I went into this pregnancy knowing that I would be HBACing. After we moved here, I became friends with a group of women, one of whom I found out is an underground midwife (henceforth referred to as MW). She had a UBAC herself the month before I was cut with my first son. It’s interesting because she is also and L&D nurse with the reputation that "her" patients don’t have c-sections. So I was very confident and comfortable with her.
At my 40 week prenatal, I requested a VE just because I was curious. I was 1cm, 80%, and peanut was already at +2 station and firmly anterior. So I was pretty darn happy...but a week later, I was getting tired of waiting for this little kid to show up, and having all these false alarms. We had actually called MW twice, and we all thought it was time, but after several hours of regular contractions, they would stop. I wasn’t physically uncomfortable, just anxious to meet our baby. So, DH and I had been trying to get labor going for about a week...if you know what I mean.
(All the times are pulled from my labor record, since I had no concept of time as I was in La-La-Laborland, and we didn’t have a clock anywhere in the birthing area)
I started having contractions around 3:00 on Thursday the 7th of July (41 weeks exactly). But, I didn’t really think too much about them...I wasn’t timing or even paying real close attention...just sort of like, oh, hey, there’s another one. I helped my brother get some homework submitted for his online class, which had me distracted for a couple of hours, and after he left I noticed I was still having them...hmm...interesting. DH got home from work around 5:00, and I told him I was having some "irritating" type contractions...still quite manageable, but definitely noticeable. He of course, started timing, and got a little irritated when I mentioned I may have had some leaky water about 3:30 or so...which after discussing it with MW decided that isn’t what it was. I didn’t want MW to come until we were sure it was actual labor, so I told her we’d call her again if things didn’t slow down. So I laid on the couch, showered, walked, drank a lot of water, and sat on my birth ball to see if anything made the contractions stop. DH was running around the house, finalizing the preparations, filling the tub, moving the food downstairs, and trying to time for me. It was pretty cute watching him run around all excited. Nothing made the contractions change, so we called MW again around 8:30, and I told her I thought we were in labor and that I’d like her to come out. I think I know for next time that we can probably wait a little longer to have her come. :o)
She got to the house and I was sitting on the bed playing solitaire. She walks in and goes "Oh, so this is active labor?" She checked baby’s position, listened to the heartbeat, and suggested we go for a brisk walk. So we all did...and it was definitely brisk. The contractions were annoying, but not anything I had to stop for. They picked up once we got home, and DH and I cuddled in bed and he helped me relax through the stronger ones, while our MW read a book in the outer room. I remember getting hungry so I ate a bagel. And found out that if I were to go pee, the contractions didn’t seem so bad. About 11:30 DH and I took another walk to see if it would get things moving more. When we got back, I was feeling pretty tired, so DH and I laid down again and that’s when I noticed the contractions were getting stronger, to the point where I had to pause in conversation for them...DH was very good labor support here...rubbing my back and helping me relax with the Bradley stuff we practiced.
Around 12:30 I decided I wanted to get in the pool, and that felt goooood. It took the edge off the contractions beautifully. I still had to pause and breathe through them, but I was back to cracking jokes in between...our MW was particularly amused when I mentioned peeing in the pool and DH got disgusted by the thought. LOL
(Now here is where things get weird. Over the next 17 hours of laboring, I appeared to go through transition twice. Now, I never got the URGE to push at those times, but it felt very good to push, so I went with it...won’t make that mistake next time!)
I spent most of the night in the pool, with DH in there with me. He was wonderful labor support, rubbing my back, my shoulders and he and our MW poured water over my lower back during contractions...that was AWESOME!!
The first time I pushed, which was around 4:00 a.m. on Friday, I did that for about an hour, then asked for a VE (the first of my labor) because I didn’t feel like the baby was moving. Sure enough, I was only 5 cm. So I got out of the pool, took a shower, had a beer (which slowed things down and spaced things out), and napped between contractions for a couple of hours. I had some yogurt and our MW went home around 6:30 a.m. to get some sleep. While she was gone, DH cooked me some breakfast, and my mother wondered what the heck was going on. She was upstairs babysitting our 21 month old, Zack. When she saw MW leave, she thought we had the baby...when DH didn’t say anything to her, she asked him, rather irritated, "Well, is it a girl or a boy?" He had to explain that we hadn’t had the baby yet. At some point I got back in the pool, and labored there again. We called our MW to let her know I had had some more bloody show and things were getting harder to manage. So she came back and we labored in the pool some more.
