It is 6:02 AM, and by a cruel trick of the universe I cannot
get back to sleep. Sometimes, in those times when I should be sleeping but my
brain can’t turn off, I think of all the things I don’t want to forget.
I don’t want to forget web team meeting at 12:00 today.
I don’t want to forget to buy better picture-hanging nails.
But most pressing this morning was this: I don’t want to
forget the details of Felix’s birth. And so here’s the story that I wasn’t
wrong in thinking it would take me four months to write. Here’s Felix’s birth
story.
As I wrote in my last post, this pregnancy was hard for me.
Physically, it was so challenging, but towards the end it was really mentally
tough. Because I was due at the end of December, I wasn’t even sure what year
this baby would be born, and for some reason that was really hard. I didn’t
know what to plan for. Some time in November, our families kept asking us when
we thought would be a good time for family Christmas parties would be; in my
better moments, I said things like, “Well, it’s highly unlikely that I’ll have
the baby in early December, so if you really want us there, do it earlier in
the month.” In my worse moments, I wanted to say, “I HAVE NO IDEA WHEN WILL
THIS BABY WILL BE BORN!! STOP ASKING ABOUT PARTIES!!”
I tried not to think about things that shouldn’t matter but
do; what if he was born on Christmas or Christmas Eve? Would he hate his
birthday forever? Did I want his birthday to be farther away from Christmas for
his own sake, or did I want him to come earlier? Would I get the child credit
on our taxes? Would he be born in 2017 so we could finish out our deductible
and not have to pay so much?
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| This is me at 38 weeks, right before a work Christmas party. Did I mention that I was huge? |
Parties came and went; we went to some, but not all of them,
because I was also just so tired and still working 40 hours a week. Christmas
came and went with no baby, which I was thankful for. And then not, because
whenever you go to that “due date” appointment and the midwife tells you that
you’re really not dilated at all, it’s just a little depressing.
That week after Christmas, I started timing contractions. I
would have something like 4 in a 1-hour period, and I would start to get
excited. And then they would stop, and I would be sad. At the time, I kept
wishing I had written down how I felt for the last week of my last pregnancy,
thinking that maybe that information would magically give me patience. So, for
the benefit of my future pregnant self (if there is such a being), here is how
I felt that last week:
I felt awful. Everything hurt. Mentally, I wasn’t handling
the not-knowing-when-the-baby-will-be-born-ness well. I second-guessed every
twinge, every cramp, and constantly wondered, “Is this it?” I frantically
Googled things at 3:30 AM:
“How long after you lose your mucus plug do you go into
labor?”
“Natural ways to induce labor”
“Natural ways to induce labor other than sex”
(side note: I read a hilarious article about foods to induce
labor. The author ate through a series of suggestions, but the only thing that
her midwife said was a tried-and-true thing that will induce labor was castor
oil, but that she didn’t really recommend that because it’s a crazy amount of
digestive distress. Deciding that if all she needed was digestive distress to induce labor, the
author picked up a box of TGI Friday’s frozen jalapeño poppers, and ate the entire
box. That evening she had explosive diarrhea, and then a baby. So if you’re
looking for a food to induce labor: jalapeño poppers.)
So yes, future self, I really felt as bad as you do in your
last week of being pregnant, especially because any time family, friends, or
random strangers find out you are past your “due date” they always ask if you’re
going to be induced. Because I was due around Christmas, I was asked the
induction question SO. MANY. TIMES.
“Oh, a Christmas baby? Are you going to be induced so his
birthday isn’t on Christmas?”
“Tax credit baby! Are you going to be induced to make sure
he’s born in 2017?”
“2 days overdue?!? Are you thinking about induction?”
I never know quite how to react to these questions; I
usually just politely say, “No, I don’t do that.” And then they ask why, and I
say because I don’t think it’s good for the baby and the mom unless things are
really medically necessary, and just “being uncomfortable” or “wanting a tax
break” doesn’t seem like a medical emergency to me, and then things get awkward
because inevitably we all know someone who was induced for some reason and now
it seems like I’ve passed judgment and declared them an unfit mother, and now
everyone feels sad.
So, yeah. That last week was tough. Going in to work every
day felt like torture, because every day my coworkers were surprised to see me,
and though they didn’t always voice the question, I saw it in their eyes: “When
is she going to have that baby?!?”
But, like all hard things, this one passed. I took Friday
off because I was just so tired, and I rested and did some getting ready for
the baby things. We had a quiet New Year’s celebration, and had a question
answered: this baby would not come in 2017. We would not get that tax credit.
We would start over on our deductible. And it was okay. But I couldn’t fathom
going back to work the next day.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to.
One of the aggravating things about researching the question
“how do I know when I’m in labor?” is that the answer is often, “You will know.
Trust me, you will know. If you don’t know, you’re probably not in labor.” I
know that’s probably not true for every woman, but it turns out it’s true for
me. After a week of second-guessing every feeling in my body, I woke up to a
contraction that Tuesday morning and thought, “Oh. Yeah. This is what it feels
like to be in labor.” Sure enough, I had another contraction about 10 minutes
later.
And then another one about 10 minutes later.
And then another one about 10 minutes later.
At about 6:00 AM, I showered. I woke Brent up and told him
that I was pretty sure we would be having a baby today, so now would probably
be a good time to shower. So, we were both showered, we packed bags, and then
we waited.
And waited.
