A Magic, Moving, Living Part of theVery Earth Itself (Birth Story...Sure to Be Acres Long)

(Of course, sweet boys in my life, there will be ooshiness in this post. It happens with alarming frequency during delivery.)

I was scheduled to be induced on Monday, January 22nd. My doctor's instructions, in a nutshell, were to go to the hospital at five in the morning complaining of contractions and a general feeling of doom. I wasn't too keen on this whole plan. A: It would involve Pitocin, a drug which I wanted to stay away from because I wanted a natural delivery. B: It would involve lying to the hospital people, which made me feel bad and didn't seem to be a very good way to start the whole hippy-dippy experience I wanted to have. I tried all sorts of things in order to get labor going. Except for THAT, y'all. Because whenever Will and I talked about THAT, we couldn't keep straight faces. Finally, in desperation and GD be damned, we went to the local Mexican restaurant and chowed down on spicy food hoping for some contractions.

Nothing. Sunday night, I had a hard time sleeping, mainly due to excitement, but also due to the gas that was the only apparent side effect of the salsa. When we got up at four, both of us were feeling all of the things soon to be parents feel and we loaded everything up and headed out into the rain. Along the way, I was feeling some Braxton Hicks contractions. It seemed kind of weird that they were coming every five minutes, but they were nothing compared to the contractions that started with Jeffrey, so I just sort of remarked vaguely to Will that I might be having contractions and we went on our merry way.

Cut to the hospital, where I let Will do the lying to the staff while I stared at the floor and tried to look "in travail." I was so ashamed of us. The nurse got us into a room and put a monitor on my non-contracting belly and did a quick exam. Three centimeters stretching to four. Huh. Interesting. She left us and we made small talk and Will copped to feeling a little bit alarmed by the enormity of my belly. It WAS impressive, especially given that The Squishums was all "Woohoo! It's 4:30 in the morning! Time to PAR-TAY!!!" The nurse came in and said, "We're just going to readjust your monitors because we just aren't picking up on your contractions and we know you're having them." Whereupon I tried to sink into the bed, because I was a big fat lying minion of the Dark Prince. And the poor nurse lady was so nice and gentle with me.

A few minutes later she came back with a clipboard saying something about admitting me, what with me being in labor and all. Do hunh?, I thought. This isn't labor, nice nurse lady. It's a lie. A lie, I tell you. And as Will was blinking at her in a befuddled way and I was saying, "Really? Like, LABOR, labor?," she showed us the monitor strip and sure enough, there was a regular little series of peaks. Well. Slap me in the face and call me Rachel.

So we get to the delivery room where I tell my nurses (Renee and Gigi) that my veins have a habit of exploding. Or blowing. Or something that sounds all bomb-related and not something that one wants to hear about one's veins. I heard it during Jeffrey's delivery, when it took the nurses five times to realize that my veins did the combustible thing and that they needed to call the anesthesiologist in to get my IV in. Renee tries and fails this time around. I say "fuck," even though I had hoped to avoid it. Gigi gets the IV in and we are told that I need to wait for a little bit to walk so they can monitor The Squishums. Will stands by my bed and says, "How did you do that?"

"I'm magic," I say.

"I think you were so worried about lying that you psyched yourself into going into labor."

"Whatever works."

Renee comes in and lets me walk around for a while. I plug into Will's iPod and listen to the Motown soundtrack. When a contraction hits (or kind of nudges, really. They didn't hurt at all at this point.), I stop and sway back and forth. At some point in time, Hayden comes in. I use his computer (I AM A NERD) to give the ladies at GAMom a shout out. Daddy comes in. Nicole arrives. Mom comes in. I dance to the Motown and feel okay. This is going well, I think.

My doc arrives and checks me. I'm at a four! Alright! Then I feel a squoodge of warmth. Doc broke my water without warning me or asking me. Huh. I decide not to be angry, even though this means (the nurses tell me) that I can't walk around any more. (Note: this was completely different than my time with Jeffrey.) I sit on the bed instead and rock through the contractions. They still aren't too bad. Time passes.

