Pitter’s Birth: Part III

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[Part I is here and Part II is here.]

It is early in the morning of June 19, 2006.  

Upon deciding it is time to walk to the hospital, my dear husband decides to packs his bag. Yes. Nothing like the last minute. He rushes around asking, “What should I take? How many pairs of underwear do I need?” and as is usual in our relationship, I am the calm consultant to these queries and assist in the packing. Good grief. I’ve had a bag packed for a week, replete with a little photo album of lovely Hawaiian-focal points and my ipod jammed with “soothing” playlists for labor. (Did I ever use these items? NOPE.)

Finally, with bags and pillows in hand, like bandits in the night, we begin what is normally a seven-minute walk over to Brigham Women’s Hospital. But, it takes about fifteen minutes to get there because I need to pause a few times for contractions. It’s eerie walking through our neighborhood in the wee hours of the morning. Even drunk we were never out this late. Three am is truly the witching hour. When we arrive at the hospital, we learn that I am only allowed to have two visitors with me (Sweet Cheeks and my Aunt/Doula). My mother must wait downstairs. I wasn’t told I should have made a special request for three people to attend me and ooooh I’m ticked off. But the registration staff tells us that the midwives can probably overrule this but we’ll need to speak with them upstairs. A frustrating problem we remedy before anything important occurs, but I feel bad about it.

Upstairs, the midwife on duty checks me in a small examination room, and tells me I’m not dilated more than a centimeter. Whaaat? I was only a centimeter dilated at my last OB appointment nearly a week ago! All this pain and sleeplessness for nothing? No one reminds me that although I may not be dilating, my body may be busy effacing, which is just as important. In retrospect, this information would have helped my attitude.

In the room, I lay on my back with the fetal monitor on for half an hour and it is maddening because I can feel how being still is causing my contractions to slow considerably. Now, although they are as much as 10 minutes apart, the whole process begins to slow down, but the intensity and duration of the pain doesn’t abate—so much so that I find it increasingly hard to talk while they’re going on.

After we’ve been at the hospital for an hour, the midwife suggests I walk around the hospital or outside for an hour or so to see if being upright will trigger the labor’s progress again. If it doesn’t work, we’re to go home. I am determined to do whatever it takes to stay at the hospital, so we heed her advice. Downstairs, we find my mother adorably curled up like a cat, asleep in the waiting area, and we leave a note explaining we’ll be waddling around the building.

Outside, the muggy dawn greets us and the Longwood Medical Center has awoken from its strange stillness. As we make our way through people departing for their morning commute and the am-hospital shift arriving, I have my first breakdown/crying jag. I am so tired and depressed that my body hasn’t “progressed” in any “meaningful” way. As we walk up and down gentle neighborhood hills, my Aunt calms me and is really helpful in keeping my spirits up. She’s convinced that although it seems to the midwife like I’m having a slow beginning, in our family, things pick up pretty quickly. After a little over an hour, the contractions become closer together and we return to the maternity ward, as I try to choke down a bite of bagel for nourishment. It tastes like a poison brick and I struggle to chew more than two mouthfuls. Nausea and exhaustion are hitting me hard.

It’s now about six am. When a new midwife, Denise, examines me she finds that I am dilated to two centimeters, but my contractions slow down yet again once I am on my back strapped with the fetal monitor. She really upsets me when she delivers this priceless news:

“You’re not going to have the baby today!! But you should be excited because when you come back tomorrow morning your body will be more ready for the induction that’s already scheduled! You may not even need the cervial ripener tonight!”

She nearly claps her hands in glee and suggests we go home, especially since there isn’t a labor room available for me anyway. 

When we come back tomorrow??? I want to PUNCH her in the face. Really hard. But I’m too tired and Sweet Cheeks is a wuss and won’t do it for me.

However, Denise picks up on our reluctance and doesn’t force us out of the hospital, and says that we can hang around if we want. Sweet Cheeks sits next to me while I take catnaps in between contractions that come every 7 to 10 minutes. This chunk of time feels like an eternity. And after an hour or two of this we admit defeat decide to go home. I finally realize I’ll be more comfortable in my own bed, but I am totally dejected that we’ve spent so much time in the hospital and are leaving. I’m worried about the hot apartment (we’re living in the attic of a 100-year old house with craptacular air conditioning) and I don’t look forward to going through the checking in again process when we finally do return.

This sucks. I am the classic case of the new mother who turns up at the hospital too soon. Did we dream up all of those close-together-long contractions from so many hours ago? What happened?

It’s now noonish and we do not brave the heat to walk home. Crazy we are, but not yet certifiable. Sweet Cheeks scuttles back to the apartment and brings the car for us.

At home I try to sleep again in bed. My Aunt and mother make me a fruit shake to try to get me to eat a little bit—I haven’t eaten anything since the Thai food the night before and they’re worried I’m getting weak. I’m not hungry in the least but I understand drinking half the shake is a good idea. I manage to keep it down.I sleep quite a bit but have continually more intense contractions.

From this point on, my memories of labor have some very strong points, but the rest of it is some what fuzzy. My sense of time passing is much like the one or two times I have ’shroomed. There is little way for me to grasp whether 10 minutes or 10 hours have gone by. I can read the clock, but how I feel in my body relates so little to the numbers I see that reality becomes a random concept rather than a concrete place.

I have an intense physical memory of laying on my side in our queen bed sweating, with my body pillow between my legs, facing away from Sweet Cheeks. The large blue and white hibiscus-print on our sheets is both soothing like I’m floating in water, but it’s also bothersome.  I need Sweet Cheeks next to me in bed so that when I wake up from the mini-dreams I’m having with a contraction, he can hold my hands and look in my eyes while I do my deep breathing.

Laying down makes the contractions hurt more—which continues to solidify what I learned at child-birthing class: sitting still and sitting down hurts more and slows the process down. Although I’m weary and frightened, I still believe that if I were to have an epidural, everything would slow down and I can’t stand the idea of doing that to myself on purpose.

When I can’t take it anymore, my Aunt calls the OB office to speak to someone there about my progress. I have an appointment at 2 pm set up from the previous week in order to check my pre-induction status. My Aunt gives Biddy (the head midwife with whom I only met once but loved and trusted whole-heartedly) my story, and Biddy suggests we either come in or go back to the hospital—our choice. Biddy is convinced that I’m ready to be admitted even without seeing me. I decide that I’d like her to check me so that I don’t get to the hospital only to be turned away again. It’s a tough call, however, since I don’t want to get into the car for more than one trip. The contractions are stronger, longer, and closer together and I don’t want to travel unnecessarily. I need to focus intently at this point and can’t talk during the contractions.

Focus and breathing is nearly all I can do…

[...and sticking with this loooong birth story is probably more than you can stand. But I promise that Pitter will arrive at the end of Part IV!]

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