased the transition for her.

It was getting a bit harder to sit still through the contractions during her bedtime.  I was able to be “normal” for bedtime before the real restless early labor stuff started.  Again, there is a big gap in my memory from now until several hours later.  I texted back and forth with the on-call midwife, and the contractions got slowly stronger and closer.  I tried again to rest, and Frank rather hurriedly set up the birth tub in front of the fireplace.  He was very worried about having the “nest” ready in plenty of time in case my labor turned into one of the notoriously fast 2^nd babies.  No such luck!

I was upstairs while he did this.  Even in a big pile of pillows on my side, it was hard to be still and lie down during contractions.  I did this for a couple of hours, moving around as I needed to find comfort.  Maybe I even napped a little between rocking into child’s pose with a pillow under my massive belly and relaxing between the contractions.

I got up and went downstairs to check out the setup and eat something—greek yogurt with strawberries, blueberries, and honey.  Weeks earlier, Frank had helped me string long, gauzy white panels embroidered with delicate silver starbursts from wall to wall.  The living room, which really had my sewing table, some toys, and a stray chair in it opened right into the kitchen, and I knew I’d feel weird laboring with people milling around the rest of the house in my sight.  It created such a sense of privacy and closeness to have those simple pieces of material strung on a clothesline from wall to wall.  Contracting still, I tried out the tub, partly curious to see if it changed anything and partly because I just love a big tub of hot water.  It was delicious.  There is no other way to put it.  It also relaxed me so much that my contractions slowed down.  Not time to get in, yet!  

Frank says I look like I'd been hit by a truck.

We went up to try and sleep again around 11pm—seriously, after 2 nights of no sleep with Isabelle, I was hoping not to start out that exhausted again.  Frank, again, was asleep in no time.  I showed him where to push on my top hip, and he’d wake up enough to give a good squeeze during a contraction.  They were getting stronger, the beginning and ends were more noticeable.  I had a rice sock heated and propped under my belly or against my low back for the crampy, achy feeling.  

After a while, Frank was snoring, and I was getting really uncomfortable.  A summer thunderstorm had blown up outside, and my labor seemed to match the growing intensity of the storm.  It was taking all of my focus to relax and be open to the changing sensation of the contractions.  With one, I could not stand lying down anymore, so I slid my legs off the bed and sort of slithered onto my hands and knees.  Ah, so much better.  That turned into wandering around our room and bathroom, stopping to lean on the counter or dresser, lean over the side of the bed, or get on hands and knees to sway through.

By 2am, I was not going to rest, and I needed Frank to be awake with me.  The storm had stopped.  We went downstairs.  He checked the water, pumped out some cooled, and refilled some hot.  I really wanted to go outside, so I walked around the driveway for a little while.  It was surprisingly cool after the rain.  We walked around the block (again, on a secure military base) in the dark, stopping to slow dance through contractions.  At some point, Frank told me with more than a little surprise that they were 6 minutes apart like clockwork.  I didn’t care about the time and had not even noticed he was wearing a watch.  It was getting real—I finally had the “maybe this is it” feeling.

We came inside around 3am, and I got in the tub for a little while in the last bikini that fit enough to squeeze into.  Again, the water was delicious, but my contractions stayed strong and steady this time.  Frank asked if I thought it was time to call my midwives to come to the house.  No, I didn’t think so.  I was still trying to think the baby out.  Even though I knew better, I was doing labor math—no mucous plug, no bloody show, not in the “out-of-it” laborland.  It’s going to be a long time.  Maybe I’m being a wimp about these contractions.  Maybe they're going to stop completely.  

I got out of the tub, snacked on something I can't remember, put on a tee shirt, and decided to labor in the bathroom for a while.  Let me tell you about laboring on the toilet.  It’s a good place.  Even in the hospital on pitocin with Isabelle, the only place I wanted to be was in the bathroom by myself in the dark.  Think the basic, mammal part of my brain was looking for a safe, dark cave?  Yep, me, too.  So, the toilet—it’s the only place we “modern” women are conditioned let go of our pelvic floors in the way a baby needs to move down and out.  Immediately, the next contraction was more intense, the pressure increased, and the peak seemed longer. 

