one year old

(Warning long, detailed post--only for the truly curious)

Dear Sweet Levi,
You are one year old today. In was a year and a night ago that I was going into über-nesting mode, madly preparing for your arrival. I promised myself I would write you your birth story, so here it goes…

Despite the strong contractions I had been feeling for weeks, including some take-my-breath-away-stop-dead-in-my-tracks cramping that warranted a trip to the midwife a month before your scheduled due date (I was 2.5 cm dilated already!**), I was not so certain the night I went into labor, that it was the real deal. I suppose in hindsight it was my behavior, not yours in utero, that tipped me off.

After a day of some heavy weeding/ yard work in our new home that night I was feeling tired, but oddly alert. It was Sunday, May 31st. I had worked right up until the Friday and was looking forward to a week to myself to get organized, celebrate Zack’s birthday, and hope that you would come a day after your due date, so I would not have to share my birthday. As it was I had this nagging feeling like all the sterilization and washing I needed to do to prepare for my homebirth could not wait another day—no, not even another hour. I was futzing around the house, and every once in a while would pause to accommodate some crampiness and look straight at Zack working on the couch. After one in particular, I said to Zack, “I don’t know honey, I think this guy might come tonight.” To which he replied with nothing and promptly buried his head in his computer, feverishly trying to finish writing his students’ final exam in the event I actually would go into labor. I continued about my preparations, setting up my birthing space, organizing supplies, running hot loads of laundry. This early period was marked with confusion for me. After all, I had been through this before with Micah. Surely I would know when labor was upon me…and yet, I couldn’t be too sure. It was about 9:30pm and I thought there was a pattern to the contractions, but maybe not? Eventually I just decided that I had better follow the books advice and just get to sleep, admonishing Zack to not stay up too late—I might need him later. It must have been about 10:30 at night when I finally settled down for the night.

It was the middle of the night. I awoke with some more contractions and some more indecision. Do I call the midwife? Do I wake Zack? Perhaps it would be better if we all just slept? But I couldn’t sleep. I also knew it was very important that I start an IV of antibiotics early in labor to ensure I got in the recommended two doses for a laboring mother who is beta-strep positive. That was the clincher that sent me dialing Sue’s phone number at 2am, wincing with each telephone ring. She answered sounding more awake than I had anticipated. “I know it is ridiculous, but I’m still just not sure if this is it…but I know I’m supposed to have the IV.” We settled on just Sue—not the whole birthing gang—coming over to the house. She said she would be there by 3am.

Zack was awake now, but I told him to go back to sleep. One of us may as well have gotten some sleep, I reasoned. I tiptoed out to the living room and rested on the sofa, on which I type now, within ear shot of the street and an arriving car. I kept the lights soft and low and just waited. Holding my belly and aware of the sensations in my body. I was calm and quiet.
Sue tapped at the front door and gently pushed it open. We whispered hello and she came to sit by my side on the sofa. She made sure I was comfortable and then went to the kitchen to whip up some antibiotics and an IV. We decided given how relatively gentle the contractions were, she would get the loading does in and head home. Yet another prick in my arm, only instead of the white sterile lab room, it was in the comfort of my home, and the IV was jerry-rigged hanging from a clothes hanger hooked onto the curtain rod above my head. I sat crossed-legged on my sofa, in my jammies, breathing into my body. But my breathing was getting harder, matching the contractions washing over my body. And it was over the course of the IV treatment that Sue opted to stay by my side. My labor had shifted and become decidedly harder.

This time on the sofa was strange. The fact that I was sans glasses or contact lenses only added to the strangeness of it all. I would feel a contraction come on and the pain—yes pain (not surge)—would start warm and low, deep inside and just spread. At the height of the contraction I would feel a deep pain in my lower back and it was bittersweet—bitter because of the discomfort, sweet because that was my cue that the contraction was almost over. I even commented on the sensations out loud in wonderment, “It is just so, so…strange.”
I was able to ride these waves for some time, practicing my yogic breathing and reminding myself to, “feel the rest between the effort.” This was my mantra in the early hours of labor, in the wee hours of the morning. I was haunted a bit by the memories of Micah’s hard and fast labor and feeling so out of control with the pain and saying, “There is no rest, there is no rest. They’re one on top of the other.” It was the lament of a first-time laborer and someone who could simply not relax enough to allow her body to feel the mildly perceptible rest in between contractions. “Mildly perceptible” characterizes the awareness I brought to this early labor period. As the contraction wore off I would recognize the slight improvement in pain from the peak and remind myself that the rest had begun, just as you do when you are coming out of a challenging yoga pose, but not all the way out and in the restorative child’s pose yet. The psychological rest could begin…and I let it.

