Peter's birth story

Peter's birth story

Sunday, March 4. 11:50 p.m. – I have my first contraction. I’d had Braxton Hicks in the weeks prior, but I’ve done this rodeo a few times and knew that this one was real. I hadn’t been able to sleep yet and so was puttering around the house, planning what I’d get done on Monday. Sam had just settled into bed and was sleeping soundly, and I was reluctant to wake him – he’d been doing so much to take care of the older three kids and get them into bed in their shared room and then take one to the potty and then sit by the other’s bed while she yelled out the ABC’s to try and wake her siblings (CLARA) – all this on top of his stresses at work.

Monday, March 5. Midnight – Second contraction. Crap, it really is happening. I haven’t had any sleep yet! I need to be well rested for this! I also very much want to let Sam get at least a few hours of sleep if we’re about to have a baby. On the other hand, I’ve been known to crank out a baby in under a couple hours of labor, and a home birth ain’t in the ol’ birth plan for this mama.

1:00 a.m. – I’ve had some more contractions about ten minutes apart. They’re not getting closer together, but they sure feel like the real deal. I text my parents, asking if they’re awake. They are – or at least wake up to my text. I ask them to come over. Mom wraps on her bathrobe and grabs her ‘go’ bag – she’s been ready to get to our house in minutes to stay with the kids in case I have another precipitous labor. Sam is still asleep.

1:15 a.m. – I rouse Sam apologetically, saying that I think we’d better go to the hospital. ‘Are you sure?’ he asks and falls back asleep.

1:20 a.m. – Mom arrives in her floral robe. For some reason I think she looks adorable in that robe with her bag and pillow from home, bravely taking over care of three kids in the middle of the night. I wonder if she will get any sleep. I load the hospital bag in the car. I convince Sam (poor dude!) to wake up and come with me.

2:15 a.m. – We arrive at the hospital and sit in the car. I came a couple weeks earlier because I wasn’t sure if my water had broken (it hadn’t) and was rewarded with a $900 bill for my troubles. I really, really don’t want to incur another $900 charge and not be in full labor. Contractions are feeling real but still 10 minutes or so apart.

3:00 a.m. – I decide to go on in to triage, praying I’m in real labor. The nurse checks my cervix, me desperately hoping for some action. 6cm dilated! I’ve never arrived at the hospital this dilated before. I figure it’ll be another hour or so tops before baby is here.

4:30 a.m. – I ask the nurse to check my cervix again, sure I must be at 8-9 cm. Contractions have been hard but not unbearable. For the last few weeks, I’ve been eating 6 dates per day and drinking Red Raspberry Leaf tea. There’s anecdotal evidence that these things speed labor and reduce pain. I’m putting an irrational amount of weight into these claims. When I feel a contraction coming on, I remember to open my mouth so that I don’t clench my jaw, and I look at a spot on the wall above the hospital bed and bounce a little. I’m camped out at the end of the bed on a yoga ball with a big white blanket wrapped around my shoulders, pooling on the floor around me. I look like Albino Jabba the Hut.

The nurse says I’m at 6-7cm dilated. WHAT. I’ve never made so little progress in this amount of time. In fact, this long into labor I’m usually done having the baby!

The only good thing about this is that a new nurse will be coming on at 6am. The one we have is lovely, but she looks about 12 years old and 80 pounds. I don’t fancy someone down there whom I have to wonder whether my baby will knock over as he comes out.

6:00 a.m. – New nurse arrives – Tanya. She’s loud and hardy and buxom and has been doing this for twenty years, and she’s just fine delivering this baby if needed, and she’s just fine if I want to be on all fours or doing jumping jacks or whatever I want. She sees my big belly and yells at Sam to get a photo of this gorgeous baby bump before it disappears. She tells me to cover my hoo-ha and let Sam take the photo in profile. Sam cannot get over the term ‘hoo-ha’ and is still questioning me about whether we Americans really say this.

7:00 a.m. – Tanya checks my cervix. Still 6-7 cm. I’m feeling annoyed that I didn’t wait around at home and let Sam get more sleep, and I’m beginning to feel fatigue set in from a lost night’s sleep. I’m nervous about what will happen if my energy gives out. The OB has visited and said he’d break my water if I wanted to try and speed things up. I huddled into my yoga ball and said no because contractions after my water breaks are much, much worse. But I’ll do it if this goes on much longer.  Maybe. Well probably not – I’m a chicken about those post-water-breaking contractions.

Somewhere around 8am? I’m stationed at the foot of the bed, now standing with my arms on the bed. Still no water breakage.  I feel the contractions shift down and get hard. I can barely survive these. I have to groan to get through them, and I can’t focus on my wall spot as I’m now swaying around and burying my face in the sheets. I realize that I’m going to have to go through every iota of the pain again. The dates and tea have let me down. I manage to gaze at my spot on the wall for a moment and wish I didn’t have to go through what I now realize I’ll have to endure for the fourth time. I taste the familiar panic of not being able to take any more, but I can’t stop it now. That’s one amazing thing about birth – no matter how much of a chicken you are at any point in the process, it’s still going to happen, and you are still going to achieve your baby ex utero. I remember looking at the door during my labor with our first child and having the irrational thought to run away and somehow escape the pain. Now, deep in labor with our fourth, I desperately wish to be an hour in the future, by which time I am certain I will have had the baby.

I imagine for a brief moment the courage Jesus must’ve had to face something very painful and still go through every moment of the process. Did he bow his head in Gethsemane and wish mightily to skip to Sunday? My giving birth is nothing like his submitting to crucifixion, yet I have a taste of dreading an excruciating experience that I know I will go through with anyway.

I tell Sam to call in Tanya. I realized later that I was happy with her being there to deliver the baby and did not tell her to call in the OB, though I knew I was close to delivery. She figured it out anyway and called the OB, but he would not arrive in time. I heard her on the phone as I had my face smushed in the bed, making uncivilized noises.

At 8:19, I crawled onto the bed and yelled a lot and gave birth to our baby boy. Sam clamped and cut the umbilical cord – there’s nothing that man can’t do. The sweet nurses put baby right beside me on the bed as I had collapsed sorta on my front and side, sweaty and done and thankful and wide-eyed.

‘Do you want us to wipe him off, weigh him and give him back to you?’ one nurse asked, sensing my overwhelmed-ness I think. Yes please.

The OB arrived after the baby. They put baby boy back in bed with me, and I felt the unmatchable relief of having passed the watermelon-size being straining inside me and instead be holding the live little person in my arms, curled and desperate and wet and beautiful and OUT. Hello, little Peter. I wiggled my toes, feeling all the way down not being pregnant anymore, and thanked God.

Donesies!

Holding number four

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