  

After a few of those, I wiped and there was a glop of mucous with some blood.  My apologies if this is too much information.  This is a birth story, a real one.  Goo, blood, and bodily fluids are part of birth.  They aren't gross or embarrassing.  They just are. From then on, I had a bit more mucous and consistently saw show.  This is good!  Show means dilation, but again the labor math caught me—so many people pass a mucous plug long before labor.  There’s no way this is active labor.  I can’t be very dilated.  

 The fact was, nobody knew how dilated I was.  My midwives didn’t even ask to do a “check.”  They didn't need to, figuring my first baby came out just fine even with a nuchal arm.  My body knew what to do.  Why make me uncomfortable and increase the risk of infection?  I’ve never understood the point anyway, other than morbid curiosity.  It doesn’t tell you a thing about when the baby will come.  I know two people who’ve been 5+ cm for weeks and not in labor.  Personally, knowing that would have driven me crazy. 

Frank, apparently is better at all math than me, even labor math.  Maybe it's more like calculus than algebra.  He literally slept through AP cal, so that's got to be it.  He saw very clearly the shift in how I seemed, the emotional signposts that say this is active labor, baby is coming.  He did NOT want to have a surprise unassisted birth.  He quietly leaned into the small powder room from the hall and again encouraged me to have the midwives come.  I couldn’t cope with the contractions and argue, so I agreed, even though I really did not think it was time.   My parents were about an hour away and would be to us around 5am, too.

That settled, I waddled back to the tub, and Frank got in with me.  It felt a little silly at first, like toddlers in a giant bathtub together, but the first contraction back in the water was wonderful with his support.  We had a big sponge floating around, and he would squeeze the water slowly across my shoulders and upper back during contractions.  The rhythm the sensation and sound created became something upon which I depended.  He didn’t ask question, he simply followed my lead.   

By this time, I was vocalizing with the peaks of contractions, a low mmmhh on exhales.  My breathing pace comes naturally.  When I run, I count the breaths in my head.  I had no idea how this pre-set rhythm would help me.  I stretched out my same old rhythm as my breath deepened and my exhales grew longer.   

We quickly fell into a pattern together, and  this working together was a whole new kind of intimacy.  It was romantic.  There was nothing gross or scary.  It was simple, powerful, and the oxcytocin was flowing.  In retrospect, the endorphins played a role in this love-buzz feeling, too.

Frank went to get my mom at the gate.  Even he figured we weren’t that close to babytime.  The 3-4 contractions alone were harder, still manageable, but not as good as with the simple presence of the person with whom the baby was made.  It’s true that to facilitate labor, make an environment as similar to the one that got the baby in as possible.  More apologies if that makes you blush.  First mucous and blood, now sex--like I said, this is a real birth.  Stop compartmentalizing--birth, intimacy, sex, love, and trust all go hand in hand on a chemical level. 

It was a relief to have my mom there.  My dad went on to the hotel.  I’m not sure if I would have felt as uninhibited with him there.  My dad and I are close.  He is a loving, gentle kind of guy, but he is pretty squeamish, and I wouldn’t have felt normal walking around partially clothed in front of him with Frank following me around with a chux pad.  Mom was so calm and not worried about me giving birth in my living room.  I needed to have Isabelle taken care of, too, to really let go and get into the groove.  By 5am, my midwives arrived.  They were so quiet and careful not to interrupt me other than the occasional doppler on my belly after a contraction. 

As they arrived, I still wondered if I was even in active labor.  I felt a little silly and figured maybe I’d be holding a baby by lunchtime.  They brought in cases of supplies, laid things out nearby, and sat quietly at our kitchen table just on the other side of the curtains.  I got out of the tub again, making a loop downstairs through contractions.  I ate a piece of peanut butter toast over the sink between a couple, knelt on the floor leaning onto the couch for another, and finally ended back up in the bathroom, door barely cracked, by myself.  I needed to be by myself.  It wasn’t lonely like when Frank had to leave.  I knew everybody was right there.  It got so intense.  I made it through 2 or 3 sitting on the toilet rocking and moaning.  I remember Amy saying, “Is she pushing?” so I must have grunted or something at the peak of one.  She poked her head in and suggested that I get back in the tub for the next one.  This was code for: “If you want a waterbirth, get in the tub.”  Midwives, ah, do I love them.  Mine could tell simply from the way I moved and the sounds that I made that we were getting very close to greeting a baby.

