Maternal aphasia: Week One

Indeed, things got going. For real. Except instead of a labor of three hours or less, I was in labor for a full 11 hours, and complained about how long it took. (Which is a bold move, complaining, when your own midwife labored for 60 hours to have her daughter, not 6 months ago.)

Since time is tight and I've already typed up the birth story for another online venue, I'll share it here instead:

I'm pleased as punch to announce the arrival of Abraham Zev, on 2/18/10 at 5 a.m. He weighed 9 lbs 7 oz, measured 21.7 inches, and had a head circumference that was, according to the nurse, "off the charts." Contrary to what my body led me to expect with my quick first delivery, this labor took 11 hours of hospital time. Which goes to show, you can never really tell!

Thanks to early discharge from the hospital birthing center, I was able to birth a baby in the morning and be home in time to sing his big brother a lullaby that night, which was pretty amazing.

Jonah's birth was labeled "precipitous" since I got to 8cm dilation without feeling any contractions, went to the hospital to have my water broken, and had him 3 hours after that. So when I switched to a midwife practice early in this pregnancy, they were very concerned about my first labor and sure that I wouldn't make it to any hospital.

So this time, as I got to 37 weeks, and then 38, and 39, I was sure I was a ticking baby time bomb (and it didn't help that I had two due dates, 4 days apart). I was mystified that things were not quite going as they had before. At 39 weeks I was a couple cm dilated, not completely effaced. I wasn't feeling any contractions, just occasional painful twinges in my cervix. When I showed up for my 40 week appointment, the day before my due date, I was 3cm. And PISSED at my body for not doing what it had last time. The midwife checked me with evening primrose oil, and asked me to hang around the office and call in later. I knew I'd have a few contractions from the internal exam, since that happened the first time around. But we hung out, and nothing was happening except our need to get back in time to pick up Jonah from school, so we came back to Brooklyn.

When I called in later in the afternoon (after trying to take a nap during a playdate with a very loud & contentious little pal of Jonah's), the midwife on call suggested that I come in to the birthing center that evening and see if she could start some midwifery induction procedures. I was anxious to get things going before it became an emergency, because of all of the logistics of Jonah care, so I said yes, thinking we could go in at 8:30, after Jonah was in bed. Instead, it turned out we needed to be there as soon as possible, and definitely before 7:30, because the birthing center nurse on duty was leaving then, the next one on the schedule was out sick, and if I were not there & in labor (or on the way to it) by 7:30, they'd send me to the regular L&D and I'd miss out on the birthing center. So my in-laws showed up to take care of Jonah overnight, we scrambled around (luckily our hospital bag had been packed for a week) and managed to get to the hospital by 6.

We had found a parking lot coupon on the web that promised $20 for 24 hours (which is great for NYC), only to find that it was an outdoor lot, still largely covered with slushy, icy puddles from our recent snow. We decided to deal with it for the savings, and then had to walk a very steep uphill block to the hospital. Good thing I wasn't yet in active labor!

The midwife (who also happens to live on our block in Brooklyn) met us at the birthing center along with the nurse. The rooms there are decorated in a tacky floral B&B style, but the lights were nice and dim and it felt so luxurious to think we'd get to spend some hours there, alone (when Jonah was born, both sets of grandparents were hovering around in the hallway right outside the room!). I was hooked up to the monitor for a bit, and ate a PB&J sandwich. We had brought other snacks from home (juice boxes, Gatorade, raisins and almonds, unfortunately forgot the cookies) but as it turned out, not nearly enough to cover 11 hours of labor.

Then the midwife checked me, again with evening primrose oil. I was 5cm. This is when I realized we might actually get to leave the hospital with a baby.

After they took the monitor off, it was time for an enema. This time I was relieved not to have to hold it in for a full 5 minutes (as I had last time). I wasn't at all sure how to get from the bed (where it was administered) to the bathroom, but somehow managed without making a mess.

Once that was overwith, we ordered dinner from the Greek restaurant across the street, because I remembered the food fondly from last time. I had a spanakopita and a small salad. (Yes, I would see them again later.) It felt very weird to just be sitting around eating takeout food in the room where we'd be having a baby later on. But weird in the best way.

