I had been having waves of nausea and on and off short spurts of mild contractions that were a bit stronger than Braxton-Hicks for a good 3 weeks. I woke up on 12/8 because my downstairs neighbors were noisy and I was enraged and weepy. I think this was the upsurge of estrogen that precedes labor. I calmed down, and tried to relax and have a restful day. When Seth came home we went for a long 2-hour walk. On the way home I got an enormous roast beef sandwich and some cookies and woofed the whole lot down. I went to bed around midnight. At 2:30 am (now 12/9) I woke up to pee and had some bloody show when I wiped. That got my attention. But I had been determined to not have any false alarms, so I shrugged it off and went back to bed.
Within a half hour of lying back down I was having mild crampy period contractions not unlike what I had in the weeks before. But soon they turned into something a bit sharper and closer together (all within 10 minutes of each other). There was no way I was going to sleep through them. I still wasn't convinced this was the real thing, but I woke up Seth at 3:30. We lay in bed and talked about what to do, whether this was real or just more warm up labor. Around 4am I got up and took a hot shower (I had the irrational thought, “I can’t have a baby with dirty hair”). Seth began cleaning and prep in the kitchen, where we were going to set up the birth pool.
After the shower I checked email, had some oatmeal and trail mix, listened to birth affirmations and strolled around the apartment. The contractions began to get closer together and strong, different from the period cramp contractions. They weren’t all that painful, partly because I didn’t stay still through them. I breathed and swayed and rocked and let them wash over me, thinking about opening my cervix. I was mostly on the opposite side of the apartment from Seth, content to be alone and do my own thing, with occasional forays into the kitchen to say hi. I also had to use the bathroom like 20 times.
By 6 am I wasn't able to really talk through them and they were about 5 minutes apart and close to a minute. At 7am Seth called the midwives, who, as luck would have it, were at another birth, which had begun an hour before mine. Luckily hers was going fast too... We didn’t know this at the time though. I think both they and we thought I had much more time than I did.
I continued to wander around the house, listening to birth affirmations and leaning against walls and into chairs, swaying through the contractions. I took a second shower, which felt like heaven, and that really seemed to speed things up. Around 8am I began moaning through them, not because they hurt, but because it was a way to release, to let them wash over me. I asked Seth to get the pool ready, since we had estimated it would take 2 hours. I didn't know if I was jumping the gun because it was our first time, but things seemed to be moving along pretty quick and I could almost feel my cervix opening. Seth also kept in touch with Audra and Tara about once an hour.
After 8am I was in my bedroom leaning against the wall on the floor in a hip opening posture. I was trying to rest but I found lying down through a contraction made them really hurt and it was annoying to have to scramble to my hands and knees every 3-4 minutes. During a contraction it was much easier to get on my hands and knees and rock back and forth from a sitting position. I stopped talking at this point too, except for the occasional monosyllabic necessary communication. One of these was to ask Seth for a bowl when he came in to time contractions again. I felt somewhat nauseous but didn’t end up throwing up or really even getting close.
Around 10:30am I got in the pool, which was not warm enough, and Seth was frantically boiling water in our big pots, waiting for the water heater to recover. But it was good enough. It made the contractions, which had gotten much more intense, so much better and it made my body easier to relax. I must have been in transition at this point because I was thinking, "This is really hard, I don't want to do this anymore" and "We are so not having any more kids." But I didn't actually say anything beyond grunting, monosyllabic demands and hand waving. My moaning at this point was still sounding like I was having really loud, really good sex. But Seth and I were still alone and didn't know how far along I was, though at this point we knew that Tara was on her way from the other birth. It was snowing and generally very bad weather outside so the drive was long.
At about 11:15 I had a contraction that ended in an involuntary push and we were still alone. I was so surprised, and at that point I thought maybe we should have someone here with us who knew what the hell they were doing! Seth just assured me that Tara was on her way and held my hand. I think we sat in peaceable silence. I just continued to let my body do its thing, neither fighting nor encouraging it.
Fifteen minutes later Tara arrived and a little later Rebecca came (Audra had stayed behind at the other birth to finish up). At some point Molly, the student photographer, came too, but my recall of this time is not so good. I do know that my vocalization shifted at this point to more of an animalistic grunting. The contractions were pretty intense and I was totally inwardly focused, clutching Seth's hand and shoulders in a death grip and hanging over the side of the pool in between, which didn't seem that long (2-3 minutes). This was the most painful point for me; there was this dull painful pressure all around my pelvic bone, which I later realized was my bag of waters.
The whole labor I could feel the baby's feet pushing against my upper and then mid-belly, like she was helping me by trying to push her own way out. The whole time I was concentrating on taking long, slow, deep breaths and during contractions exhaling with a low moan and loose jaw. I drank a lot of water too. The midwives monitored the baby while I was pushing and she was doing fine. I think I was a little crabby about being monitored because I had to shift positions to help them find the baby’s heart beat with the Doppler.
I think somewhere around 12:30pm Tara told me that I could start pushing, so I tentatively began to put some effort into those involuntary pushes that were happening on their own. At this point (I think) my water broke with a loud pop that kind of scared me and made me clench up. But relief was almost instantaneous, and the pushing began to get much more serious. Contractions would start with two or three pretty intense pushes and then begin to taper off. That beginning two or three involuntary pushes were when I added my own active efforts.
Tara and Rebecca were encouraging me and Seth seemed to take his cue about what to do from them and he began encouraging me too. They were praising me for how careful of my perineum I was being by not heaving her out in one go. At one point I was reaching down to support myself and Tara told me I could reach down and feel the baby’s head if I wanted. I snatched my hand back; I didn’t want to be reminded about what was going on from the outside, it would break my concentration. Tara also told me I should wait for a second after the head came out so that she could make sure the cord wasn’t wrapped around the baby’s neck. I felt her head come out in increments, got the all clear and then (probably a little too enthusiastically but I was ready to be done) gave one good heave and she shot out into the water like a cannon ball.
The midwives caught her and put her on my chest, but I couldn't bring her up very far because the cord was pretty short. Because of this, having some mucus in her mouth suctioned out, she got pissed. This is when things got stressful. She cried for a good 30 minutes and was too angry to nurse. I had gotten out of the water at this point was reclined on some pillows and blankets on the kitchen floor against the fridge. I gave her to Seth to do some skin-to-skin and calm down while I delivered the placenta. He did managed to calm her down by singing her Sonic Youth’s Schizophrenia. After a couple of hours I was getting worried because she hadn't nurse yet and was only calm while dozing. She screamed through the whole newborn exam and was too upset to nurse until close to 6pm. I was feeling shaky and all this was pretty overwhelming.. Argh!
Tara stayed and helped me get her to nurse a little and help Seth with the worst of the clean up (draining the nasty water out of the tub). After she left the baby was still really cranky. If we moved her she screamed. But around 1am, she farted, shat a diaper load of meconium and barfed up what looked like the rest of that mucus that was in her mouth at birth, and calmed down immediately. And the next morning, I got to wake up in bed with Seth and our new baby, Rassa June, to hang out, work on breastfeeding and rest.
I feel so totally lucky to have had the kind of birth that I wanted that seemed surprisingly easy to handle. It was painful there at the end, but not unreasonably so and didn’t go on for too long. I got to stay at home and I never had to deal with things I didn’t want to. Tara and Audra were important in making this happen for me throughout my pregnancy and birth. Welcome Rassa, aka Angry Goddess.
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