I get checked again in an hour and I'm still a four. Renee comes in with a bag and says, "Time for the Devil Juice." Yikes. Pitocin. I take a deep breath and say, "Bring it on."

I'm such a dumbass.

The Pitocin starts to take effect. The contractions are stronger. Not too crazy, but definitely stronger. I have to grab Will's hand (or Nicole's or Mom's) to get through some of them. The Squishums decides to press onto my back. Ow. Whoever is near me must dig his or her hands into my back or I want to DIE. Still, I'm listening to my music and trying to ride through the pain. It's okay.

Then. Damn. The baby starts to have something called "lates." I still don't know what this means or even if I got the name right in the first place, other than that it meant it wasn't dealing with the contractions well. So I have to lie down on my side. No more rocking. Crap. I also completely lose my focus, because I have to take my earphones out so I can listen for the baby's heartbeat. I'm frightened all of a sudden. I am in pain that is hard to cope with. (They keep turning the Pitocin up, unbeknownst to me.)

I lose control and large chunks of time as I try to get through the pain and stay calm and not freak out about the baby's heartbeat. I start to sweat and I literally want to claw people's eyes out if they talk to me. Will and Nicole discuss the possibility of an epidural and I tell them to shut up. The frickin' cell phone keeps ringing, even though everybody knows that we're having a baby. What the hell??? I want to grab the damn thing and jump out a window with it. It occurs to me that I'm in transition and I ask the nurse to check me. A six. Okay. Progress. I start talking to myself, telling myself to relax through the contractions. It helps a little, but everything feels very speeded up.

There's a big chunk of lost time here, during which I asked about Stadol and I moved to an eight. Will asked Nicole again about an epidural and I told him again to shut up, mainly because I realized that there was no way I could sit up and hold still for an epidural. Also, I feared the needle far more than I couldn't handle the pain. There was an interval near here where Nicole called Moglet crying about not being able to help me and where Will's mother delivered his talismans which he had left behind at the house and in which Nicole, realizing that the epidural was not going to happen, told Will that this delivery was going to be different. Understatement of the year.

I hear Gigi say I'm at an eight and I ask for the Stadol. Chunk of time missing. Renee says to me, "I'm giving you the medicine right now." I swear, maybe three seconds pass and I say, "I have to push." Various people say, "No, no, no. Don't push. Just breathe." I say, "I have to push!" And feel a gush of amniotic fluid shoot out of me. (Tasty.) And the Stadol takes effect. It does not at ALL deaden the pain, nor does it make me care any less about it. What it does do is give me amazingly stupid clarity during the milliseconds between contractions during which I make a complete ass of myself. For example, when everybody tells me not to push, I rise up on my elbow and say very calmly, "Okay, but I'm pushing a little and it feels good, so I'm thinking...not so much with the not pushing."

They ask me to roll onto my back, which is preposterous, but I do it anyway and Gigi says, "Wow. You're complete. Well, you have a little lip."

And I, veteran viewer of "Baby Story" and high on Stadol say, "Oh, the cervical lip? Can I push past it?" And as soon as I hear a "yuh" sound come out of her mouth, I'm pushing.

Oh. My. God. It feels so good to push I can't even tell you. Everything still hurts, but I'm actually DOING something. Ah. Relief. Yay. Then...

I blank out or something and when I come to, I am SCREAMING. I mean, deep from my throat screaming. The thought in my fuzzy little head? "This is the sound the earth made when the earth was being made." Yeah. It was very...visceral. I become convinced I'm...using the bathroom. The nurses tell me it's the baby. I say, "Uh, no. Pretty sure it's poop." Laughter from everybody else. Not funny.

I realize that lying flat on my back sucks more than anything has ever sucked. I start demanding that they raise my head up. I feel Nicole on one side trying to give me something to grab onto. I squeeze her hand so hard that she winds up with bruises. At some point in time, I ask where my mother is and if she can see. She answers affirmatively and I tell her to shut up. I tell the entire room that I can't do this.

