Mira's Birth Story

As with Milo's birth story, this will probably be of interest to a limited number of people, but it's of interest to me, and this is my blog, so here it is.

On Sunday morning, Mira's due date, I woke up at 6am with very mild contractions - so mild that I thought I might just be willing my own uterus to contract because I was so sick of being pregnant. Also I'd thought it would be kind of cool to have both kids arrive on their due dates. I tried timing the contractions but they were so random I got the sense that I was imagining them more than actually having them. I'd been preparing for the birth with Hypnobabies, a set of CDs that teach you self hypnosis techniques, so I put my earphones on and listened to some Hypnobabies (which Steven and I had started referring to as Hypno-crack because it we'd both found the CDs put us into this drug-like state where you lose time and have no sense of what is going on around you) in the hopes that it might make me go into labor. So it's me, everyone else sleeping, and the hypno-crack for an hour or so until Milo woke up and came into our room.

I spent the morning resting, listening to the hypno-crack, and trying to will myself into labor. At around 11am Steven and I decided to take a walk to try to get things moving. We drove down to Little Stony Point and walked around, took some pictures, and managed to totally put an end to my contractions.

At that point I decided, ok, forget it, no baby today, I'll do other stuff. So I came home and puttered around -- sterilized baby bottles and pacifiers, had lunch, then Steven made a fire and we sat in the living room and played Boggle for a while.

Some time that evening the contractions started up again, but again they were mild and so un-timable that I barely paid any attention to them. By 10PM, thoroughly annoyed with my uterus, I took half a Unisom and went to bed. Three hours later I woke up with more contactions. I rolled over and went back to sleep for another hour, until the contractions became too frequent to ignore. At that point I woke up Steven, told him the contractions had started up again and that I was going to do more Hypnobabies, and that I'd let him know when things got interesting.

By 3AM things started to get interesting. Steven started timing contractions and they seemed to be coming every 7 minutes or so, and lasting close to a minute. They were still not painful, but the intensity had definitely picked up so we called the doula, who asked if I wanted her to come over. I said I wasn't sure, because things had been so stop and start all day. I said maybe I'd wait an hour and call her again and she agreed. Twenty minutes later she called back and said she'd changed her mind and was coming over now. I believe my response was, "Thank god."

Ten minutes later she walked in the door, and my labor immediately slowed down. Awesome, I thought, clearly I am incapable of being in labor with anyone else around. I sat on the birth ball for a while, still listening to the hypno-crack, but the contractions refused to pick up. The doula suggested we get into bed and lie down, which sounded like a fantastic idea. Shortly after that the contractions picked up again, and they started getting more intense. The doula massaged my back and did pressure point stuff as each contraction came. In between contractions I would get up, sip water, and go to the bathroom. I'd been having bloody show all day, and it was increasing as time went on. With Milo I hadn't had the show until I was at least 5 cm dilated, so my feeling was that things were progressing rapidly, but I wasn't sure.

Sometime later the contractions started becoming painful for the first time. Until then it had just felt like an intense tightening, as though someone was wrapping me up in a gigantic rubber band and squeezing hard, but now the contractions began wrapping around into my lower back. The doula asked if I was starting to feel it in my back, and when I told her I was she said that meant the baby was moving down and things were progressing. It also meant I was done with the hypno-crack. At that point I couldn't concentrate on breathing and relaxing any more, and I started yelling a little during the contractions. Around 5:30 I got loud enough to wake up Milo. I heard him get up and go to the bathroom, and suggested we move downstairs because I didn't want him to see me in labor. The doula seemed a little puzzled by this, but I think she understood once we got down to the bat cave that is our downstairs guest bedroom.

We lay in bed there for a while as the contractions got more and more intense, and I got louder and louder. I am not one for yelling in pain, but this was something beyond pain. The waves were almost exactly like the experience of being on psychedelic drugs. I could feel each wave building, and knew that there was nothing I could do but hang on and try to make it to the other side. Somewhere around 7AM I burst into tears. I just felt like I couldn't do it. I wanted so much to avoid pitocin, to get to the hospital ready to push, but I had no idea how far along I was, how much longer this was going to continue, and I just wanted the pain to stop.

The doula asked if I was crying because I was afraid of how the birth was going to change my family.

"No," I said. "I just don't think i can do it." I waited for one more contraction to come before I told her I was done. I'd had it. I wanted an epidural.

"Let's go to the hospital," I said.

She asked if I wanted an epidural and I told her I did. My contractions were still only 7 minutes apart, and she said she thought the odds were good that they'd take one look at me and start pitcoin.

"I know," I said. "I know, I know, I know, and I don't care. I think I'm farther than 5 cm, and I just want this to be over."

