Keeping my promises

There are three things I have promised in prior posts that I have not yet delivered. Here they are.

1. Cute, funny video of DJ learning to suck his thumb:




It's over a month old now. He can reliably get his hands to his mouth now, but he doesn't hang out and soothe himself that way (which is too bad).

2. Birth story:

Prior posts contain bits of the birth story, but here's the comprehensive version. I'm doing my DAMNEDEST to be concise.

Tuesday February 1st I had an OB appointment and learned that I was 2 cm dilated and 75% effaced. Cool! I had painless, barely noticeable BH contractions sporadically through the next week and hoped they were getting me further along. The night of Monday February 7th I was actually woken up by some BH contractions, which made me very hopeful. The next dayI went into my next OB appointment, eager to learn how dilated I was.

2 cm dilated and 80% effaced. Son of a B!%(H!

That night I started to get uncomfortable around 5 pm. I was feeling really lousy while watching The Biggest Loser (and not just because I'm embarrassed that I like that show). After a while I felt distinct contractions! I had J time them, and they were 5-7 minutes apart. I waited a couple hours to see if they would stop, and then called Rosie who encouraged me to call the doctor. By that point they were three minutes apart and moderately challenging; I could still talk through them. I remember thinking I could cope with contractions like that for hours.

Off we went to the hospital with our overnight stuff and our utterly useless labor kit (Sudoku book? Really?) . I hung out in the lobby for a couple contractions while J parked the car. It was just after midnight when we arrived. We walked up to L&D and they brought us into triage. Rosie joined us there. I'm feeling like hot stuff - hula dancing through contractions (I've SO got this!), rocking the snazzy no-slip socks , thinking "I bet I'm, like, 5 cm dilated!"

3 cm and 80% effaced. Son of a B!%(H!

We moved into a labor/delivery/recovery room. Rosie first found all the light switches and created a nice, dim lighting regime. She suggested a bath, drew it for me, and figured out how to have dim light in the bathroom as well. It was a regular tub with jets in it. I loved it. I started to feel really sleepy though -- no wonder, given how poorly I had been sleeping for the prior two weeks and the fact that it was now 1 or 2 in the morning.

When I was good and relaxed and over my disappointment about being only 3 cm dilated, I got out of the tub ready to do some work. The three of us walked a slow loop around L&D for a good while. I'd stop and grip the railing during contractions and Rosie would put pressure on my lower back. The contractions got a lot stronger. I couldn't talk; I went inward, focusing on accepting each one and relaxing into it.

At one point while we were walking we heard this unholy shriek. Rosie chirped, "There's a woman about to meet her baby!" J blanched.

The contractions got more intense and came one on top of the other. I felt a strong urge to push. Rosie said, "That's a great sign! Let's get you checked!" So we went back to our room. I laid down on the bed feeling so, so tired, but I thought, "Hey this is probably transition! I'm probably like 7 cm! Those contractions must have done a lot of work!

4.5 cm dilated, 100% effaced. Son of a B!%(H!

I started talking about an epidural. Rosie responded well. She laid out other options: back in the tub, more walking, some massage, and she suggested we ask for someone from anesthesia to come and answer my questions and take my info; that way if I decided on the epidural it would be completed faster. A great suggestion.

They sent in this impossibly young looking guy with a central European accent (J referred to him as Borat). He answered my questions and politely waited for each of my contractions to finish so that I could talk and listen again.

There was a funny moment when he was getting information from me. He asked me how tall I was. I was in the midst of a contraction, so I held up fingers like a game of charades. Rosie, J, and Borat all said in unison, "Five ... Eight...." How much do you weigh now? "Two ... Oh ... Five...."

I said yes to the epidural. I was less freaked out about having a needle between my vertebrae than I predicted. And getting the catheter was no big deal either. At this point it was about 5 in the morning. I only know this because Rosie wrote this stuff down -- I had no sense of time at all.

The epidural was perfectly dosed. I could feel each contraction, but they felt like the early ones. My legs didn't feel affected at all. The blissful part was that I could finally lay down and rest. Rosie and J both found places in the room to doze as well. The epidural made my limbs shake, which I found it really relaxing.

The next couple hours were great -- laying in the dark, my arms popcorning around, feeling the wave of each contraction, listening to the beep of the monitor. I chanted to myself: "I have PLENTY of room for my baby!"

They came to check me: 7 cm. Awesome! Later, 9.5 cm. They said they could try to move that last little lip of cervix, or I could just keep resting and let it happen on its own. I'll go back to dozing, thank you. And then finally: "You're ready to push. Would you like to push?" Why, yes I believe I would! Now it's about 8 am.

I was recharged and ready to go. I first pushed for a long time on my knees, resting my upper body on the upraised head of the bed. Either Rosie or the nurse kindly put a blanket over my bum, but I couldn't have cared less. I felt like I was pushing well in that position. but DJ and I didn't actually make much progress with it.

