Don’t get me wrong. I loved being pregnant. (Yep, I’m crazy like that.) But when you are huge and feeling the social pressure to have a baby YESTERDAY, forty-three weeks is an eternity. And so on December 9, when the Walmart employee rotating the chicken in the cooler sidled up to me and predicted I would start labor at 7pm that evening and followed it with a declaration of her prophetic track record where births were concerned, I shot off a text message to my birth team warning them to clear their calendars. Good thing I did, because the good lady was right again.
That evening (Dec 9), my back was getting pretty uncomfortable as I headed out the door to a choir dress rehearsal for our Christmas Cantata. We’d had so many false alarms by this point that I was determined to go to choir to keep my mind off things. Once I got to church, I stopped walking several times to lean against a wall, a door frame, a chair to counter the pressure in my back. By the time we filed into the sanctuary at 7pm to start rehearsal, my back ached so much that I couldn’t stay on my feet. After rehearsal, still unconvinced that something was actually starting, I foolishly agreed that I would cover for the main soloist if she was still sick by Sunday and headed home.
When we got home, Chris and I took a long walk (about 1.5 miles) around the neighborhood, arriving home just in time to greet my dad and grandma as they arrived from Wichita. They were coming to visit for the weekend and the whole bunch of us was pretty sad that there was no grandbaby (or great-grandbaby) for them to play with. My dad walked in the door, gave me a hug, and told Addalyn she could come any time since he had arrived. Feeling tired, achy and a bit nauseous, I excused myself and went to bed.
I woke up around 1 AM from a silly dream in which one of my Wichita friends was in my kitchen washing dishes because she believed the smell of the dish soap would make me go into labor. Those pregnancy dreams, I tell ya! But I digress. However, that imaginary dish soap must have done the trick, because I woke up with the most intense discomfort around my middle. It felt like someone had looped a rope around my waist and was pulling it too tight. I ignored it and rolled over, only to have another wave hit me. I glanced at the clock every time it happened and soon realized that I’d had four or five contractions exactly four minutes apart. Soon I couldn’t lay down anymore. Not wanting to wake Chris, I went to Addalyn’s bedroom, sat on the birth ball, and rocked until all I could do was groan through the contractions. Around 2 AM, I texted my friend & labor coach that it was baby time. At her directive, I went back to bed for all of ten minutes and my groaning woke Chris up and I told him we were going to have a baby. Soon I sent out another text to my team to come over and crawled into a hot shower, kneeling on the floor of the tub under the water while the contractions continued.
At this point I lost all track of time. By the time my labor support arrived, I was back in bed trying to relax, while Chris was gathering birth supplies. I quickly came to the conclusion that I could not labor in bed. At all. I had to move and I had to try to shift the pressure from the back labor. Soon I was back on the birth ball in the living room trying to have a conversation between contractions, and absolutely unable to focus on anything else during them. Hannah arrived some time later just as I was puking my guts up into a pink bowl that someone so graciously held for me. Labor is not so pretty and that’s the honest truth of it.
[Some of you are getting anxious for the part where I finally decided it was time to go to the hospital before it was too late. Not happening. We had started researching and planning for a home birth around 18 weeks. Once I did the research and learned the often unnecessary medical interventions & saw the evidence-based truth that birth is actually safer (in most cases) for mom & baby to be at home than in the hospital, I was sold!]
I don’t remember much about Chris filling the birth pool. We'd had it blown up and resting on its side in our bedroom for weeks. But I do remember how awesome it felt to get into it. The pressure lessened significantly as I settled into the water. Not that I had too much time to enjoy my warm bath in between intensifying contractions. My water broke a little while later and the next several hours went by in a blur. The back labor was intense and I thought several times that my body was going to turn itself inside out. I changed positions several times, from floating on my back in the water to hands and knees, to being draped over the side of the birth pool.
My birth team was absolutely fabulous. I could not have asked for better friends and support. Chris held me through various positions, reminded me to breathe deeper, fed me popsicles and trail mix to keep me hydrated & energized, and reminded me to stay calm and focused. My friend prayed for me a couple of times when I felt myself spiraling into feeling like I couldn’t continue. Hannah popped in and out of the room from time to time, doing whatever she could around the house to help out and even running a few errands to pick up a few items as after thoughts (we decided I needed bananas for extra potassium to get rid of the nasty leg cramps that were really an unwelcome part of the program). Somebody gave me a rogue M&M from the trail mix bag. That was the best chocolate I have ever tasted!
I got a laugh out of my team when I announced that I understood then why people use pain meds in labor. Hey, I never said I didn’t need pain meds; I was just determined not to have a drugged-up sleepy baby! Hannah disappeared for several minutes and returned with a bottle of whiskey (Baptists, stop reading now!), from which I promptly received a good, strong, nasty-disgusting shot to take the edge off. (Note: if you think I’m a horrid mom for drinking whiskey while in labor, it was ONE shot toward the end and NOT a constant pumping of meds into my baby’s bloodstream through an epidural). I wasn't really supposed to tell that part, but it's one of my favorite parts of the story so I couldn't resist. There aren't too many things you find amusing while in active, intense labor, so you have to make the most of it!
