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And Then We Were Four: Part Four

Posted on January 26, 2012 | 26 comments

It was decided that I would stop trying to push through the last centimeter of my dilating, that I would stop and take a break, let my body finish doing the work. Then it was determined I should change position. In spite of the enema I had managed to give myself during early labor the shred of privacy I had been maintaining was holding on to the fear that it felt like I had to go to the bathroom. When Sarah suggested I go sit in the bathroom for a while it sounded like as good a plan as any. Pillows were placed on the back of the toilet and I sat backwards with my face against the cool, soft pillows. In the dark it was easier to let my mind go.

Earlier, I had gotten very sick. Throwing up like a freshman at a fraternity party, I couldn’t even open my eyes lest I see the bucket and get sick all over again. (Hello, chinese food, I had to have!!) I took a new bucket with me to the bathroom just in case. There, in the clean white bucket from the birthing center was a single dog hair. Even amidst the mania I felt… I smiled, Fisher… his damn hair gets everywhere.

Changing positions brought no physical relief. If anything it required the body to acclimate to new pressure points, new pain. At this point each contraction seemed to radiate down in to my legs. Later I would have IV fluids to hydrate me and the pain in my legs would almost immediately subside.

Physical relief did not come while I was in the bathroom, but it did give me a moment to regroup emotionally. I’d had my eyes closed much of the previous hour and now in the darkness I could feel only hands rubbing my back. Not knowing if it was MQD or Erin – it almost didn’t matter. I cried out as my contractions peaked. Spoke quietly to myself and to the baby in the interim. I don’t know how long I was in there. But when I came out, I knew it was time. I said more than once that I felt like I had been asleep. And like I had just woken up. I asked several times for Erin to tell me again what was happening.

For a time I felt like I was trapped between the bathroom and bed. My body had returned to the bed, my mind had stayed in the bathroom. Eventually we all reunited and a feeling of calm alertness washed over me. MQD smiled at me and I could see in his eyes the relief I was experiencing. Never once did he look frightened, but he looked so happy to have me back that I know it must have been quite a scene there for a bit.

As with so many things in our lives the clearest pictures are those that we can see only after the fact. From this side of things I know that it was the final stages of transition in the bathroom.

As much as it was almost unnecessary to check, I needed to hear it. When Sarah said “You’re ten centimeters, we can have this baby any time you’re ready,” tears began to flow down my face.

I had watched a lot of birth videos. I had seen images of these smiling women as they pushed their babies out in to the world. But I had imagined I would be more of the Linda Blair/Exorcist labor and delivery type than the Blissed-out Commune Mama type. This picture does not tell the whole story, certainly. But it captures the joy, the lack of a sense of fear and urgency, the calm that was in the room before Lucy made her debut.

Our doula, Erin, pulled triple duty as she held the mirror, the flash light and my iPhone throughout the home stretch. Sarah suggested I reach down and touch the babies head and I asked her to guide myhand. In keeping with the sense of levity throughout my labor Erin said “I don’t know how big your vagina is exactly, but you’ll find it.”

As soon as I felt her the waterworks began again and I wondered how I would ever continue to push slowly, not risk tearing. At one point (after I had the moment of clarity wherein I asked for my glasses and could actually see in the mirror!) I saw her head begin to emerge and then as I tried and relaxed between pushing I saw it retreat. “No, no, no, baby, come back….” and I wept.

I told Sarah and Missy and Erin the story of my dream, how Baby D came and knocked on the door and I didn’t pick him/her up. How I was so terribly afraid that I didn’t do the right thing. Sarah reassured me that the baby would descend at least as far as they had previously with each push. So, I relaxed. And spoke. “Come on baby, I promise I will pick you up, and I will never let you go, just come out… Come on… I am right here.”

And slowly, I saw this tiny flash of baby hair become a baby. I was waiting for the ring of fire, and as I saw the head emerge I can recall thinking this must be it… and then the head would grow bigger. Later they would tell me Lucy was born with her hand against her face contributing to her already giant sized baby head.

I felt it, finally. The mystical ring of fire, the moment that your body is open, allowing passage of your child in to the world and then I saw her face. Red and smushy, bloody and quiet. With little effort her shoulders appeared and I had my hands hooked beneath her armpits and I was pulling her on to my chest. Our baby. She was here.

I cried out for Emily. I had been adamant that no one tell me if we’d had a boy or a girl and we realized as Emily entered the room that from my vantage point I really couldn’t tell. And no one else had gotten a decent look. So, it was Emily that told me. My sweetest girl, my Emily June, it was she that said “It’s a sister.”

“You got your sister, baby girl…” I said,my eyes flooding with the realization that my baby girl, was no longer my baby girl.

We stayed at the birth center only a few hours before we headed home. Our family of four. Mom and Dad in the front seat. Our girls sleeping quietly in the darkness of the early morning. I carried Lucy Quinn in to the house. A teeny tiny girl in her car seat. MQD carried Emily June up to her bed, her long legs looking even longer as he carried her past me up to her room.

It was just after six in the morning. A new day. We were home. And then we were four.

MQD's girls

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Posted in Family, Parenting, Pregnancy

Tagged baby, Birth, birth story, delivery, doula, Family, Labor, Parenting, phases of labor, Pregnancy

And Then We Were Four: Part Three

Posted on January 25, 2012 | 9 comments

The final parts of Lucy’s birth story are likely best told as a series of pictures in my mind. Moments I thought I would never forget… my hazy memory of Emily’s birth tells a different story. I’ll make some effort to put them in a narrative order… but that is the best I can do.

