Here is the story of Lea's birth. (Come to think of it, this particular post might actually be interesting. It's also going to be long.)
My due date of 11/11 came and went without any sign that things would be progressing anytime soon. I had done all my prenatal care and was planning to deliver at the Birth Center, a midwife-staffed facility just across the street from Bryn Mawr hospital (so the best of both worlds). I went in for an appointment on 11/14 and the midwife that day, Julia, checked and found that there was really no sign that labor would begin anytime soon. She laid out the timeline of how we'd have to prepare for the possible eventuality of an induction at the hospital at 42w1d, if we got to that point without delivering. I knew I didn't want this; I knew introducing Pitocin for a medical induction would make it way less likely that I could go without anesthesia, which is what I was really committed to. Julia was encouraging, though, and also suggested that I try "pulling out all the stops" and trying lots of natural induction techniques, including acupuncture. She recommended a husband/wife acupuncture team who'd actually had their baby at the Birth Center a year ago, and we got in touch with them to set up a series of three appointments.
At the first acupuncture appointment, on 11/16, Dawn, the practitioner, just did "general acupuncture" (rather than anything to induce contractions), with the hopes of balancing me out and releasing tension to possibly help my body do its thing naturally. This was a relaxing experience, but nothing happened until Saturday night when I had some regular contractions for a few hours, which was exciting but then they stopped.
The next appointment was set for Monday, 11/20, just after another checkup at the Birth Center. We saw Julia again, and she was excited to report that I was 2cm dilated and 50% effaced. She stripped my membranes (a process to separate the amniotic sac from the walls of the uterus) and expressed her confidence that I'd have a Birth Center birth within a few days (but again, we had to make some hospital-induction related appoinments just in case, which was stressful). We then headed over to Dawn for more acupuncture. This time, she did some work to actually induce contractions, and sure enough I started contracting right there on the table, and felt what I can only describe as the baby growing "heavier." I was in a great mood and we went out to dinner on our way home, feeling excited that things would probably progress on their own.
Sure enough, I started having some more regular contractions-- mostly of the Braxton Hicks variety, which I described as "invigorating" and sort of breathless, kind of like the wind being knocked out of me in a good way, if that makes sense. But I couldn't even time them, really, because they didn't have a distinct start or stop, and some were just sort of a general crampiness that came and went gradually. Then the contractions stopped entirely. We got ready for bed, set our alarms for the next morning (we had set our 3rd acupuncture appointment for then), and turned out the light. Within seconds I felt myself having another contraction, which started like a Braxton Hicks but instead of fading away, it intensified rapidly until I felt a sudden squeezing pain and knew-- before I even felt fluid-- that my water was breaking. I jumped up and ran to the bathroom to try to clean up (which was dumb-- I didn't realize that the fluid would just keep coming). We called the Birth Center answering service; after hours, you leave a message and they page the midwife on call who will immediately call you back. We didn't get a call back, but didn't worry too much because we assumed I'd have a very long early labor. Although contractions had begun and were somewhat uncomfortable, they still didn't have a distinct start or stop. Finally though, after 45 minutes of this, we tried the answering service again, and Betsy, the midwife on call, immediately called back, having never gotten paged the first time. But after we talked and I didn't know how to describe my contractions, and wasn't in a ton of pain, she said not to come in yet, and to wait for the 4:1:1 rule (contractions every 4 minutes, lasting a minute, going on for an hour).
After that things got confusing because my contractions started to get way more intense pretty much right away-- but although they were immediately 2-3 minutes apart, they only lasted 30-40 seconds. I didn't want to be a bother to Betsy so I waited until I was REALLY in pain (what felt, as expected, like severe menstrual cramps) to call back at about 2:15. She told us to come in so we threw our stuff in the car and headed out, arriving at the Birth Center at exactly 3am.
