My Fourth Baby- The Birth of Judah Elon: HBA2C

I had wanted another little girl.  We had two healthy boys and a lovely daughter and I wanted to finish our family with another baby sister.  I used the Shettles method, which is what we used to conceive our daughter and I followed it perfectly.  On the night I ovulated, which is the worst time to conceive a girl, I had the most insane urge of my life to be with my husband.  My body was not going to accept anything other than getting pregnant right then- I have never felt anything like it.  That is how we conceived our perfect little boy.  He was totally meant to be from the second he was created.  There was nothing my planning and controlling nature could do- he was the one for us. I must admit, after meeting him, that he is the only baby I wanted and I couldn’t imagine it any other way!  We did not find out the gender of this baby until he was born.  It was a fun guessing game but we have a lot of clothes to buy!

I had a midwife appointment at 41+5, which was a Wednesday.  I had finished everything I needed to do for the baby, my family, and for school (I had just finished a nurse anesthesia program).  I was so ready to have the baby. The days preceding the appointment had been semi-difficult as I anxiously waited for the baby to come.  I walked into our midwife Nancy’s house and she said, “You look done, are you done?”  YES.  She checked me and I was a 2-3 on the outer os and 2 on the inner, 80% effaced, baby still at -2 station.  She stripped my membranes, pushed on pressure points, and stripped my membranes again.  She prepared a birth drink to start labor.  It was made of castor oil, almond butter, some herbs, champagne, and apricot juice.  She told us to go have a light lunch and go home and start the drink.  We had Panera- broccoli and cheese soup.  I had been having contractions on and off for days and they continued through lunch.

 I chugged the drink when I got home and watched the Office.  I felt immediately sleepy from the champagne and went upstairs to my bed. I dozed, didn’t really sleep so much but definitely relaxed.  I got up to call Nancy since my contractions continued.  She had given me strict orders about what to do and when to call back.  This time, she told me to go for a vigorous walk with Adam around our neighborhood.  We walked about a mile through contractions.  They weren’t bad enough that I needed to breathe through them or anything but they were a tiny bit more powerful than Braxton Hicks.  They were also coming really often, like every 2 minutes to 7 minutes.  When we got home, we called Nancy again and she told me to get in the shower and relax.  I turned on Kings of Leon, Only by the Night and swayed in my dark shower as the sun went down.  I was alone and it was so special to feel my contractions and talk to my baby about coming out. I dried off and the contractions continued.

I had spaghetti for dinner with my family.  The kids were very excited about the baby coming.  I went back upstairs and went through a yoga sequence that is supposed to help labor along.  I had made a little diagram of the poses and followed it through my contractions. Again, they weren’t bad enough to make me wince but I could tell they were doing something. Nancy told me to go for another walk, this time I needed to pick up the pace.  The neighborhood was dark this time and I drank in the cold air and peaceful quiet.  The Christmas lights in our neighborhood were on and I was reminded of our birth with our daughter three years earlier when we walked around our neighborhood in Texas as we powered through contractions in the glow of Christmas lights.  When we got home, I read a chapter of Harry Potter, Prisoner of Azkaban, with the kids and they all went to bed. The contractions lasted almost one minute and were between 2 and 5 minutes apart at this point.  I had scheduled a Skype meeting with my best friends from high school to do a gift exchange.  All through our meeting, I was contracting and even had to close my eyes through one of them.  I loved that we got to share that even though we are all over the country.  Nancy called me during that Skype meeting and I told her how close the contractions were but that they didn’t feel strong enough yet.  The app my husband was using to time the contractions said “GO TO THE HOSPITAL IMMEDIATELY” due to the small intervals between them.  Nancy decided she was coming over.  She called the birth photographer who acted like an assistant to her as well. 

I got off my call when Nancy got there.  I went into the living room with the lights off and hung out with my sister and husband while Nancy set up her supplies in my room with Patience, the photographer. We had the soft blue lights for Hanukkah on in our big window facing the street.  It was very relaxing and calm.  I went up to my room when Nancy was finished and bounced on my yoga ball.  She checked me and I was a 4 on the inner and outer os- she said the outer would stretch to a seven.  I couldn’t believe it, it took me 18 hours to get to a 4 in my first labor and it had been long and painful.  This labor was breezing by.  I did some more yoga and turned on some music I had picked out for labor.  At this point, I felt like I just wanted to be alone.  Everyone left me while I listened to music, worked though contractions and bounced on my birth ball.  Nancy came back in after a while and we all sat as I contracted. At one point, I started to cry.  It wasn’t pain, it was the realization that this was the last time I would be doing this.  This was my last birth- I was mourning the end of my childbearing era. At one point, Nancy checked me- all of these checks were at my request.  I was a 7 and decided I wanted to get in the water.  I had been looking at this birth tub in my room for weeks and I was so ready to use it.  The water felt so good, the contractions were taken down so many notches.  I tried many different positions in the tub, Nancy would press my back, Adam would hold my face as it dangled above the water.  I felt like I was making good progress. We told stories and hung out in the soft light of my room.  The music was perfect, it was all just ideal. 