In my myopic state in the soft light of our yellow living room, I remember tripping out on all the rectangles. I was practicing my sensing exercises to cope with the pain. Sight revealed rectangle after rectangle: the picture frames; the bricks; book spines on the book shelves; the long, oak floor boards, stretching across the room. Then there were the sounds. Were those birds beginning to chirp, or was it still too early? There was the feel of the soft sofa cushions beneath me, the taste of diluted EmergencyC on my tongue. Zack is now awake and by my side. He tells me I am the picture of calm. He is so impressed with me. It gives me confidence and makes me feel good. It hurts. It is hard. But I can do this. I am doing this. I am calm—in discomfort—but calm. This is in total contrast from my first labor and it gives me strength. Nothing like a frame of reference. In between recording details of my labor and the fetal monitor readings, Sue is reminding me that I can do this. “Breathing to match the intensity of the contraction,” she says.
But it is also getting harder to maintain the aura of calm about me. On one particular contraction my body begins to squirm, trying to escape the pain. I am getting up onto all fours, off of my seat and pushing away from the cushions beneath me, writhing, squirming. It hurts.

Reinforcements have arrived. Davey, the midwives’ assistant holds my hands—or I instinctually grabbed them—during another contraction. I hold onto both hands, bracing myself—trying to breathe. The going is getting tough—and it is time for the tough to get going… to the back. We decide that a hot bath might do me some good. But just as we are making ready to tromp into the misty morning out to the birthing room/ AKA “the cottage”/ AKA the garage out back, I hear Zack say, “Micah, guess what. It is a very special day. Today you get to meet your baby brother…Mama is having our baby.” I remember seeing the fuzzy form of my first born, my big boy Micah, come into focus as he rounds the corner from his room into the living room, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and pondering the two women whom he knows from our monthly appointments, in our living room. I am amazed I didn’t hear him stir in his room before that moment.

The bath water is deep and hot. It enveloped my body and brings some mild, but needed relief. I float, with my huge belly protruding like an enormous island from the water’s surface. Sips of cold liquid are brought to my lips from a straw. Even Micah offers me a sip from his water glass, mimicking those around me. Sweet boy. He strokes my forehead, just like his daddy does. Sometimes he is with me, sometimes he says, “I don’t want to be here right now” during a particularly hard (and vocal) contraction I am experiencing. I do not worry about Micah. I am too focused inward.

While I am in the bath the midwife checks me. Kind words about how far I’ve come; how great I’m doing…but no mention of how many centimeters. I cut to the chase, “But I’m not fully dilated.” I do my best to process that disappointment and take it in stride. Stay positive. Dawn is there. She is speaking in a reassuring, but deeper, more serious tone. I get back to business and try to push my disappointment aside.

Time is a blur. At some points Zack is there, stroking my head. Other times it is me and the women. Davey dances with me in the bathroom. The pain is intense and low, so very low. I am rocking holding onto the sides of the pedestal sink and just swaying my hips from side to side. I want to escape the pain. I grab Davey’s forearms and clasp them searching her eyes, “It hurts so badly.” “I know” she says. I just want them all to validate my pain. To assure me that what I am experiencing is the worst physical pain imaginable—the worst pain any human has ever known and I alone am carrying it. That I should receive some sort of award for enduring this onslaught to my body. It was during one of these squirmy dances that I realized I could not escape it; that I had to take a leap of faith to bring you into this world; that I actually had to go into the heart of the pain, not dance away from it. On the next contraction, with fear in my heart I visualized the center of the pain—it was black and deep and never-ending in my mind’s eye, but I went there nonetheless. It was intense. I don’t really have the words to explain.
I come out of my insular world for a moment and catch Micah’s eye, watching warily from the next room. “Mama is okay, Micah.” I say, referring to myself in the third person as I often do with him (why is that?) “It is just hard work, but Mama is okay.” He settles back into the story being read to him by the other midwife Dawn. I can hear Dawn suggest they have a birthday picnic for his baby brother—for you, Levi. I smile at that. At least I think about smiling about that. I don’t think I was capable of smiling at that point.

I begin heaving and throwing up. I know this is normal; part of the intensity of labor, but it is disconcerting nonetheless. I am a child again. The sick familiarity of your body chocking up bile and that taste in your mouth that one associates with tearful, scary nights as a sick child. They try to give me more fluids, but I spit it all up. They wash the sick up off of me, but as I cannot very well bathe in my own vomit, I am helped out of the bath and onto the bed. The midwives suggest I try lying on my left side (as I was further dilated on one side and not the other). I am extremely uncomfortable. Zack says I look like Cleopatra. I don’t feel like a queen. It is 6:45 in the morning.