The thing you look for in labor is that contractions are
longer, stronger, and closer together. Longer, stronger, closer together. As
the day progressed, they were getting longer. They were getting stronger. But
they were not getting closer together. They were stubbornly stuck at the
9-minute mark from about 8:00 AM until 2:00 PM. Finally, at about 2:00 PM we
decided to call Brent’s mom and see if she could come and take Calvin and the
dogs away. She got there at about 3:30; we packed everyone up and said goodbye
for now, and tried to explain to Calvin that the next time he saw us I would
have a baby.
And just like most mammal mamas go and find a place that is
quiet and dark to have their babies, as soon as the noise and commotion of a
three year old and two dogs left our house, things kicked up a notch. Suddenly
my contractions were seven minutes apart. Now six. Now five. Now four. Oh! I
told my mom, and she said, “I have a feeling you should go to the hospital
right now.” Our plan had been to wait until they were three minutes apart, but
about ten minutes after she said that I had that same feeling.
Here’s a thing you have to remember: when I was in labor
with Calvin, I was 10 days overdue, I’d been having regular contractions for 12
hours, and by the time I got to the hospital I was dilated to a 1. Calvin was
born 12 hours after that. With Calvin, I pushed for an hour. That’s the kind of
long-game I tried to be prepared for, and why I wasn’t in a super rush to get
to the hospital.
So we got to the hospital, and my contractions were strong
but manageable. I maybe had to stop in the middle of the check-in process and
just lean on the transaction desk, and at that point the triage nurse said,
“Just make her a hospital band; she’s not leaving.”
We were given one of the last big birthing suites (Yay!),
and when they checked me I was dilated to a five! A five! I couldn’t believe
it. I told the nurse that in my family, once we get to that point things happen
pretty fast. And I was right.
They called my midwife; she was sick, and called another
doctor to come and deliver for her. They asked if that was okay, and it was.
Because I do unmedicated deliveries, I just need someone there to catch the
baby; I’m not overly attached to who it is. All along I just kept closing my
eyes and breathing through contractions. Just like when I went through it with
Calvin, I was mostly quiet. A nurse showed Brent how to put counter pressure on
my knees, and that felt amazing, so that’s pretty much what he did for the next
hour.
At one point, the nurse said she’d never seen someone so
calm in labor, even after they had the epidural. Sometimes she’d try to ask me
a question, and I’d just put up my finger, and then she’d look at the monitor
and realize I was having a contraction. I sort of wondered if nurses tell
everyone these kinds of things to make us all feel amazing. But I didn’t care,
because I liked it when other nurses came in and my nurse bragged about how
well I was doing.
After about an hour, I really felt like I needed to push.
The doctor wasn’t there yet; a nurse checked me and said I had a “bulgy bag”,
and at that point I realized that I’d been in strong labor for this long and my
water still hadn’t broken, which was kind of amazing.
So up until this point, I’ve told you my story. I haven’t
told you Felix’s. Though I’m not privy to all the details, I think his story
went something like this:
“Something is squeezing me. Something is squeezing me. Oh
boy! Oh boy! What’s this my foot has found? A rib? Hmm…seems like a launch pad
to me. I jump now, right? Like this? Like this? Like this? Get. Me. Out. Of.
Here!”
Felix was going bonkers inside of me. He’d been a crazy
kicker all throughout the pregnancy, but this was insane. The heart rate
monitor actually couldn’t recognize him half of the time because he kept
kicking it so hard. The nurses said they’d rarely seen such an active baby in
labor; in fact, for me, that was the most uncomfortable part. It felt like
Felix was a swimmer using my ribs like a wall to push himself off of. I kept
wanting to say, “Hey, baby! I’m the one that does the pushing!”
The doctor was on her way. I had stayed pretty calm until
this point, but I was starting to lose it just a bit. The contractions were so
strong, and so close together, and the baby wouldn’t stop moving so it never
felt like I got a break. I needed a break. At one point I said to Felix, “I
just need five minutes, baby. Please give me five minutes.”
And he did. Things were calm and quiet for almost exactly five minutes. And then they weren't.
The doctor arrived, checked me, and told everyone to get
ready because she felt like as soon as she broke my water the baby would be
out. She wasn’t wrong. She broke my water, turned around to put a gown on, and
had to say, “Wait! Stop pushing! Just give me 30 seconds!”
With Calvin, I pushed for an hour with constant coaching,
admonitions to count to 10, reminders to breathe, and oxygen. Between Felix’s
leaping and my pushing, we had it done in two colossal pushes. The doctor
walked into our room, and about three minutes later I had a baby in my arms.
He was huge. He was slippery. And on January 2, he was mine.
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| 8lbs, 7 oz. Born at 7:32 PM. |
It’s now 7:00 AM, and I need to get ready for work for the
day. I don’t have time to talk about how different it felt to be a mom of two;
how it felt natural and wrong all at once. How amazing that turkey sandwich
tasted after 12 hours of labor. How Calvin freaked out when he met Felix for
the first time. How Brent went home with Calvin and I stayed alone in the
hospital with Felix and he cluster-fed all night. How we got through that by
listening to my Pandora lullaby station. How he smiled at me during that crazy night of
15-minute naps and feeding, feeding, feeding. How afterbirth contractions after
your second baby feel like being in labor again. How hard it was to recover the
second time around. How hard it was to adjust to having two children.
Now, Felix is three and a half months old. He is a joy. He
is a delightfully happy baby. He smiles, and giggles, and rolls over but then
gets a look on his face like, “WHAT HAVE I DONE?” because he hates being on his
tummy. He is incredibly impatient when he’s hungry; he starts crying when I
place him down momentarily to give him (ahem) access to what he needs.
At first, he felt like a little stranger; now he feels like
family. Welcome to the world, Felix George.
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