Then it kind of just stopped.  My contractions had been slowing down steadily for the last hour or so.  It was around midnight when Nancy said she wanted to see them closer together.  My cervix was ready but the head wasn’t placing enough pressure because I wasn’t contracting enough.  I went into problem solving mode. What can I do? Do I need to get out of the tub? Yes. Walk in the hall? Yes.  The contractions, though fewer in number, were more intense when they came.  I would hold the walls in my hall and moan/breathe through rip-tide contractions (I had pictured myself riding waves earlier, these waves were thrashing me around).  Nancy had me sit in chair pose on the wall while pulling the baby up and in to try and get more pressure on my cervix from the head during contractions.  This was very intense- I had to breathe giant breaths to get through this.  At one point, Nancy said, “Well, we can look at other things to try and help things move along.  Your water still isn’t broken…” Before she could finish this sentence I flopped on the bed and consented to breaking my water.  She laughed but I was like- no really, you offered let’s do this.  CONTRACTIONS.  They were still few and far between but so so intense.  This was around 2:30 in the morning.  I kept walking the hall, doing chair pose, breathing.  Nancy tried to dab Pitocin in my nostrils to help things go- my nose was stuffy and that did not work.  My back pain was so intense that Nancy suggested doing sterile saline injections in my back to help with the back labor. She takes a TB syringe and injects a tiny bit of water just below the skin.  It fools the pain receptors into focusing only on that pain (gate theory) while also sending endogenous opioids to the area for pain relief.  They felt like 6 little bee strings.  Nancy was surprised I didn’t scream with the injections- they hurt- labor hurt way more. These injections REALLY helped with the back pain, though- I would love to see more people using them in labor and delivery.

 Around 4 in the morning, Nancy told Adam to go get some sleep, he was totally nodding off and losing steam.  He went and slept with my middle son while Patience and Nancy helped me through contractions while we also napped. Around 6 in the morning, things were still not moving and Nancy suggested a second round of the birth drink.  YES. “I will do anything,” were my exact words.  My kids were waking up, the sun was coming up, the world was getting bright again and I thought for sure I would have had my baby by now.  My heart was heavy, I was feeling so defeated.  Why was everything not going the way it had gone last time?  Why was it not happening the way I had imagined?  Every time Nancy checked on the baby the heart tones sounded great- this was the thing I kept focusing on- baby was fine, I could keep going.

After the drink, I walked a little more and rotated back and forth between my kids’ bathroom, my daughter’s room where there was a big rocking chair, and my bathroom. I liked sitting on the toilet backwards and standing above it.  I was in so much pain.  At one point, I opened the window in my bathroom because it was just so freaking HOT- this is evidently from a surge of hormones.  I was looking out the window, there is no screen or anything on the tiny opening.  I would have a contraction and moan and roar.  Then I would stick my head back out the window and feel the cool December air on my cheek.  There is such a dichotomy in labor- the grueling intense contractions and the peaceful periods of calm in between.  I tried to soak up as much of the calm as I could but I wanted to remember a taste of the pain as well since this will be our last baby.

The kids left for school.  All of us ended up on my bed again as we tried to nap and let the castor oil take hold.  I don’t remember when it started happening, but it worked and my contractions became much stronger and closer together.  I was still drifting off between the contractions having bizarre dreams and crazy thoughts.  No one told me the contractions were closer together so I thought everything was still not working- I thought my body was still slowing down labor- but I was in so much pain.  I whispered to Adam that my friend was working OB anesthesia at the hospital and we could just go in and get an epidural and start some IV Pitocin and the baby would come right out.  I repeated this a few times, mostly fantasizing.  After the third or fourth time, Nancy said, “That is always an option.”  I should have known that I was almost there at this point- that is always when people start saying they can’t do it and they need relief.