The doula went upstairs to tell Steven we were ready to go, and in the space of the time between her going upstairs and coming back downstairs I could feel my contractions slow down. When she came back into the room I told her I'd changed my mind.

"I just said the word 'hospital' and my contractions slowed," I told her. She laughed, and later repeated this back to me, as one of several oddly witty things I'd said while living through the most intense experience of my life. So she went back upstairs, told Steven forget it, and came back downstairs. Five minutes later my contractions picked back up even stronger than before, and I changed my mind again.

"I'm done," I said. "Really, really, done now. Let's go. I want to go now. This second."

We got organized and walked toward the car. Ont he way to the car I had another contraction, leaning up against the side fo the car. And then an amazing thing happened. Instead of my labor stalling out once we got into the car, it picked up. On the twenty minute drive to the hospital I had 6 contractions. At that point I entered another dimension. I heard Steven talking to me but I had no idea what he was saying and I didn't care. I worried that my yelling would make him drive off the side of the road, I worried that I might throw up, and I did my best to stay focused on the wonderful, delicious epidural that was waiting for me at the hospital.

Steven pulled up in front of the hospital and, without waiting for him, I opened the door, got out of the car and marched straight into the lobby, pauding inside the doors for another contraction. I heard Steven yell, "Maternity!" to the people at the front desk, as I leaned against the wall through another contraction. I stared at the elevator doors at the end of the hall, wondering how on earth I was going to make it all the way down there. Suddenly someone was at my side with a wheelchair. I looked at him like he was insane. "I don't want a WHEELCHAIR," I snapped. At the time Steven thought this had something to do with my not wanting to associate the labor with illness or wheelchairs or something, but in fact I couldn't fathom the idea of sitting down.

Moments later the doula was at my side and we kept walking down the hall. I saw a woman at the end of the hall staring open mouthed at me and realized I probably looked like I was out of my mind, sweaty and yelling, staggering down the hallway holding onto my body pillow (which for some reason I had grabbed as I walked out of the car, thinking, well, I'm at the hospital, I'll want my body pillow later). The doula and I got into the elevator and I had another contraction. As it ended the doors opened ont he second floor and someone else got out. I noticed no one had pushed the elevator button for our floor. I looked at the doula and said, "What floor are we going to?" and we both started to laugh for a second because it was so ridiculous. Somewhow I realized we were on the right floor, and we walked out and into the maternity ward.

I pushed through the double doors, had another contraction at the admitting desk, and announced I wanted an epidural as soon as humanly possible. I heard the people at the admitting desk murmuring that they'd have to check and see how far along I was, at which point I thought, are you people serious? Do I look like I'm not actually in labor?

Then we were in the delivery room and they were checking me. I was 8.5 cm. The doula beamed, Steven beamed, and I suddenly didn't know what to do.

"Do you still want the epidural?" the nurse asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Are you sure?" said the doula. "You're almost there."

"I still want it," I said.

"OK," said the nurse, "then lie down on the table so we can get your IV started."

"I can't lie down," I said. "Is there something else I can have with no IV?"

There was a brief discussion of other options, during which I had more contractions and had a hard time following the thread of the conversation. I remember asking the doula if she thought it would be another 20 minutes until I was fully dilated, or another 2 hours. "It's not going to be another two hours," she said.

"What about the tub?" I asked. Everyone agreed this was a good idea, and we started filling up the tub. Steven said something about the nurses thinking that by the time we got the tub filled up I would be ready to push. As the tub filled I got into it and immediately felt relief. The pain in the front of my uterus subsided. The water felt heavenly. Time passed, things were said, contractions came and went, I felt that I was pushing a little. What felt like hours later, but in reality was another twnety minutes, the nurse asked if I was ready to push.

"I have no idea," I said, "I'd LIKE to be ready to push because i just want this to be over."

She helped me out of the tub, checked me again, and found that I was now nearly at 10cm. I'd dilated 1.5 cm in twenty minutes. No wonder the contractions felt so intense. Suddenly the doctor was in the room, I was up on the table, and she was asking me to push to get the last little bit of cervix out of the way. Then one more push, the utterly ridiculous sensation of ANOTHER PERSON'S HEAD coming out of my body accompanied by an unfathomable level of pain, one more push, and Mira's head was out.

The cord was wrapped around her neck so I was asked to stop pushing while Steven and the doctor had some conversation about how she was going to cut the cord now but he could cut some other cord later, at which point he was like, look, do whatever the hell you want, and I was lying there thinking, are you seriously having a conversation while I am lying here in front of you with another human being half out of my body? Then one more push and out came the rest of her. And in that instant, as though a switch had been flipped, the contractions stopped, the pain stopped, and I was just me lying naked on a table.

"You have a mini-Me," I heard one of the nurses say, and moments later there she was, lying on my chest, little red-faced, fat-nosed, white-blonde Mira.