The Story

I’m already forgetting things, in just two months, so I’d better do this now:

On my due date, March 5, a sunny and windy Thursday, we had an appointment with our midwife, Cathy, at Christie Clinic at 11am. Our doula, Trish, met us there. When the nurse was taking us into the exam room, she asked if I was still feeling the baby move around as much as usual. I said he’d seemed quiet today, so she said she’d hook me up to the fetal monitor for twenty minutes before Cathy came in, just to be on the safe side. So she sets us up in the room, the monitor on, and after about five minutes or so, Trish asks if I’m in any pain. Not really, says I. Because, she says, you’re having contractions. And so I was! There they were on the little inky printout. When Cathy came in, she confirmed it, did an exam, and told us I was dilated to 3 centimeters. I had been at 1 centimeter the week before, so this was some progress. Then she told me to hurry up, because she wouldn’t be on call that weekend, so I’d have to deliver before midnight on Friday (more or less) for her to be at the birth. Pressure! But I was technically in labor at that point, so this was all exciting. Then, of course, I went back to work at Dalkey. And after work, I went to yoga. And after yoga, Marty fed me gnocchi and spinach (not fed me fed me, he just made dinner). Then we tried watching TV, but I was tired and the contractions were getting stronger, so we decided to try to go to bed and ride out the night. But things began to really pick up around 10pm. Marty started timing the contractions and after only an hour or so they were four minutes apart and I was in a lot of discomfort (and having diarrhea . . . gross, but apparently a common sign of labor). He called Trish then and she said she’d shower and come on over. But we wound up calling her back, or Marty did, about twenty minutes later, because it was clearly time to go to the hospital (I was writhing and yelling on the kitchen floor [after having eaten, incidentally, a bowl of Total]). When we pulled out of the driveway, the clock in the car clicked to midnight, so I said Happy Birthday, Husband, because then it was his birthday.

Okay, so we pull up to the Emergency Room at Provena Covenant Medical Center just after midnight and check in. They offer a wheelchair, which I (freakishly) refused, and we went up to the fourth floor, me writhing and wriggling down the hallways. But I was smiling, which the labor and delivery nurses commented on right away, and we were quickly taken to the room with the tub, which we’d requested, and left there with Trish, who showed up just a minute or two behind us. Trish had us start some early labor stuff involving a sling and some unflattering positions, and I still had diarrhea, and they started to fill the tub, and they hooked me up to the monitors for twenty minutes and told me I was still at 3 centimeters (which was a little frustrating to hear, considering how much more intense the pain was now), and then the tub was full and hot, and the monitoring was done for a while, and the pain was getting major, and so I got into the tub. What a freaking relief! Huge relief! Then the next few hours I spent in and out of the tub (out to run to the bathroom [or sort of tip-toe in a writhing, hobble-esque tip toe] and to get monitored and measured). Marty took a nap. A nap! Trish sat by the tub and basically coached me, rubbing my lower back and being all-around encouraging. I don’t think I made any eye contact with anyone for those few hours. I went to my monkey place, as Ina Mae tells you to do in her book. I moaned a lot, in my monkey place, and when I started to actually yell Trish coached me down into a lower register. I think I was really loud, because once or twice the doc on call came in looking concerned, but was promptly ushered out by the doula and/or midwife (once she got there). Overall, the time went quickly to me, but each contraction was an event, physical and psychological, and at one point (he was awake again!) I either thought or said to Marty that there’s no way I can do this for a long time. Thankfully, I didn’t have to.

At 4am or so, they measured me again and I was effaced and at 8 centimeters. Someone called Cathy; she was on her way. I think she got there around 4:30. I got out of the tub for the last time, got on the bed, and Cathy said it’s time (I was at 10, etc.) but the water isn’t broken, shall I break it? Basically, she said, this baby is ready, if I break your water I think he’ll come right out. So I said, yeah, break it, and she broke it, and it gushed out and felt sort of nice, actually, and then the pushing began. This was the most intense and scariest part for me. I kept backing up in the bed as if I could back out of my body. And it all went really fast, was very intense, and Marty stood by my side and held my hand and held his breath whenever they told me to hold my breath (I had my face buried in his belly this entire time, so I could feel him holding with me), and two nurses had to push my legs toward my body (two on each leg, I mean), and they all kept saying, yes, great push, one more like that, and after they said that a few times I got pissy, YOU KEEP SAYING THAT, and I was getting fatigued and maybe a little discouraged or freaked out, and so someone took my hand and put it on the baby’s head and said, that’s your baby, he’s almost here, and then it really was just one (maybe two) more push(es) and the head was out, and everyone shouts, STOP PUSHING, so they can make sure the cord isn’t around his neck I guess, but it was like a millisecond in time to me because then out comes the rest of him lickety-split and slick and it’s done (or so you figure at the moment) and there he is! He was awesome from the first: eyes open, he latched on and started eating right away while covered in schmuck and blood. He was grand. He is! And I felt insanely proud of myself; I was beaming in pride, seriously, I couldn’t believe I’d done it, and I kept saying, I did it, and also saying, I never have to do it again. And the doula cut the umbilical cord, and then they took him from me because I had to deliver the afterbirth, and I said, no he needs to be on skin, Marty take off your shirt, and he did, and they put him on Marty’s chest, and Marty and Elijah sat in a chair and got better acquainted on their birthdays.