If you’ve already read Aiden’s natural-ish birth story, I just want to start out by saying this ain’t that. My labor experiences were so drastically different. Where my labor with Aiden was crash and burn, my labor with Donovan was more sizzle and fizzle. I definitely recommend starting with Aiden’s since I wrote a nice little introduction as to why I decided to share my birth stories in the first place. Mainly because I wish people had shared theirs with me. I felt pretty prepared because I am a researcher and over-preparer by nature, but there were SO many things that I had no clue about. I’m just doing what I can to share with others.
Without further ado, I present to you the birth story that made me a mama, aptly titled “Labor or nah?” In my phone. You’ll see why in a bit.
On the First Day of Labor…
This birth story starts at 1:00 am on Tuesday, February 28. I was 37 weeks pregnant and experiencing my first real contractions. Because I was full term, I was anticipating contractions, and had even experienced Braxton Hicks. But in that moment, I can tell you with the straightest of faces that I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I had noticed that same feeling a couple times the night before, but now they were waking me up out of my sleep. This was definitely not a Braxton Hicks contraction. And truthfully, I feel like it’s disrespectful to real contractions to even call them Braxton Hicks contractions. Call them Braxton Hicks cramps because these were so. very. different.
After about an hour and a half of not being able to get any sleep, I called our midwives answering line. Yes, I know they say to wait until contractions are 4 minutes apart (the 4-1-1 rule), but I didn’t know they were contractions! I was trying to figure out why I was keeled over in my bed so I wasn’t even timing them. Silly me. The midwife on call tells me to get some Benadryl to try and snooze. Basically do whatever I can to get some sleep, because I’m going to need all the energy I can get later if this is actually labor.
By this time it’s about 3:30 am and I am able to doze off between contractions with the help of Benadryl. Now that I know they’re contractions, I start timing them, and they are about 8-10 minutes apart.
TMI alert but it doesn’t get any more TMI than a birth story so whatever. Around 4:30 am, I have my third bowel movement in three hours. So I’m like, ok, it’s go time! I’ve heard about this. My body is trying to get everything out of the way to make way for the baby. I’m ready!
Remember how I said this was called “labor or nah.” That was definitely a nah. I get a little bit of sleep in between contractions, but they are pretty consistently 10 minutes apart and not getting any closer together. So, what do I do when I wake up in the morning?
I go to work, because, ‘Murica. Prodromal labor and America’s (lack of) maternity leave policies don’t mix.
Prodromal what?
Prodromal labor is when your contractions start, and continue, but never progress. It’s not “real” labor when the baby is actually on its way. And it’s not a “false start” where you have contractions and then they stop and you go on with your day. Prodromal labor can last for a day, or it can last for three weeks. Knowing that baby could still be weeks away, I decided not to take my leave because I only had a set amount of time. I wanted to save every second of my leave to be with the baby instead of “waste” those days and potentially weeks while pregnant. But also, I was in the middle of a huge project at work – preparing for a group of college students to depart for China on my actual due date. What a timing mess. So I am trying to wrap up loose ends, secure Chinese visas, finalize details for the welcome reception, etc. etc. etc.
Life pro tip for working moms: When you get to the 3rd trimester, prepare a weekly or even daily memo for your boss with the status of all of your projects and deliverables along with key contacts just in case you have to go out unexpectedly.
So I literally spend all of Tuesday contracting. Every. 10. Minutes. At my desk, contracting. Commuting to work, contracting. Having meetings, contracting. They aren’t the worst feeling in the world, but they definitely stop me in my tracks. Why is this a thing?!
I remember calling the midwife again to see if there’s anything else I can do. She says try to relax. Get in the bathtub, have a glass of wine, see if that helps or maybe even stop them. Y’all, when I tell you the midwives could have told me to go outside and jump on one foot facing the full moon, and I would have done it? I trusted them so much! But… there was no wine bath for me that day. We were in the middle of a gaht damn bathroom reno. That was supposed to be done well before this time. BLOWN. I did have the wine without the bath though. Didn’t do a thing for me.
On the second day of labor…
On Wednesday, I go to work again, but leave early to head to my 38-week appointment. Still contracting. The only thing I want to know from this appointment – is this real labor yet? I find out that I’m not dilated at all – meaning my cervix has not started opening. Sad face. But I’m effaced – which means my cervix has thinned out to prepare for labor – good news! And the baby’s at +2 station. Meaning his head is engaged (see where +2 is in the pic below – great news!). But my cervix is still behind him or something like that (more terrible news). She was literally able to feel his head when she did my pelvic exam. She asked if I wanted to reach down and feel it? I’m like nah sis, I only want to feel his head when he comes out. And I want that to be yesterday.
