Here We All Are.. All of Us..

(loosely quoted from Winnie the Pooh)\par
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And we’re back! We went to the hospital Monday morning at 6:00, and returned, babe-in-arms, Wednesday afternoon around 5:00. The time inbetween (especially the first 24 hours) was very rigorous, but still it’s amazing how little time it takes to actually have a baby after all of that waiting, and walking, and drinking raspberry leaf tea, and setting up nurseries, and washing baby clothes, and preparing the boys for the coming change in their lives… In the end, only 17 hours in the hospital pre-delivery\’c2\~- not even a whole day!\par
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Not 17 hours in active labor, mind you..[warning: birth story following]\par
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Being induced was nothing like I had been hoping for. I was hoping that I would be dilated to at least 3 by the time we waltzed in at 6:00 a.m. on Monday morning, that a modest amount of Pitocin would be pumped into my blood stream via IV (along with the antibiotics for Group B Strep), and that labor would subsequently follow quickly, being numbed almost completely by a much anticipated epidural, and hopefully the baby would be born maybe mid-afternoon – or earlier.\par
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The reality was much different. I hadn’t made any progress at all since my last checkup 4 days earlier, and was barely at 2, maybe 40% effaced. The various drugs were administered, seemingly without effect all day long, because at 8:30 p.m. I was still about the same: only this time exhausted after getting up at 5:15 that morning, and having a headache, possibly from not eating much since lunchtime. It had been a boring day,\’c2\~too: except for when Michael had to be wheeled to the ER after a\’c2\~nasty, but shortlived case of food poisoning\’c2\~around\’c2\~mid-afternoon. Not kidding.\’c2\~We were worried that he’d miss the birth, but by the time he’d checked himself our without being seen an\’c2\~hour or two later, nothing much had happened.\’c2\~At 8:30 we consulted with the midwife about maybe bagging the experiment and going home if nothing had changed by 10:30.\par
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This was not what we had planned, and the greatest source of distress to me was thinking about how this was going to mess up our schedule so completely: Michael was due back at work on Wednesday after taking 2 weeks off already for the purpose of having this baby. Michael, by the way, was NOT adding to this concern of mine, assuring me that it would all work out somehow and that he’d just have to figure something out in terms of his scheduled meetings and appointments\’c2\~on Wednesday and Friday.\par
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So, we prayed that things would move along a bit more quickly and that I’d be able to deliver within the next half a day of so. At 9:30, my contractions were definitely picking up, but I wasn’t getting my hopes up, and on the phone with my mom was still half expecting to go home, babyless,\’c2\~at 11:00 that night. By 10:00, I was enlisting Michael’s support to help me sway through contractions and we were both saying, “this is a lot more like what I remember from last time.” At 10:00, my water broke. At 10:56, Monica was born. And\’c2\~ born, and this was the most pertinent point to me at the time, without an epidural – there just wasn’t time. The anesthesiologist did get so far as to make it to our room, consult my chart, ask me a few mind-numbingly slow questions (I’ve never been so impatient in my life), and finally trundle his cart into the room: just in time to hear the nurse say, “Try not to push until you’re fully dilated..” and then, “She’s pushing..” at which point he turned around and trundled on out. Alas. Somewhere around that point I completely lost any composure I had managed to maintain.\par
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When the midwife checked me after my water broke, while the anesthesiologist was being waited for, I was at 7. If memory serves (and it’s already starting to get hazy), it was during the very next contraction that I started saying, “I feel like maybe\’c2\~I need to push,” and actually doing so. After that agonizing contraction, she checked, and I was complete. Then she said, “Are you OK with having this baby without an epidural?” and I replied, “It’s too late for an epidural!” and she said, “Yes, it’s too late for an epidural, ” so I said, “then I guess I’m going to do this without an epidural.” I wasn’t being stoic: at the time I was wondering why she was asking such a stupid question…\par
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I asked if I could stand up, and leapt out of bed (probably not, but that’s what I felt like I was doing. They said I could start pushing if I wanted.. and boy did I. They (it felt like there were a lot of people in the room during the actual delivery, but the only voices that broke through to my very focused brain were Michael’s, the delivering mid-wife, Natalie, and the nurse who’d been attending me that afternoon, Brandi) asked if I wanted to labor in bed on hands and knees, and I told them I’d rather just stay standing up. I might have asked if that was OK.. and then again I\’c2\~might not have – I wasn’t feeling real considerate by that point in time. Well, OK, so they threw blankets on the floor, and 20 minutes later (Michael’s reckoning, it felt like maybe 5 minutes to me), little Monica made her appearance upside down. They tried to tell me, between contractions,\’c2\~how they were going to pass the baby up to me between my legs, after her birth, which I thought was crazy. I just couldn’t see how I was going to do this, deliver a baby in the midst of that much pain and then reliably hold her and get into bed by myself. As it worked out, after she was delivered I just leaped back into bed and they handed her to me there. So much simpler. Michael said they actually talked about the whole passing the baby up thing a lot, as if they thought it was really important: something about basic instictive needs or something. I don’t remember. I don’t remember a lot. But I think that they were all tickled pink that I delivered standing up – Michael said them seemed pretty excited about that, during the process and I know they told me that that was unusual nowadays, especially since most people get epidurals. Once the baby was born, I saw all of the people in the room, and they were very nice: complementing and petting me about how well I’d done, and how well I’d worked with my body, and that sort of thing. It would’ve been really nice if I hadn’t said, “As compared to what?” when somebody told me that I’d done a good job, because I’ve been feeling bad about being so mouthy ever since! I hope she wasn’t offended.. whoever she was. I guess I was wondering if they told everybody that, and if everything’s special, then nothing’s special… and I hadn’t exactly been a model of silent suffering during that last hour. But anyway…\par
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Alas, that delivery went so fast it makes me wonder if I’ll be able to get an epidural next time.. it makes me worry that I might not even be able to get to the hospital in time next time! But I don’t know how much of the speed of my labor was influenced by the pitocin, and how much was just my own natural labor. But if one’s actual active labor and delivery only lasts for an hour and a half, I suppose one really shouldn’t complain – and expecting to have an epidural probably made the whole thing less bearable once I realized that it wasn’t gonna happen. Maybe next time I’ll investigate IV narcotics… \par
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At least I can say that I have fully experience natural labor now. And when I read, “Pain as of a woman in childbirth” I will be able to fully identify. And after all, less than 24 hours to have my sweet pretty little girl is really a pretty good deal all around. She is darling, the boys (including Michael) are all delighted with her, and so far she’s been a really good baby. Which reminds me that I should go try to wake her up and feed her so that I can try to get to bed…