Here are the details. I am not bashful about talking about
birth, but I will try to leave out any “TMI” details. Try.
Monday, December 31st. I woke up around 3:30,
okay it was 3:37, feeling the first contraction. I figured it was labor
beginning (contractions had never woken me up and these were low and in my
back), but I did not jump to conclusions. The second contraction came at 3:44,
lasting 25 seconds, like the first. As I timed my first contractions, Elsie
woke up across the hall. I debated if I should go in with her or wake up Will.
Being that my contractions were painful enough to make me lie still through
them, I decided to wake up Will to get her back to sleep, not mentioning the
contractions to him. He fell asleep in her bed with her. I continued timing:
contractions now 6 minutes apart, each lasting 25 seconds. Not long.
A little after four I said, “Okay, this is definitely labor
and I need to go to the bathroom.” From the bathroom in our bedroom, I called
for Will a few times. With Elsie’s noise maker on and her door partially closed,
my calls fell on deaf ears. I found laboring on the toilet, leaning up against
the towel rack the most relieving. 4:18 contraction. The next one should be
around 4:24. 4:20 contraction. 4:22 contraction. Somewhere in there, I made it
to Elsie’s room and shook Will’s foot, telling him to get up. No response. My
next contraction brought me back to the bathroom across the hall, in the back
of our bedroom.
4:40. “WILLLLLL!!” I heard him spring from bed – he knew
what was up. I asked him to call my parents (to stay with Elsie). He did. He also called Dr. Wall:
“Good morning. Well, Jill’s in
labor, she says contractions are coming one on top of the other.”
Dr. Wall,
“Get to the hospital.”
By this point, my contractions were really one on top of the
other. I was no longer even trying to time them. I went from squatting over the toilet to standing, still
leaning on the towel rack. I found rocking and groaning to be comforting. Will tried desperately to get our bags packed. However, I was basically
of no use. I made it out of the bathroom a couple quick times to throw
something in or out of my bag. My parents came at some point. Will kept telling
me we had to get to the hospital, but every time he poked his head in the
bathroom, I shoed him away, relaxing through my contractions.
In my head I realized I needed to slow down my labor. How
was I going to make it to the car? The hospital? I knew the answer to both
questions. I started laboring on all fours in the knee – chest position (on
knees and elbows, keeping my chest low to the ground). The point was to work
against gravity so the baby would not continue as quickly through the birth
canal. Okay, well, this didn’t really work for very long. As I panted through
one or two contractions, trying to relax , I felt the baby’s head crowning.
What? I was not pushing!!! Quickly, I pulled off my pants and told Will the
baby was coming (he was looking for my shoes). He came to the bathroom quickly,
wanting to get me into the tub in the other bathroom, only to find me on all
fours and the baby crowning.
“Call 911!!
The baby is coming,” Will yelled to my parents. Acting as quickly as he could,
he grabbed his shower towel from the rack to catch the baby.
As I relaxed through the next contraction, Madelyn’s head
came through, still in the bag of waters. I continued to stay relaxed and let
things happen. Will told me I was doing great and talked to the baby, urging her
to come the rest of the way out. I breathed through the next contraction, felt
the shoulders twist through, pause, the body followed and she was out. Listening
for her cries and breathing was the only time I was a little tense. She let out
some cries to let us know she was good and healthy. From the floor, I grabbed a towel out of the
cabinet next to me and Will handed little Madelyn through to me. By this time,
my parents were talking to 911, relaying messages to Will. As directed, Will
handed me a clean wash cloth to wipe out the baby’s nose and mouth. Wondering
how I was going to use this wash cloth to get in her tiny nose and mouth, I
used it to pat her dry instead. After getting situated, I finally sat up
against the bathroom cabinet and held Madelyn against my chest. What a precious
moment.
The EMTs arrived a short time later (and the fire truck and
the police cruiser, of course). They clamped and cut the cord. We like to wait
until the cord has stopped pulsing before clamping; however, Madelyn had
probably been born for close to 10 minutes at this point and the EMTs were just
doing what they knew (sitting on the bathroom floor, I asked, they don’t do
this very often), so we didn’t say anything about not cutting the cord yet. Feeling
good, I walked to the gurney in the hall since they couldn’t angle it through
the bedroom doorway. It didn’t really bother me that I was naked with half a
dozen men surrounding me. I had my baby and that was all I was concerned with.
From here things aren’t as exciting. The ambulance ride was
nice and warm, and Madelyn nursed the whole way to Bethesda North. Our OB was waiting for us at the ER entrance. We were glad to
see him and he was excited about our morning events (I later found out that he was sad he missed the birth). We were admitted on the
maternity floor. After finishing things up, Dr. Wall sat and chatted with us,
while he held little Madelyn.
Personal Reflection and FAQs:
Will and I had no intention of delivering this baby at home,
but it turned out to be an awesome experience! Several months ago, I joked with
a friend on Facebook about having an exciting, but not too exciting,
birth-story to share. I think this fits into the exciting category! There was
nothing scary about it and Will and I were both very calm.
With Elsie’s labor being 12 hours, I figured this one would
be 8 – 10 hours, not just under two. My contractions started out further apart
and shorter than those I had with Elsie. I counted on having a few hours of
early first stage labor and didn’t want to go to the hospital too early. That
didn’t happen. My contractions pretty much jumped from 6 minutes apart, to 2
minutes, to one right after the other.
One sign of late first stage labor is you lose your modesty.
This is easy to identify at the hospital because you stop caring who sees you
naked or working through your contractions. It is hard to lose your modesty at
home when it is just you and your husband. I also never lost my mucous plug
(I’ll leave that up to you to research, if you don’t already know what it is)
and my water did not break until the final contraction when Madelyn was born.
There WERE other signs that we could have read to figure out
what stage of labor I was in. For instance, standing with one leg forward and
rocking is a clear sign of the baby moving down and turning to move through the
pelvis. Somewhere in my research in the past few months, I read how during
labor you go from using your left brain (reasoning and logic) during early
first stage labor to using your right brain (instinct, intuition) during late
first stage/hard labor. So, although in
my head I knew I was not going to make it to the hospital I was so internally
focused and acting on instinct that it didn’t cross my mind to convey to Will
that we would not make it to the hospital. (I think I was also in denial and
was trying to convince myself that we could.) However, my body knew what to do
with out me even thinking about it. It is also important to know that labor is
involuntary. If you let your body progress naturally through labor and delivery
(no chemical interventions), you really don’t have to do anything for the baby
to be born. Our Bradley Instructor compares it to throwing up – once it starts,
you can’t stop it! It is important to know how to work with your body, and not
against it, in order for things to go smoothly. This is why I did not have to actively push the baby out, my uterus actively pushed the baby out on its own.
Experiencing that was one of the coolest parts of this delivery – my body had
this baby all on its own!
We did NOT HAVE to call 911. We did NOT even HAVE to go to
the hospital. However, neither Will nor I are medically prepared for an
unassisted homebirth. We knew chances were low of anything being wrong (roughly
90% of births are safe to do at home if you let nature run its course) but
didn’t want to take any risks. So, we called 911 to get us to the hospital and
let our doctor take care of us from there.
I think that about covers it :)