I feel the baby come down. I feel (being Stadol Girl) that there is a plate moving down my birth canal. Yes. A plate. A salad plate, to be exact, more rounded square than circle. I see it in my head: a red squarish salad plate with elaborate gold trim. Thank The Filing Cabinet I don't bring up the plate. Then. I feel a cheek. Against the inside of me. There's the hardness of the plate and then...the softness, the roundness of a little cheek. (Unbeknownst to me, one is not supposed to feel a cheek where I felt a cheek. The Squishums had decided to come out face up. Which explained why it felt like the plate was wedged inside me. Because, um, it was.) Anyway, somehow feeling that cheek calmed me down. I remember looking at Will and saying, "It's a person. I have to get it out." I think I said something about making him proud. I know I started whispering the lyrics to "our song." Suddenly, the whole thing stopped being about everything else and started being about the three of us: Will, the Squishums, and me. Everybody else was just scenery. (Which isn't meant to be a slight to them, of course. And when the doctor gave me a shot to deaden me for the episiotomy made necessary by
The Squishum's position, I looked at him and said, "Are you kidding me with the shot? Right now? Right now you decide it's a good time for a shot? Seriously?")

I suddenly felt the burning that Molly Ringwald talked about in "For Keeps." Not comfy. I reach down and feel a head. Outside of me. There is a part of a head sticking out of my body, which is scary, you know? What with the burning and all. But I keep pushing. Screaming. Trying to get the baby OUT. Everything is about OUT. I think I actually say, "OUT!!" And then...the head is out. And WHOA!!? I can feel legs and shoulders and knees squirming inside me and it's cool and gross and ugh...so big at the same time and then The Squishums is out.

Will leans over me and says, "We've got River. We've got our little girl." And I cry and ask if I can hold her, because I didn't get to do that with Jeffrey and they put my slimy, bloody, screaming little girl on my stomach and I touch her and she's warm and soft and tiny and I love her so much and love Will so much and am so damn proud of myself that I want to explode. I look at my mother and say, "I did it." She thinks I mean, "I had a little girl," but what I mean is that I was strong enough to let a person come out of my body without an epidural. That the person was a girl is, in that moment, irrelevant.

We try to breastfeed and we get her Apgar's and all is well and I'm just worn out and happy and feeling good.

Then there's sewing to be done, during which time I tell the doctor cheerfully that I love him, but I'd like to kick him in the head and that I'm ready to stop saying, "Ouch." I also bite Nicole's boob. Several times. Which I'm sure she really appreciated, given that I'd already practically broken her hands. I don't MEAN to bite her boob, but it's hanging over the side of the bed and everytime the doctor takes a stitch, I want to bite down. I think I eventually wad up a sheet and bite on that. However, the Stadol and adrenalin kicked in but good around this time, and I may have only thought about doing this.

People have asked me if I'm sorry that I didn't have a virtually natural birth with Jeffrey. I'm not. I was in labor for days with him and so tired by the time I got to four centimeters that I was ready to drop. However, I will say that if we decide to have more children, I'm definitely planning on going virtually natural again. I felt great after delivery and feel as if my body has bounced back much more quickly. I didn't swell like I did with Jeffrey, I didn't feel shaky for weeks like I did with Jeffrey. I'm already exercising again and my body feels like my own. Plus, none of the weird back feelings like four years ago.

River is beautiful. The four bruises on her forehead (courtesy of the doc having to push her under my pubic bone--hence the third degree episiotomy) have faded and she is pinking up after a bout with jaundice. She is a good baby, crying only when she's hungry or needs to be changed. (We did have a spell of gas last night that makes me nervous about tonight. I'm going to try to think positive, though.) I remember thinking that I might not like the new baby, that I'd resent it or wish that it wasn't with us. But she fits so snugly into our life that it's like she's always been here. The love I feel for her isn't an extension of my love for Jeffrey or Will...it's there because she's here.

I think this picture says it all.