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In the interlude between the miscarriage and getting pregnant, I stumbled onto the idea of unassisted pregnancy and birth. And it just... resonated. Looking back, I think it resonated so hard because I still had a lot of hate in my heart, and a lot of feelings of being utterly unsupported by the medical/birth establishment. I read. I researched. I analyzed. And decided that the start of my unassisted pregnancy would be the rejection of all prenatal testing and monitoring.
You don't realize how enculturated you are until the bazillionth time you drive past the pharmacy and have to exercise force of will to keep from driving in and getting a pregnancy test. Even goofier in my case, since I'd been charting, knew within a day when I conceived, had my temperatures to back me up, and I'm one of those women for whom pregnancy tests don't work. But still... there was the lure of the little pink line. I resisted. And that resistance made me that much tougher in researching and then rejecting each and every other potential prenatal test. I never saw a doctor, a midwife, or any other formal care provider.
And it was glorious. I reveled in what I knew for myself. I built up my shattered confidence in my knowing of my own body and what it was doing. I got massages and acupuncture treatments and chiropractic adjustments. I did yoga every day. I ate fabulously well. I felt really, really good about my body and what it could do. And the pregnancy progressed completely unremarkably. Zero drama. Zero stress. No arguments. Just gestating in peace. Incredible.
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Going into Labor
The Fears: Eternal prodromal labor.
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| Contractions started about a week out. No big deal, very mild, but it was part of my new body awareness and personal calm that I could feel which twinges were Braxton-Hicks contractions, which ones were priming my cervix, and which ones were just dehydration. I cherished my sleep, took extra long naps, and settled in. Since last time I'd spent the weeks leading up to birth exhausting myself, I spent this time recharging. Ahh... |
| I was also very nervous about calling it labor too early. I'd done so much prodromal labor, and it was so disappointing, that I was kind of in denial this time. Also, Rowan was 4 weeks overdue, so I was also in denial about going into labor "on time". I thought I still had a month or so to go.
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No, Really; Labor
The Fears: Pain. Swelling. Pushing. Failing.
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| Monday morning, May 30, 2AM, I was awakened not by my customary need to get up and pee, but by a very strong contraction, lasting nearly 2 minutes. Huh. OK. Started losing the mucous plug, which was neat, because I don't remember doing that before. Went back to sleep. Continued that pattern (contract, wake, back to sleep) until about 10AM. Got up, and started quietly organizing my space. I tried to hide the contractions, since prelabor had been the bane of my prior pregnancy. But these contractions kept getting stronger and closer together. Eventually, I just gave up the fight, told Jason it was time to focus, and started really working with them. |
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| It's tough to simultaneously be calm and pacific and opening through a contraction, and try to help it be "productive" as well. What's that about? And since last time, direction to push prematurely is part of what went wrong, I had to really focus on that fear, and try to banish it. But tough! |
| I tried to just breathe through them. That lasted through Monday, and into Tuesday morning. By dawn Tuesday, I was unabashedly vocalizing. Apparently I scared some of the neighbors. Sometime in that time, my waters broke up high, so I was trickling fluid. Rowan was incredible...he'd come over, kiss my belly, tell me he was making it all better, and then yell along with me. What a guy. Didn't seem the least bit scared. I took a lot of comfort from that... |
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By 1:30 Tuesday afternoon, after 20 hours of pretty intense labor, I was exhausted, I was scared, and I was wondering what the hell I'd been thinking to not just schedule a repeat cesarean. I had also started bleeding a small amount, and passed an odd bit of tissue. They say the mind gives up far before the body does, and I think they're right. I gave up. Just...gave up. But Jason wouldn't let me. While encouraging me, telling me that I wasn't allowed to give up, and that he knew I had more in me, he found Claudette's phone number (which, in an interesting psychological spin, was NOT in the basket where I'd put every other thing we could potentially need for the birth). He found it, called her, described the situation, and held his breath while she thought about it. For about ten seconds. "I'll be there as soon as I have someone to pick up my kids!" she said. No hesitation. No lecturing. A calling. |
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| She showed up around 3:45, and the assistant midwife, Paula (as I later found out, the only person in the area who didn't basically say "throw the crazy u-birther to the wolves"), showed up around 6:00. They were quietly reassuring. They were calm. They were practical. Claudette assessed babe's position, and confirmed that he'd swiveled posterior. Thus, my labor stall-out. I got on hands and knees and leaned on the birth ball, and they applied ice to my sacrum ("They hate ice", she tells me. I can't say but that I don't agree, I hate it too!). Every time I wanted the ice off, Jason talked me through keeping it there. Ugh! |
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| Apparently, I'd sent some wave out on the psychic hotline, because everyone showed up at my house after that, hell-bent on being supportive and encouraging. My sister in law Stacey, who'd been at my first horrible birth, her husband Mike, my brother in law Marc, my friend Isabel...we also got more phonecalls than we'd had in the prior several months. Everyone pitched in to provide food, to keep Rowan entertained, to do laundry and keep things tidy. I was totally oblivious, focused on the contractions, on moving from the bathroom to the bedroom, to moving the baby back around the right way. Any time I moved even the slightest bit into a bad position, baby flipped posterior, and we had to coax him back. I burned a lot of energy that way, but learned so so so much about my body, and about my prior birth.
