My/Her Birth Story

Happy Due Date to my little hapa dumpling. Here is Mumma’s perspective.

TL;DR

Baby Dumpling arrived four weeks early, on the day of her baby shower during Labor Day weekend. I did not poop on the delivery bed.

August 29, 2017

Tuesday Morning

At this point in my pregnancy – one month away from our due date, three months in at the first home we own – I was loving my new domestic rhythm. It took time and adjustment, but I was finding happiness and fulfillment in full-time running the house, thinking positively for Baby, eating with a mind toward peak nutrition, and not overdoing it at work for the first time in my life.

I had just gotten back to the house after my morning routine: walk the dog wearing the sensible slip-on shoes that had become my footwear uniform since the baby bump began. After tossing his poop bag in the trash, I did the rounds watering our roses, my single tomato plant, the hibiscus we had just recently bought to pretty up the yard before our upcoming baby shower…I was really looking forward to Sunday, when we’d get the happy baby vibes going with our friends – Baby’s First Village – in person. We’d limited our pregnancy announcements to primarily in-person reveals for so long that this baby shower took on extra significance. The week before I had finally made a social media post about being pregnant, so I was still riding the high of our virtual community’s ongoing congratulations. Friends were making long-distance trips to spend their Sunday with us. We’d finally reveal the sex, there’d be a bunch of kids breaking in our backyard, and my only concern was how we’d all fare in the heat.

Anyway, I went to the bathroom, and – wouldn’t you know it, like the set-up for a comedienne’s monologue on mortification – found blood on my shorts. My white shorts. It seems obvious as I write it, but lemme just say: After eight months of being pregnant, it is really disorienting to see blood in your panties. I actually had a fleeting thought that I had somehow forgotten I was due for my period, and then realized I hadn’t even had a need for pads or tampons since before moving into our new house. Because I was pregnant. This was not my period.

Women know the difference between “spotting” and “bleeding.” Spotting is a typical thing that can happen closer to a woman’s due date. Bleeding through to your outer layers of clothing, though, is something they tell you to call your OB about. So I did.

By mid-morning, I was sitting at my OB’s window looking at the eclipse through one of the medical assistant’s glasses. In my impromptu check-in with the doctor, everything checked out fine (minus the active vaginal bleeding, which had slowed). She sent me to get an ultrasound to verify that my placenta was intact. If it wasn’t, that would be grounds for hospitalization.

The ultrasound technician was baffled, too. Every number was correct. The placenta looked fine. Blood flow was good. Measurements on my thirty-five week-old baby in utero were right on target, just as they had been for the entirety of my pregnancy.

With nothing conclusive, they sent me home on “pelvic rest” – a term I’d never even heard before! “Bed rest” is part of the greater public’s general understanding of Pregnancy, but pelvic rest is not as extreme as bed rest. Pelvic rest meant that though I wasn’t confined to a bed, I was to strike out all exercise from my daily diet of motion. Everything from walking the dog to ballet.

This bummed me out. Even though I knew pelvic rest was simply a precautionary prescription to stave off bigger unknowns, this was a huge blow to my confidence and attitude.  Up until now I had been enjoying what I came to believe was one of the best pregnancies ever. I threw up once. I had virtually no morning sickness. The week before, my ballet teacher had me demonstrate turning leaps to the class, and even asked to film me doing fouettes. I was impressed and empowered by what I could do. It helped me fight off the “Pregnancy as Disease” mentality of the American hospital system. “Women’s bodies are amazing” became a guiding mantra every morning.

Respecting the prescription for pelvic rest daunted me. I recognized it to be sage advice for the good of my future delivery, but it felt like a foolish sacrifice that could have easily all been for naught. It was giving up all the physical ability that had defined my pregnancy before. I had become so proud of and attached to what my body was capable of doing while pregnant, that I felt robbed with just four weeks to go. I made it this far, why can’t I just continue to listen to my body?

And of course, while these bitter feelings toward being told what I couldn’t do stood well enough on their own, but they also masked an overall sense of fear for Something/Anything that could go “wrong” with my delivery.

September 1, 2017

“Thirty-Five and Five”

Friday Morning

So for a couple of days, I did the bare minimum. It pained me to not even be able to walk my dog in the mornings. You should have seen his puppy dog eyes when our routine was upended! I was bitter, but I did it all for Baby.

That Friday morning, the most I did was water the plants. When I came back inside to go to the bathroom, I found blood in my underwear again. I texted Bill. I messaged our doula Nancy. I was putting off the inevitable until I called my OB again.

