We entered March with the assumption that I would have the baby that month. It was the month of our due date, albeit barely. I assumed I would go early because Mom had Shannon and Aileen a few days early each, and Shannon had had Fiona so early (two and a half weeks) and even Devon was born a few days early, and they say that you tend to follow the patterns of your mother and sisters. But March 30 came and went and the baby was still firmly lodged in my belly. Each day I would think about that day in terms of what it would be like to have the baby that day. We talked about and viewed each day as if it were the potential birth day of our baby. We lived each day in anticipation of contractions starting or my water breaking. Every little twinge in my body was suspect. It was a tiring and somewhat frustrating time, but exciting too.
At my weekly doctor appointment on Friday April 2, I was still dilated 1 cm and close to 100% effaced, just like I had been for the past few weeks. Dr Vanek scheduled us for a non-stress test and ultrasound on Monday April 5 and an induction on April 8. She stripped my membranes (sweeping a finger around the inside of my between the cervix and the bag of waters, to separate the bag from the uterine wall, a procedure that often causes the body to start contracting. It also weakens the bag of waters and increases the chances of water breaking). She had stripped my membranes the previous Friday and we all assumed that I would go into labor that weekend, as she said I was very favorable. But the weekend came and went with nothing. Jason and I were very disappointed. So when Dr Vanek stripped my membranes that Friday I was skeptical and had no expectations of anything happening – I had hope, but no expectation.
On Sunday morning (April 4) Jason and I woke late and made breakfast – French toast, since I wasn’t feeling like I could stomach our usual Sunday breakfast of bacon and eggs. I was mildly nauseous, as I had been off and on for several weeks. We ate and sat around talking for a while, enjoying the quiet of the morning. Around 11 I got up to do something, then sat back down. As I was lowering myself down into the chair, I felt something pop inside my belly, way down low and deep inside. It was the strangest feeling and made me pause mid sentence. I must have had a funny look on my face because Jason asked me what was wrong. I didn’t answer, because at that moment I felt a warm trickle of fluid. I jumped up and ran to the bathroom, saying as I went that I wasn’t sure but I thought my water had just broken.
I sat on the toilet for a minute and then checked the color of the fluid and found to my relief that it was clearish with a pink tinge. The trickling was a different sensation than any other sensation I have felt, which made me positive it was my water and not urine. Jason stood in the bathroom doorway and we looked at each other, in a state of disbelief that this was happening. It was a very similar moment to the one we shared after I first got the positive pregnancy test - the beginning of a long journey into the unknown, exciting and scary and exhilarating all at the same time. I hadn’t been having contractions, so my water breaking was a complete surprise. I had convinced myself that I was simply not going to go into labor on my own as a way of preparing myself for the scheduled induction later that week, which I wasn’t looking forward to at all; I much preferred to let nature choose when the baby was born. I was thankful nature had finally made a decision!
We were both calm despite being excited about the prospect of labor being imminent. Jason went upstairs to make a final run through the hospital bags to make sure we had everything, while I took a shower. Once the bags were ready and I was out of the shower, Jason left to make a run to his office to transfer the on-call phone to his coworker. I called the doctor’s office and left a message with the answering service, then used the cell phone to call Sara, our doula, and then I sat and waited. I couldn’t do much else, because standing and walking made the fluid gush out more. That was messy!
I only had to wait a few minutes for the doctor to call back – the doctor on call that weekend was Dr. Missy Boyles, who had coincidentally delivered my sister’s baby five weeks previous. I described to Dr. Missy what had happened and she said that it sounded very likely that it had been my water breaking. As I expected, she instructed me to go to the hospital as soon as possible. Sara called back not long after that, and we agreed that because I was not having contractions, we didn’t need her yet, and that we would call her with an update once we were at the hospital and settled in. Once those calls were out of the way I called my mom and Shannon and then went upstairs to the computer to email my friend Hollie, because she was going to be the one updating our website about the baby arriving.
