Prelude to a birth: John and I took two very different style birth preparation classes. One was the more traditional, information based class offered through my insurance at MIT. The second was called 'hypnobirthing', offered by the midwives at Mt. Auburn. Hypnobirthing focuses on relaxation and working with your body to 'gently and easily' bring your baby into the world. We actually really enjoyed both, and pretty early on we hoped to attempt to use the things we learned in hypnobirthing to have an unmedicated child birth. We had an open mind to the various types of medications though and knew what our options were. Also, as many of you know, if you've read the blog at all, that Davis was one day short of being induced. One of our hopes was to labor as long as possible in the comfort of our home, and we were quickly having to adjust to the idea of that not being possible.
Early labor: As per the usual, Braxton-Hicks (or false labor) contractions began for me during the night, they woke me up starting around 4am on Saturday morning. Given that I had been having these every night for almost two weeks, I was prepared to ignore them and so John and I met up with our friends Megan and Dave for breakfast as planned and then went to the crafts store to get the supplies we needed for making our own birth announcements. The difference with these contractions was that they didn't go away after I got up for the day. They were somewhat sporadic though and for a while I was pretty sure it was another false alarm. Around 2pm though they were still going and I was starting to get very hopeful!
Active labor: At about 4pm, my contractions took on a whole new intensity. I was having a lot harder time handling them and at this point I found I really didn't want John touching or talking to me during them, because it made it much to hard to focus on getting through each one. It was at this point in time I realized that hypnobirthing was failing me in some ways, it was almost impossible to stay relaxed during a contraction, so instead I focused on remaining relaxed in between and for as long as possible during. This stage of labor seemed to last for a while, with pretty intense contractions lasting about 1.5minutes, but they were quite far apart, typically 9minutes. The rule of thumb is that you shouldn't go to the hospital until you've had 1minute contractions, 5minutes apart, for an hour. I was breaking down though and called the hospital to see if it was time to come in. At this point in time I was also visualizing an epidural and readjusting my expectations for a medication-free birth. The midwife suggested I try getting in the shower. It was amazing, as soon as I hopped in the shower my contractions moved to 4minutes apart, still lasting 1.5minutes each. After about 3ominutes of this we called the hospital again and talked to the new midwife on shift. She suggested we take our time coming into the hospital since the contractions had only been close together for a short time. Since our water heater was now tapped out, I came out of the shower and moved to the living room. It was now 7pm and John suggested we head to the hospital at 8pm. It was nice to have a goal and someone to make a decision! In fact, when I talked to the second midwife, she asked me what my vision for labor was and I said I didn't know anymore! It seemed my capacity for thinking and decision making was completely gone and I just wanted it to be over. I don't remember when I started to shake was, but it was about the time that started that John said, "Let's go!". Heading to the car I could hardly walk I was shaking so bad. Contractions in the car were quite a bit harder to handle, especially with the rough roads of Arlington and Cambridge, but luckily it was a pretty easy drive with no traffic.
At the Hospital: John dropped me off in front of the hospital, we couldn't remember at what time we were supposed to use the emergency room vs. the normal entrance, so I went in the normal entrance and headed towards registration as John parked. John found me in registration having a contraction, so they told him to take me straight to labor and delivery and then come register us. So we headed there. John remembers thinking at this stage that things were really moving when I had two contractions between the elevator and the labor and delivery desk. They swooped me into a room and got me into a hospital gown. I had one friend who suggested taking a sports bra in order to maintain at least a modicum of modesty, but the moment I was in that room all modesty went out the door. By the time John returned from registering me they were checking my progress. I don't think either of us could believe it when the midwife pronounced that I was 8cm dilated. It was a complete blessing and a problem in some ways. They'll only administer an epidural if you are between 5 and 7cm and so I was committed. All I could think about at that point was when I had gone to collegiate cycling nationals two years ago. I was the weakest rider on our TTT team (TTT stands for team time trial, it's a rare event in pro cycling, but common in collegiate. You work as a team of four riders drafting to improve your overall time, the time counted for your team's time trial is when the front wheel of the third rider crosses the finish line. That means you HAVE to finish three riders or you essentially just forfeited. Here are two pictures of the men's and women's 's TTT team at National's the year I attended to help you visualize it. The women's team at this point has just started off the line, so we aren't quite in formation, in a few seconds all of us will be a couple of inches apart only). National's that year was in windy Kansas and being the weakest rider, I went in with low confidence that I would finish that race, within the first few kilometers I had almost been 'dropped' (which means left behind and would have left only three riders). I had just caught back on when one of our teammates double flatted (very bad luck). So she was done, and it meant no matter what happened the remaining three of us absolutely had to finish that race. It was like a switch went off and I lost all my fear and self doubt and I finished that race stronger than I ever thought possible. The point of that tangent, is at 8cm, I felt exactly the same. I was committed now, we were birthing this baby without medication, and if I had made it that far, I knew I could make it the rest of the way.
Although I was 8cm dilated, the baby was in position -2, which means he wasn't yet engaged (i.e. Davis had never really 'dropped'). They start at -2, at 0 that means they are in the middle of the pelvis and +2 means they are essentially crowning. So they suggested laboring standing up and moving my hips around to get him to drop down. This turned out to be more intense than I could handle, and so they drew a bathtub for me and I moved into that. I believe I was in there for about an hour and 15minutes. John was a champion, he made sure there was relaxing music on and poured water over my back and belly the entire time I was in there. He also fed me popsicles and water in between contractions to keep my energy up. The nurse with us was amazing and could tell where I was and how I felt, she said "You feel like pushing now, don't you?" And I did. In fact, I had been focusing on "breathing my baby down". In hypnobirthing, they stress not pushing until the baby is ready (so as opposed to pushing right when you are 10cm, breathe the baby down, by forcing your breath through your diaphragm during a contraction you can push the baby down in a more gentle manner). I have no idea if it works, but I was focusing on that around the time I felt like pushing. They pulled me out of the bath and took me back to the bed for an examination. Well, I was now 10cm dilated, Davis was at +2 and during the exam she broke my water. This began a flood of contractions that I could barely handle (in fact, even before this I wasn't getting a break between contractions). It helped immensely when they told me just to listen to my body...all of a sudden I knew when and how to push. We went through four (or five..it's all a blur) series of pushing contractions and Davis was all of a sudden in the world! In all we were only in the hospital for 2.5 hours before he was born.
Immediately Postpartum: Unfortunately, since Davis was so late, the amniotic fluid was 'meconium stained', i.e. the baby had already had a bowel movement. So as soon as I started pushing they had the pediatrician come in. They quickly cut the cord high up and took him to the warming station to suction out his nose and mouth. Everything looked great though, so they let John do another cut on the cord and they brought him to me where Davis immediately nursed! What I wasn't prepared for was the discomfort of being stitched up, I didn't have an episiotomy and so had some tearing. John also got me through this as he had everything else.
A note about this post: I actually began this post the first day at the hospital, but it's taken this long to finish it! Life with a newborn is very busy and yet we seem to get nothing done!