I had been on the bed with Adam, lying on my side.  I would sleep between contractions, really fretful, disorganized sleeping.  Anxiety dreams.  I would wake up to have a contraction and everyone else would also wake up and push on their respective parts of my body that needed attention.  I held Adam’s hands and squeezed so hard, at one point they came undone and I just grabbed what I could find and ended up pinching his cheek and pulling his hair.  At the end of the contraction, I realized what I was doing and apologized profusely, my poor bear. It was just so incredibly painful- I wanted to use the strength of my arms to push the pain away.  This is augmented childbirth.  It is not the same as natural labor.  True, it was only Pitocin in my nose and castor oil but BOY was it different from going into labor on my own.  I actually felt that feeling of being ripped in half during a contraction right before I was complete. Anyway, at one point during our napping and contracting session, Nancy said “Ok, let me see what’s going on here,” and put her fingers inside me during a contraction.  She said I 9 to complete with a small lip but she was just going to smooth it away.  I groaned as the world split apart and the intense contraction surged through my body.  She said “PUSH the baby down with this one!” I had only ever pushed with contractions during an involuntary pushing reflex, this felt different and because it led to more pain, I was almost hesitant to do it.  “PUSH!” she said.  I pushed, I pooped, Nancy smoothed the lip and told me to go sit on the toilet. I peed and contracted, she said I could push through that contraction.  I stood and Adam said he could see the baby bulging on my vagina as I was contracting on the toilet. I reached in a felt the little head.

 I came back to the bed and Nancy put her hand inside me again and let/made me push against her during the contractions.  I felt the baby give way and start moving.  I pushed through a couple more contractions and felt the head start to crown.  Nancy said, “Get up and come to the birthing stool.”  I felt like the baby was already half out of me.  “I can’t Nancy,” I breathed/whined back at her.  “Yes you can, come now.”  GET UP COFFEE!  I said to myself and hurled myself out of bed and onto the birthing stool next to the bleached and emptied birthing tub. “Ok, we are not pushing now,” Nancy gently explained to me in her coaxing midwife voice, “we are breathing this baby out and letting her come down on her own.”  We changed pronouns many times during the long labor.  Neither Nancy nor myself were interested in stitches.  I had torn quite a bit with my daughter. Ok I can do this.  I sat on the stool and my body said, “just push the baby out- it will be so much easier.” No body!  I need to just breathe.  It was the oddest feeling to try and embrace the temporary pain to avoid weeks and months of pain afterwards.  Nancy had me place my hand over the baby’s head and help ease him out with a little counter pressure. Breathe, open, wide, breathe. She placed warm towels on my vagina as he crowned.  I have never experienced this “ring of fire” it doesn’t seem to hurt me any more or less than all of the other things that happen during this time.  I could definitely feel that moment of maximal stretch.  Ok, the head was out.  I had remembered resting for a second after this point in my last birth.  No rest- another extremely strong contraction came and Nancy now told me to push with all of my might. She said she freed one shoulder -PUSH! I used all of my muscles in my body to shoot out my little friend.  Nancy said later that he had very broad shoulders and this was when I tore a tiny bit- not enough for stitches. His body came out and I grabbed him and brought him to my chest.  I looked between his legs to see we had a perfect little BOY!

 He was looking around and crying but he was so purple/blue. I started stimulating him and rubbing him with a blanket.  Nancy stopped me, “He’s ok.”  She said gently. “Is that grunting, Nancy is he grunting?” I said in a haze.  “No, he is perfect.” She said sweetly.  I could not turn off my medical mind. In times of extreme stress, I am expected to remember to be calm and think about these things but this was not one of those stressful times- it was ok to just be a new mommy.  I looked him over and fell in love immediately. I touched his hand and actually counted his fingers, I don’t remember ever doing that before. I thought he had three on one hand for some reason. I delivered the placenta in one push shortly after he was born. It looked great. He looked great, too.  He still had some vernix on his back and he had a little bit of peeling skin on his fingers. We put the placenta in a bowl and moved to the bed.  Nancy was cleaning and moving things around while we just soaked him in.  He started rooting really soon after delivery, I took off the little bra I had been wearing so we could nurse. He had a little bit of fluid in his mouth and nose and continued to cough it out every now and then. We clamped the cord after about an hour and my husband cut the cord.  We saved the placenta to freeze and put in smoothies, I cannot recommend that enough.

Postpartum was beautiful except for the fact that I had a horrible bout of mastitis. I ended up on 10 days of antibiotics and bed-bound for three weeks.  Luckily, I had my sweet baby and loving husband there to get through it with me. As I complete this birth story, at seven weeks postpartum, I am content and happy with my last birth.  It was not at all what I expected but that is how birth happens.  Now, I get to move into the next phase of my life- raising these beautiful babies!