BOILING WATER

Well, at last, the time inevitably came. It’s funny – no matter how long one is pregnant, the onset of labor is still somehow surprising, as if one didn’t know for months that this event was bound to happen at some point.

The day started out normally enough as far as I could tell. I was overly tired because my partner and I had spent the past two evenings finishing up the last of the new baby preparations, arranging furniture, setting up the co-sleeper, getting out newborn clothes, stuffing tiny cloth diapers, etc.. As far as we could tell, we were more or less as ready as we were going to get.

On Tuesday, feeling materially prepared now but very worn out, I started realizing that I just kept making bad decisions. Nothing major, I was just having a difficult time planning my day in a way that made sense for some reason, as though my mind was off doing something different. Because of this, though I had every intention and several potential opportunities, I never did get around to taking the nap I had assumed would be on my agenda for the day.

Early in the morning I ran an errand for my mother then (after NOT taking the nap I could have taken) made phone calls and plans for purchasing a new van in preparation for our new arrival.

Is this, too, getting to be a trend? Before the arrival of our first daughter, we bought a van for family transport purposes. And now, with the arrival of our second daughter, we found the need to upgrade.

Though, in my heart, nothing can ever replace The Powder Blue Woody, I have to admit that she did have some problems. She was always reliable, always got me where I was going, and was of course aesthetically unparalleled. But, there was that pesky water leak that couldn’t be fixed without dropping the entire engine, a complicated and / or expensive endeavor for a very old vehicle which was also mysteriously burning oil for some unknown reason.

So, at the advice of my father The Car Expert, we decided it was time to trade up.

We went out looking for a dual door minivan, which would also make it MUCH easier to deal with two car seats at once. We looked and looked and looked and looked. Every one we saw either had too many miles or too many numbers in the sticker price, so we just kept looking.

After visiting more than twenty lots in twenty-four hours, we stopped at yet another one. My partner got out to jog around to look at a van at the back of the lot while I waited. (Waddling all over car lots nine months pregnant was not easy for me.) He was gone for a longer than usual time, but eventually came back.

Long story short, though it is not what we planned to buy, we ended up purchasing a larger conversion van that had been kept in great shape by its former owners. There is nothing "mini" about it, but the extra room will still make it easy to deal with two car seats. Not to mention that there is a fold-out bed for vacations, a TV/VCR that we will never use, and custom blinds on the windows to keep the sun out of my babies’ eyes.

We picked it out and put a deposit down on Monday and planned to go pick it up Tuesday afternoon. We had some financial arrangements to make first and then would drive to the lot together and I would bring the new van home with me.

On the way to the bank, I had the first strong contraction.

Huh. That was different.

Eight minutes later I had the second one. Eight minutes after that, the third. And so on. My partner was timing them, noting that they were lasting more than a minute a piece, even though I was totally in denial. Surely this was a false alarm – I wasn’t really in labor.

While we waited in the bank, I continued to have contractions. Sometimes they were on the every eight minute timetable, and other times they were not. Every time I skipped one, I told myself again that this wasn’t really happening, that this was just a stronger version of the periodic contractions I had been having for weeks.

But then one would hit, say, while I was downstairs in the bathroom at the bank and I would find myself crawling on my hands and knees in a public place because I couldn’t stand up. Then I would think, hmmm, maybe it is really labor.

Between contractions, however, I was totally fine and could go back to pretending that labor wasn’t really happening. That is the thing about it – though it is uncomfortable, you get a break from it every few minutes.

Eventually we finished up our business at the bank and started to make our way over to the car dealership. We had already amended our plans – I was NOT going to be driving any vehicle anywhere at this point – though I did assure my partner that I was all right to continue with the plan of purchasing the vehicle. Since I was the one technically buying it, I needed to be there to sign the paperwork. And, if I was having the baby (which I was convinced I was not) then it would be best to get this stuff taken care of sooner rather than later anyway.

When we walked into the dealership, the other couple filling out paperwork to buy a vehicle made a joke about me having the baby in the lobby. My partner, after checking his watch, let them know that we had about another seven minutes to sign paperwork until the next contraction. We were immediately bumped to the head of the line – no one wants a baby delivered in their lobby.

I actually signed my name while I was having contractions, which was kind of amusing. We were very quickly moved through the purchase process, given the keys and shuffled out the door. With the dealership’s permission, we left the old van outside the lot with the promise to pick it up in the next few days after the baby was born. (Believe it or not, I was still in denial – my partner arranged all of this.)

We went home and I reluctantly (it was all a false alarm, remember?) called my doula and midwife to let them know that we might be having a baby later in the evening. Both grandmothers were on "yellow alert" and waiting to hear if this really was the day or not.

I tried to lay down and take the nap I wished I had taken earlier in the day, and though I dozed on and off, I never really did get to sleep. Every eight minutes those pesky contractions would wake me up, not to mention that someone on the street behind ours apparently got a new stereo that they needed to share with the whole neighborhood. Though we eventually called the police, by the time they showed up to ask them to turn it down, I had already given up.

