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The Birth of My First Baby, Halloween 2000
The Night Before
I was having a lot of Braxton-Hicks contractions, so I decided to have a big glass of water and go to bed early, since that usually calmed them down. It was about 9 p.m. when I left my husband in the living room and headed to bed.
I woke up after midnight with what felt like mild menstrual cramps. Since I was scheduled to leave the Purdue campus at 7 a.m. for a 3-hour day trip, I decided to time the cramps and see if there was any regularity. There was. I clocked them at just about 10 minutes apart until I fell asleep at 2:30. I remember asking my husband when he came to bed if he’d like to have a baby today. He smiled and hugged me, but I don’t think either one of us thought I was serious.
That Morning
Before I slept I’d decided that if the cramps were gone when I woke up, I’d go on the day trip; if they were “worse,” I wouldn’t. When I woke around 5 a.m. on Halloween morning, they were exactly the same. I decided not to risk being that far away in a vanload of people, so I put on comfy clothes and drove to work in the dark.
When I arrived in the parking lot outside my building, I explained to my colleagues that I was having “what might be contractions but probably weren’t” and had decided not to travel with them. I handed over my laptop, speakers, and projector, and wished them luck. My student had to do the presentation, but she is great. (Two years later, when my second son was born, my department hired her to fill in for me while I was on maternity leave!) They all wished me luck and made me promise to give them any news. I stayed at work and got an amazing amount done because I had no meetings scheduled and had a great burst of energy (hmmm…labor?).
All day I had those mild, crampy contractions – I was now thinking of them as contractions – but I didn’t notice them getting more frequent. In fact, in my distraction of work, I didn’t notice them being as regular as before. I did call our doula, though, to check in and tell her about what was happening. I was excited, but still skeptical that this could be “it.” She asked if there was any bloody show – nada. She changed her plans to go out of town for the day, told me to try to nap, to keep eating, and to keep her posted.
Noon
I was tired at noon and the contractions hadn’t stopped, so I wrapped up and got ready to leave the office. In the hallway at about 1:30 p.m., as I was telling my secretary bye, I had to stop and “listen to” a contraction. I wouldn’t say that it really hurt, but it did get my attention. I began to let myself believe that this might be the real deal. In that frame of mind, I left and ran some before-the-baby comes errands. I arrived home an hour later and realized I’d had 7 of those stronger contractions during the hour.
4:00 p.m.
It was a warm autumn day, so I sat in the front yard in a big chair with the telephone, a glass of water, a novel that I never read, and my watch. My little dog watched hopefully for some chipmunks and ignored me. The contractions were about 5 minutes apart now, so I called my husband and said to come on home.
When he got home, he called our doula who told him to make some food and make me eat it, and she asked if I could talk through my contractions. He answered “yes” as he got out a pan and made me pasta. I think the doula asked him to call her back in an hour, but I’m not sure because I was distracted, almost immediately progressing to not being able to talk through contractions, now about 4 minutes apart.
Our doctor had said to come to the hospital when contractions were 4 minutes apart. But our plan was to labor at home with our doula for as long as possible, so my husband hedged a little by telling the hospital and telling them the contractions were 5 minutes apart. They said to come on in anyway.
I took a shower.
Our doula arrived at our house. I breathed and swayed and “Ohhhhh’d” through a contraction (I was really telling my cervix OhhhPEN on each one), and I remember her telling me how well I was doing. We felt it was time to go to the hospital, so we left in two cars. The trip was bumpy. Not able to stand and sway/rock, which really seemed to help during contractions, I took full advantage of the benefits of moaning with gusto.
6:00 p.m.
We arrived at the hospital and I was checked in by a large lady completely unaffected by my condition. A very tall, sweet man in a red blazer wheeled me all around the hospital to the patient elevators, and guess who was there when the doors opened? My doctor! He grinned and told us he’d see us in a few minutes.
I was delivered to a labor and delivery room, one of two in a suite sharing a shower between and nurse’s desk outside. The first thing that happened was that a nurse told me to get on the bed to have a fetal monitor strapped to my belly. I didn’t want to because I preferred intermittent monitoring so I could move around. Our doula pointed out that I had a birth plan. The (grumpy old) nurse rolled her eyes, and I thought “Oh God, here it is.” But I agreed to the monitor to establish a baseline heart rate for the baby if they agreed to take it off afterward, which she did.