Jason got home not long after that. We did a final, final check on the bags, loaded them into the car and headed out. As we were driving away, we saw Straka (our dog) in the front window, her nose stuck through the mini blinds, watching us drive away. This is something she never does. We think she knew something very out of the ordinary was going on.
Jason dropped me off at the front entrance of the hospital and went to park the car (we later found out he could have left the car there at the front entrance in the special “Labor and Delivery” lane while he went with me upstairs so I didn’t have to wait). While I stood in the lobby waiting for him to come in, I watched two new families come down and go through the process of loading their new babies into their cars. It was so surreal, standing there watching those new families. I knew I was going to have a baby that day, but somehow seeing them made it seem very large and very real and a little scary in ways that it hadn’t felt up to that point. An older woman standing nearby waiting for someone saw me watching and commented that that would be me soon. I smiled and said yes, it would, in about two days. She was surprised I was in labor, since I was so calm and wasn’t panicky or in obvious pain. We chatted about babies and the changes they bring until Jason arrived and we headed upstairs to the maternity ward on the third floor.
Before we knew it, we were checked in and in our room. I put on a gown and put all my street clothes into a plastic bag and then laid down on the bed. This whole time I was feeling as if I was faking since I wasn’t feeling anything. It still didn’t seem real. We waited a while before the nurse, Kris, showed up. Kris checked my cervix – still 1 cm as it had been for about 2 weeks – and then hooked me up to monitors. Not surprisingly, no contractions registered. The nurse asked what seemed like a hundred thousand questions while we waited for the monitors to do their thing. I was pleased I was able to state many of my preferences for the birth up front. I found I didn’t have any problem making it clear that I wanted to avoid certain things – Pitocin, internal monitoring, a full IV, and so on. To our surprise and pleasure, the nurse was more than accommodating and made a list of those items to run past Dr. Missy for approval.
The nurse left to call the doctor and returned some time later and said that everything we wanted was okay with Dr. Missy. We were being given six hours from the time my water broke to get contractions started (by walking and other natural methods), but that if nothing was happening by then they would start Pitocin. We agreed to that wholeheartedly - we had not expected so much time! I was fully expecting to be more or less forced into having Pitocin from the start. I was at that point expecting to need Pitocin eventually, but I knew that at least by making an effort to get labor started without it would make the inevitable more tolerable. (Pitocin typically causes contractions to be stronger and more intense than they otherwise would be; I especially wanted to avoid this since contractions tend to be more intense anyway once you water has broken.)
We started walking around 1:30. We were instructed to walk for an hour, then go back to our room for 20-30 minutes of monitoring, then walk for another hour, and so on. By the end of the first hour I was feeling what I thought might be mild contractions. They seemed to be coming fairly regularly every 10 minutes and lasted roughly 20-45 seconds. Unfortunately, once I laid down on the bed to be monitored, they disappeared. The second hour saw the contractions return, stronger this time – strong enough that I was sure they were actually contractions – but they disappeared again when I laid down. During the third hour, the contractions returned again, and to our surprise, they stuck around while I was monitored. At this time it was around 4:30, and since our walking time was up at 5:15 and because the contractions seemed to be constant now, we decided to call Sara and tell her to head down to the hospital. At the end of that monitoring session the nurse did an internal check and found me at 2-3 cm. She told us to go walking again. She said as long as I was having regular contractions they would hold off on Pitocin. We cheered to ourselves.