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| Very respectfully, Claudette asked to check me. Fully dilated! WHOOT! Time to push...
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...and push. And push. And push. I had zero urge, and was really scared to push. Might not have been brave enough at all, had I not had that confirmation that I was complete, since pushing against an incomplete cervix was part of what stalled my labor out last time. Jason counted out the pushes for me, push for a count of ten, breathe in deeply twice, push for another ten, breathe another two, push another ten. Rest as minimally as I could stand to, and do it again. Two hours worth. Thank God for strong thighs, a sturdy sink, and other people counting, because I was so deep in focus, I couldn't keep count myself. |
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| People kept appearing at my side, offering me watermelon gatorade, which sometimes I drank and sometimes I snarled at. Paula tried to get me to eat a spoonful of honey, which I puked back up into the sink immediately. Cool washrags appeared at my brow randomly, sips of water; it was all a blur. Somewhere in there, Paula fed me a homeopathic remedy to deal with the leg cramps I started having. Claudette turned all the lights in the room off, which startled me a bit. "Your brain makes more oxytocin in the dark, this'll be better for the baby." I looked around, and realized that she and Paula had set up all their newborn stuff...Wow. They weren't hedging, like the midwives last time. They were setting up their gear, like it was only a matter of time before I had that baby. And I don't think they intended it to be the statement of faith that I took it as. But it made a huge difference to my attitude. I realized that even at that point, I was still questioning, but they weren't.
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| About half the time, the "urge" kicked in, and I felt like I was turning myself inside-out. The other half, I felt like I was pushing against the immoveable object. I couldn't feel the baby moving down, I couldn't feel any progress, I felt like I'd been torturing myself for two hours for nothing. "Reach down and touch your baby!" Claudette told me. I reached down, and sure enough there was the head, just about an inch up the birth canal...but there was also... "What the hell is that puffy thing?" I yelled, just before another urge-push, that brought the baby up to my perineum, and returned my focus entirely to what I was doing.
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| The burn of the "Ring of Fire" was definitely there, but compared to the contractions, it was no big deal. I eased the baby's head up to my perineum, then backed off. Then up to it. Then backed off. Oddly, this was very instinctual; I just knew that I had to do this bit very, very gently. Warm cloths and hands supporting my perineum were just irritating, and I snarled at whoever was trying to support it. Finally, the urge, stronger than any of the others, to get the baby OUTOUTOUTOUTOUT!!!!! My water broke, explosively. PUSH! There was the head! PUSH! And plop. There he was. He?
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| Yup. He. My baby was a boy! No one thought I was having a boy!!! I went to swoop him up, and Claudette said "short cord! Be careful!" I could not quite get him to my chest, with how tight the cord was, but it didn't matter... I don't think I'll ever find the words to describe how utterly enthralled I was by his eyes in that moment. He was quiet, alert, and the most gorgeous thing in the entire universe. |
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| The placenta came about 10 minutes later, with very little cramping and no effort whatsoever. Jason had to call Claudette and Paula back into the room, because they (and everyone else, but I was totally unaware of any of it) had retreated to allow us some family bonding time. No one thought the placenta would come that fast, but there it was. I bled a tiny bit additionally, but not even enough to wipe out an entire chux pad.
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We waited until the cord was totally limp and drained, and the baby no longer startled when we touched the cord (a tidbit I picked up on some birth list or other; baby will startle if you touch the cord on the placenta end, if it's still pumping). Rowan and Jason cut the cord together. I spent this happy time getting four stitches. |
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Epilogue
The Realizations: CPD means nothing to me. The Birth Machine can't stop me. And it's OK to get some help from your friends.
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After the jubilation set in (seconds after I felt him come out of me), the first thing I realized was that I HAD DONE IT!!!! Nothing I ever accomplish in the rest of my life will ever be that empowering. Later, after we'd measured his head, did the full impact hit me; not only was his head the same size as Rowan's, but with the nuchal hand (which is what the "puffy thing" was that I'd felt when I reached up to touch his head coming out), I'd birthed something significantly bigger than what had gotten me a CPD diagnosis.
Victory? Victory is sweet. |
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| Much later, probably the next day, I started thinking about writing this story, and about milestones in the experience. And it occurred to me that, had I been laboring under the care of an OB, a MedWife, or had I been anywhere but home, I would have been cut again, at several different points in the adventure. My water broke significantly before the 12 hour limit. I labored far longer than I "should" have. Baby went posterior several times. And of course, I did give up once. That's four places that being home saved me from the machine, saved me from the knife, saved me from that horrible place in my head again.
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| Perversely, I also think that without the cesarean, I would not have appreciated this miracle. I have spent the two weeks since this birth comparing all the minute details, and having my world rocked. But without that first hideous birth experience, I wouldn't have known what of this to appreciate. I will tell Rowan, when he's old enough to understand, that he was my learning baby, and I will tell Kestrel that he was my confidence baby.
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| Most importantly, though, I think a very big hole in me was healed, not just with the birth, but with the midwives being present after all. They both took a risk on attending me. Claudette had only the vaguest notion of what I was like, Paula had none at all. Both were, realistically, risking all kinds of legal disaster, depending on what situation they found when they arrived. And they both have so much faith in birth (not in me; they didn't know me), that they showed up, and provided that bit of support I needed to drive a stake through the heart of the last of my fears. They were there for me, and therefore, I am healed.
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