My doctor was out on surgery, her medical assistant told me. “Go to the hospital,” she said. I didn’t want to jump immediately to going to the hospital. It seemed rash. I asked if I could see my backup OB. She was out on surgery, too, the assistant said. “You’re not going to want to go into the weekend not knowing what’s happening.” She told me to go the hospital.

Friday Afternoon

I waited for Bill to come home mid-day and we headed to Huntington Memorial Hospital together. I didn’t know what was happening with my body. I was scared on the inside. I went from being ashamed that maybe pelvic rest wasn’t extreme enough after all and I let my ego get ahead of the baby, and I grew worried about whatever we’d find out in the hospital. But attitude is a decision, and I resolved as we walked into the entry to stay as focused and ready as possible for whatever my body – and my baby’s body – might need. It really felt like whatever part of the brain that processes worry and worst case scenarios just muted itself for the rest of the weekend.

With both my OB and backup OB out on surgery, we went into Labor & Delivery’s Triage unit where I was visited by the hospital’s on-call laborist. He was already running on empty, having been on the floor for twenty-four hours straight. Apparently Labor Day Weekend really is a hot time for women to give labor, and the ward was slammed. Still, I was grateful to finally be seen by a medical professional. I explained the signs of blood that were not actual telltale “bloody show” that are expected in pregnancy and labor. The nurse checked my vitals, the doctor checked my cervix, and voila: I was one centimeter dilated and contracting every five minutes. What the what now?

We’re in labor! We’re in labor?…

…after all I had learned about Hollywood’s myths of how labor starts, I had no idea an expecting mother could have contractions so frequently without even realizing it. (Easiest pregnancy ever or easiest pregnancy ever?)

The laborist was concerned about delivering a baby at my gestation, thirty-five weeks and five days. He warned that the baby’s lungs would be underdeveloped. She’d need steroids at birth, and would likely have to stay in NICU (one of the last things a pregnant woman wants to hear). He described two drugs for me that would stop the labor, and mentioned that my third option would be to go home. He strongly advised Drug No. 1, Terbutaline.

Bill and I were trying to sort all of this in our heads. I had never heard of these drugs and kept mispronouncing them so I didn’t even know what to Google. Though she was, of course, accessible, our doula was expecting our delivery in early October. I had Bill reach out to our childbirth educator for advice. All of this was happening while the laborist awaited our answer. Add to that being in a hospital room the size of a broom closet, and the pressure was on.

And then, suddenly, our OB showed up! Her surgery round had ended, and she just dropped by having heard we were in triage. Her response was not as pill-happy as the laborist’s. Women walk around for weeks dilated 2-3 centimeters, she said. We could just go home to labor and stay tuned for when the show was really about to start. Having heard so many stories about women whose bodies had plans that deviated from whatever “average” timeline exists, we opted to go home. I wanted to labor surrounded by all my creature comforts.

Midway through the ride home, I read our discharge papers more closely. “Preterm Labor Discharge Instructions,” it said at the top. “Are we in labor??” I asked Bill. He shrugged. We both figuratively threw our hands up in the air at that point. This baby wasn’t even born yet, and she was already calling her own shots!

Friday Night

Back at home, we crafted an update to all our baby shower attendees. “Baby is showing signs of trying to make it out to meet all of you!,” we wrote. Party’s still on. I’d just be camped out in the living room off of my feet. But be forewarned that things are subject to change.

I made myself some guacamole and put my feet up for a mini-Arrested Development marathon. My mother, twin brother, and his girlfriend had just arrived in town, so I announced “So I’m in preterm labor!” After a low-key family dinner on the couch, they went to their hotel and Bill and I went to bed.

And then, at around 10:30, I turned to him.

Friday Evening

“I AM HAVING CONTRACTIONS.” I said. This time, I knew it. This time, I felt them. Every single one.

Just the week before, Bill asked “What do contractions feel like?” in our childbirth education class. The teacher responded that they feel like menstrual cramps, which left me just as stumped as some of the guys. My periods have never been particularly noteworthy. I got menstrual cramps so infrequently before that I couldn’t translate how labor contractions would feel.

Having experienced labor contractions now, though, I wouldn’t say that contractions are explicitly painful. They feel like muscles activating and squeezing on their own – which is more or less what’s happening. Hollywood makes them sound like the most painful thing in the world, but they aren’t necessarily. They are for sure distracting and all-encompassing. You can’t focus on anything else. Being so out of control is completely disorienting and alarming. They’re more intense than twitches and last longer than spasms. They can be painful, but after the week of ambiguity I’d had, the contractions I was feeling for the first time affected me mentally more than they did to register on my pain radar: Is this it? Is this abnormal? Is the baby okay? Why is this happening so off-schedule?