We ran into Sara in the hall partway through the next hour, took her back to our room to drop off her bags, and then we all went walking. During the rest of this hour of walking the contractions started coming more frequently – five minutes apart by the end – and were strong enough that I had to stop walking and lean against the wall during them while Jason or Sara rubbed my back. I was monitored again, but when that was over I didn’t feel like walking at all anymore. The contractions were simply too much and were getting very strong very quickly. The three of us stayed in our room from that point on. I tried several different positions – sitting in a rocking chair, on all fours on the bed, leaning over a birthing ball that was placed on the bed. Sara and Jason rubbed my legs and feet and back. Sara showed Jason good ways to rub and good places to put pressure on my back. All of this helped for a while, but eventually any position where I was upright or leaning forward made the contractions so much more painful that I couldn’t tolerate them at all. I collapsed into bed and laid on my back. I knew this wasn’t a good position since I needed gravity to help the baby move down and to put pressure on the cervix to help it open faster. I knew I really ought to change positions, but moving and changing positions made the contractions worse and I couldn’t bear the thought of that pain. The pain was starting to scare and immobilize me. Being on my back hurt but not as much, and I wanted to maintain the status quo.
The nurses’ shift changed at 7:00 and our new nurse, Linda, came in and introduced herself. She explained that she didn’t want to do many internal checks, if that was okay with us (it was very, very okay!). Contractions continued steadily to worsen and come more quickly. Around 7:00, they were less than five minutes apart, possibly closer to three minutes. With Sara’s and Jason’s help, I was managing the contractions fairly well by breathing through them and relaxing, but the more time that passed, the more panicked I started to feel each time a contraction would start. I started to worry I couldn’t handle them if they got any worse. Jason and Sara made me get up to go to the bathroom periodically, as they were supposed to. Moving made the pain so much worse, and sitting on the toilet was utter torture. I dreaded being made to get up. At one point, while sitting on the toilet, I threw up. Surprisingly, that helped the pain, for a time.
Some time later (around 9:00 I think), Linda the nurse came in and checked my cervix. I was in a fog from the pain of the contractions, which were now coming every three minutes or less. She didn’t announce how dilated I was, but I heard Jason ask and she whispered something to Jason and Sara. I could barely hear, but I thought she said I was at 6. My heart sank. I asked Jason how far I was and when he said 6, my heart sank some more. I think may have cried a little. I was positive I couldn’t handle much more than this, and knowing I wasn’t even in transition yet made me even more positive of that. Two contractions later I asked for Nubain. Jason waited some time before finding the nurse, to make sure that’s what I really wanted. I was very forceful in telling him that it was absolutely what I wanted. Eventually the nurse got there and gave me half a dose of Nubain – she explained that she gave me half so I could have another shot of it in while to spread it out, since narcotics work best on the first full dose only. I never did get the other half dose.
I don’t remember feeling much relief of pain from the Nubain, although Jason says that the intensity of the contractions lessened considerably for a while after the injection (at some point they had hooked me up to the monitor and left it hooked up since I was in bed). Just the same, looking back I know that having the Nubain helped my mental state and made me feel more in control and better able to handle the contractions.
The rest of the time is a blur in my mind. There was pain and more pain, and eventually the contractions were coming so strongly and quickly that breathing and relaxing on my own were things of the past. I barely managed to hold it together through each contraction. I would grip the bed railing during some contractions. Sara sat next to me, breathing through the contractions with me. I could hear her breathing, and hearing helped. It reminded me to breathe, and the breathing helped me manage the pain. I feel like I eked through each contraction just barely. I began vocalizing somewhere in this timeframe, too. Making noise helped, as I think it gave me something to focus on during each contraction, something to hang onto. Being on my back started to give me tons of pain in my back, so I rolled onto my side.
Linda was in and out of the room several times, but I was barely aware of it. Despite how out of it I was, though, I remember watching the clock tick ever closer to midnight. I began to realize I wasn’t going to have my baby that day, and as such that the baby’s birthday was going to be 04/05/04 instead of the 04/04/04 we had been excited for. Linda started making preparations for the baby’s arrival – setting out blankets and prepping the warmer and so on. This made me feel a little hopeful that I must be very nearly done. Around 11:30 Linda checked me again. I was at 8 cm, which cheered Jason and Sara considerably, but made me wail in frustration. They told me how awesome that was and how very little I had to go yet, but that didn’t matter. To me it was way too much further to go. I wanted to be done with this and done N.O.W. I remember making a near-constant stream of “I can’t do this” statements – I can’t, I don’t want to do it anymore, make it stop, I’m done with this, I want to go home, and so on. Once I even looked at Jason and said I wished I could have an epidural.