During all this the nurse examined me and said a bit scoffingly “fingertip’s width” meaning that I was only a couple of centimeters dilated and pretty much a wimp. A possible eternity away from delivery! Ick. I felt disappointed, but at least I knew I was definitely in labor now. My doula said we could go back home right now and do this labor right and in comfort as we had planned. Our doctor agreed that it could be a long time yet, and that if we wanted we could certainly head home. They hadn’t even checked me in to the labor ward yet anyway. (I was thinking “But, we’d have to re-drive that bumpy Division Road again – twice.”) I trusted my doula, but I also felt a huge need to get settled and get down to work. So we decided to stay, to tough out the rest of our labor in the potentially “interventive” hospital. Somehow, I felt it would be fine.
The nurse shift changed almost immediately and the grumpy nurse was replaced by a cheerful one. She never got my blood pressure taken because the cuff was broken or too big for my arm or something. The nurse told me to put on a hospital gown, but I replied that I’d brought my very own oversized, button up the front, Wal-Mart flannel shirt to deliver in. She said I’d get it ruined, and I said I fine. She left us alone again to labor.
My husband and I walked along the halls and to the cafeteria. I had contraction there and hung onto him with abandon and then felt embarrassed that two older ladies were sharing their snacks with my moaning and very private work. We walked to the breezeway between Home Hospital and the Women’s Clinic, and I noticed how black the sky was and how pretty the lights looked. Then I had more contractions and wanted to get the heck back to my room.
7:00 p.m.
Our doula had turned the lights way down low in the room, and it was perfect. I remember laboring on the birth ball while leaning over the foot of the bed. I remember her suggesting and then helping me and my husband into a spooning position (my favorite place in world) in the small bed.
I also remember my husband eating crackers behind my back as we spooned. Crinkle-crinkle-crinkle, crunch-crunch-crunch, gulp, swallow (repeat). He was very concerned that he was bothering me, but he didn’t at all.
9:00 p.m.
Then our doula gave me spoonfuls of honey. And she asked me so firmly to please eat a cracker, too. God, how I did not want that cracker. I hated that cracker. But I took it into my parched mouth and tried to chew it and just then I felt a contraction coming and knew I was going to have to pant and just might inhale all those crumbs. So then I spit the cracker into my husband’s hand and we both tried to scrape the darned thing off my tongue and into a little pile on the floor. Later, we decided that must’ve been a “transition cracker” but we didn’t realize it at the time.
And then I (we) remember:
…labor in the bathroom on the way to the shower (which we never made it to). The bloody show was actually encouraging to me,
…my water breaking as I walked back from the bathroom and he and our doula leaping away from me in unison.
…stripping off my special, flannel delivery shirt because I was hot, hot, hot.
…the nurse examining me finally (for only the second time) and saying with conviction, “fully dilated and ready to push, get her doctor here!” and then to our doctor when he arrived in his jeans and sweatshirt “get your gloves on now!”
…beginning to push… My husband remembers a peace about reaching this point and a calmness as this began. I remember that nothing hurt at all any more. I cracked a few jokes.
… standing naked on top of the bed with my husband holding me on my left and our doula on my right and squatting like I’d been envisioning to push the baby out like the Bolivian women on that videotape I watched.
…Our doctor leaning back with his leg crossed at the knees saying “Good, good, that’s it; you’ll be done in a couple of pushes,” and me feeling performance anxiety and no longer such an intense need to push after all, so how ‘bout we just hang for a while?
…craning down to look at my baby’s face while his body was still inside mine and seeing his eyes open and him look slowly around like “Wow” or “Whoa.”
10:10 p.m. – Baby is Here!
…My husband saying 10 fingers, 10 toes, 1 penis “It’s a boy!”
…Our doula putting the baby to my breast and helping me learn to nurse him.
…the nurse finally checking me in and giving me and the baby hospital bracelets.
…and recognizing at the time the permission to be completely focused on this. There was absolutely nothing else that mattered right then – nothing. It was “flow” being wholly, deliberately in the moment, and it was delicious. I also dug the attention because it was all about me doing this work and having beautiful people support me in it.
…and I remember not being able to be quiet! At some point I realized I was still the loudest thing in the room, although I had progressed from moans to words. Our doctor and the nurses were quietly going about their business of checking the placenta, weighing the baby, talking with my husband about where to put the baby’s footprints in our baby book, while our doula sat beside me and listened and laughed at me and made loving yap-yap signs behind my back, but how could I contain my joy and please don’t ask me to because look at what we just did! I swear to God I didn’t feel anything close to the pain you should feel in order to get something that beautiful. I already loved him with all my heart. So things kept pouring out of me – cheers and didja-see-whens and many silent Amens and promises, too. I will always remember the electric sweetness of that moment, when I knew exactly who I was and how good I was because of the power of our tiny new son.
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