The second time it felt good to push was around 3:00 p.m...did that for a half hour, didn’t feel like baby was moving, asked for another VE...was only 6cm and starting to swell a little. At this point, had I been in the hospital, I would have gotten an epidural. I was soooo incredibly tired and frustrated, and the contractions were incredibly intense...it took DH on one side and MW on the other, both pushing in a hip squeeze for it to do any good. I took another shower, had another beer (actually, I had the beer while in the shower) and tried to rest in bed again. (BTW, a beer in late labor doesn’t do diddly-squat.) Our MW suggested that I try to labor on the toilet or walk around to see if that helped. Now this whole time, the only place I had any sort of relief was in the water, I DID NOT want to walk around or sit. I actually said, "I’m seriously considering going to the hospital just so I can get some rest." Our MW gently reminded me that that would increase my risk of having another c-section, which I knew, but I didn’t want to think about. We all thought we were looking at another REALLY long night of labor. She left again around 5:00 p.m. and I spent the next hour on all fours on the bed trying not to rip my husband’s head off. I was absolutely miserable. Every contraction, I thought "epidural, epidural, epidural." Then I would think "c-section, c-section, c-section," then I would think "one more contraction, one more contraction, one more contraction."
At around 6:00 p.m. DH forced (coerced, begged, and eventually ordered) me to take a walk outside with him. It took us 15 minutes to walk 500 feet. Every five steps I had a contraction that doubled me over. (I had three in the garage...one right next to the trash cans that didn’t get put out that morning...yuck!). Around 6:30 p.m. I got back into the pool...and after about two contractions had the unmistakable, unbelievable, undeniable URGE and I mean URGE, to push. At this point, DH sort of freaked out...which is understandable. He calls MW on her cell, and tells her I have to push. While he’s calling her, I check myself...an unusual experience may I say...and surprisingly, I knew what I was feeling...and what I was feeling was a baby’s head., and cervix...CRAP...cervix...is that really cervix...DAMMIT!! I’m STILL not complete. I tell DH there is still cervix there...MW tells him to tell me not to push, she’s on her way. So he gets off the phone, and for the next half hour he alternated between begging and ordering me not to push. I wish we had it on tape, "Honey, don’t push, you can’t push. Honey, please, for me, DON'T PUSH. You’re pushing, STOP IT!." I was chewing on the side of the pool, and clawing the heck out of his legs and clothes because I was trying sooo hard not to push, but after a certain point, your body is going to do it anyway. BUT, he also wouldn’t let me check to see if I was complete yet. Every time I would reach down to check, he’d say, "Don’t check, she’s coming, she’ll be here soon." AND I LISTENED TO HIM...DUH!! Can anyone say "oxytocin induced stupidity." He was very freaked out about the thought of having the baby without someone there, which I totally understand now...then, I was a little annoyed. Although to a certain extent I was nervous about checking too, because if I wasn’t complete I was going to kill someone. Now, during the time when I wasn’t allowed to push, he had my mom boil a big pot of water to heat up the water in the pool. While I was climbing the walls during contractions, he kept asking me, "can I go get the water now?" Uh...NO!!
So about 7:40 or so, DH calls MW and when he leaves the room I check myself...HALLELUJAH...NO CERVIX!! He comes back in, I tell him I’m complete, and his face goes white as a sheet. He says, "She says she’s complete...uh huh...ok...uh huh...ok...ok...bye." MW told him what to do over the phone, so he’s much calmer now, "don’t pull on anything, keep baby under the water until it’s all the way out, go slow." Once he had directions on what to do, he was fine...very calm and reassuring, and he just kept repeating those things to me while I pushed. In a brief flash of clarity, I told DH to turn on the video camera...which I’m really glad for, since we had no one to take pictures.
If you picture kneeling with your knees kind of far apart and then sitting back on your heels, that’s how I was pushing. It only took a few pushes and I could feel the baby’s head right at the opening. It was surreal to reach down and feel this little fuzzy hard thing there. I remember thinking, "That’s not really that big." Little did I know how much bigger it would get! I vocalized through all the pushing, mostly because I kept hearing DH say "go slow", so I had a very sore throat the next morning. It was 38 minutes from when I started pushing until he was born . MW happened to call back just as the full diameter of his head was crowning ("ring of fire" doesn’t cover it), so she got to "hear" him being born. I was kind of in my own little world once the head came out. I remember looking down into the water, and watching this little dark shape come out and turn to the left, and seeing an ear. MW told DH to have me check around the neck for a cord, which there wasn’t. It was a good thirty seconds until I had another contraction, so I just sat there feeling the head. It was incredible to feel an ear on this side, a nose over there, fuzzy hair...just incredible. I had another contraction, pushed really hard, and the whole body just slid out all at once, much faster than I expected. There was this second where time seemed to stand still for an instant and I looked down at this little body under the water and I didn’t have one, single thought in my head.. (You know in the movies where the scene freezes for an instant, but the character is still moving, and then the scene suddenly starts moving again? It was one of those.) I remember thinking "Oh my God." I picked him up and held him to my chest and rolled over on my side so I was leaning up against the side of the pool. I rubbed his back, and he made some gurgly noises and started mewling. No screaming or shrieking like Zack did when they took him out during the c-section...instead this was a surprisingly peaceful moment. No one sticking things in his nose or mouth, just letting his body do what it knew to. DH told MW, "We got baby" and I distinctly remember him giggling when baby started making noises. MW asked him if the cord was "thumping" so I felt it (another surreal experience to feel the lifeline to your baby pulsing under your fingers) and said yes, and she wanted to know how fast...which she told me later was the easiest way to measure baby’s pulse. DH put a towel over us and I asked him what time it was...our MW told him 8:18, since she knew we didn’t have a clock.