Sometime after checking me at 8 cm, Linda came in and asked me if I was feeling the urge to push. I said no, although I think I was having mild urges even then. Within a couple of contractions after she asked, I started to feel strong sensations reminiscent of the need to have a bowel movement. This feeling intensified with each contraction, and soon it was nearly uncontrollable. Somehow Linda was told of this – by Sara or Jason, or by her coming into the room and hearing me say so, I can’t remember. She came in and said she was paging Dr Missy and that I was to hold on as long as I could.
With each contraction, the urge was getting worse. Before long my body was spontaneously giving little pushes during every contraction. I tried (not very hard, but I tried) not to, but I couldn’t help it. It felt like forever, waiting for Dr Missy to show up. I kept saying I couldn’t help it, I just had to push. Finally, after an eternity, Linda came in and told me that Dr Missy was in the hospital and I could push with the next contraction if I wanted to. Did I want to? Hell yes!
And so I pushed. It was a blessed relief, even though it was a new kind of discomfort, and I was so worn out from laboring I didn’t have much energy. They put my legs up in the supports and Jason and Sara helped hold my knees back for me. I pushed two or three times with each contraction. It was such hard work, and I was already exhausted. During each push I felt as if I was trying to topple a solid wall of granite. I couldn’t feel anything moving, and had no way of knowing whether my effort was doing anything. I didn’t have the energy to push very hard and during some contractions, all I did was tense up or push with the wrong muscles. I knew it wasn’t helping at all, but it was all I could give. Dr. Missy showed up eventually, and from there things happened very quickly. One thing I remember about her first showing up was that a nurse came in and told her that she had another patient ready to push. Dr. Missy glanced at me and then back at the nurse and said “The other woman has an epidural, this one does not – Tell her she can wait!”
I remember Jason and Sara and Dr Missy and the nurse exclaiming about being able to see the head and how much hair the baby had. I remember them being excited about being able to see more and more of the head. They told me how close I was, how much they could see of the head. All this flowed past me – I heard it, I sensed their excitement and the pleasant (for them) tension of the event, but it did nothing for me. All I could concentrate on was pouring all my energy into pushing. I didn’t even have the desire to see what was going on in the mirror (I didn’t have my glasses on anymore at that point anyway.). Finally I got so fed up with the work and not feeling like I was making progress that decided that if I was to ever be finished with this I just had to DO IT, tiredness be damned. I don’t know where I got the energy, but it came from somewhere and put every ounce of it into each push. It was probably only a couple contractions, if that, from that point until the head was born. Another couple of pushes past that and the rest of the baby was born. I didn’t have my glasses on anymore (I had taken them off some hours previously), but I remember seeing the blurry, blue-white shape of a baby emerge from me in the hands of Dr Missy. It was a baby – a boy! I was done. I felt relief.
The baby was put onto my chest almost immediately. It was incredible. I can’t remember what I felt or thought at the time. I was overwhelmed, and I think large portions of what I felt was just relief at the pain being over. I held him a bit, in awe, as things happened around me that I was barely aware of. Someone told me the cord was wrapped around his foot three times. People kept saying how big he was. The nurses kept asking me to try breastfeeding him to get my uterus to contract to expel the placenta but their words didn’t make sense to me – until Sara suggested it to me. A nurse took him away to wipe him clean and wrap him up. Dr Missy told me I had a third degree tear and began sewing me up. She also said I had a mild hematoma, and IU asked what a hematoma was (it is a bruise). Someone was talking about placentas and I asked to see, and was shown, mine. Eventually the swirl of activity quieted down.
