The birth of Jonas David, Part 1: Au naturale

First off, thank you so much for all your sweet and supportive comments!  It was so lovely to have those to look forward to when I got out!

This story may be a bit long and redundant because I wanted to get everything down in one place, from the midwife induction threat to the post-partum blizzard we endured. It goes without saying that this whole thing is TMI.

On Tuesday, eleven days after I was due, we went in for a scan to determine the level of amniotic fluid and the baby's position, etc. All checked out well. The baby was active and happy, and fluid was more than sufficient. Smug with the happy news that the baby was in no imminent danger despite his tardiness, we went to the midwife. There, after I was cursorily examined, the midwife told me I was not dilated or effaced at all, and that she could not sweep the membranes, but if I did not start labor by Thursday, she wanted us to come in for an induction on Friday morning at the latest. After having a melt-down upon hearing this, I went into emergency action mode, booked three acupuncture appointments, bought some black cohosh and evening primrose oil and got down to inducing my own labor (with some help from Speedy, of course.)

Whether it was the herbs, the acupuncture, or just because it was finally time, by Thursday morning I noticed some blood when I wiped, and a couple of hours later I peed and felt the loss of my mucous plug-- hooray! By Thursday night I was pretty crampy, but there were no signs on serious impending labor and I knew that after the loss of the plug it could still take days for labor to begin.  But when I woke at 4:30 on Friday morning with regular cramps that took some solid breathe-in/breathe out business to get through I started to get hopeful.

By 7:30, the cramps were getting stronger, and I woke Speedy to let her know what was going on. She got up, took the dogs out and came back to make coffee and breakfast. I was not interested in breakfast, but I drank some ginger ale, which would come back to haunt me in a very short time. By 9:30 Speedy started timing my contractions, and to our astonishment, found that they were only three minutes apart. I was still in some kind of doubt about about whether I was "really" in labor, thinking that this could be false labor, and that it might stop as suddenly as it started, but the regularity and intensity of the contractions made it seem more promising.

At this point, Speedy went to the upstairs neighbors to borrow their keys. IN the time she was gone, my contractions suddenly grew stronger, and one doubled me over and I ran to the sink to barf. I have always been a barfy person. Too much laughter, too much to eat, too long car rides, too much stress, too much to drink-- I will barf every time. Once my brother even made me barf by mere power of suggestion alone ("You're looking a little nauseous. Do you need to throw up?") But as was wretching over the kitchen sink, my water broke and I was suddenly standing in a flood hot amniotic fluid as it gushed to the floor.

When Speedy came back I told her that now I was pretty sure I was in labor and she could call the doula.  I got in the shower, which I thought would make me feel better, but while the water felt good on my back,  my contractions seemed to intensify dramatically-- I was rocking and moaning at this point, alarming Speedy with my noise enough that she came rushing in to check on me.  By the time the doula came, I was out of the shower and on all fours on the bed, in my underwear with my ass in the air, rocking with my head on the bed, trying to get through the crashing pain of contractions that were one on top of the other.

When she came in, I felt her hand on my back and heard her voice, and I could only imagine what the scene looked like from her perspective.  "You seriously do this for your job?" is the first thing I think I said to her.  At this point , everything had kind of gone to hell.  My labor plan of making banana bread, taking the dogs out, going shopping, etc., had all been blown to pieces by the near constant, all-consuming pain of the contractions.  After I got some clothes on and went upstairs, Megan the doula and Speedy just hung out with me while I intermittently convulsed.  The only position I found comfortable was standing, or on all fours, leaned over with my forehead pressed against some surface.  After several hours like this, my back ached from all the leaning., my throat was raw from all the moaning and my forehead was bruised from pressing against various surfaces.

Finally at around 2:30, Megan suggested we call the midwife since I was contracting nearly constantly and with such intensity that Megan feared that the contractions had stopped progressing.  The midwife, the same one who told me we might have to induce, said that if I went to the hospital then, I would almost certainly be only 1-2 centimeters dilated and would then be there only to get an epidural.

