Morgan’s Birth

On Monday the 16th (of 2004) I went in to see my midwife who discovered, much to my chagrin that I was only dilated a “one to two”. I was disappointed as I had been having pains for several days and nothing seemed to be happening. This was later described to me by my other midwife as “pain for no good reason.” Apparently, this is a common pre-labor annoyance. Anyway, during this appointment, my blood pressure was measuring at 157/110…not the best numbers on my track record. This concerned my midwife who sent me to the hospital for a non-stress test and to have blood-work done. I was horribly swollen and had a very mild headache that I could not get rid of. It looked like it might, maybe be preeclampsia/toxemia but according to my research none of my symptoms seemed severe enough for it to be so. I mentioned this to my midwife (this one was Stephanie) and she agreed that my symptoms seemed minor except for the bp. That is what was concerning her and she admitted that she may be being a little conservative but that she really thought it was best to go. So, naturally, I did.

Not going to into details about that but, long and short: Kathy, the head midwife, examined the readout from the non-stress test and looked at the results of my lab-work and pronounced my baby perfectly happy and my blood-work good…but was concerned by my blood pressure, which they had only been able to bring down by having me lay on my side for almost two hours. If I sat up for more than like, 2 min, it was back up into unacceptable ranges again. So, she offered me to either be induced right then (I was due wed anyway) or go home and try bed-rest of a day and see if I could get rid of some of the water weight I had gained in the last week (that would be 7 lbs…more than I gained whole pregnancy). I asked her opinion. You know, “What would you do if it was you?” I figured 30+ years as a midwife would make her opinion valuable. She said that baby looked happy for now. They were more concerned about me. No need to be too hasty with an induction, so why not try bed rest for a day and see if the results were encouraging enough to allow labor to start on its own. I had my heart set on a water birth and so I asked her about what induction would mean for that. As I suspected, induction= no water birth. I said “Screw that, then, I’m going home!!” Everyone laughed.
I went home and spent and extremely long day in bed…mostly. I had to be put back in it twice, but overall, I was very good, ate no salty foods and drank enough water to fill the Grand Canyon.

Wednesday morning came around and it’s time for me to go back to the midwife’s office. I was pretty optimistic as the swelling had indeed gone down after sitting on my ass/side all day. I was really, really hoping for a favorable report. I have heard so many horror stories about inductions gone awry that I was actually afraid of being induced. Went into the back with Stephanie and she took my bp. One look at her face and I knew I was having a baby that night. I can’t describe how I felt. Scared, a little bit, but excited too. A little breathless but then all I could be was worried! Wait a minute- Isn’t high blood pressure bad for the baby?! She had me lay down for a while and took it again. Turns out my bp upright and just sitting down quietly was just as high as before. All I had done was ride in a car to the office. She didn’t even want to think what it would look like if I decided I needed to go shopping or something! So, she told me she was sending me over.
I would just like to say that Stephanie was wonderful. I didn’t even get a chance to panic. She was extremely calm and made me feel like a person. I think she actually felt bad about having to prescribe an induction. She gave me a hug and told me that everything was going to be ok and that Kathy was the best. Got to the hospital and waited for Kathy to finish delivering a baby before she came in and started me on the liquid pain. In the meantime, my two nurses, whose names I can’t remember, came in introduced themselves and got started prepping me. I was so swollen that the poor girls blew two veins trying to get an IV established. I felt bad for them as I generally have good veins and have never had to be stuck more than once for an iv or having blood drawn. I ended up with an IV in the crook of my elbow, which really wasn’t terrible. I forgot all about it later anyway!!

All right, I’m skipping a bunch of stuff. I got admitted at four thirty but I don’t think they actually started the induction until around eight thirty or maybe seven thirty. I’m noot sure but anyway…

At this point, Paul, Ruby and Elise are with me as well as my MIL. They were not all with me all the time, but these are the peeps that started out at the hospital with me. I had called my Mom and she and my sister were driving down and did end up getting there in plenty of time for baby, although my sister chickened out at the last minute and did not attend the birth (Which was fine by me).

Ok, so, I’m sitting there laughing and joking around with the girls and the techs when I hear this really weird noise inside of my head and feel this weird like…snapping sensation. Like, ladies, if you had a water-balloon in a very private place that suddenly popped. I waited a second and then felt a gush. They checked me and sure enough, water had broken! Now, the nurse told me that the contractions might get more painful and as she was saying that I had one and it was definitely more painful. I think I did ok in the beginning. I was able to breathe through my contractions without hollering or anything in the beginning. Ruby told me I was dealing with it gracefully. I had not completely descended into my own little world yet so I was pretty alert between contractions. My nurse suggested keeping my eyes open and focusing on something in the room but I couldn’t do that. Seeing all the people in there was too distracting. It was much, much better to keep them closed. Eventually, the contractions got hard enough I started moaning and sometimes even yelling through them. This was not yet a lack of control but rather the only way I could control my breathing. Deep, slow breaths were best for me and I could not keep it that way without holding a note, so to speak. Otherwise, I kept like, panting really hard and the nurses kept telling me to slow my breathing or I would hyperventilate.

I’m not aware at all of time frames after this or who came in and when so I’m not even going to try. At some point, Ruby left, Max came and so did my mom. Max left again when I started getting kind of loud and whatnot but I’m glad he came. I think it helped Paul to know he was there. Apparently he was in the room later after I started going into transition but I didn’t know that. I never even saw him.
After 4-5 centimeters the contractions were bad enough I only breathed through like, three quietly. The rest I moaned/hollered through. I was hooked up to monitors and sitting/reclining and it sucked. The baby was posterior so the back pain was horrible. I tend to feel menstrual cramps in my back anyway, but the pressure during contractions was so bad it was bothering me more than the pain in the center of me. At some point I started begging for the monitor belts to come off. They were digging into my back and while it may not have actually been making the pain worse, having them there was driving me crazy.