The nurses took the baby – Gavin! I had to force myself to start thinking of him as Gavin – from me to the nursery for evaluation and so on. Jason went with her. Sara and I stayed in the room while Dr Missy finished sewing me up. I was still in a daze. Sometime later Jason came back and said “Let’s play Guess the Baby’s Stats.” I guessed 9lbs 3 oz, just being silly and guessing really big. Jason said I was close, he was 9 lbs 4 oz. We were shocked – so huge! Sara guessed his length at 21.5”, which was also close, he was 22”. What a big boy!
When Dr Missy finished sewing me, they called for a cart and help to move me to our postpartum room, as there was no way I was going to be able to sit in a wheelchair. I was exhausted and still in a daze, not to mention in considerable pain from the tear and the stitches. Sara helped Jason take our bags to our room. The man came with the cart and I slowly inched my way from my bed to the cart. They wheeled me through the halls. As we passed the nursery, Jason called out, “Hi Gavin!” and I smiled and waved and said hi to my boy.
Sara left us once we were settled into our room, and we were alone. I dozed a bit while Jason went to get our other bag from the car. When he got back we started making some phone calls to immediate family. Around 4:30 or 5 a.m. Gavin was brought back to our room, and our life as parents and a new family began for real.
Written two weeks after Gavin’s birth:
Our time in the hospital with Gavin was one long, unending day. We slept maybe a total of six or seven hours the entire time we were there from Sunday noon until Wednesday afternoon. It was hard to sleep, even when we had the chance. I couldn't fall asleep for worrying about Gavin. If he made a noise I had to peek at him and if he wasn't making any noise I had to peek at him. I was afraid to take off my glasses because I wouldn't be able to see him whenever I needed to, so what little sleep I got was made more uncomfortable because of having them on. Despite the lack of sleep, I think we did very well. I don't remember feeling overtired - adrenalin is a most amazing thing.
Later on Monday, the day Gavin was born, a nurse stopped by and told me I needed to try to go to the bathroom. She helped me sit up and get out of bed, which was very painful and difficult because of my stitches. Unfortunately I wasn't able to do more than sit up without going all lightheaded and getting a ringing in my ears. The nurse told me to lay back down and we would try again in an hour or two. An hour or two later it was the same thing so she had me use a bedpan, which was soooo hard, you just don't realize how conditioned you are not to pee except on the toilet until someone tells you to pee in bed! When the nurse checked my blood pressure, it was extremely low - 90/50 or thereabouts - so she ordered an IV for me to get some fluids into me. Once that was in, my BP improved some, slowly, but I was still not able to stand without nearly passing out. Eventually I was able to get to the bathroom and go, but while sitting there I very nearly passed out and the nurse had to call two other nurses to help me back to bed. They dragged a chair over and put me on it, then dragged the chair and me back to my bed. I'm sure we made quite a sight! Gradually, with the IV and food in my belly, I felt better and better and my blood pressure increased. By late morning I was able to get up with some assistance from a nurse, and sometime in the afternoon I got up all by myself with no nurses around for the very first time.
Monday bled into Tuesday. During that night, Gavin was fussy and crying nonstop. Nothing we tried calmed him down and we were both exhausted and frustrated. I cried, feeling like a failure and a horrible mother. Jason finally decided to take him to the nursery so we could sleep. I hated to do it, because it made me feel even more a failure, but as he said, we weren't doing Gavin any good being so tired and frustrated - we needed sleep. So Jason wheeled Gavin to the nursery and we slept until a nurse brought him back about three hours later for a feeding. We both felt so much better that afterwards I knew Jason had made the right decision, even though it still bothered me to have done it.
Sitting up to nurse was extremely painful because of my stitches, but I did it anyway. Motherhood, it seems, has a way of making you ignore your personal discomfort for the good of your child! Nursing seemed to be going pretty well. I felt as if we were getting pretty good latch-ons overall. The only problem we were having was that he consistently had trouble latching onto the right side, so we asked the morning nurse for a lactation consultant to visit us later that day. It took until the afternoon, but she eventually stopped by. She was very helpful and Jason and I felt much more confident in what we were doing (we, because he was helping me get Gavin latched on).
