June 16, 2009
12:30am I arrive at Beth and Jason’s. Contractions started in the wee morning hours early yesterday, but were light and sporadic throughout most of the day. Just the past few hours have they become more rhythmic. They have been getting longer, stronger, closer together since about 9-10pm and are now in the 4-5 minute range, strong enough to really require Beth’s concentration. She’s doing beautifully, relaxed and breathing through every one, not losing her focus. When I get there, Jason is playing guitar and singing praise and worship songs. The mood is so peaceful and calm, and I know instantly that this is going to be a great birth.

1:15am We arrive at the hospital. The nurses are kind and eager to help. We go at first to a triage room, and upon exam, we find Beth to already be 6-7 cm dilated (!), 100% effaced, and baby at -2 station. Yay! We are escorted to our room, and get started on paperwork, the heplock, and the initial fetal monitoring strip.

Once all the admissions necessities are taken care of, we settle into a good rhythm. Beth is sitting on the birth ball, alternating walking and slow-dancing with Jason. He’s a great support to her – loving, encouraging, excited but unruffled. They make a fantastic team. It’s quiet and serene, with lights low and music playing softly. We fill up the tub and Beth soaks in there for a few minutes. She’s now much more inward and serious. Jason and I take turns gently speaking to her, reminding her to surrender to what’s happening, praising her effort so far, and whispering sweet encouragements to her. We recite Bible verses to her, and pray for God to continue to give her strength and stamina, thanking Him for the blessing of this amazing miracle of childbirth.

2:20am Another exam reveals that Beth is not 7, probably 8 cm dilated. Membranes are still intact. Beth is working really hard now, as it’s gaining intensity. She’s now arching back with each contraction, sitting on the ball and collapsing backward into Jason’s embrace with each surge. There continues to be a lot of bloody show, and she’s starting to feed building pressure, so we are all pretty confident that things will keep progressing quickly and it will be time to push soon. Doubts start to creep in, as they almost always do, but Jason and I remind her and we are almost there. I wipe her brow and neck to try to keep her feeling refreshed and capable.

3:45am 9 cm dilated now. Baby has descended to 0 station – great progress. There is an anterior lip still left on the cervix. I suggest hands and knees, just to mix up some new body mechanics and see if we can get the lip to disappear. Hands and knees looks like it’s working well – with each contraction, Beth is feeling more and more pushy and getting more and more loud.

4:40am There is still just a tiny bit of lip left. During the vaginal exam, the nurse has Beth bear down just a tad and her membranes rupture on the spot. The nurse is now able to push that little bit of lip left back out of the way, around the baby’s head. Baby is not at +1 station. With all of these things falling into place, we can start officially pushing!

With support from Jason and I on either side, Beth semi-sits in the bed and starts bearing down. We offer suggestions but remind Beth that she can find her own way, do what feels right. Sometimes, she holds her breath; sometimes, she pushed on the exhale. It’s hard, sweaty work, and at times, she looks overwhelmed, as almost all women do at this point in labor. The sensations are undoubtedly stronger than can be put into words. Nevertheless, she is focused and committed, and making progress at an admirable rate.

5:16am Jude is here! With those last unbelievable intense sensations, Jason, the medical team, and I rally around Beth like never before. She pants and blows, trying so hard to ease her baby boy out gently as the doctor coaches. On that last push, his head emerges and rotates, and then his body comes sliding out all at once! He immediately goes to Beth’s chest, where she is exhilarated and crying. Jason is ecstatic. They are all in awe and praising God’s grace. He is health and beautiful!

After the medical team has finished up, and Jason gets in a few cuddles, Jude’s put to the breast. He’s a feisty little man, full of emotion and eager to nurse but a tad frustrated. We all marvel at his own distinct little personality, already so evident. With some facilitating, he eventually gets a good latch and is able to suckle for a good while before getting drowsy. Everything has settled down and soon there will be family and visitors arriving. It’s time for me to go, so this new family can rest and have some time alone together, just the three of them. I say goodbye, grateful to have been part of this experience and feeling blessed to have been used by God in even such a humble way as to welcome a new child into His world.