My midwife, incidentally, was incredible. She never once lost her cool. I kicked her once, totally by accident, and as I was apologizing she just waved me off and said it was fine. I didn’t mean to kick her, I was just moving my leg. I didn’t realize she was even down there at the time. At one point, during a contraction, I just couldn’t stand it anymore; I grabbed the damn monitor belt and started ripping it down below where it was digging it into me. The woman didn’t even blink! She just reached up, snatched the monitor itself off the belt, and held it on me while letting me vent my frustration on the belt. Turns out the baby looked perfect, so I was able to go off the monitors. They didn’t tell me this at the time, I guess because she didn’t want to get my hopes up for moving around, but they had taken me off the drip over an hour before this. The contractions were coming so hard at this point that I could not stay quiet even if I wanted too. I was really hollering at this point. They told me that I could get up and empty my bladder if I wanted too and I jumped at the opportunity to get off the bed. As soon as I stood up I realized two things: 1) Contractions were much easier to manage when moving. 2) I was going to be sick (gravity works).

Just to let you know, everything, pretty much, past here is going to be kind of TMI.

Ok, so, I made it to the toilet and started dry heaving and eventually brought up something. In the process I peed all over the floor as you apparently cannot control your bladder, puke and have a major contraction all at once. Something, apparently, has to give.

Ok, now here’s where whatever was left of Rebekah’s dignity went flying right out the window and I stopped caring about anything except labor. I started begging, between pukes, for the shower. All I could think about was hot water on my back. Hot, hot water-Sweet hot water! I needed it so badly! I was nearly crying I was begging so hard! OH! I must tell you the nurse that walked me in there was my personal angel. Her hands smelled so good. It was like smelling a cool breeze whenever she touched my face. She was fantastic. She kept grounding me every time I thought I was going to completely lose it. While we were in there, Kathy or the other nurse actually went and brought the people with me coffee because they were pretty much taking a break while I was in the shower, which, I’m sure they needed. I cannot tell you how much my family appreciated being treated like people. I did kind of tell one of the nurses to hurry up with something they had to do before I could get in the shower but it was more of a beg than a demand.

I got into the shower and could have cried it felt so good. From the time I stood up until the time I started feeling like I had to poop I was totally quiet. Well, not like, not making any noise quiet- I just didn’t yell anymore quiet. Got into the shower and realized that leaning forward, sinking to my knees and letting Kathy rub my back was the ticket. Can you believe that? She leaned right into the shower, got wet rubbing my back to make me more comfortable! At some point, she did have to tell me to stop banging my head into the wall…which was kind of funny cause I didn’t realize I was doing it! (I wasn’t really banging my head. The wall was cool and it felt really good to rest there. During a contraction, though, I apparently kept tapping it with my head while rocking. I don’t even really remember it.) At some point I must’ve starting moaning and grunting again cuz she told me that if I felt like I needed to go to the bathroom that she needed to check me again, which caused a round of cursing and hollering while I tried to convince my body that it could, indeed, stand up again and even walk, if it wanted too!

Back onto the bed, this time with no monitors strapped to me and I was on my hands and knees this time to-kind of draped over the back of the bed. It was better than sitting. That’s when I hit transition.
Oh my god I’ve never felt such completely overwhelming pain. I screamed and screamed and cried and screamed some more…took deep breaths and continued screaming. I have no idea what I said for the most part. I do know that I was sooooooo happy to hear I was in transition because I knew that it wouldn’t or couldn’t last long.

One thing I was aware of later is that my brain seemed to split into two different levels of consciousness. One was attached to my mouth most of the time and just responded to whatever happened around me or to me or through me. That was the part of me that screamed and screamed and cried and kept saying she couldn’t do it. It wasn’t the real me. The real me kept telling myself deep, deep inside that if I could just get to the top of the mountain, I’d have my baby. I was concentrating so hard on that that I can’t really tell you who was in the room, where they were standing or any of that. I remember the nurse with the good smelling hands telling me to push (She actually told me to poop!) and I remember screaming that I couldn’t while I was pushing with all of my might. I pushed for 28 min and then the baby was crowning, which I didn’t even know until I heard Ruth (my MIL) say that she could see her eyes. At which point, pushing through the pain was something I realized I could actually do…and so…I did.

What a relief!! Nothing compares to the warm feeling of completion when you push that baby out! It was incredible. All of the sudden I was wide awake and back to being one person instead of two. The first thing I said was, “Oh my God, Mom, I can’t believe I did it!”
Then I turned over and was handed my perfect little girl. She was covered in vernix and totally quiet. Her eyes were wide open and she was just looking at me. Then, Paul cut the cord while the NURSE took pictures for us! In fact, half the pics I have were taken by her. God, I wish I could remember her name. I could seriously hug them all!!

So, that is the story, basically. I was in labor for about six hours. I tore a little and had to be stitched up and I was totally undignified throughout the entire thing. But I survived a pitocin induced labor with no pain meds whatsoever and have a perfect little girl to show for it, so I can’t feel too badly about it. She came into the world weighing in at 6lbs 6.8oz and 20” long. She has hair!! We are so happy. I can’t even begin to tell you how happy I am. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat…just not tomorrow!
I am so incredibly grateful to the people who were there with me. Everyone in the room made my birth experience the most wonderful thing in my life. I may have remembered some details wrong or left out some stuff, but truly, these memories as I see them will always be cherished in my heart.