Another Birth Story

(All photos from Auri's birth were taken by Sarah Carter Photography)

We talked about a homebirth with our first. But there were so many reasons it wouldn't work. 

So he was born in a hospital. It was grueling and claustrophobic and the staff neglected us and we survived without an unnecessary c-section only by the grace of God and a nursing staff shift change. But he was born healthy. I tore horribly and was beyond exhausted and took a couple of weeks of drugs to get back to feeling good. 

We talked about a homebirth with our second. In fact, we hired a homebirth team and started care with them. But then we found out that our second was also our third. Twins and homebirth aren't ideal companions.

So they were induced and then birthed on an operating table with a surgical team standing by with two NICU teams and my doula and my photographer and  all crammed into the room with us. It was cold and bright and I had just enough drugs in me to let the OB do what she needed to to keep them from flipping breech and causing a section, so I was shaking and nauseated and had an awful headache for several days and had to spend 48 hours walking back and forth the length of the hospital to nurse one twin in NICU and one in my recovery room while my legs were bruising from being so swollen and my system was still trying to get the drugs out. 

We talked about a homebirth for our 4th. I begged God to pleeeease let me birth this baby without IVs and monitors and stirrups and a nasty, hard bed with scratchy sheets and bossy nurses and a scalpel-happy OB putting me on a gazillion clocks to countdown when she could cut me open. 

And He let me. 

It wasn't as planned -- our team was supposed to be a 3 person team and my photographer from the twins, but another labor with a tragic, unforeseeable outcome kept one of our team from being able to come at all, and another member from showing up until minutes after she was born.

Also, she was 11 days post due. Talk about screwing with my head. When you are due the first week of August and baby refuses to make an appearance until the third week of the month, plans start getting frustrating. I had started writing the date on her chalk board every morning and then rubbing it out the next day -- I gave up around the 14th.

So at 41 weeks we started doing some induction things. I was still only partially effaced and had a hard neck to my cervix that wasn't wanting to go away, but I had been having 6-8 hours a day of 4-5 minute contraction patterns for 2 weeks. So we did membrane sweeping and intense walking and eating spicy foods and etc. That night I had an hour of intense, active labor pattern, then it stopped. Completely. Gone. My midwives had asked us to try all of that in a day, and then take a day off to rest.  So Monday rolled around and we dropped the kids off with my Mom so we could get real serious.

 Monday morning we did another sweep... I had progressed from a tight 2 to a tight 3, but still had that pesky neck. Since we didn't have the kids we were able to take two hours to hike around the Nature Center with all its steep hills. Then we went out for dinner and during dinner the ctx picked up to a 3 minute pattern that was notably stronger, though only every 2nd or 3rd ctx was strong enough to be truly bothersome. 

So we went home. The kids were still at mom's and we were gonna choose at bedtime whether or not to bring them home. Contractions stayed consistent, so we left them. And went to bed. They didn't wake me up. 

The next morning I started using my pump on a regimented schedule. We went for a walk on some hills in our neighborhood in between pumping. We went all day like that. Contractions stayed consistant at 4-4.5 minutes, but without increasing intensity. We talked about bringing the kids home, but we were planning on trying Castor Oil (which I had put off with tears until that point. I can't tell you how much I hate the stuff) the next morning, and the twins are so routine dependent that a back and forth would have been just cruel to them. The next day was G's birthday and for 5 years in a row he had woken up to a special day and decorations and I was dying over not having him home, and potentially not even seeing him on his birthday. I sat in my room and ugly cried for an hour, but there was no way for me to see the kids that would benefit them more than it did me.  

Contractions still weren't intensifying at all, so Quinn drove a couple of gifts out to Mom's and read some books to the twins and spent a couple hours just being around. He called one of the midwives on the way out for a run down on what we were gonna do if the castor oil didn't finally kick things into gear, and to see if we were being realistic to leave the kids for another night and etc. And the other midwife called me to try to de-stress me and get a read on how I was doing. Between the two of them we actually got an emotional reset and when Quinn got home we were both doing a lot better, emotionally, than we had been doing all weekend. We watched a movie, went to bed (where I cried about Gavin's birthday some more) and went to sleep. 

I got up at 6 the next morning, walked into the kitchen where the dreaded castor oil was waiting. I started pulling out foods and fluids  -- orange juice, biscuits, diet pepsi -- and (*I can't even write this without full body shivers and retching*) poured out 2oz of the filth. I kept saying out loud "don't think about it. don't look at it. don't smell it."

So I slugged it. And then slugged orange juice. And then stuffed half a biscuit in my mouth. And then washed the biscuit down with the diet soda. and then scrubbed my teeth with a baby wipe.

And there were tears running down my face. 

But I kept it down. 

Drama, much? Sure. But I dare any one of you to slug 2 oz of castor oil, and then to do it again at a later date. The first time, anyone can do. I did that with Gavin. The second time? I triple dog dare you.  In fact, Quinn and I had a conversation about this the week before, and I believe he owes me an experience with the filth. 

And then I spent 3 hours in fetal position. It's like giving yourself food poisoning, but worse. And it's all so that you can volunteer for the most painful marathon of your life. I can't tell you how many times I said "why am I this stupid????" while laying on the bathroom floor. 