Roger that, after this massive contraction I feel coming, I'll be back in the water.  Forearms crossed on the countertop, I started rocking and moaning as it built.  By the peak, I was practically hopping on my toes trying to counter the intense sensation.  At some point I reached down and felt the baby’s head (still inside, not crowning) pushing against my hand.  It shocked me.  It was my moment of doubt—what on earth was I thinking having a baby at home.  This is big and real.  This kid will be coming out of me soon like it or not.  My head had to catch up with my body.  I don’t think I could even verbalize having felt this physically or emotionally at the time.  It inspired me to hurry back to the tub, though, in hopes of some change.

Oh, sinking into the warm water was indescribably good.  I coasted on the relief it brought for a couple of contractions.  The fireplace was turned on, and my hard worked on Pandora playlist was playing chill yoga tunes and haunting Native American flute songs.  I remember Andrea saying with appreciation, “Is that Nakai?”  Our sweet

Clarissa

dog was on the floor by the fireplace, calmly leaned against the side of my tub.

It was hard to get comfortable.  I tried to squat, and quickly got out of it before the contraction peaked.  All that felt right was leaning over the side of the tub, holding the attached handles, with my face buried into a wet towel.  By this time, Frank was doing the magic hip squeeze for all he was worth—and I kept telling him, “Harder.”  I heard Andrea say, “Her sounds are perfect,” and realized that I was saying, “Open,” over and over.  It was a moan, long and low, but I was saying and imagining my body opening and the baby moving down.

It worked.  Every contraction felt very long, even though they were about a minute and a half with plenty of time between.

Yes, the breaks feel that good.

Time gets funny in labor—the contractions felt interminably long, but after maybe 4 or 5 really, really hard contractions back in the tub, my body (without my conscious permission) pushed.  It was the most physically intense and surprising thing I have ever felt.  It felt like I was rocking the whole tub rocking myself through the contraction on the handles.  Afterwards, I looked up to my midwives, who were both sitting on the chaise longue nearby and said, “I’m not ready to push.”  Andrea sort of smiled with a sigh that might have been a knowing laugh and told me to trust my body—if it was pushing, it was time.

I didn’t so much bear down as relax into my body’s work and stop fighting it.  It felt so much better.  Then, in the middle of that contraction, I felt a pop and a great release of pressure.  All I could say to let everybody else know was, “ Ohhhh, pop.”  They knew what I meant. Things were moving quickly, so I wanted to go as slowly as possible breathing the baby down and letting my body stretch.  A couple of contractions passed, and the midwives asked if I felt the baby’s head if I reached inside—how much, dime or quarter?  I felt; Frank felt and said, “Definitely quarter.” 

With the next contraction, I felt the baby’s head move down a lot.  I reached down, instinctively, and put my hand on the little sliver of wrinkled head.  The force of my body squeezing that little body through me would have taken my breath away were it not for Frank’s whispered, “Breathe,” at just the right moment.  I tried to let him feel the baby against me with a contraction, but I had to push him away and go back to my new-found ritual.  My hand was holding the baby in and my body together all at once.  The baby pressed down, then moved back up a couple of times.  

One of my midwives, I can’t remember which one, came up and said, “Frank, when the baby’s head come out,….”  He had the deer-in-the-headlights look, but said, “Okay.”  He was still squeezing my hips.  I remember wanting one more contraction to ease the baby out, but at the peak of the contraction, I felt him lift his chin and, pop, there was a head.  After the intensity of the “ring of fire” (yes, it is real, and no laughing matter), it felt great to have a break and rest for the next contraction.  It is surreal to wait with a new person partially born, partially inside you, everyone in the room ready but calmly waiting.  

