Hellobee

I started to feel pre-labor cramps on a Friday night. It was still well over a week from my due date, so I dismissed this as my body just getting ready for the real deal.  Plus, I had five kayakers crashing at my house in town from California, and this was not the ideal crowd for laboring.  This was more the crowd for a rowdy day on the river.

And so I set about ignoring it the best way I know how – making plans to do something outdoors.  At first, I arranged to go paddle a river about three hours away.  When I woke up and my cramps had increased, I bailed on that plan.  The last thing my twenty-four year old boating buddy would want to do is deliver my baby on the side of the river!  We went hiking instead.  And hike we did –  6 miles in the Smokies.  We passed a couple of guys carrying backpacks who did a double-take when they saw how pregnant I was.

Back at my house, I started to feel certain that this was labor.  The contractions were steady about every ten minutes.  When a contraction started, I had to stop what I was doing until it passed.  By the time my regularly scheduled Sunday morning appointment rolled around, the contractions had completely stopped.  I asked a friend to buy a pumpkin for me to carve, it being just a week before Halloween.

Needless to say that pumpkin never got carved.  My contractions picked up and then some.   I did my best to ignore them, but they were intense and frequent enough that I couldn’t really do anything else.  My friend and I attempted to watch a movie, but it was nearly impossible to follow the plot with all the contractions.  I called the midwife around 9 to tell her my contractions were back but didn’t want her to come over yet.  By 11, I wanted her there.  She came with her assistant and they settled in.  The midwife took some measurements and then she and her assistant took turn napping.  This wasn’t their first home birth.  They knew to rest now, while they could.

At that point my body just sought different positions. I went from laying down to kneeling to standing in the shower to trying to relax in the birthing tub we had inflated in the living room. I trusted in my body. I moaned and grunted.  The midwife and her assistant somehow managed to nap through it.

Around 3 or 4 in the morning my contractions picked up, and I started pushing.  At this point I was kneeling a lot, holding onto the couch. I would get incredibly hot and go outside on my front porch. At some point my fluffy black cat slipped through the open door and took a front row seat for the rest of the delivery. For the rest of the week she was extremely cuddly, and I think she instinctively knew what was happening.

After three hours of pushing, I was so tired.  At this point I hadn’t slept much in the previous 48 hours.  All I wanted to do was sleep.  I was in the birthing tub and would start to nod off in the deepest sleep one could possibly drift into in a matter of a couple of minutes.  Each time a contraction abruptly and violently woke me.

At some point I looked at my midwife and told her I felt stuck.  I had been so in my head, I don’t think I had talked much at all in the past few hours.  But now I just felt my baby wasn’t getting any further with each push.  She said I could lay down and she would have a look.

I laid on my back and after taking a look, she told me that I had two options.  One option was to wait.  The other option, which she warned would be extremely painful, was to peel my cervix back manually and coax my baby out.  I’m not a patient person.  I simply couldn’t wait any longer.  I laid down and was brave as I could muster, but it hurt.  I thought it was going to break me, this baby tearing me apart as he made his way into the world.

It seemed to take forever before my midwife excitedly exclaimed she could see his head.  But then his head disappeared again.  For some reason I had thought that once you could see head, it  just sort of popped or slithered out.  That was not the case.  His head went in and and out for a good forty minutes.  Finally his head came all the way out and the rest of his body quickly followed.  The midwife put him on my chest.  At that brief moment, panic filled me.  I was so tired that all I wanted to do was to crawl into a dark cave and sleep.  I worried how I would take care of him now that he was on the outside, not snug in my belly.

But then he looked up at me, like he had been looking forward to me just as much as I had been looking forward to meeting him.  I think we were like that, him attempting to feed and me just in awe at him.  The midwife and her assistant cooked up some breakfast I’ve been told.  I can’t remember that, but I must have eaten.  They cleaned me up the best they could and then tucked my little babe and me in a cozy cocoon.  The two of us slept all through that day and the next night.  And when the first rays of light filtered in through the window, I cuddled with him, feeling complete love and adoration for this new little person.