It turned out Betsy was being shadowed by Kathie, the student midwife, who ended up being the one to care for me through the first part of my labor. She checked me and found that I was 6cm dilated. In my nerdy, purely mathematical thinking, I figured this meant I was 60% through my labor, so I was pretty excited. Kathie suggested I get in the Jacuzzi, and that sounded good to me (mostly because for some reason I was under the impression that the Jacuzzi is for the very end of labor). In retrospect, I think this actually slowed my labor down, but at least I was able to get some pseudo-rest for about an hour and a half because of it. After a while though, I got really uncomfortable because my body was telling me to move, and I ended up throwing up a couple of times before finally deciding I needed to get out. I walked around for a while and then Kathie checked me and said I was at 7-8 cm. The pain was getting really bad at this point and I was so tired, so Kathie had me get in the bed. Lying there was so painful, and I hit my low point just as Kathie's shift was ending at 8am. I was saying some really crazy things like, "I'm dying" and "Just knock me out and take me to the hospital." I know that if the epidural had been available to me, I would have begged for one at this point.
The shift change brought in midwife Gazelle, who is probably the most experienced one on staff [she has actually since retired!], and she immediately got me out of bed and had me rock back and forth on Brian's shoulders while she put counterpressure on my back. I don't even remember telling her that my back hurt, but sure enough this provided almost 100% relief for quite a few contractions. But then they got so much worse, and I started panicking again and saying I couldn't do it. So we tried something new-- Gazelle brought out these straps that hook over the door with handles on the end for me to grab and lower myself into a squat. I found that while descending into the squat, the pain would go away, but once I got down it hurt like crazy so I would try to pull myself up to do it again. But Gazelle promised that it would be more efficient to stay in the squat and curl myself forward. This was the hardest thing ever-- the pain in my back was indescribably bad-- but I managed to do it with most of the contractions.
Finally at around 9:45 am I was begging to do something different, and she said she'd check me at 10:00. I remember saying, "No, that's not good enough, something needs to happen NOW!" So she checked me right then and found I was at 9cm. For whatever reason, I was still so pessimistic and didn't realize that 9 is such a big deal and really, so close. I did some more squatting and spent a while standing next to the bed draped over the exercise ball (which was on the bed). When she checked me again at 11am she found that there was only a little lip of cervix left and I could try to start pushing if I wanted. Even though I had no urge to push, I wanted so badly to be onto the next stage so I said yes, and I got into the traditional lying on my back, propped up in bed position. But I was too weak to even hold my legs up, and we knew that this was an inefficient position, so I got up onto my knees and leaned over the ball and pushed for a while like that. This turned out to progress things REALLY well, because when she checked me again, the baby was basically right there and the next thing I knew, Gazelle was paging the nurse. "You know what that means, right?" she asked. I knew that meant I was about to deliver, but for some reason I was still really negative and assumed it would be a while. I turned onto my right side for the final stages of pushing.
The pushing stage felt NOTHING like I expected. I thought I would feel a burning/stretching feeling, but I didn't-- the sensations were much deeper within me, almost like in my lungs or sternum. Even as Gazelle and Patti, the nurse, were telling me the baby was right there and they could see hair, I didn't believe it until I saw Brian's face and saw how emotional he was. That's when I realized the baby was crowning, and that the pushing I was doing was actually working! There were several pushes where the sensation was so intense, I was CERTAIN the head was out, but it wasn't yet. Finally when it did come out, the feeling of relief was so extreme I couldn't believe it. The shoulders came out easily, and I could actually feel my perineum shrinking back into place. I heard Gazelle say "Oh, we've still got a leg in there!" and I remember thinking, oh, no sweat, the leg coming out won't hurt at all! And it was like all the nerves in my perineum re-awakened because I suddenly could feel the little leg in there-- pretty much exactly like you could imagine a little leg would feel like. The first thing I said when I saw the baby was "Oh! You exist!" over and over, which Gazelle got a real kick out of. I remember seeing Brian looking back and forth between me and the baby, and seeing tears in his eyes when they held the baby up and I announced, "Oh, it's a girl!" They put her on my stomach and she immediately started wiggling her way up to my chest, and actually latched herself on with almost no assistance. Amazing.
As they cleaned her up I remember being in a total daze and feeling like the whole thing had been an out-of-body experience, but just feeling so astonished that my body had been able to do it. We had some quiet time as a family, interrupted only when they weighed her-- 9lb7oz, cleaned her up and did a few tests. Later that afternoon, my mom and dad came to visit us for a while in our little suite, where we stayed until 11pm and then came home, 24 hours after the whole thing had begun the night before.
Eleven weeks ago, our first photo shoot.
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