The midwife prepared some black and blue cohosh for me to drink. I think I had about 5 doses in all, maybe 20-30 minutes apart. I could see why people are generally advised against doing this at home, as I could feel contractions start almost immediately after each dose. We started doing a lot of walking too, mostly in the stairwell. It was abandoned and we were close to the roof and could hear the wind whistling up there. It was pretty surreal. We circled the hallways of the hospital, which were more and more quiet as the night wore on.

At this point the contractions were ramping up and I needed to stop walking and deal with them. I would bend over, leaning on a railing, and found myself singing very low notes to get through. The midwife commented that I was doing a good job of keeping the rest of my body relaxed. I guess the contractions were not all that intense yet...

The next time I was checked, I was 7cm! I asked to go in the jacuzzi tub, which was (other than early discharge from the hospital), the principal reason I'd wanted to have a baby at the birthing center. The water felt great, but unfortunately, I had to turn the jets off after just a few minutes - they were very loud and distracting. I was in the tub probably no longer than 20 minutes - my skin started getting pruney and I guess I was starting to feel restless as well. On the next check I was at 8cm! We did some more walking, which was getting tougher (on our next trip up the stairs I remarked that I felt like the Kim Novak character in Vertigo: "It's time to climb the tower, Madeline!"). During one contraction I hummed the lullaby that I usually sing to Jonah, and it made me miss him so much I cried. I then realized how freaking exhausted I was.

When we got back to the room we decided it was time to break my water. The bedside table conveniently housed an amni-hook. I felt a slight gush, followed by lots of trickles, and the contractions that followed really started kicking my ass. After maybe half an hour, I started feeling pressure on my butt and starting thinking it might be time to push. The midwife reached in to check and found the head "right there" (though it had been right there all evening - at one point she was tickling the baby's ears).

I heard the midwife say "OK, she's fully, bring in the table." I stopped making a lot of sense at that point. I was using a wedge on the bed to push on all fours, but it sucked having it in the way between contractions. There was no way to get comfortable. I was still wearing the tank top from my needlessly fancy pajamas, and it was so hot in the room I ripped it off, prompting the midwife to say, "NOW we're getting somewhere." I begged Josh to cut off my hair, because the elastic I'd brought was not keeping it out of my face. And I said more than once that I wanted out of my body, to which the midwife replied that I really needed to stay IN my body at that particular moment.

Pushing, which I'm told lasted 30 minutes total, was excruciating. After all my careful breathing and relaxation I could not seem to isolate the muscles I needed to bear down. The pushes kept escaping through my throat as screams. I finally stopped vocalizing but then found my eyes were pushing instead. The head popped in and out a few times. It was so frustrating! The ring of fire stung me as the head came out, and the midwife told me the next push would deliver the baby. As I had when I was giving birth to Jonah, I looked over to Josh at that moment, and the look of joy and excitement on his face gave me the energy to finish the job. I felt every inch of the baby slip out, and learned we'd had a baby boy.

The immediate postpartum was also excruciating, unfortunately. We had a respite while waiting for the blood to pulse out from the cord, and for the placenta to come out. But then I needed a pitocin shot in my leg, due to some excess bleeding. And then I needed stitches in two places - where I had torn last time around (which looked to the midwife like an episiotomy scar, but it was a natural tear) and then another by the urethra. That last one was the worst to deal with - I had to get a catheter inserted while the stitches went in, and it felt like the stitches were going directly through my clitoris. I made a mental promise at that moment not to have any more kids. The midwife was amazing though - what hard work they do. After she was done she took the time not only to show us the placenta while she examined it, but also to explain the function of each part of it.

We spent the rest of the day in a haze of phone calls, emails, and attempts to nap. The baby was examined by a pediatrician who immediately noticed his tongue-tie, which caused some feeding issues, but after a frenotomy at 4 days old, he seems to be doing great.

We drove home through a miraculously traffic-free rush hour Manhattan (the baby riding unaccompanied in back, by way of getting him used to being a second child), and pulled up to our building to see Jonah and all his grandparents frantically waving from the window upstairs. It was a hell of a day.