The thing that’s frustrating about starting labor is that you don’t know how it’s going to progress – labor is so different for each person and circumstance. When I sent that e-mail to work, I wasn’t sure if I was going to go into active labor that day, or two days from then. I almost felt guilty about not going in to work that day, but it turned out to be the right decision.

Early labor was very easy to manage – the pains were light and irregular. We went for a walk, out to lunch, watched TV, played on the computer, read books, sat and talked – all without having to pay too much attention to the pain management of the contractions. It was just a waiting game to enter into active labor. We would know this stage by contractions that were “longer, stronger, closer together” (the phrasing our doula had us commit to memory).

The contractions started getting longer and stronger later on in the evening, but not closer together. They still were not difficult to manage. I made dinner, then talked with our doula who recommended I take a hot bath and try to slow the contractions to the point where we could get some rest for a couple of hours – or for the whole night. Baths are very good for slowing down labor that isn’t active and relieving pain in labors that are active. Turns out I WAS in active labor and the bath and laying down to sleep just intensified the contractions. We left the bed, got dressed, made sure our bags were packed and loaded in the car, then went downstairs.

I walked our house to help deal with the pain as the contractions continued getting longer and stronger and closer together. At this point, we decided to start timing the contractions to see if they were developing a rhythm. They certainly were rhythmic so we alerted our doula so she could start making her way to our house. While waiting for Laura to arrive, Jason started playing worship songs and I joined in as much as I could as it helped me bare through the contractions. Our doula arrived around 12:30am and we called the doctor to let her know that we were thinking about heading to the hospital. The contractions were around 3 minutes apart and anywhere from 60 to 90 seconds long – this shocked the doctor (I think most women call their doctors really early) and she told us to get to the hospital!

We checked into the hospital around 1am and I was already dilated to 6 ½ centimeters and 100% effaced. They admitted us to a room and we got set up and ready to deal with the worst of the pain. From here on out, I don’t know if I really have the words to adequately explain the rest of the labor. It was intense and exhausting. You feel like you enter a time warp, where you are always going to be in labor because the end never felt near until it was the end. The worst part for me was being so tired and trying to manage the pain – there were several moments where I just wanted to give up and curl up in a ball and go to sleep. In particular, there was one contraction that took me completely off guard: I had briefly fallen asleep and didn’t prepare myself to manage the pain of the upcoming contraction. Talk about panic. Thankfully Jason and our doula, Laura, were there to talk me through it and help me get back on track. We utilized a birthing ball to help me rock through contractions, deep breathing techniques, baths, standing up and swaying (almost like slow dancing).

I really don’t know how I would have done a natural labor if I hadn’t had the encouragement and support of Jason and our doula. They helped talk me through the contractions, told me I was doing well, gave me tools to manage the pain, and prayed over me regularly. The phrase I remember most clearly is ‘this is big, but Christ is bigger’ and that particular phase helped carry me through some of the worst contractions.

The final phase of the labor, pushing, started out by finding out that I was 9 ¾ centimeters dilated around 4:45 am. One small part of my cervix still had a slight lip, so the labor and delivery nurse (who was 36 weeks pregnant!) suggested that she try to push that back while I tried to push to see if the baby’s head would slip past it so we could really begin pushing. It worked! And my water broke at this point. I was so grateful that my water lasted that long as I had heard that labors where the water breaks early can be more painful . . . (and only 15% of women have their water break before contractions begin . . . just to dispel the myth that women just have their water randomly break at any given moment). It was at this point that ‘Hey Jude’ started to play on our music playlist.

