The Birth Story

My last prenatal appointment was August 16. Prior to that, I had gone in to see my doctor on August 12 and she decided to strip my membranes to see if that would put me into labor. I texted my husband to let him know that I could be going into labor if this worked, and despite telling him not to, he was so excited he came home from work. Unfortunately stripping my membranes had no effect. None. We started reading diligently about what natural things we could do to induce labor, and while I absolutely refused to try the herbs or castor oil avenues, we took lots of walks, I spent some time on a swing set at the park, took a hot bath, and spent what feels like endless hours bouncing around the house on my pilates ball all to no avail. On Monday the 16th I made Matt go into work - sitting around the house waiting for labor to happen had taken a stressful toll on both of us, and listening to him joke that we'd be celebrating our son's first birthday with him "in there" was not helping. Instead my mom came out to "babysit" me incase I went into labor. I also had a prenatal appointment that Monday - the one that turned out to be my last.

My doctor's first comment on entering the exam room that Monday afternoon was that she couldn't believe stripping my membranes hadn't worked. "Nope, still pregnant," I replied forlornly with a shrug. She was guessing the baby to be right around 8 and a half pounds and all that weight on my pelvis was making me miserably uncomfortable (I think all that time on my pilates ball trying to "open" my pelvis only made the pain worse). "Well," my doctor started, "how do you feel about inducing? Tomorrow?" Needless to say, I was totally on board. I was already just over 3 cm dilated and 50% effaced, so I'd basically bypassed "early labor." My doctor called up the hospital and sent me home with my induction paperwork; I was to check in to the hospital at 5:30 the next morning - August 17 - and I called Matt as I left the doctor's office asking him if he was finally ready to become a daddy.

Matt and I spent the night in a weird state of anxiety. I can't describe the feeling of knowing it will be your last night without a child, but it was exciting and it was impossible to concentrate on anything else. My sister-in-law had had both of her children induced and it had been a very long process, so I was expecting nothing short of 12 hours in the delivery room. We called Matt's family and tried to dissuade his parents from coming too early (because this could be such a long ordeal), but they were still planning on arriving at the hospital around 7:30 a.m.

Somehow we managed to get some sleep and bright and early the next morning (okay, not so bright... it was still dark out when we left at 4:50), we loaded up our bag, my extra pillows, and the infant seat into the car and headed off to have our son. I had always imagined rushing to the hospital in the midst of painful contractions, so this trip was quite the opposite; I still had yet to even know what a contraction felt like as all the ones I'd had thusfar had gone completely unnoticed. We checked in at exactly 5:30, and after shedding my comfy yoga pants and maternity tank for a not-so-flattering hospital gown, I chattered nervously with the RN as she hooked me up to an IV, adjusted two belts around my belly - one to measure the baby's heart beat and the other to measure my contractions - and checked my cervix (I was 4 cm dilated and 70% effaced). At about 6:15 a.m. the nurse added the pitocin drip to my IV and the waiting officially began. And... it was boring. Matt read the newspaper, I broke out my book of Sudoku puzzles. Every now and then we'd turn the monitor up so we could listen to Roger's heart beat, and sometimes Matt would ask if I "felt that contraction?" I couldn't see the monitor, but apparently it looked like my contractions were off the chart. Matt's parents showed up at about 7:45 and stayed in the room with us until 8:30 when my doctor showed up to break my water.

It was a weird sensation, having my water broken. I was worried it would hurt and asked as much, but was assured it wouldn't. And it didn't. It was just a gush of a tremendous amount of fluid. A really, really tremendous amount. I probably lost 5 pounds just from having my water broken... One of the nurses inserted a catheter into my uterus, explaining that the monitor around my belly wasn't measuring my contractions very accurately (apparently those "off-the-chart" contractions weren't really off the chart) and this catheter would do a much better job of giving them an idea of the size of my contractions. My doctor left saying she'd be back on her lunch break to check on me, and it couldn't have been more than a few minutes later that I finally discovered what exactly a contraction feels like. Once my water was broken it was game on. I curled up into the fetal position on my right side and clung to railing on the bed. I did not want to be touched - I told my husband so on numerous occasions and my mom got to hear it as well when she showed up and rubbed my leg. All I wanted was someone to fan me (I was unbelievably hot) and keep replacing the cold wet washcloth on my head. Thus I labored for a good long while until the nurse came in at some point and described my contractions as "moderate." Moderate! I started questioning my decision to try and forego the epidural. If these were merely moderate, what would the strong ones feel like? I concentrated on breathing. My husband joked to "stay out of my uterus's way" (something the birth class instructor had told us) and I could've killed him because laughing brought on hard and strong another contraction (though I have to give him credit for successfully making me laugh in the middle of labor). I listened intently to Roger's heart beat - rapid and rhythmic, I used it as my "focal point" to pull me through the contractions.