Our Preterm Labor Discharge Instructions specified that if contractions reached a frequency of more than four per hour, go back to the hospital. By 11:52 p.m., I was having contractions three minutes apart. We texted Nancy. She knew we’d rather not spend extra time at the hospital when things were so unclear, so she advised we try to relax as much as possible. Bill drew me a bath. We went back to bed.

The contractions slowed but didn’t stop. Past midnight, I was doing less sleeping and more managing a growing wave of them. At around 2:30 in the morning, I turned to Bill.

“Is it time to go in?” he groggily asked.

“I think so,” I said.

Back to the hospital we went.

September 2, 2017

Saturday Early Early Morning

Labor & Delivery Triage is an awful place. I already mentioned that the triage rooms at Huntington are minuscule. At 3:00 in the morning, Labor & Delivery Triage is minuscule and overcrowded and understaffed and not where you want to begin your Saturday.

The L&D Triage rooms are so small that laboring women are only allowed one guest each. At any given moment, I’d have to choose between either the father of my child or our doula with seventeen years of birth experience. I couldn’t have both around me at the same time. Bill and Nancy tag teamed texting each other updates and rotating between the chair next to me or the waiting room. At least Nancy was even available – we weren’t planning on diving into this phase with her for another four weeks!

We overheard that five women came in at once, all in labor (later stages than me). Our nurse was tired, going on her third shift. The laborist we had seen earlier was still working. He was not pleased to see us again. At one point, he said to Bill, “There was an opportunity to stop this labor this morning, but that choice was not made.”

The Preemie Difference

At 3:55 a.m., I’d dilated further to 3 centimeters, my cervix was 90% effaced, and the contractions were still going. It was made official: They’d admit me.

Since, to the deign of the laborist, Bill and I had opted not to stop the labor, we were basically choosing the path of delivering a preterm, “preemie” baby. The laborist eventually finished his shift at 8:00 a.m., and we were now in the hands of an on-call OB who worked in the same medical group as my personal and backup OBs. What a relief! But even with a newly assigned (hopefully less alarmist) OB, the medical team stayed on alert. When I had envisioned my birth plan and preferences weeks before, one of my top priorities was to not be tethered to fetal monitors. I wanted to be able to move and stretch and go to the restroom at will. But with the baby’s gestational age, basically no doctor was willing to let me off the monitor’s hooks. This became a reality we just had to accept for the rest of the labor: This baby was coming on her own terms, and I’d have to throw my entire birth plan out of the window.

Though I’d signed all the paperwork to be admitted, there was no delivery room available for me to be transferred to. For the next five hours it was a dance of me breathing through contractions and asking my nurse if I could go pee (which involved unhooking from the monitors and wheeling an IV across the hall and hopefully locating my slippers before my bladder couldn’t take it anymore), Bill and Nancy switching rooms based on energy and needs, and overhearing the harried state of the ward through the open door of my triage room.

At 9:15, a delivery room opened up! Oh, sweet, sweet Delivery Room with your trompe l’oeil birds and ivy. What a complete 180 from the tight quarters in Triage. The delivery rooms at Huntington also come with birthing balls, a recliner, a rocking chair, and a window! Considering the amount of continuous hours I was about to spend indoors, the window was a big deal. Finally getting Bill and Nancy in the room with me at the same time was a gamechanger, too. As my contractions activated, Nancy did bodywork to help me power through them, and also enlisted and taught Bill the pressure points she was focusing on. This was a hands-on crash course for everyone!

Oh, also, right around this time Bill emailed our baby shower attendees to let them know we’d have to reschedule.

Saturday Afternoon

Having graduated from Triage to Delivery Room felt like such an accomplishment – except my numbers hadn’t changed. Still dilated 3 cm, 90% effaced, actively contracting.

…and the numbers remained into the afternoon. They remained while Bill and Nancy took breaks for lunch. They remained while I tried to glean as much energy as possible from paper cups of chicken bouillon and apple juice. From the 9:15 start in our dedicated delivery room until 3:30 in the afternoon, my labor ebbed and flowed, plateauing twice. For those familiar with the phases of labor, I made signs of approaching active labor twice, only to have my progress back off again. I even took two naps when I was able to breathe through contractions on my own. That didn’t make the rest of the labor phases any easier. I had put in more than a work day’s worth of navigating contractions.

At various times I needed the assistance of Nancy, of Bill, or of both Nancy and Bill together. I’d apply pressure to my own joints to give myself added relief when their two sets of hands weren’t enough. In all this time, I had taken no pain meds and just kept putting my vague understanding of yoga breath to use.

The second time I laid down to sleep through a less intense stage of contractions, I turned to Nancy and asked, “Is this progressing backwards?” The ebbs of my laboring were discouraging. How many more false alarms would there be? Because these false alarms were long and intense, and didn’t know what else I could do to prepare. I was worried that my body being tired and compelling me to sleep was the impetus for my regressions in labor. As if my own lack of endurance was slowing the labor.

Nancy, with the wisdom of over 450 births, simply replied, “This is just how your labor goes.”

At 3:30 in the afternoon, a full twelve hours since she’d arrived on the scene, we sent Nancy home. I had fallen into another manageable valley of labor, so we strategized to have Nancy return when we finally reached active labor (hopefully). At this point, counting back to first feeling contractions at home the night before, I had gone seventeen hours without painkillers, and the “end” was very unclear.

Just the Parents

So with Nancy resting and on-call, Bill and I labored through the next four hours by ourselves. It’s time I really treasure now. I always knew Bill would be a great partner, but having a doula at our side to teach both of us ways to manage pain, milestones to look for, and help us sort our thoughts was absolutely invaluable. By the time she left, Bill had absorbed the basics of her techniques, and I surrendered to the added comfort that it was just me and my husband (and the occasional nurse visit) for now.

In that late afternoon alone with Bill I was at my lowest. I was running on empty in terms of rest and in terms of food. I ran through the emotion and energy equations of laboring on poor sleep while having only eaten some broth, juice, yogurt, and banana chips since entering the hospital. Would I even have the energy to deliver a baby when the time came? What if the time didn’t come for another twenty-four hours?

At one point I leaned on his shoulders while we stood face-to-face. I was fighting back moaning how I couldn’t do it. This is actually a recognized stage of labor, where the mother actively expresses feeling defeated. I picture it now, and after some distance and the romantic lens of hindsight, it feels less like I collapsed against him and more like we did a slow dance. I was surrendering, and low. But he had been at my side the entire time to get me through this intense process. He was dedicated to hydrating me between contractions. After I made the request a few times, he started to anticipate when I’d need another swipe of lip balm. He brought me a neck pillow filled with lavender sachets and heated it up to relieve my shoulders. That four-hour period where I had a hard time asking for help and he employed every trick he’d learned to take care of me is the manifestation of true love. I will never forget how “there” he was for me. It was necessary for us to labor this period of time on our own. I needed it.

“I’m so tired,” I kept telling him. I sounded super negative, even to myself. I could not envision doing this baby justice and delivering with strength based on the state of my body and spirit.

Plans change.

And then, seemingly out of nowhere, I finally felt pain. I’ve had back issues before, including one random kink during my third trimester. It happened just that once, but now in the delivery room, that same zone was spasming and spidering across the hemisphere of my back. It was a sharp, shooting, blinding pain. Unlike my contractions, this spasm never let up. I was already worn out, and I couldn’t focus on anything else other than this aching. Bill provided an extra two hands to suppress the sensation, but I also still needed additional counterpressure as my contractions continued. I asked for ice but between Bill and me we didn’t have enough hands to manage the contractions plus keep the ice targeted. In a fleeting moment of clarity, I finally turned to our nurse and said, “I would like to take you up on an epidural.”

Birth Team, reassemble!

As we awaited an epidural, my breath changed again. I can’t remember now if the spasm spurred my third round of seeming advancement toward active labor or vice versa, but at around 7:30 Bill held up the phone up to my breathing so Nancy could hear how legit this round might be.

I really hoped this was the real deal, and not a third detour teasing at active labor. The question of how much longer I could labor at the hospital became very real for the medical team, too. The nurses had been monitoring for more than half a day now. The ward was already overrun when we arrived, and here I had spent half a day in one of the coveted delivery rooms without any movement on my labor stats. Up until this point, with my numbers still at 3 cm/90% effaced, plus the added complication of our baby only being 35 weeks gestation, the on-call OB was very leery of introducing any drugs for induction.

I have always said, “I want to deliver as naturally as possible, knowing that plans change.” When you’ve labored for over fifteen hours without chemical assistance, you just wanna see your baby. No matter what it takes. So it was a long, slow, deliberate fifteen-hour decision when I started to entertain Pitocin. I just wanted my baby!

Just before Nancy got back to our room, my nurse finally measured me at 4-5 centimeters dilation. Progress! When she alerted the OB on call, it made all the difference. “I was about to send you home,” the OB said – which, knowing all the factors I mentioned before, Bill and I were completely prepared to hear. (But this time, I was terrified at the prospect of being one of those women who stay dilated at 2-3 centimeters for weeks. I could not imagine laboring at home with active contractions for another 24 hours.) Now that I had finally advanced, though, it was a safer period to introduce Pitocin and get the labor going. The OB prescribed “just a whiff” and we waited.

Shortly after Nancy returned, she and Bill got shooed out of the room as an anesthesiologist came in to give me an epidural. At 8:20 p.m., the anesthesiologist was prepping my back and coaching me into position. At least three times, he asked me to “straighten up.” My spasm was cramping so much that I was perpetually tilted to the side, and didn’t realize it. I thought I was hunched forward hugging a pillow, but in fact I was twisted to the left and definitely not in a safe position for a spinal injection. My nurse had to clamp me down with both arms to keep me aligned as finally the needle went in.

With the epidural and all related procedures complete, I lay back on the bed. The anesthesiologist and nurse checked on me – “How are you feeling?” I mentally scanned my body, and though my lower half was largely numb, I noticed a sensation in my leg. “It feels like there’s tension in my left hip, am I supposed to feel that?” I asked.

The anesthesiologist pursed his lips and checked my monitors. “Well, you’re going through a really big contraction right now,” he said.

Oh! My eyes lit up. So this is why women get epidurals! After twenty-two hours of breathing manually through every contraction, here I was feeling virtually nothing as my body just did the work. Bill insists I was like a whole new person.

– Well, yeah. Like the stuff of magic, suddenly I didn’t have to squeeze every last drop of my energy into running a marathon without a finish line. We even had my mom, brother, and brother’s girlfriend visit and I was back to my usual social self. I was prone laying on my right side with a peanut ball wedged between my legs, but I was otherwise up and at ’em! Wresting my energy and focus away from a long period of labor and persnickety back spasm was like uncovering the first layer of gift wrap on the rest of my labor. I had clearer vision again. I had hope. Thanks, Drugs!

Halfway There

At 10:30 p.m., a full twenty-four hours since telling Bill I finally knew what the singular womanly experience of a labor contraction felt like, my cervix reached 5 centimeters of dilation. And that’s what Pitocin does.

September 3, 2017

Sunday

…Pitocin’s effects aren’t as immediate as an epidural’s magic. It could take hours after it’s introduced for active labor to start, and I was still being monitored when the day shifted from Saturday to Sunday. At 12:05 Sunday morning, I measured 5-6 centimeters dilated – and, oh, did I mention? My water still hadn’t broken yet? Stupid, lying Hollywood. Sure, a pregnant woman’s water can break when she’s in line at Starbucks, or it can just stay intact for more than a day in the Labor & Delivery ward inhibiting medical professionals from getting a proper measure on a baby’s station.

With so much attention weighing on the measurement of my dilation, the status of my water bag was almost an afterthought. My aspirations for a natural birth had already been deviated from so much, and we were so close to finally meeting our firstborn child, that I gave the OB the OK to rupture the bag. The liquid came out perfectly clear and healthy, and we got our first measurement of the baby’s station: 0 to -1.

Come on, Baby!

At 3:00 a.m. Sunday morning, precisely twenty-four hours after having come into the hospital due to detectable contractions, my numbers peaked! Full dilation, full effacement, and Baby was at +1.

Nurse Mandy coached me on pushing, and at 3:18 I started the actual pushes. Twenty-seven minutes of pushing later (a complete twenty-four hours after being officially admitted) our baby was born at 3:45!

Epilogue to the Birth Story / Prologue to the Rest of Our Lives

The funny thing about coming in on Friday at 35/5 and birthing a child on Sunday is that the baby is then at 36 weeks gestation. Two days’ difference dispelled a whole class of preemie concerns. Our daughter never ended up needing the NICU, though their staff was on call and at the ready.

In her four weeks of life, our baby has met multiple medical professionals, and a number of them have posited that she’s more developed than a typical baby at 36 weeks of gestation. In the words of one lactation consultant, “She’s a fake preemie.” That LC was convinced that we were given the wrong due date.

I don’t know much about the biological nuances of developing babies, but I do know this one took eight months, one long weekend, and half an hour of pushing.

Future baby shower TBD.