We opted to stay at the hopsital until Wednesday, even though we could have left Tuesday evening. Our experience the previous night with sending Gavin to the nursery had been so positive, we wanted to take advantage of having that option for as long as possible. Tuesday night we did send Gavin to the nursery again. I can't remember if he was inconsolable or if we just decided we needed to sleep without worrying about him. I still felt guilty sending him away, but knew we needed the sleep.
By Wednesday morning, breastfeeding had gone downhill and I was frustrated again. We again requested a lactation consultant. She showed up in the late morning and was even more helpful than the first. In fact, without her help I don't know what I would have done, as I'm sure once we got home and the nipple soreness kicked in, I would have been even more tempted to cheat with forumla than I was (no, I haven't cheated, and I won't, but I can't deny being tempted!).
When the pediatrician visited Gavin Wednesday morning to okay the discharge, he was concerned about jaundice. Gavin wasn't overly yellow, but apparently he was more yellow than he should have been for being only two days old. The ped ordered a bilirubin test and it took a few hours to get the results back from that. That turned out to be fortunate, because I found I wanted the lactation consultant again when I tried feeding Gavin later after her visit in the morning.
Gavin's bili levels came back at 14.1, which was 0.1 over the threshold where they begin considering it a potentially serious case. We were instructed to take him to a Children's Hospital clinic near us the next morning to be tested again, but they okayed our discharge. We left the hospital around 4:30 Wednesday afternoon.
The first night home was extremely overwhelming. I was terrified when it came to bedtime, as if the mere fact that we were home meant something terrible was going to happen. I was completely overwhelmed by being home and having the full weight of responsibility for the little soul resting on myself and Jason. I'm sure I was also coming down off the rush from being in the hospital and having the baby, and that I was starting to feel the lack of sleep finally! That night we left the hall light on, and that helped some, but I still slept lightly and very poorly, waking every half hour it seems to check that he was still breathing. Thankfully I've grown a bit more confident that he can breathe on his own at night.
Thursday we took him to the nearby clinic to have his blood drawn for his bilirubin levels again. His levels on Thursday were 17.9, which was a huge jump, so the pediatrician prescribed phototherapy. That afternoon, a nurse stopped by and introduced us to the light blanket, which he had to wear 24 hours a day, or as close to that as possible. We also had to take him in for testing each day. It was a hassle to deal with that blanket, and heartbreaking at first to deal with the idea that my baby wasn't perfect, but we adjusted and dealt with it and made it through just fine. His Saturday bili level was 17.6 and on Monday we were told it was okay to take him off the light blanket.
Since then, the days have flowed from one into the next in a haze of diapers and feedings and hormonal crying. We are slowly finding a rhythm in this new life, a pattern in the course of each day. We are all learning about and getting to know each other - Jason and I about Gavin, and he about us. As cliched as it sounds, we are gradually falling in love with each other. I find myself looking at the small creature in awe, filled with an incredible depth of wonder and a new kind of love I've never felt before. When he is crying and crying and I pick him up and cuddle him and whisper in his ear and he calms down immediately, I am filled with an incredible feeling of -- of power? Being needed? I don't know what to call it, but it touches me in a deep place I never knew was there. With each passing day, the positive moments of being a mother are starting to outweigh the moments where I am sure I can't possibly suceed, that the job is far too large and overwhelming for me. I put the emphasis on starting to, as there are still plenty of times each day when I wonder what I've gotten myself into and long (with plenty of accompanying guilt) for the days before baby.
We have gone out on several small trips since coming home with Gavin. We took him to the clinic, of course, every day for three days. We have visited several relatives, and we have gone to the grocery a couple of times. Today we had our biggest adventure and went back to my old work. They had a Secretary's Day celebration and invited me to come so they could thank me for my help the past year. Even though we were only gone for a couple of hours, I was exhausted when we got home and put us both to bed for a nap. Bit by bit we're getting the hang of this baby thing.