At about 10:45 or so, after 2 hours of laboring through contractions, my focal point stopped. I wasn't totally aware of it until my mom and Matt's mom were rapidly ushered out of the delivery room, three more nurses suddenly appeared, and one of them was urgently saying that they'd lost the heart beat. Lost the heart beat? The nurse was calmly but urgently telling me I needed to move. She was explaining to Matt why it can sometimes be bad to labor in one position for too long, but I wasn't fully cognizant of what was being said. Lost the heart beat? Was my baby okay? I rolled over onto my left side, all the tubes that were attached to me being adjusted by the nurses as I turned, and my belly monitor being moved around as they continued their search for the heart beat. After a few minutes on my left side, the nurse told me to get up on all fours. I obliged and an oxygen mask was thrown over my mouth and nose as the search for my son's heart beat continued. It seemed like an eternity before Roger's heart beat started up its rhythmic thump-thump on the monitor again.

My natural endorphins had started to kick in causing the contractions to have less of an effect than the moderate ones had earlier... the human - nay, the woman's - body is truly an amazing thing. I tried to shift to laboring on my left side for a while but found that surprisingly the most comfortable position was up on all fours (which admittedly is an awkward position to be in in a hospital gown with no back, but that wasn't a concern at that point). Shortly after they finally removed the oxygen mask from my face, I was overwhelmed with the urge to push. We had learned in the child birth class that one of the benefits of bypassing the epidural is that you wouldn't need to be coached when to push; now I know why. I told the nurse who, upon checking my cervix, found me to already be at 8 cm after just 3 hours of laboring (I say "just" 3 hours because I really had it in my mind that this would be a much longer process than it was turning out to be). They paged my doctor (who would be coming back earlier than her planned check up on her lunch break) and I started the somewhat arduous process of breathing ("breathe like you're blowing out a candle") through the urge to push. The nurse kept telling me that breathing would prevent me from pushing which may very well have been the case, but I have to say that fighting the urge to push was probably the most difficult part of labor (though definitely not the most physically draining - that was yet to come).

I was stuck at 9 cm for a while after my doctor arrived, still actively squelching the urge to push so much so that when I finally reached 10 and was able to start pushing, I was extremely relieved and ready to do so. While he had significantly lowered when my water was broken, Roger never really dropped so he was still relatively high in my pelvis when I was finally able to start pushing. The positive of pushing was that I was able to use my contractions rendering them pretty much unnoticeable; the negative was the general physical exertion of it. Because he was stationed so high in my pelvis before I started pushing, I had a lot of pushing to do to get him to crowning: over an hour and a half worth, to be exact. Matt kept reassuring me that "you're almost there, Roger's almost here," but it felt like I was hearing the same reassurance from him for many, many pushes. I was spent. I didn't think I could manage pushing even one more time. Then: "Erika, he's crowning. Reach down and feel his head." I did. I felt his soft little head and a little tuft of hair. HAIR! That was all the motivation I needed to get my second wind - with a brief pause to cut the umbilical cord which had wrapped around his neck - it took only a couple more pushes till he was officially born. I glanced over at the table where they were checking my son and after a brief moment of shock over the idea that I had just delivered that big baby, I was instantly in love.


Roger was born at 1:45 p.m. on August 17, 2010. He weight 9 lbs 3 ozs and measured 21 1/2 inches in length (which explains why I was so huge when I was pregnant!). His arrival has added so much to our lives; it's already difficult to remember what life was like before him.

Taken August 18 before we left the hospital: