Susanna's Birth Story, Part III

Here’s the other thing—I was coping. I was getting through the contractions without suffering, and this was new to me. I attribute this mostly to the fact that my first labor took place entirely without the cushioning of an intact bag of waters, as my membranes had ruptured at the start, leaving nothing between Lea’s skull and everything it was pressing against. This time, the pain was there and it was real but it wasn’t mind-altering. I was not the crazed beast of a creature I had become the last time. I could keep a conscious thought in my head. I wasn’t screaming my face off. Instead, I was very methodically creating rhythmic rituals for myself, draping my chest over the big blue exercise ball at the foot of my bed and slowly, slowly slowly lowering into a squat during each contraction. I found that if I started doing this the very second I felt a contraction coming, I could keep on top of things and generally do ok. I would also signal to Brian: “HIPS!”, which meant I wanted him to stand behind me and push inward on the bony part of each of my hips. I don’t know why, but this brought considerable relief, and he did it every time.

More good news: DeEtte was about to call her assistant, whose primary job was to help with the actual delivery and the baby itself. “Are you sure?” I asked. “I’m only 5 centimeters.” It had been just 45 minutes since she arrived, but DeEtte smiled and said, “Oh, I’m sure you’re more than that by now. These are really good contractions, I can tell by what you’re doing to get through them.” I think I actually shrugged my shoulders as this expert who’d delivered over 1500 babies dialed her assistant, and said to me while the phone rang, “Paige, I really don’t think she’s going to be here long.” I wanted, in some ways, to cover my ears and shut my eyes and say “LALALALA,” because I didn’t want to jinx it, and I didn’t want to labor with the assumption that things were moving along quickly, only to find out otherwise and be devastated.

We also talked about Lea. So far, she was sleeping soundly. We had a local friend expecting to be called if we needed her for childcare, and we debated whether to call her or just keep laboring as long as possible. It was 1:30 am, and I decided that if we got to 4am with Lea still sleeping, that would be ideal because she would’ve gotten enough sleep that there would be no expectation on Lindsay to try to get her to sleep more. In all her jinxiness, DeEtte said firmly, “I think we’ll be done by then.” No way.

Assistant Donna arrived, and DeEtte checked me again at just after 2am: 7 cm. OK. I started to believe that I was making very good progress, which seemed to turn a switch in my head that said I was now allowed to suffer a little more. I switched up my routine, climbing onto my knees in the bed (still draping over the ball), and just rocking around in circles, trying to breathe deeply. I also remembered a technique I’d read, to exhale “horse lips” style, allowing my lips to blow raspberries. The theory is that if you relax your mouth, you kind of can’t help but relax everything else. It really did work—I was amazed at how well.