This post contains graphic material. Because it’s a birth story. And birth is graphic. So meditate on that before reading. 

It is very difficult for me to justify doing anything besides sleeping and nursing right now but I want to make sure I write this down before I forget or reinterpret the details any further. So here it is….

First of all, I curse you Downton Abbey. I had been waiting for season two for weeks and then was horrified to learn that the two hour premiere ended at 11 pm. 11 pm! Way past my five-days-over-EDD bedtime. I knew better but I went for it. I took a chance and went to bed at midnight after days of saying “this is the night” with not a single contraction to show for it. I felt my first contractions an hour later, at 1 am.

But with one birth under my belt I was wise enough to know that this might not be “it.” I went back to sleep and finally woke up with some steadier contractions with a slight edge. I got up to time them from 4-5:30 am but then went back to sleep until 8:30. We called my parents and sister and told them to come up from Virginia, and Jacob got Tennyson off to school. (We told T we were having the baby “soon” but I’m pretty sure she’s stopped believing us after literally weeks of hearing this.)

We started frantically preparing our house for family coming, packing our bags, eating a good breakfast and making sure everything was set for baby’s arrival. Our friend-neighbors agreed to pick T up from school and give her lunch so that we could labor without any interruptions. The morning was fairly slow, contractions moved from 20-25 mins apart to 20-10 mins apart, but still not in especially regular intervals. My family got into town and we did some walking around CRW. This helped the contractions but they slowed down whenever I stopped moving. This carried on into the afternoon. My parents took T out for a Chuck E Cheese date and we waited to see if we were in for another marathon labor.

I was starting to get nervous about this prospect. We were up to about 10 hours of labor and my own internal exams showed no more than 3 or 4 cm of dilation. I kept walking in a circle around our apartment. But pretty soon things started to pick up. I needed to use coping mechanisms to get through each contraction and I put on the TENS Unit. But no significant back labor; almost all the pain concentrated in my lower uterus. By 4 pm our doula came over.

Amanda Rachel suggested that I stop walking and that the contractions would stay steady on their own. I did and she was right! I labored on the birth ball for another hour when contractions started coming every 5-10 minutes. We called the midwife at 6 pm when it seemed like things were starting to move. I was starting to feel a lot of pain. We made the decision to go to the hospital.

Let me just say, doulas are REALLY important for what happened next. Just as the door shut for Jacob to go downstairs and load the car I had a series of five very powerful contractions in a row, strong enough to make me vomit and almost knock me on the ground. I can’t imagine being alone in the house at this moment. Amanda Rachel tried to calm me down. The pain was about at my ceiling at this point. I really, really hoped this was transition.

On the way over the hospital I had several contractions that were difficult to manage. Lots of screaming, folks. That’s when I added a new goal to my birth plan: not to be traumatized by my labor. If this was transition then I was quite certain I could finish the delivery without pain medication. If not, then I would need to make the call based on how dilated I was.

We got to the hospital and I went screaming off to labor and delivery. I was given an internal exam around 7 pm by our midwife, Ursula. I was only 6 cm dilated. Ursula tried to convince me that I would be ready to push within the hour but the last time I heard those words uttered I was in labor for another 14 hours, going from 7.5 to 10 cm. Everything about this labor was so far eerily similar to T’s. Five days past EDD. Long early labor. In the hospital right around transition. Emotionally the idea of a repeat was overwhelming. I was at my pain limit and I knew that if I waited any longer I wouldn’t be able to get an epidural. So I went for it.

It took another half hour to get the epidural in place (blood work, IV fluids, etc). In the beginning I was pretty amazed by how much freedom it gave me. It was almost like a wearing a belt of pain medication. I could feel my legs all the way up to the thigh. I labored on hands and knees, squatted, turned from side to side, pushed a little when I felt the pressure of the contraction. I was shaking all over, releasing a day’s worth of stress hormones. But still, it was great!

It was great, that is, until it came time to push. I started feeling this pressure in my rectum that got increasingly stronger. Wait, I thought. Aren’t I not supposed to be feeling this? Apparently the epidural is contained to the point that it didn’t really affect the vaginal or rectal areas. This was not good. The main reason for the not goodness was that I had already checked out of the “hard labor zone” required to get on through the intensity of active labor. Basically, I thought I was done. Pushing T out wasn’t easy, but I didn’t feel a thing.

Not so this time. I felt everything. The pressure was so strong that it became almost unbearable. And when I say “pressure” I’m not talking about someone pressing down on your back. I’m talking about a freight liner sitting on your rectum. It was unbelievable. The “urge to push,” it seems, is actually the urge to get this g*damn mother-fer off your internal organs. I was completely hysterical by now and Ursula and Amanda Rachel did their best to calm me down. My sister and mother were also their by this point and I really hope neither was scarred for life.

The most graphic part of the experience came as the baby descended and seemed like it was ready to emerge. Yet, even as the head stuck, it wasn’t coming out. Instead, my vagina and rectum grew to a head-sized balloon. I eventually had to stop looking in the mirror it was so disturbing to see. I went into my internal Kung Fu Fighter space and remained there for the final pushes. Ursula eventually said, “open your eyes! Grab your baby!” and the head popped out, after 25 minutes of pushing.

You guessed it – face up. Holy mackerel.

I grabbed the baby and pulled him on to my chest. On the way up I caught a glimpse of what was unmistakably scrotum and penis. It was a boy. He stayed connected to the chord and wailed away as everyone in the room (probably not the nurses) cried. I felt tired but not in the same sort of bone-crushing way I had with T. Labor started at 4 am and ended at 10:15 pm. It was a long day, but only one day and that made a big difference.

The pushing was kind of traumatizing and the sunny-side-up baby did serious damage to my body. I definitely feel like someone ran a truck through my anus (sorry, that may be excessively graphic, but there it is). I am also glad I had the epidural. It gave me just enough time to relax and recover, but didn’t go in so early that I was worried labor would not progress (my #1 goal for both labors was to avoid an unnecessary emergency C-section. I have no moral quandaries about epidurals and not the slightest concern with being a birth super hero. But I do believe epidurals, especially early on, lead to a cascade of interventions and can lead to C-sections that would otherwise be unnecessary if the laboring mother could have switched positions and walked around to aid her labor progression). I think that the verdict on my childbearing experiences is that I carry pregnancies with ease but have very difficult labors. Or that I’m a wimp. I’m willing to concede either, or both.

Now we are back at home. Wick went home at 8 lbs 4 oz and is already back up to his birth weight (8 lbs 10 oz), only two days after being home. It’s hard to tell much about his personality this early on but I’m living in the hope that he will have a very different temperament from his big sister. If he doesn’t I may fail out of my last semester of seminary.

Speaking of big sister, she loves having a real live baby doll in our house and is being well supported by her grandparents. I think the realization of how big this life change is going to be (for all of us) will hit home around Jan 23, when J goes back to school full time and then even more so when my classes start on Feb 2.

And that’s the story of Wyclif Henry’s birth!!