1.23.10 - A Birth Story

Having never experienced a contraction before, I wasn't sure how I would be able to handle them once they came. I didn't really experience too many Braxton Hicks contractions, partially because I carried baby very compactly and by the last month, she was so tight in there, her movements sometimes were indistinguishable from those pesky irregular contractions.

I started to feel regular contractions Friday afternoon, but they were not very painful -- just a momentary tightening in the belly -- and they were pretty far apart, maybe about 10-15 minutes. They stayed that way until nighttime, when they started to get definitely more uncomfortable, like very bad menstrual cramps, and come closer together, around 6-7 minutes apart.

Around 11 PM, J and I called the hospital and were told to come in to get checked for progress. When we got there, I was 2 cm dilated. The nurse on call gave us a choice: be admitted and know that I would be subjected to fairly regular vaginal exams to monitor progress, and perhaps face some pressure to have labor hastened medically if I didn't make steady progress, or go home and wait it out for a while longer. Though the hospital was a good half-hour away, we chose the latter. Home was just so much more comfortable!

I didn't sleep very well that night, though -- just snatches of shut-eye between contractions. We had been told to go back to the hospital when the contractions were very close together, like 3-4 minutes apart, and "more painful." Morning came, but the contractions stayed about 5-6 minutes apart, though they grew more and more painful. By 10 AM, I couldn't take it anymore. The pain from each contraction was so intense I was sobbing during each one, instinctively throwing my body onto all fours with my back end in the air to try to lessen the pressure and pain a little bit while I buried my face in my pillow. J called the hospital to tell them of my pain and we began the trip there again. The ride there this time was nothing like the calm, collected one of the previous night -- I couldn't help crying as the contractions came again and again. J talked me through them as best as he could, though I could see the helplessness in his face as I writhed in pain next to him.

Around 11 AM, we were rushed through admitting into triage, where I was found to be 7 cm dilated and baby was making her way down the birth canal at +1 station -- no wonder there was so much pressure down there! At this point I was still crying out uncontrollably with each contraction, much to the discomfort of the other couples in triage just a thin curtain away, I'm sure, but at that point I wasn't aware of much besides the pain and pressure I was feeling.

I vaguely remember being wheeled from triage into a birthing room. Had it not been for the contractions I think I would have really appreciated how nice it was -- large, clean, a private shower for laboring, etc. There was even a room with a birthing tub available had I wanted it. They had asked me in triage if I wanted any pain medication and I had responded somewhat deliriously, "I... don't know!" The birth plan they had given me during my prenatal care, that I had filled out months earlier, was forgotten somewhere inside the suitcase we'd packed, but even it would not have offered a more solid opinion. My labor nurse looked at me and said, "If you can make it through this far, the contraction pain will not get worse until you are fully dilated. It's up to you, but if you can make it to 10 cm, the pushing will be a relief and will feel good." I locked eyes with her and gathered strength from her words, willing myself to at least try.

The next half hour or so was a blur. J continued to talk me through the contractions as he watched them on the monitor, telling me when I was over the hump of each one and the pain was subsiding. "You're doing so well... I am so proud of you," he told me.

Within thirty minutes of being in the birthing room, each contraction began to come with the strongest, most compelling physical urge to push that I have ever felt in my life. It was time. I hadn't yet been measured, but I knew. Somewhere in the whirlwind of me yelling out that I needed to push, my nurse checking me to confirm I was at 10 cm, and one of the hospital's midwives arriving to deliver the baby, I found a focal point in my husband's face.

Somehow, as I gazed at him and took a few deep breaths to prepare for the next contraction, the pain became a little less distinct: a backdrop to the bigger picture of what was happening. I concentrated on him as they helped me hoist my legs up, knees toward my chest, and instructed me how to breathe as I bore down to push. I looked at him and pushed as hard as I could through the contraction, focusing on him and the baby and what this meant for us. I pushed through one more, and one more -- and then the baby's head was out: a brief, burning, terrible pain that almost made me see stars -- and suddenly, her first cries were piercing the air, her tiny body was being placed on my chest, her little head full of hair was right there in front of me, my shaking hands were touching her moist little back, voices were telling me how beautiful she was and what a great thing I had accomplished, J's eyes were smiling and smiling at me and I would have seen that they tears in them as well, had I not been blinded by the onset of my own in that one long moment.

The last stage of labor happened as quickly as the one preceding it, with my body seemingly on autopilot to deliver the placenta a few minutes after the baby. I barely noticed. I could only see the small being held close against me, skin-to-skin, for the first time, the tiny hand resting on me with the fingers outstretched, the damp hair covering the precious little head pressed against my chest. My little girl, our baby daughter, had finally arrived.