Susanna's Birth Story, Part IV

By 3am I was 9cm and starting to lose my cool. Mostly, I was scared, scared, scared of the actual delivery, but even so, I remember commenting that the fact I could even conceive of a tangible emotion like “fear” represented a big difference from my first labor. I had so far refrained from making much noise, which would have been an absolute impossibility with Lea.

I started to sing a descending 5-note scale in as low an octave as I possibly could. The idea behind that one is that singing low prevents you from basically screeching, which is a huge waste of air and energy. I was getting tired, and tired of laboring. I wanted to be done. DeEtte recommends only pushing when you have an urge; in other words, 10cm does not magically mean it’s time to push, and she doesn’t typically direct her patients to push to a certain count or anything else. In her experience, pushing works best when you absolutely can’t help it. But I was getting impatient, and I told DeEtte—“I need to move on, I just want to be at the point where I can push.”

She checked me again—9cm still, no! I think I pouted a little, and a huge contraction hit me like a brick while I was still lying down. This was the first big one I’d experienced while reclined, and felt so grateful that I’d been encouraged to labor upright all this time. Contracting while horizontal was NOT a good recipe for me. This is when I started to get loud, but DeEtte convinced me to let her check me during a contraction to see if I got to 10 in the midst of one. I did, with the exception of a lip of cervix that remained. She suggested that she try to move it away during the next contraction. This was excruciating, and the beginning of the screaming. I’m not proud of the amount of screaming, actually. I wish I was one of those people who could surrender control, but I am not. It was bad.

But, DeEtte was able to massage that lip of cervix away, and said that if I wanted to, I could start to try to push, urge or no. So yes, I would push. I wanted to be in charge. (At this point, it was about 3:45 and I felt very strongly that we should call Lindsay because I felt so sure I was going to wake up Lea. Brian called her and she arrived, waiting downstairs in our living room, ready to respond if Lea awoke.)

I tried to push on a birthing chair (a c-shaped stool that some people actually deliver while sitting on), but it felt all wrong. I remembered that with Lea, pushing felt automatic. I didn’t have an urge then either, but pushing brought great relief and felt enormously productive. I loved it. This was different. Something about bearing down felt like the opposite of what my body wanted to do, and for the first time in the whole labor, I went completely tense and practically refused to let myself even breathe or move during a contraction. It was, needless to say, not a productive way to approach the situation.

DeEtte wanted to check me one more time to make sure the lip of cervix was totally gone, because she thought that might be what was feeling so off. She confirmed that it was gone, and decided that it would be best at that point to break my water, because even though no cervix remained, it seemed like the baby’s head would not descend any further. Very little water even came out, but I found myself remembering stories of second labors in which the baby is out within literally seconds of the bag of waters breaking. I decided to continue pushing right there on the bed.

Like I said, with Lea, I suffered through the labor but thrived while I pushed. This would prove to be the opposite. With the beginning of every contraction, I tried to push. I wanted to push, and in some ways, my body really was giving me the signal to push. But each push brought an extra jolt of pain, grinding, mind-erasing pain. (I found out later that the baby would be born with hand pressed to face, which is probably what caused this mixed signal, as the descending head encouraged the pushing instinct, but the totally-in-the-way hand encouraged the freakout instinct.) I refused to push at all a few times. Other times, I could only muster up the strength to push for 2 or 3 seconds. “I can’t do this!” I kept saying. Brian and Donna and DeEtte were firm: “You ARE doing it.” “NO!” I yelled. “Something is WRONG, something is DIFFERENT, this is not WORKING.” DeEtte insisted, “it IS working, Paige, you’re bringing the baby down, it’s hard work but it’s happening.” I shook my head. “No. I just need to FIGURE OUT a way to PUSH in a way that WORKS!” Anyone who has been through a birth knows that this is not the optimal time for “figuring out” anything. It’s not like you’re at your most logical. But, that’s me. I needed to figure it all out.

In the end, I didn’t. I had what I think of as an Exorcist-style contraction because I think I actually spit on the bed and spoke in tongues, and when it was over, something happened. In fact, I remember saying “something is happening,” and as the tail end of the contraction faded, I felt the most primal, animal NEED (not urge) to push, and I pushed and I pushed through two more contractions, the first of which DeEtte announced that the baby was crowning, and the second of which the head actually emerged. In between those two was what I now know is the infamous “ring of fire,” which I never experienced when I pushed Lea out. This is when the fullest part of the baby’s head fills the cervix, and women report feeling like their entire body is going to tear in half. I felt my eyes roll back and I heard myself half groan/ half scream until the next contraction hit, when it changed to all scream and I finally felt the head emerge. DeEtte firmly reminded me to keep pushing, and I felt her helping the baby rotate as I puuuuuuuuushed and then pop! Out came the rest of the body, and a huge gush of fluid, and a sweeping sense of relief and ecstasy.