There was about 30 minutes of pushing before Jude was born (appropriately enough to the song Umbrellas by Sleeping at Last). It is a sensation unlike any other. Some people compare it to pooping, and in some ways it is, but it is dissimilar to it as well. Once I felt how my body pushed and honed in on that sensation, it went very quickly. It was this point that I was very glad we had decided to go natural; even though I could feel all of the pain, I also felt the sensations that I needed to feel to push effectively. On the last push, Jude was completely born at 5:16 am. Jason said that his quick exit surprised the doctor! Once the baby crowns, it sometimes can take one or two more contractions to push through to completely birth the baby but Jude just popped right out. The doctor placed Jude on my chest and the labor and delivery team cleaned him up right there while I sat looking at him and crying with all the emotion of the moment.

Post-birth, as I held Jude, the doctor assessed my physical state and waited for the umbilical cord to stop pulsating, allowed Jason to cut the cord once it had, delivered the placenta, stitched me up as I had a small tear to the perineum and then the team did everything they could to make us all comfortable and help educate us on how to feed Jude and comfort him.

The team at the hospital was amazing. They were so respectful of our birth plan and our wishes; I was so thankful that we had delivered there even though my initial preference had been for the birthing center. Labor and birth with no drugs was certainly a crazy ride but I think it was the right decision for us and we ended up in the right place.

We are so incredible blessed to have this healthy little boy in our lives now!

As month 5 is halfway complete, I am more than halfway through this pregnancy. The most common questions I get asked on a day to day basis are, ‘how are you feeling? [fantastic now that I don't have a stomach virus]‘, ‘do you have any cravings? [no]‘, ‘do you have any morning sickness? [no]‘, ‘do you have a name picked out? [yes, Jude]‘, ‘have you felt him kick [yes, and Jason has too], and most surprisingly, people have begun to ask me if I’m going to get an epidural.

This awakened me to the fact that I am going to have to make some decisions soon. I hadn’t done any research or any fact checking on the birth process, partially because I am in denial. I know most women just allow themselves to be filtered through what is considered the normal baby having system: you find a doctor you like, you have a hospital birth, complete with drugs, a possible c-section, and maybe a couple overnight stays. As I started doing some research I was alarmed to find out more information about hospital births, starting with the drugs that are considered normal. The pain killers numb the pain and slow the birth, so you receive another drug that speeds the birth up. Seems counter-productive to me and makes me lean towards a natural birth. On top of that, America has the highest rate of any industrialized country for c-sections, infant mortality and maternal mortality.

This caused me to want to reassess what options where available to me. I had always thought of mid-wives and birthing centers to be too ‘crunchy’ for me. That’s just not what we do here in America. Only hippies entertain that option. The couple of friends I have had that have used a birthing center, I’ve always dismissed as, ‘oh, they didn’t have enough money to go to a hospital,’ or ‘oh, how strange.’ Turns out they are a lot more legitimate than I imagined and that the rest of the industrialized world relies on them to receive their children into the world instead of hospitals. Midwives have to be certified through a state board, and most are traditionally trained labor and delivery nurses. I had no idea. On top of that, birthing centers are typically exponentially cheaper to deliver in than a hospital. No $20 charges for that one ibuprofen pill. On top of all of the medical reasons for considering a birthing center, I hear that midwives tend to be more concerned, involved and less sterile and ‘business’ oriented than a hospital workers. They want to make you feel ‘at home’ (I know this is a blanket statement and not true across the board, but it’s worth considering).

So now, we are going to go visit and tour the Austin Area Birthing Center. The overwhelming responses I have read and heard from mothers that have had hospital births and birthing center birth is that they have preferred the birthing centers. I haven’t made a set decision, but I feel like I am leaning towards this option.

It’s a bit scary to be making a decision that 1) makes me feeling like I’m cheating on my OB/GYN – who I think is wonderful and highly recommend, 2) extremely countercultural in our society, 3) causes me to directly face the pain of childbirth.

Any readers out there have anything thoughts about these shenanigans? I’d love to hear about your experiences and friend/family experiences. . .