We tried some other positions including on my back (which I hated), and there were a couple decel incidents. One in particular lasted for what seemed like a long time. That's when they put an oxygen mask on me, gave me a shot of terbutaline, and put an internal monitor on DJ. The best position then was on my left side where I stayed until the end.

Rosie was annoying me some at that point because she kept telling me to fill my chest with air right before I started pushing (I'm an abdominal breather), and at the start of a contraction she would crank my right leg back before I could get a full breath. For some reason, I didn't have the words to tell her that, so I started resisting the push with my leg until I was ready. I also grabbed my own foot, thinking maybe she and the nurse would let go of my leg and let me do it myself.

I was also annoyed that everyone was telling me to push three times when the contraction was over by the end of the second push. I thought I would wear myself out pushing without a contraction, so I started faking that third push. In retrospect, that probably wasn't smart. I think DJ was getting fatigued, and I was unaware of that.

At some point, I noticed that there were a lot of people in the room (I didn't have my glasses on). Rosie noticed my puzzlement and said, "They're here for the baby. That's how close you are." Well, all right!

Towards the end there were MANY contractions where the doctor said"This one might be it!" But then it wasn't. Blurgh.

I was warned that the epidural doesn't actually do much for pain the perineum. And, wow, it really doesn't. After a bunch of this-might-be-it pushes, I realized that I was just going to have to tear to push DJ out; there was no way around it. So I dug into the next one and finally got the traction we needed.

Searing pain as his head emerged. I thought the rest would slip out. Oh, no. Much tugging this way and that to get the shoulders out. I could feel the tears deepening.

He was born at 11:04 am.

When just his head was out, the doctor said that "babies with his profile" (whatever that means) need extra attention after they're born, so they wouldn't be able to hand him to me immediately. Perhaps I should have felt a sense of panic, but I didn't. Maybe sucking down the oxygen made me placid. I had pushed for 3 hours, but it didn't feel like it. I could have kept it up for a long time.

J saw them take our limp DJ to the other side of the room. By my recollection, I heard him cry in about 4 seconds. Rosie says it was longer than that, but pretty quick. While he was away, Rosie helped me get my gown off my chest, and people were massaging my gelatinous belly in an uncomfortable way. That must have been when I expelled the placenta. I had no idea at the time. I asked later if it was time to do that, and they told me it already happened.

I couldn't see much of anything lying flat on my back without my glasses, including DJ either when they brought him to me. But I could feel his sturdy little back and limbs and damp cone-head. He latched on perfectly (which apparently makes Bunny want to stab me in the face, but in a nice way). I blurted out, "I had a baby!"

They took DJ again for his treatments, and J went with him to the other side of the room. I started to notice that it was taking them effing forever to stitch me up. My knees are splayed, my legs are shaking, and now, all of a sudden, I'm annoyed that there are a bunch of people with their hands in my hoo-ha. At one point I whined, "I'm just so WEARY of this!" The doctor said, "We're almost done!" My lower body must have felt like another universe, because I was surprised that they could hear me.

They kept saying "This is the last one ... oh wait, one more over here."

Say it with me: Son of a B!%(H!

They brought DJ back to me, and I put my glasses on and repositioned so that I could see him better. I watched his ears come out from the side of his head.

Finally, they were done, and all the medical people left. Rosie made her exit, and the three of us were left alone in a suddenly quiet room as DJ drifted off to sleep in my arms.

3. Comments on the doula experience

The best part about having the doula is that in the weeks leading up to labor, I knew that we had someone we could call as often as we wanted, who would have come to our house during early labor and even driven us to the hospital at our request. She did things that neither of us would have thought to do, like quickly learn the room lighting and write down the basic timeline of labor. She was next to me almost all the time, and often explained things to me. She also had a lot of good suggestions for the birth plan, which the hospital took very, very seriously.

The downsides, as I've described in prior posts, is that the commitment to helping me have the labor I want is belied by a bias toward unmedicated birth and she also gave me some troubling misinformation. It makes me wonder what else she got wrong.

Another downside, perhaps the biggest, is that I don't have much memory of J during the labor and birth. I know he was there, but he wasn't particularly active. He tends to defer to others, waiting to be asked to help. And I did turn inward during contractions, so maybe it wouldn't have been all that different, but for myself, it is probably the main disappointment of the experience. J has a more positive take -- he was comfortable staying on the margins, letting her provide more of the support.

What would it have been like without Rosie there? Would the nurses have been at my side more often? Would they have explained things to me? Made the useful suggestions for ameliorating pain and discomfort? Would J have been more in the thick of things? I don't know.

I don't regret hiring a doula. It was a well considered decision, and it gave me a lot of peace of mind leading up to the event. If the hospital weren't so flippin' awesome, the doula might have made a huge positive difference. If I wasn't so exhausted and went without the epidural, then she may have been a godsend. Once I got the epidural, a lot of Rosie's expertise was no longer relevant.

If, by grace of heaven, we get to do this again, I'd rather go without.