Sunday, August 22, 2010.  7:03 am.  9 pounds, 4 ounces of perfect.

With a grunt, and one more bearing down, the baby was out and floated gently into Daddy’s waiting hands.  Set, hut!  The moment afterward, I think I closed my eyes and was frozen with the instant relief of his little body leaving mine.  Hearing a rather surprised Frank say, “We have a little boy!” is one of my dearest memories.  We both thought he was a girl, of course either would have been wonderful.  We planned for a baby.  I turned around, and Frank passed him to me.  As he was being born, I heard Isabelle begin to stir and talk upstairs with my mom.  Within five minutes of the birth, Mom and Isabelle appeared.  She saw him, grinned, and said, “Baby!”  

Less than 30 minutes after the first picture was taken.

We sat in the tub for a few more minutes.  Frank hoped out just before my placenta came.  After the placenta, they helped me out and settled me onto the chaise just beside the pool with baby on my chest under blankets.  We sat like that for the “golden hour,” and within a few minutes he made his way to my breast and nursed.  Just like with Isabelle, it surprised me how strongly he latched and suckled that first time.  Amy brought me a big glass or apple juice, a grilled cheese sandwich, and some blueberries while he went to town.  For the coming weeks, he nursed constantly day and night.

Frank said I looked like myself, just holding a baby this time.

The next day.

So, that was all two years ago.  I’ve told the short story a lot and shared pictures here and there, but it felt like time to tell the long version.  My body was so extremely different then, it almost doesn't feel like looking at myself.  I hope my memories may inspire you to believe in yourself or encourage the mothers around you.

 It’s been fun, stressful, exhausting, and trying.  Parenting is much harder than giving birth and caring for a baby.  We’re still figuring out a lot as we go along, but the kids seem to be happy.  Sometimes this life makes me feel crazy, but I do love it.  It’s mine.  My daily mantra is: “This is my life, these are my kids.  Let me be the best mother for them.”  I don't always do that as well as I'd like.

Ten years ago, I had no idea I’d be happily married to Frank, my best friend from highschool, and have these two babies.  I’d laugh if you told me I’d let go of the dream of a glamorous career and let my heart lead me into birth advocacy and serving other women in pregnancy and birth.  I certainly wouldn’t believe that the birth of my son in our home would so profoundly change me.  It more steeled my resolve to change the way our culture tears down mothers and plants seeds of fear and doubt.  It’s not a scary medical ordeal for most healthy people, unless we choose to make it one, sometimes unwittingly with the mentality of "what is must be best."

Birth is as old as time.  The story is never new.  It's been part of daily life since before the written word, before the spoken word.  My story is big to me, but it was simple, really.  Life as usual went on in the homes around ours, and we began our new normal.  I went upstairs, got a shower, put on the nightgown my grandmother sent, and got tucked into my own bed to sleep and nurse my baby.  

From the other side of it, I feel part of something bigger, something most mothers are denied unnecessarily.  I was fully present in every moment, even the hard ones.  The pain and discomfort aren’t medals of honor I wear on my chest.  I chose those moments of intermittent, purposeful pain over weeks or months of healing from a medical birth.  Even the pain was normal—it told me how to move, how to breathe, what sounds to make to get my baby into my arms.  I’m not a member of any special club.  My body isn't any more uniquely equipped for this work than yours probably is.   Our bodies are incredibly designed  to grow, birth, and nourish our babies.  

Messing with the foundation of the physiological process without just cause is dangerous.  It changes the chemistry of your brain and denigrates the ancient wisdom of our bodies.  It chips away at our confidence as mothers.

I chose to give birth in my own home with my loving family and skilled, compassionate midwives paying close attention to safeguard my baby's entrance to the outside world.  My health and that of the baby were at the top of everyone’s list.  I would do it again in a heartbeat.  The chill that ripples through me on a good run as the endorphins begin to flow  is pennies on the dollar to the hormonal high after that birth.

I know if I can give birth, I can do anything.  So can you.

August 22, 2010