My doula stopped by to check on me, though I had encouraged her to just go home and get some sleep, that I would call her later if anything "really" happened. (She had just attended another birth that day and was on her way home from Dayton.) Being much more experienced with these things than I, she opted instead to stop by and assess for herself whether or not I needed her to stay.

After a few minutes visit, she called her husband to let him know that she would be staying. We also went ahead and called the grandmothers and let them know that they should probably head toward our house sometime in the near future.

While the birth tub was filling the basement (it’s a big tub – it took a while), my partner henna painted my stomach for the last time. It was a strange thing to do, but it kept us occupied until I could get in the water.

I sat on the birthing ball in the living room leaning back against my doula while he quickly but beautifully applied the dark brown stain to my huge stomach. It was a pattern of his own design, a Buddhist mandala with elements of Celtic knotwork and Middle Eastern stylization. For months he had reapplied the henna every week to ten days, just as he had when I was pregnant with our first daughter.

When he was finished, we dried it as quickly as possible and I headed to the basement and the big pool. Ironically, he was also boiling a huge pot of water while we were doing the henna painting to augment the warm water in the pool. It was so traditional – we all got a laugh out of that.

It was amazing – the second I submerged myself in the warm water, the discomfort of the contractions eased by about seventy-five percent. I have no idea why every single labor and delivery room in the country doesn’t have one of these things in them because it really made a HUGE difference.

At that moment, I wished I had planned a home birth because I knew that I did not want to get out of that tub. I could totally see why birthing in water is so wonderful and I have no idea what doing so is not common practice.

For about an hour I floated in the tub, and the contractions went from every eight minutes with a few irregular ones thrown in between at random intervals to contractions every three minutes like clockwork. I had three in a row that made me say "something is different" to my doula. I got out of the tub and went to the bathroom (we had a portable toilet so that I didn’t have to navigate two flights of steps while in labor) and when I finished I made the decision.

"We need to leave. Now."

If my partner and doula hadn’t insisted on drying me off and putting clothes on me, I would have left the house stark naked and dripping wet. As it was, I did leave without shoes. Someone put a pair in a bag I think, but at that moment I was in no mood to care about such trivial things.

As we were leaving, my daughter was very concerned as to why her mommy was crawling up the stairs and breathing so funny. She came over to me and patted me reassuringly, then held my face between her little hands and kissed me. It was about the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen, and I did my best to reassure her that everything was really okay – it was just that the baby hiding in mommy’s tummy was ready to come out and play now.

We made it out to our new van and I kneeled on the floor, supporting my upper body on one of the beautifully maintained plush seats. In the back of my mind, it occurred to me that it would be very ironic if my water broke in the van, considering how unbelievably pristine the thing had been kept up until now.

My mother was not comfortable driving a totally new vehicle in the dark under emergency conditions, but I was insistent that that was what we needed to do. My partner needed to stay with me, she needed to drive, and we needed to take the van. Mostly that was because I really wanted to be positioned on my knees, and there was no other vehicle in which that would work.

We made it to the hospital with our doula following behind in case we needed to pull over. While my partner was getting a wheelchair for me, a labor and delivery nurse just happened to come outside and see what was going on. When she saw me, she radioed up to the maternity ward. I heard her say something about how she hoped that they could get me up there before I had the baby.

Once again, I found myself being quickly wheeled up the ramp to the front door of the hospital by my partner, though this time there ended up being half a dozen medical staff running ahead to get the elevator open and calling around on radios. Though I was in quite a state by that time, he and I still laughed about it – is there any way that I could possibly go into labor and NOT have a dramatic entrance?

Needless to say, I didn’t have to stop to fill out any paperwork. They checked me quickly and found that I was a little over nine centimeters dilated and just about ready to go. I had planned to labor at home as long as possible and had timed it perfectly – if I had waited any longer, I wouldn’t have made it to the hospital at all.

My midwife arrived in a flurry, having driven eighty miles an hour all the way there. I started pushing almost immediately and was once again so grateful for the wonderful support team that I had with me. I had my partner and mother again, though this time I also had a very experienced doula (who is also a friend of mine) and a midwife to help out.

I was astonished at the different positions they had me try, noting where the baby was, which parts of my body needed to open to allow more room, and which direction the baby needed to rotate next. Between the midwife and the doula, they optimized gravity and positioning to allow the baby to come down as quickly and easily as possible. While actually in labor, I would never want to move of my own accord, so I was very glad to have experienced coaches helping me do what was necessary to move things along.

Through the whole experience, I tried to stay as relaxed as possible and was almost in a sleep state between contractions. My midwife was concerned that I was exhausted, but I let her know that I was just conserving energy since I was going to need it.

I was totally aware of what was going on around me, but found it very difficult to speak or verbalize in any way. It would take me a few minutes to get up the gumption to say "ice" when I wanted a piece and interaction beyond a simple nod was out of the question. Though when the midwife mentioned the possibility of giving me intravenous fluids at some point in the future since I was starting to look dehydrated, I did interject that I would prefer not to wait – I wanted fluids NOW.