He talked to her for another minute or so, (during which she says he was funny...very giddy...just like a first time dad) she told him to just have me hang out in the pool until she got there, and then he hung up. We put a hat on baby and just took a few minutes to enjoy the moment. Then he asked me if he could go get the water, and I said fine...so he did, and the warm up of the water is wonderful...but, he managed to burn his hand emptying the pot into the pool. When he went upstairs, he told mom, "We got a baby, but we don’t know what it is yet." And my mom told me later she thought, "How do you not know?" She didn’t realize we just hadn’t looked yet. After about four minutes of staring in amazement at this new little baby, it finally occurred to me we don’t know if it is a girl or a boy...so we took a peek, and I said with a very shocked look on my face, "Oh my god, it’s a boy!" DH giggled some more and says "Zack's got a brother!" (We kinda intuitively thought we were having a girl, so we hadn’t really thought about boy’s names too much.) Eventually my mom came down and sat with me for a while, while DH looked after Zack. I think it was a shock for her to see the difference in me between how I was immediately after giving birth to Dominic, compared to how I was in the recovery room after the c-section. I think she may now have a better understanding of what childbirth is supposed to be, and why Zack’s delivery was so awful for us.
I didn’t expect the third stage contractions to be so strong. I was feeling them down my legs, just like the first stage ones, so that was pretty annoying. I also didn’t expect my butt to be so sore...someone I know once referred to birth as "shockingly rectal"...I would have to agree! MW got back at 8:50, and I thought I would get out of the pool to push out the placenta, but I could feel his cord tugging a little bit when I moved so I said I thought it was too short to stand up. DH cut the cord in the pool, and MW took baby in a warm towel and handed him to DH. Again, I thought I’d get out of the pool, but the contractions were still pretty strong so I decided to stay where I was. Two contractions (I think) and I pushed out the placenta (THAT had to be the weirdest sensation ever) which MW scooped up into an ice cream bucket and closed up. I got out of the pool, got dried off, and into bed. MW checked me out, and I had one incredibly superficial 1/4" tear, and some skid marks. DH and I cuddled in bed with our new son while MW cleaned everything up and started laundry. Mom got me a piece of Gramma’s homemade lasagna, and we started calling family. Once everything was cleaned up, MW pulled out the placenta bucket and showed it to us and explained the parts. She said he had a nice thick cord, and a good strong sac. We finally got to sleep around 11:00 p.m. or so. What a long day!! (He was 8lbs. 2oz., 21 ½ in.)
I know I would not have been psychologically able to labor in a hospital. I had a hard enough time with the memories of the c-section being at home. I have no doubt that if I had been in a hospital I would have been sectioned again...probably about hour 18 or so. I never would have been "allowed" to go 28 hours for first stage. I think that despite how much I wanted a natural childbirth, I would have caved to the epidural, which likely would have led to other interventions and eventually another surgery. Even if we had transferred and if (and that’s a big if) I didn’t wind up with surgery, I still would have regretted going in and getting the epidural. I would look back and wonder "Could I have done it without it?" Instead, I KNOW that I can and did. I didn’t know I had that kind of strength. I’m so thankful that I had labor support who knew what I truly wanted, so when I was utterly exhausted and ready to give in, they didn’t let me.
I also believe that we were meant to birth him unassisted. Our MW had two assistants who could have been at the birth. When I went into labor, they were both out of town and unavailable. My dear friend, who was going to act as our doula, was out of state and unavailable. Another friend, who is also a doula and who offered to drive two hours to be with us had a migraine and couldn’t drive. That was the first migraine she’s had in years. That many people who could have been there and were all unavailable is just too coincidental to ignore. I know things happen for a reason. This birth doesn’t fix or heal what I was put through during Zack’s delivery, in fact, right now it makes me angrier about it since I now know what was taken away from us. I still have a lot of healing to do, but if I ever needed to know if I am strong enough to do something, I can look back at this birth and know that I am.