Since prodromal labor can last for weeks, and my contractions didn’t seem to be speeding up, my midwife prescribed sleeping pills so I can at least sleep through the contractions. For the last two nights, I have woken up every 8 minutes or so because of the contractions. So the goal at this point, is to get some rest. Some people are probably thinking – why is she prescribing you sleeping pills and why did they tell you to take Benadryl? Remember, this isn’t even real labor yet. I’m not dilating. I have a LONG way to go. If I do not get rest, I won’t have the energy needed to withstand labor. So, sleeping pills it is!
I need sleep. Or for this baby to come on. Or both.
When I get home around 3:00pm, I immediately try to take an Ambien nap through these useless (or so I thought) contractions, then try to be as active as possible to get this party started. Marching in place, kickboxing 8 counts, circles on the yoga ball, whatever. Being active really got the juices flowing. Contraction frequency sped up, but they were only lasting 30-45 seconds. I know these midwives were sick of me, but I called them again around 10:00pm. She says wait until they’re lasting a minute and call back. An hour later they are more consistent. So I call the answering service again. But it took her too long to call back so we decided to get our things together and head to the hospital around midnight. Note: I’m grateful that I had to go to the hospital in the middle of the night with both labors. It’s a 25 minute drive with no traffic. Could have been an hour if we were going with morning rush hour traffic.
I call my mom who’s in Tennessee and let her know that we’re heading to the hospital. Knowing how unpredictable babies can be, she had previously decided not to prebook a flight based on my due date – and it’s good she didn’t! Depending on the airline she would have had to pay change fees, or would have lost money if she ended up needing to book with a different airline. This allowed her the flexibility of being able to get the next flight no matter what airline.
We get to the hospital a little after midnight. I get to triage and pray to the labor gods that I’m dilated more than 1-2 centimeters, and they don’t turn me around and send me home. I heard about that happening from so many of my friends. Well, I’m 4 centimeters which means, all that marching in place must have done something and I’m getting admitted!
Admission means DRUGS!
When I got into my actual delivery room, I let the midwife (hey Loral!) know that I wanted (needed?) some drugs. After 3 days of prodromal labor, I needed something. I asked about the nitrous oxide which I had heard so much about and was honestly the reason I chose to deliver at the hospital that I did. She instead suggested one of the IV drugs, nubain, so that I could sleep (remember, energy conservation is the goal and I still have 6 centimeters to go). The nitrous oxide doesn’t stay in your system, which means you have to constantly put it up to your face when you need it. I would have needed to be more “active” with the nitrous oxide whereas the IV allows me to just lay there. And sleep. Good call Loral. And this is why it’s so important to have a competent provider that you trust and who is committed to helping you accomplish your labor goals. Speaking of, my labor goal was a healthy baby without an epidural (because they scare me – more on that in Aiden’s birth story), but with a side of “I’mma change my mind if I want to.”
So around 3 or 4 am, after they plugged me up to the nubain I went to sleep. And probably slept for 3-4 hours. This was the longest stretch of sleep I’d had in three nights. It. was. amazing. I woke up and felt relatively refreshed. As refreshed as you could be in active labor. But as the nubain wore off, I really started to feel those contractions. The nurse (hey Victoria!) was great at helping me relax and reminding me to release the tension during the contractions. She explained how our body’s natural response is to tighten up when we feel the pain of a contraction. But that works against the contractions – meaning it takes longer to accomplish the goal of dilation. Victoria taught me how to release the tension from every part of my body for the 60 seconds that each contraction lasted. She stayed right there and breathed with me to make sure I got it. She was pretty much my doula- without the massaging. I’m SO grateful Victoria was there. I don’t think I would have progressed like I did or been able to handle the contractions like I did if I didn’t have her guidance.
So now I’m asking for a check because these contractions feel “real.” Loral comes back and says I’m about 8 cm (hooray!). So I let her know I’m interested in the nitrous oxide at this point because that nubain is gone! The anesthesiologist comes in and talks to me about nitrous and about the epidural. I’m not asking any questions because I want him to just go get the drugs please and thank you (I now get all of the jokes that my doctor friends make about anesthesiologists – no sense of urgency at all!). He’s telling me about the epidural and Queen Victoria (the nickname I gave to my nurse because she truly is a queen at this point) is like, “She’s already 9 cm, just go get the gas.” So then they come back with the nitrous and at first I don’t really feel anything. I’m like, I don’t know about this friends. But when I start inhaling deeply, I can definitely notice the difference with and without it. It takes the edge off the contractions. It’s slightly less painful, and makes them bearable.
Around 10 am my mom finally arrives.