We took the room in the front of the birthing center, the same room I’d been in only twelve hours earlier. Only at night it was different, quieter. As we arrived and our bags were put down, cell phone chargers plugged in, I could not help but imagine that it would be in this room we would meet our baby. These people…. these were the players. Me, MQD, Erin, our doula, Sarah, the midwife and Missy, a kind and gentle nurse on call for the evening. Later that night I would laugh between contractions, laughing to cover my embarrassment and apologize for what I feared seemed a rude question and ask Missy why she was there? “I know you are not actually a scary person… but no one told me that there would be a nurse here the whole time. Is something wrong with me? or the baby? Is that why you are here? You’re scaring me.” We all got a good chuckle over this, my being frightened by this addition to our cast of characters.

As we organized ourselves, each of us finding our place in the room I decided to change my clothes. I had a black nightgown, with a racer back that I had envisioned wearing for a while. I pulled it on and realized it was backwards and started to giggle, pulling one boob out each side I said “So, I was gonna wear this, that’s cool, right? A great nursing gown, too, right?’ It set a tone, showcasing my absurd sense of humor, in even the most reverent times.

Sarah checked me and I was six, maybe seven centimeters dilated. Not as far along as I had hoped but lots of progress had been made since the morning. She said that she thinks my water had ruptured up high in the amniotic sac, there was plenty remaining so there was no reason to be concerned about the baby. I recall her telling me that we had plenty of time, and thinking, sure, loads of time, what’s the rush?

Shortly after we got to the birthing enter my contractions began to get closer together. The experience of the stopping and starting of active labor was an incredible feeling. The relief felt as each contraction ended, the way I could see it in MQD’s face as they peaked, the reflection of my own pain in his eyes and the strength I knew I had to endure them, these were all new experiences to me.

I have since told anyone that I have spoken to that the stopping and starting of contractions can be compared to only one other mind-altering, if not life-changing experience in my life. In my wilder, younger days, as I sat in a hotel room after a concert with a handful of friends, looped on whatever was our pleasure for the evening, sweaty from dancing, all of us in our own mental spaces I can recall the moment when the trip was over and I’d blink my eyes. And in that instant, I was back. “Guys, hey guys! Are you normal? I feel totally normal. Is anyone else normal?”

As each contraction came to an end I’d revel in having my body back, my mind returned to me, all at the same time clinging desperately to the fleeting memory of the experience, knowing that I had experienced something while I was gone, something I wanted to remember forever.

This picture is everything that I wanted from this experience. My smile, MQD’s support, Emily’s pinkie blanket in my right hand.

My greatest weakness as an individual and as part of a couple is my struggle with asking for help. And this experience was life changing in that respect. To see and experience what I am capable of achieving if I am willing to lean on others, specifically someone who loves me, was empowering. To experience that strength that comes when you need it most.

My contractions continued to escalate for some time, growing increasingly more difficult in their peaks, and slowly my need to entertain, to hold court, to make up for perceived weakness during those moments with a clever commentary during the time between contractions slowly waned.

It was during the first of one of these quieter moments that my water broke. Again. This time I got to experience the rush of fluid that you see in the movies. It was comic, nearly missing soaking Erin.

This was another moment that I could feel the energy of my own mind shift. My water had broken completely. It was to time to get the baby out. Shortly after this Sarah checked to see how dilated I was, at my request. I was beginning to second guess my intuition. What is an “overwhelming desire to push?” I have had a nearly overwhelming desire to meet this baby for weeks. How would I know that this was the time when I could not fight the desire any longer?

I was only 9 centimeters, but feeling more and more like it was getting closer. I was afraid that Em’s absence would hold me back. That I’d not be ready to meet our baby until I knew she was here, the final players in our cast of characters.

MQD called Amy. Or maybe it was Erin that called. I knew they could get here within half an hour. As soon as I knew they were on their way I started feeling more and more like I couldn’t wait any longer. Sarah told me she could help me, she could try to ease my cervix back that final centimeter if I felt like I needed to start pushing now. Later, when my sweet girl was born with a head not unlike that of Megamind I would see that this early pushing, the pushing that I felt had been wasted energy, it had been significant. Moving Lucy down in my birth canal, it had also made for one hell of a bruise as I tried to squeeze the poor girl out a not quite open door. Days later with her perfectly round little noggin in the crook of my elbow as I type, I can laugh. If I doubted my strength I need only look at those first few pictures of her.

Eventually the struggle of pushing before it was time became too much and both Sarah and Erin suggested I take a break, change positions. I had been so certain that I’d want to labor in the bath but intermittently through this labor I was afraid of falling. Off the bed, down to the ground, I just felt like my grasp on the planet was tentative enough, the addition of water seemed too much. At one point, we started to fill the tub, but the sound was overwhelming.

Amy and Emily got to the birth center before I got up, I think. I know that Em came in, sleepy eyed and tentative. She stayed through the duration of a single contraction. And I told her that each one ended. And when they were over, I was okay. I recall telling her that it was just like when we were at home. Amy took Em out to the lounge area to watch a movie and I think that was when I started feeling like I needed affirmation. I asked Erin to tell me what was happening, that I was okay. I remember her saying “this is not like when you were at home, this is transition.”

It gives me goosebumps now to type it. Transition. The most difficult part. The last part. The period of labor that comes right before pushing. The hardest work is done now. This is the time when it is officially “too late” for an epidural. I was tired. And frightened. But in the back of my mind I knew then when she said that single sentence, “This is transition,” I had this.

We’d done it…. part four.