People, I am crazy stubborn.  On hearing this, even though I could not even stand up straight for long enough to make a whole lap around the kitchen without having another contraction, I was all, "hell no, I won't go!" and poor Speedy and Megan were stuck watching me writhe with decreasing capacity for conversation for another four hours.

By 6:30 I had become nearly catatonic-- labor is not for the weak of heart, I'm telling you!  Ex came to walk the dogs and I remember I was lying on the couch, holding Lolo's paw for comfort  and dozing between contractions.   Around this time I started to wonder if this was the infamous "transition" state--   I had stopped trying to hold conversations and was having little cat naps between intense and long-lasting contractions.  When Megan asked me what my pain was on a scale on 1-10, I said 8, but she didn't seem to believe me, thinking that I must have been higher than that.

After ex brought the dogs back, Megan called the midwife again, and this time when she hung up, Megan said she felt we should go to the hospital, because either my labor was progressing and I was about to give birth or it had stalled and I would need to find that out and assess my options from there.  After some discussion, made slower by the haziness of my brain (I kept insisting I needed a full disclosure of risks and benefits but did not have the capacity to consuder them all at once.) we decided that yes, we would go.

Speedy got our bags together and I put on some sneakers and we left.  As soon as we git outside, the cold air reinvigorated the strength of my contractions, and I doubled over the rail at the bottom of our stoop and roared.  Megan looked at me and said,  "That is what I wanted to hear!"

The half-block walk to the car and the mile drive to the hospital took forever.  I kept peeping out the window expecting that we must surely be there by now, only to see that we had gone only a block or two since the last time.  Finally, at the hospital, we entered through the ER at about 7:30. Megan came with me while Speedy parked the car. The hospital I chose is a bit down-scale and bare-bones and to get to the ER you have to go up a flight of stairs, which doubled me over again-- now I was openly crying and screaming and swearing up a storm.  At the top of the stairs there was a bank of pay phones, where I again doubled over and shouted through a contraction, only to curse out the filthiness of public phones at the end, which made Megan laugh.  I followed Megan through the maze of corridors and elevators to get to L & D, clinging to walls as I cried through contractions.  (Really, I was a total shit show!)

My midwife met me outside L & D and whisked me straight to the birthing room to examine me-- I was 8-9 cm dilated, and my waters had only partially broken, so she broke open the rest and I got off the table.  As soon as I stood up, hot amniotic fluid gushed to the floor, soaking my socks and sneakers, which were inexplicably still on.  (I have no recollection of the details of how or when I got undressed.)  The pressure was immediately ten times greater and with each contraction more fluid than I ever imagined sluiced out of me. My midwife told me that I should just "go with" my urge to push (which I wasn't feeling so much as I was feeling the horror of how big and heavy this child was that was apparently imminently going to try to exit my uterus through my vagina. 

I got back on the table with some trepidation and Speedy came into the room.  Suddenly everyone was shouting for me to push and I just couldn't fathom it.  I had endured so much...I thought this was supposed to be the part where nature and endorphins did the job for me.  When the midwife told me again to push, I told her, "You've got to be fucking kidding me!"

Then it was a furious blur as people shouted at me to push and forcing an oxygen mask over my mouth and nose.  I was so overheated I kept batting it away and the frustrated nurse gave poor Speedy the job of oxygenating my very cranky self.  With every contraction they kept shouting and I kept screaming and trying even though it hurt like hell and I was terrified of the pain.  Finally the midwife announced she could see the head and I redoubled my efforts, though I felt like I did not have the strength.  After what seemed to be an eternity, but was probably only another contraction or two of inconceivable pain (and, no, I have not forgotten, nor did it feel like it was somehow manageable at the time), Jonas David's head emerged with a healthy cry of protest, with his hand up by his cheek in a twisted greeting, followed quickly by his slippery body.  It was 8:39-- we had been at the hospital for all of an hour.

I was so happy to have had a completely unmedicated labor without any interventions at all, aside from the amniotomy.  Speedy witnessed Jonas's debut into the world, and by sheer luck my parents had driven into town that very afternoon and were in the delivery room just two hours after his birth.

That's it for now: Jonas is demanding feeding, which has become our biggest chalenge following his birth.  More on that later.