At some point, my midwife suggested that we rupture the amniotic sack since it hadn’t yet broken. It was bulging ahead of the baby into the birth canal which was going to make pushing her out that much more difficult. If I had given birth in the water and been more comfortable, I would have considered trying to have the baby with the sack still intact, but as it was I didn’t feel like trying to push out something even larger than a baby.

(Apparently, my body was trying to make up for the thin sack that ruptured early with my first daughter. The midwife later called it the "bag of steel" since she had to try to rupture it several times before it would break. She said it felt like it had a double, or at least very thick, wall around it. So, I guess all of those positive visualizations about NOT having my water break early must have done the trick.)

This baby was MUCH bigger than my last one, so it was a little harder to get her head past the pubic bone. I kneeled, I squatted, I leaned over a padded table, I sat up, I leaned back, I made noise and exhaled, I held my breath and was silent.

The coaching, again, was phenomenal. They could tell if I was putting energy into, say, tightening my jaw or pushing through my legs instead of focusing it down toward the baby. In that moment, that was certainly something that I never would have noticed, but changing what I was dong in response to that would totally change the quality of the pushing and make it much more effective.

I moved to laying on my right side and suddenly things started to shift again. At one point, I asked if my midwife was in the room and was told that she had stepped out to get something. I let them know that she needed to come back RIGHT NOW, at which point she stepped back into the room anyway.

They rolled me over so that she could check me and as they did, they saw the top of the baby’s head. I had my eyes closed (just like last time) but they told me that everyone moved very quickly then.

A couple more pushes and I got to the place I had been mentally rehearsing for weeks. The baby’s head was part way out, was not going back in, and I needed to just stay right there and resist the urge to shoot her two feet across the room.

With my first birth, I had gone so early that I missed the birthing class where they went over the technique for not tearing during delivery. So, instead, I went with my instincts and pushed her out as quickly as possible, which is exactly the worst thing to do if you want to avoid tearing. Luckily, I only needed one stitch the first time, but this baby was much bigger.

So, difficult as it was, I listened to my coaches and eased her out ever so slowly while the midwife used warm oil and counter pressure to help my body stretch around her head and shoulders. The ninety seconds of discomfort were so worth it – no tearing and not a single stitch this time.

It is such an amazing sensation of relief when the baby finally comes out. For me, it is like I totally forget through the delivery that A BABY will be there at the end of the process. It is a totally internal physical experience, then suddenly it’s all over and this little wet creature is sitting on your chest.

We delayed the cord clamping for a while, though when they finally did it, they found that the cord was so huge it was difficult to clamp. When the placenta finally came, it was astonishingly large as well. Perhaps that’s why it looked "low" on an ultrasound – it was just so big that it had to take up a whole lot of room. (It was, literally, probably the size of my first child.)

She was eight pounds one ounce, twenty inches long and perfectly healthy. She nursed within twenty minutes and was content to curl up on my chest. Apparently, there was something in the air that night because EVERYONE was giving birth. There were forty babies born that night on that floor and the recovery rooms were nearly full. I had to share a room with someone, which though it wasn’t my preference, there was little we could do about it. After my arrival on the floor, there was only one bed left and nine more women in labor.

But, they had FOOD waiting for me, all laid out on the bed side table, so that really did make up for it. The second the baby comes out, I’m STARVING, so the turkey sandwich, apple juice and graham crackers looked like a feast fit for the gods.

I seem to have this "thing" about apple juice after I give birth. Last time, I found that they will bring you up to four apple juices with every meal at the hospital, so I always order the maximum number. For some reason, both times now I have craved apple juice obsessively after giving birth…. strange.

And, apparently, I can eat whatever I want now. They actually brought me COOKIES, which I haven’t touched in months. Of course, I’m not going to go crazy with this kind of food since I’ll pretty much have to watch my diet from now on, but right after birth I’m just not going to worry about it.

After twelve hours of being woken up every five minutes by someone either stopping to check on me or my roommate, I asked the midwife doing rounds if I could be released to go home. The hospital has a very strict policy about not sleeping with your baby (and the beds are unsafe for that anyway) so I was just as happy to go home so that we could all get some sleep.

I gave birth at 2:48 in the morning and was home by seven o’clock that evening – not too bad of
a turn around time. From the first contraction to having a baby laying on my chest was less than eleven hours, about one third the time of my first labor. It was a totally unique experience from the birth of my first daughter, though it was just as positive and rewarding.

Now I have a tiny little baby laying on my lap again while I type. She is doing great, nursing fourteen times a day and doing all of the things that she is supposed to do at this point. Her older sister is totally intrigued and wants to hold, pet and kiss her all the time – they are really cute together.

And now we are four. It is so strange… I never pictured myself with a child, much less children. I was an only child, my mother was an only child, my partner was the only child of his parents’ marriage. (He had half-siblings, but they were all significantly older.) So, this should be a new experience for all of us.

So far, so good. And now for some more apple juice…