Soon it was brought to my attention that I should probably try to go to the bathroom before I reached the pushing stage. This in itself became a problem, because although my coach’s experienced eye could see the physical signs that it needed to happen, I felt absolutely no urge to go or to get out of my warm pool. So it didn’t happen. While it probably didn’t help speed things along, I’m not sure how much of a difference having a full bladder actually made in the scheme of things. The one time I made the effort to get out of the tub to head to the bathroom, I had to sit on the side of it for a minute to let a contraction pass, and that was when I felt the baby start to descend & I started feeling like my body would start pushing her out on its own soon. So I got back in the pool and there I stayed and stubbornly refused to come out. I’m sure it has happened, but giving birth in a toilet was not quite the romantic birth story I had envisioned!
I changed positions so many times that my memory is fuzzy as to what happened when. So I’ll just tell it the way I remember it. My one and only dilation check found Addalyn’s head to be less than an inch away from crowning and only a tiny bit of cervical lip left, so we knew it wouldn’t be long. I did stand up (with strong support) for a few agonizing minutes to encourage baby to move down a little bit more. That was probably the most uncomfortable part of the whole ordeal and I had to make eye contact with my friend directly in front of me in order to focus and make it through those contractions.
At some point soon after that, my friend asked for a camera and started taking pictures of my progressing labor (which I still have not seen!). I felt a little bit frantic when I sat on the side of the pool again to see if I could bring the baby down any farther. Although she wasn’t quite crowning yet, it sure felt that way and I was a little bit panicked that my labor coach was standing across the room, casually taking pictures when I just knew my baby was going to pop out any second (for the record: it was another 8-10 minutes) I actually find it a bit comical that the first time rookie was shooting orders at the experienced baby-catcher to GET OVER HERE RIGHT NOW! (Sorry, friend! Hehe).
Soon Addalyn started crowning. My mother-in-law came into the bedroom then with the video camera (more camera footage that I haven’t seen!), since she was designated the official birth videographer. I was on my knees, leaning on my arms on the side of the pool with Hannah kneeling in front of me, who kindly donated her fingernails to the cause as I somehow started biting HER fingernail. Oh, the crazy things that happen when you are completely out of your right frame of mind and focused on getting a child out of your body! (Hannah, I think I owe you a manicure!)
Crowning felt like a lot longer than it probably took. It felt like I pushed and pushed forever (reality check: about 5 minutes) without making any progress. While I knew Addy was not actually stuck, I felt like I could not work with my body well enough to get her head down & around my full bladder. I had to change positions again and knelt on my left knee with my right knee up. (Seriously, I don’t know how women do this flat on their back in a bed with their legs in stirrups…that would NOT have worked for me!) That was when I was able to reach down and feel the top of her head, and that gave me a new determination to keep going. I knew I was going to meet her any moment.
Looking back, I now know what women mean when they say they are totally focused on the task at hand. I made myself focus and graphically visualize the baby’s position and what I needed to do to help her out. A moment later, her head was born (with her right hand pressed against her face) and I took a deep breath, pushed with the next contraction and Addalyn shot out into her daddy’s waiting hands at 12:22pm. I’m told she was wide-eyed and a bit startled when he scooped her out of the water. [Note: Water birth is safe for the baby because the placenta & umblical cord are still the baby's oxygen supply, so there is no need for her to breathe under water.] I then had to stand up and lift my leg over the umbilical cord so that I could sit back down and meet my daughter. The cord was so short (8 inches!!) that I couldn’t lift her high enough to hold her to my chest, and had to lean forward a little. My dad got the first phone call (follow up to the excited text in the middle of the night that I was in labor).
The short cord caused a little bit of pulling on the placenta, and thus a lot-a-bit of bleeding. The placenta completely detached pretty quickly. We had every intention of waiting several minutes or even an hour or two before cutting the cord, but due to the amount of blood in the water, we decided we needed to get a move on and get me out of the pool. The cord was cut, Terri got some time with her new granddaughter, and my birth team & Chris helped me stand up with such a sudden gush of blood that I apparently fainted and woke up on my bed about 5 or 10 seconds later. I opened my eyes and was looking directly into my friend’s concerned face, with my husband standing next to her wearing a terrified expression and a few tears. Yikes.
My bleeding was quickly brought under control. While my friend helped me clean up, Addy hung out with her grandparents for a few minutes, totally alert and staring fixedly around the room, taking everything in as if she was determined to remember every detail of her birthday. But soon somebody placed my angel next to me and even though I felt like I was going to break her, I was glad to get a little snuggle time. It was a beautiful thing to be resting with my newborn baby and my husband in our own bed, minutes after giving birth.
Addalyn Mae clocked in at 8 lbs 1 oz, and 21.5 inches long, at exactly 43 weeks gestation. Her Apgar scores were 10 and 10, and she was absolutely perfect in every way.
In those moments after birth, I felt so much gratitude. I was so grateful to the Lord for a beautiful, unassisted birth. Grateful that He created my body to carry a child and give birth as naturally as breathing, and that He had given me the strength to birth without medications. Grateful that He led Chris & I to the research, people, and decisions that allowed me to experience the beauty of birth in my own environment. Grateful that my dad and Grandma were in town and able to be at the house within an hour of Addy's birth. Grateful for the friendships that developed with my birth team during my pregnancy, and for the fact that they were both there to love me through my labor and celebrate my daughter’s birth with me. And most of all, grateful for my healthy, perfect baby girl trying to nurse and looking at me through great big, trusting blue eyes.