I'd rather go through labor twice than go through castor oil and then labor. 

I'm never doing it again. 

Besides, I'm not even sure it worked. There was no notable change in contractions. None. By 11 I was back to trying to eat and back to 4-5 min contractions that didn't seem to be doing anything. But then my water broke. Was that because of the CO? I doubt it. I think spending 3 of the previous 4 days aggressively encouraging things caused that. Or maybe just being 41.4 days pregnant caused that. 

So the midwife came out to check on me at 2. Still no increase in labor pattern. I was almost a 5. She sent us out for a walk. We walked to the bottom of the ravine in our back yard and I ended up completely stuck through 1 (one. yes. one.) very strong contraction that wouldn't let me move. Then we walked back up to the house. It was pushing on 4 o'clock and Eva and I stood in the kitchen talking. The contractions were still around 4 minutes, and were leaving me pretty breathless and I was leaning on the counter, but we just kept chatting and snacking and waiting to see what would happen. 

Around 4 she headed to the shower because, since my water had broken, it was likely to be a very long evening/night. I was sitting in the livingroom with Quinn and we were talking and he was getting some work stuff wrapped up. The contractions were steadily increasing in intensity, and right around 6 :00 Quinn said something and all I could say to answer was something along the lines of "I need to just do this."  Eva came back out a few minutes later and Quinn had moved over behind me to do back pressure because the next one was stinkin stout. So we did that for a while, with me on the birth ball because that's where I had been for a while anyway. 

Then Quinn stepped to his office to put some things away and I decided I would grab a protein bar out of my room. I walked a few steps to my room and stopped. Then a few more steps and stopped again.

"Rapid Labor: The most obvious difficulty with Rapid Labor is emotional turmoil. Rapid Labor can make it extremely difficult to find coping strategies and can leave the expectant mother feeling out of control. "

I didn't make it to my protein bar. I got stuck hanging on a chair halfway across the bedroom. Eva and Quinn  came in and Quinn said something about the birth pool (which I planned to labor, but not birth in) and Eva said something about "we better just use the bathtub. We don't have time for the pool." And I laughed at her. 

But every time I got to doing well with a contraction level, the next one was a step up. There was no time to settle into coping. They just piled up. Sarah got there right about the time they got me in the tub, and my brain said that that was the time to count it as real labor, but in reality I was only about an hour from transition. 

As I was hitting transition Eva asked me if I wanted to stay put and have baby in the tub or try to move to the bed. I wanted to move. So they got me out and I went to the toilet, and I knew I was feeling pushy. So we moved to the bedroom, but I was still only a 9, and STILL had a hard neck to my cervix. I'm kind of convinced at this point that my body thinks 9 cm IS complete. With Gavin a nurse had to hold my cervix open and had me push Gavin down past an 8.5. With the twins the last check I had I was an 8-9 and then I was way ready to push little Lena out. 

Eva told me to go ahead and start pushing, but be ready to stop if we started causing problems. Pushing seemed to take forever. With Gavin it was under a half hour. With the twins it was ten minutes each. This round was over an hour.  Nothing felt like it was actually moving her. Eva said I never lost that hard cervical neck. She just had to work it around Aurelia's head manually because it wouldn't soften. See what I mean? My body doesn't do a 10.  

At 9:24, just 3.5 hours after I felt like laboring was the only thing I could do, she was born. Wide eyed and quiet and taking in the world.  Her cord was looped once around her neck, and she twisted into face-up as she was being born, so she got a face full of amniotic fluid and was a little gurgly for a bit, but we got that all suctioned out. I had a bit more bleeding than expected, so I got a pitocin IV within a few minutes of her being born, but otherwise all was perfect. 

 She was little, other than her 14" head. And with the vernix, people were wondering about my due date calculation, but her foot print was a solid 41-42 week footprint, and her placenta was getting calcified, so I'm still just as confident in her due date.

I can't get over the difference between her birth and the others. The freedom to not worry about when to get in the car. The quiet of being in my own space. Moving and changing and working in whatever spot, whatever position seemed to work best at that moment. Not worrying about how long anything was taking or whether or not I was progressing.

Then getting to enjoy her. I mean, we got to hold her and love her and I got to nurse her before we did any of her weighing or measuring or anything. We got to ooh and aaah over her mile long, beautiful cord, and I was so quickly piled into my bed with her that there wasn't a thing to think about other than soaking her up.  I was so settled that when they started talking about getting a herbal bath going for me I wasn't sure it would be worth getting out of my cozy bed to soak in the tub.

 But I did. And I was glad. Because it was so much nicer than trying to get a shower, and we got the bloody stuffs all cleaned out of Auri's hair, and I didn't feel the need to stand in the shower until after we introduced her to the children and caught up on sleep and all of that.

No worries about when to go home. No stupid required videos. No nurses pulling her away from me when I dozed off with her in my arms. No hospital hallways to walk. Nobody telling me I couldn't carry my child from one room to the next. No drive home at 48 hours post birth. No tearing or stitches or threats. No incubators. No fending off shots and soaps and eye treatments with her 30 minutes old. 

Just me and my close friends and my husband and my beautiful girl. Food piled on the bed, happy tears, comfort, and peace.