Pitter’s Birth: Part II

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 [Part I is here.]

 

A clarification: At no point during labor did I believe I was going to die while giving birth.

 

 I did not feel like my body was failing (because it wasn’t) or that dying feels the same as the worst pain of childbirth. I am a dramatic gal and all, but such thoughts never entered my head, and I don’t want to scare any of you off who are considering having children and/or a natural birth. I found the event traumatic, but this was my experience alone. Maybe I have a low threshold for pain, or my expectations were off. I don’t know. Perhaps  I can convey the experience more clearly this way way: When the building intensity of contractions (which started with very mild menstrual-like cramps and ended with nearly-hallucinatory pain) was finally relieved with the final push, the sensation was as beautiful and miraculous as I now imagine death might be.

 

Over the course of our lives we become so accustomed to the weight of our bodies on our spirits/minds, we can’t imagine what it will be like to be completely relieved of their imprisonment. I think the total relief of childbirth, after months of carrying a growing child, and after hours of increasing pain and pressure, might be akin to the relief of our spirits from our bodies.

 

Anyway. On with the story.

 

When I was 7 days past due, barely effaced or dilated, my midwife swept my membranes (ouchy ouch ouch!) and insisted that we schedule an induction appointment for 12 days past due. The prospect of taking a cervical softener and then going in for a pitocin drip devastated me. From all I’d read, that was the road to an epidural…forcing your body to do something it wasn’t yet ready to do would be more painful than normal, and I might cave and agree to pain medication, which might then slow labor down enough for me to wind up with a c-section. Yes, my fear of this kind of extreme domino effect was a bit hysterical, but it wasn’t an impossible scenario. I knew that because Pitter was my first child that my body would be slow to start, and I was angry and dismayed that medical science couldn’t just chill and let things play out naturally.

 

I had supreme confidence that nothing was wrong with my slow progression, since my body had done a healthy job with the pregnancy all along. For once in my life, I was proud of my body and the secret knowledge it held about how to carry and deliver a child; I didn’t understand it, it was driving me crazy, but I held complete trust in its abilities. Also, sonograms showed that my amniotic fluid levels were fine, which is the main concern once you pass the 40-week mark. Fortunately, my midwife sympathized with me and suggested I drink castor oil and take primrose oil pills to try to move things along. (Sex and nipple stimulation were also suggested and cough tried.) She and the other women in the OB/Midwife office also insisted that babies seem to know that once an induction is on the books, they need to get moving, and often do. Ha ha. So this is just the ticket, eh? I crossed my fingers.

 

That evening, my Aunt arrived from Colorado.(Neither Sweet Cheeks nor I had any local family in the Boston area.) Our hope was that my Aunt would either help serve as a doula and support me and Sweet Cheeks during labor, and/or be there to help with the newborn if I’d hit my due date. She has had three children au natural herself, and served as midwife to many friends, so I was thrilled to have her there. My mother would arrive a few days later—mostly in the anticipation that she’d be there to help with the newborn after my Aunt went home.

 

The next day, over the course of four hours, I drink two doses of castor oil and orange juice. It wasn’t as disgusting as I thought it might be, but I see no need to ever drink that particular concoction again. Six hours after the first dose, I began the unpleasant process of emptying my guts. The cramping that went along with this lasted into the evening, but then petered off. I felt like time was quickly running out—it was now Friday, and this baby would be coming out one way or another by the induction appointment on Tuesday.

 

At this point, I’m of split mind: I want a natural birth and to have the baby because I’m so hot and tired of being pregnant, but I remain instinctively afraid of the experience and kind of can’t believe I’m trying to encourage the labor process. I’m losing connection between the pregnancy and the arrival of an actual baby—a problem I continue to have during the most intense part of labor. Yet, I’m obsessed with it and feel absolutely trapped in my body. I feel extremely vulnerable.

 

On Saturday, my Aunt, Sweet Cheeks and I take the bus from Brookline over to the Cambridge River Festival. We eat lunch and listen to music along the river—it’s very hot for me and we walk quite a bit, including through Harvard Yard and to the Sanders Auditorium. We take a few pictures and then head home. Here’s a shot from the last pre-Pitter photo session because you know what? Taking pictures is pretty low on the list while you’re in the midst of labor itself. (Also, I swear I feel like I’m already this big and I’m only 25 weeks right now. Patter’s going to be 12 pounds or something. Fun!)

 

 

 

 

All contractions that membrane stripping and castor oil brought on have stopped at this point. I still take evening primrose and my Aunt.is convinced that I’ll go into labor over the next day or two and not have to go through with the induction. I so want to believe her.

 

My mother arrives that night. We’re ready. Hello, baby?! Get MOVING.

 

 

Late Sunday morning, my Aunt and I walk the mile walk over to the Brookline High School pool free swim session while my Mom works her magic and cleans our apartment. I loved swimming in the last trimester—the opportunity to feel weightless is amazing when you’re thirty pounds heavier than normal. We hang out in one of the lap lanes for nearly an hour, chatting, doing occasional laps, and floating around. Although I’d be happy to float around for the rest of the day, we decide to leave as the pool fills with crazy children running about and we’re forced to listen to the teenage lifeguards dealing with cranky parents who want their kids to have run of the place. I was once a teenage lifeguard, and I’m on my way to being a cranky parent. But I’m still somewhere in between. My ambivalence towards labor dwindles as we enter the hot afternoon; I am increasingly ready to get this baby moving into the outside world and to move into a new role.

 

Was it the arrival of my labor team, the castor oil or my new peace of mind about relieving my burden that kick-started things? Who knows. But around 3 pm that afternoon I begin having light menstrual-like cramps every fifteen to twenty minutes. They require no special attention but by 6 pm I’m fairly certain that this is the beginning of labor because they’re more regular and consistent than Braxton Hicks contractions, or than the random cramping the castor oil brought on.

 

We all decide to go out to a Thai restaurant for dinner and see a late movie to pass the time. We see the appropriately titled Inside Manwith Denzel Washington and during the movie I start having more intense contractions that are ten minutes apart. I begin using yogic breathing to work through the sensations. I am fine sitting in my seat and I don’t feel the need to interrupt the movie to tell everyone, but the contractions are beginning to distract me.

 

When we return to the apartment around midnight, my contractions are strong enough that I can’t sleep. We hang out in the living room as they become stronger and closer together. My Aunt  times them—all day I’ve had a hard time discerning exactly when they start, but now it’s more obvious to me when one is gearing up.  I sit on my red bouncy exercise ball or stand up and lean against an armchair during the contractions and use my Hypnobirthing/Yoga breathing. By 2 am they’re three to five minutes apart and last between one minute and a minute and a half. At 3 am we decide this has been going on for almost two hours and that we should head to the hospital, which is a fifteen minute walk from the apartment. The Longwood Medical Center’s smoke stack tower’s red lights blink ominously above the trees and I feel a bit like I’m about to walk to the Tower of Mordor.

 

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