My water still hasn’t broken, but they tell me I can start pushing whenever. I’m so confused. I’m like, won’t I feel the “urge” to push? They’re like “You’re 10 cm. Your body’s ready. You can push.” The baby’s head is already super low, I just never got the urge to push. But I trust my midwives so, let’s do it.
But pushing isn’t getting us anywhere. Queen Victoria suggests emptying my bladder via catheter because it might be in the way. I’d been drinking water the entire time I was in the hospital, and felt like I needed to pee, but couldn’t! I tried to go just before my mom arrived and literally sat on the toilet for about 15 minutes and nothing came out. But guys, the catheter. I might have emptied like 30 oz. It was impressive.
Ok so now the pushes are getting somewhere! Apparently my bladder was in the way and Queen Victoria earns her title yet again. I’m so grateful for a nurse who was paying attention and a delivery team who was patient and willing to try different things. I could have ended up pushing for hours, putting me and the baby at risk and likely ending up in a c-section.
But my water still hasn’t broken. They can literally see my sac bulging during pushing.
You’re not going to break my water?
I’ve heard so many stories of people getting their waters broken by the doctors that I just assumed that’s what they would do. But the midwives are like (yes, I had two at this point! Hi Liz and Beth :)), “we can if you want us to but we don’t have to. When your water breaks the contractions will definitely get more intense because there’s no more cushion. ” They reminded me that babies have even been born in the sac before. So I guess.
At one point, Victoria goes and puts on a pair of goggles and sits at the foot of the bed. I’m like what are you doing?! Victoria says that when my water finally breaks it’s probably going to explode, and she doesn’t want my amniotic fluid all over her face.
We are all cracking up at her. When I say cracking up, I do mean belly laughing. The atmosphere is really chill because the contractions have slowed down and are back to every 5ish minutes apart. Since you only push with the contraction, we have quite a bit of rest time between contractions for me to catch my breath and just lay there and talk. Apparently the body does this if laboring without pitocin or other inducing drugs because it knows you need to store up energy to push. True enough, my water finally breaks during one of my pushes and it is a bit of a gush. It doesn’t quite reach her face though. 🙂
After my water breaks, it’s a pretty uneventful and textbook labor experience. Only a couple pushes after that, me feeling the baby’s head full of hair, and reassuring the midwives that I do NOT want a mirror to see what was going on down there, and then baby arrived. I will say that there is a noticeable difference between contractions before my water broke and contractions after my water broke. So, if your water hasn’t broken, don’t have the doctor do it! Remember that you can deliver a baby fully in the sac! And save yourself some pain.
On one of my final pushes, the baby’s head popped out! And it was literally just like a “pop”. A jack-in-the-box of sorts. Or should I say jack-out-the-box. Ok, ok, nevermind lol. I had to keep pushing for the rest of his body to slide on out, but I thought when I pushed, the whole baby came out! Nope, not always! Pushing out the head is one thing, but those shoulders can sometimes get in the way.
We did it!
His official delivery time was 11:25 a.m. About an hour after my first set of pushes. When they placed him on my chest I had instant tears. It still is one of the most surreal feelings. The sense of relief, the fact that you did it, the fact that your baby is healthy and you survived one of the most dangerous moments in a woman’s life. All of these emotions come rushing over you in an instant.
We got skin-to-skin for something like 2 hours. It was awesome, but by the end of the 2nd hour I literally had to call in the nurses to weigh him and stuff- because I wanted a nap.
I experienced vaginal tearing, but I don’t know how badly. I’m pretty sure stitches were involved, but I don’t know how many. She took care of all that during skin to skin time after the umbilical cord stopped pulsing, and the placenta was delivered (yes, you have to push the placenta out after you think you’re done pushing). I was pretty distracted with my squishy new perfect little baby so I didn’t ask a lot of questions nor did I care.
We only spent one night in the hospital and got to go home with our little Donovan the next day.
In my notes, I wrote “10/10 would totally do that again.” Which is funny, because I did a couple years later with Aiden. Though the labor experience was drastically different, that moment when they put the baby on your chest felt exactly the same. I am super grateful for two positive labor and delivery experiences and I couldn’t have done it without the best midwives and nurses!
Recovery though was another story. I was not prepared for the ass pain when walking, sitting, sneezing, or laughing. Or the death-smelling lochia – I’ll have to write a full post about the things no one told me about the first few days and weeks after having a baby. It’s insane how much we prepare for the labor experience which lasts hours and then go home woefully unprepared for the post-partum experience. Something’s gotta give.
But we got a super cute, witty, and joyful kid out of the deal. I know it’s pretty cliche of me, but he was definitely worth it.
Relevant book recommendations:
- Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth by Ina May Gaskin
- The Birth Partner by Penny Simkin
- Supernatural Childbirth by Jackie Mize
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