Why has my water not broken? I begin to wonder. I get it fixed in my head that if only my water would break it would all be over that much sooner. In fact I am getting impatient. This is my second baby. This is meant to be easier. Why is this not over yet? I ask to have my membranes ruptured. I’m not proud of asking for this. I had AROM with Micah and had always hoped of experiencing the natural gush of my bag of waters breaking naturally but cannot wait. I am counseled against it. “Remember, you are beta-strep positive. That sac is protecting your baby.” I need no further convincing and resign myself to more of the same. But I still want it to be over.

It is 7:35 in the morning. Sue informs me it is time for my second IV. She tells me to remain still so she can poke me again. Is she kidding?! Remain still? You have got to be f*cking joking. The next contractions were excruciating. I was straddling the toilet trying to be still when a contraction would come on—I was deep in the throes of labor and my body was screaming to move. I remember half rising up off the toilet, desperate to move; holding my arm straight out so Sue would have a clean shot of my elbow pit but itching to squirm. The needle stung. The contractions were intense and low. You were getting lower Levi, so very low, and it was that hauntingly familiar sensation deep within my bowels. I think I yelled at the midwife to hurry up. I really didn’t think I could manage this much longer. I was absolutely aching with the need to move and for the pain to subside. The contraction peaked and I let out another low, deep moan.

The midwives give in to my pleas to rapture my membranes. We move to the bed. Warm liquid rushes between my legs. The next contraction blew me away. My immediate thought was, “Omigod what have I done!” Which I must have vocalized because the midwives were quick to remind me that is what I wanted and that it is okay, it is just the baby’s head putting pressure on my cervix without the cushion of a sack of water. Ok? I want the cushion back, but have to resign myself to the choice I made and the very real, very intense, very perceptible pain I am feeling. It stings. It really stings. I am on all fours squirming away from the pain again. I have no capacity left to imagine going any deeper into the pain. I don’t want to visualize it; I just want to get away from it. The baby is so low, I cannot sit. “Get ooouuuut.” I moan in a deep voice, “Just get oooouuuttt.” This is my new mantra at this intense stage of labor. It is 7:50pm.
I desperately grab for helping hands. I cannot bear being on the bed any longer and want the soothing waters. Panicked I grab at arms that hoist my body off the bed. Time seems never-ending and yet my chart says I feel the urge to push just seven minutes later. I’m in the bath once again. I am squatting; grunting with the pain. Everyone is so encouraged when I say I want to push and tell me to go for it. I wait for the next contraction and bear down. I do this again but pretty quickly I start to give up. Why is this harder then I remember? Why do I not feel the exhilaration I did with Micah’s birth. Why can I not visualize the 200 repeats and get into a groove and instead feel like a stalled car. “This isn’t working…It doesn’t feel right.”
The midwife checks me. It seems I have just a bit of cervix left on one side. On the next contraction the midwife actually pushes the lip away with her fingers (sweet baby Jesus the pain!), but it works. She tells me to reach inside and feel my baby—I can’t. I am confused and all I want is the baby to be out. I lie in the bath and with each contraction push—but I feel ineffectual, out of sync. Sue suggests I labor out of the bath; the water may be masking my contractions and hindering my ability to work with them and my body. Desperate for it to be over I accept the helping arms out of the water and make my way back to the bed. I resume pushing with a new found conviction. Zack is there. Micah is there. Both midwives are there and Davey the assistant. Everyone is encouraging me and yet I feel all alone. I feel maxed out and short of breath. I cannot seem to push as long as I want and yet just when I feel I need to take in another breath, I find another reserve to sustain the push longer. The sting of your crowning head comes and I almost welcome the pain because I know this means you are really close. Just one more push and you are on my belly.

Relief. Thank God it is over. Honestly that was my first thought. Then I wanted to see you.
You are a complete surprise…totally different from your brother. Jet black hair—a full head of it and this poor purple face. I love you instantly but I am worried. The midwives are not. We let you quietly take in your new world. Your brother and daddy are all smiles. We are a complete family now that you have joined us. I love you and now that you are in my arms it is as if you have always been with us. My love is infinite.




**This caused both a certain panic that you would actually be early—and I would not get my huge report in at work/ cause to lay low and a good excuse to lay off the uphill hiking