Where was I? Oh yes ... the tub.
Eventually, the water cooled off, and they moved me to a bed in the tub room. I labored there for awhile, leaning on the raised head of the bed as I had on the wall of the tub. I was deep in my dark work space, and became increasingly angry when people messed with me. The nurses kept taking my blood pressure while I was in the tub, and now they weren't even waiting for a contraction to end before taking my vitals while I labored on the bed. The squeeze of the blood pressure cuff during a contraction totally threw me off of my rhythm, making it hard to concentrate on my coping mechanisms. (I had the opportunity to fill out a post-birth survey and wrote a long rant on the form about how invasive and annoying this was.) The nurses even had the nerve (the nerve!) to have conversations in the room, and I remember snapping at one of them to stop talking. I know now that the shift change was coming up and they were telling the Mister and our doula that they wanted to get me back to my room if I wasn't going to get back in the tub. I remember the new nurse and on-call OB coming to introduce themselves to me, but I was too far gone to even make eye contact, much less say hello.
It was dark outside by this time, and I couldn't stand the idea of getting back in the tub -- by the time I'd climbed out, my fingers were turning into prunes, the giant tub had become too small and confining, and the water wasn't making me happy. But I also couldn't imagine how I could possibly get back to my room. The contractions were coming too hard and fast, and there was no way I could emerge long enough from my cave to walk. I managed to communicate this to the Mister, using just a few words, tone of voice, and a glare. He then acted as my interpreter to the rest of the room. Our doula called for a wheelchair. They wrapped me in towels, then we waited until the end of a nasty contraction and helped me clamber into the chair. It was incredibly uncomfortable, and I could feel another contraction rising up. I couldn't face the lights or the faces at the nurse's station in the hallway, so I covered my face as they ran me (and my good buddy Stanley the IV trolley) down the hall and back to our room. Thankfully, it was a quick enough trip that the next contraction didn't hit until we reached our room, because the noises I was making would have echoed down the hall. (It occurred to me that the L&D rooms must be heavily soundproofed. Wonder if that's true?)
Back in our room, mysterious hands (nurses? the Mister? our doula? I wasn't looking and didn't really care) helped me up in the bed, where I again knelt facing the raised head of the bed, gripping it as each wave came in. The Mister continued placing a heated bean bag on my back, giving me sips of water mixed with Gator*ade between contractions, and oh yes -- handing me tissues. I guess I forgot to mention until now that I was laboring with The Snotty Cold From Hell. I must have blown my nose at least once per contraction, sometimes twice, which just further annoyed the hell out of me. Ugh.
It felt like I was only on the bed a little while, but the Mister assures me it was at least another hour. The room cleared out and somehow it was just the two of us when I turned to him and said the most words I'd managed in awhile: "You'd better get someone in here. I feel like I want to push." The room filled back up with blue-suited medical people. Someone checked my cervix - ouch ouch ouch bloody hell OUCH. But I was 8cm dilated! How had that happened so quickly? Ah, the funny things time was doing ...
They moved me and Stanley to the bathroom and sat me on the toilet. Our doula told me that I was in transition, and that this would be the hardest but shortest part of my labor. (I remember thinking "Transition ... transition ... I know it's an important stage and towards the end, but what happens during transition?" It was like I'd forgotten to study for that part of the exam.) Oddly, I enjoyed transition a lot more than the earlier labor. I wanted to push and they were fine with that, so I didn't hold back. The contractions at this point were strangely intense. It really felt like something momentous was happening, which was so much better than the hours and hours of sick-feeling surges. The Mister took the brunt of the pain during this period as he knelt on the floor and let me use his arms for support and leverage as I strained and roared. I really thought I was only there for 15 minutes or so, but I've since been told it was at least an hour. I vaguely recall someone checking my cervix and saying there was just a little lip left. It was time to push for real.
When they moved me back to the bed, the room had been transformed into a birthing space. The foot of the bed stepped down like a staircase, the heating lamps were on over the infant bed, and the room was brimming with carts full of medical equipment, blue tarps, bowls, and a lot of other whatnot that I barely glanced at with my peripheral vision. I was still focused primarily on getting through the contractions, and the urge to push had become very strong.
By this time, the strangest thing was happening. I could actually feel the baby twisting and turning her way through the birth canal. I'd push during a contraction and it would be horrible and uncomfortable and then -- ah! -- I felt her head reach the next station and I could relax. And then the same thing would happen with the next contraction. It was at this point that I really began to bond with the baby as I admired her ability to corkscrew her way through my pelvis. How did nature let her know how to do that?? And how completely bizarre was it that there was a human head traversing its way through my pelvic structure?!
They had added a birthing bar to the bed, and I squatted on the edge of the bed's top "step" and pulled on that damn bar for all I was worth. (In hindsight, I think they should advise birthing women to do lots of pull-ups during pregnancy if there's any chance there will be a bar involved at the birth. Just saying.) Pushing was a bitch, I won't lie. It felt like I was trying to pass the biggest poo in the history of the universe, and every position was uncomfortable. I could feel the baby in the birth canal and no matter how I moved, I was sure I was sitting on her head. I was almost out of steam, and several times thought to myself "They're just going to have to cut this baby of me. I can't do it anymore." The contractions had slowed down to one every 5 minutes or so, which stretched the time out. All total, I pushed for about 2 hours, and for 1 hour the baby's head was crowning. Yup, I hung out in the dreaded "ring of fire" for a full hour. They had placed a big mirror at the foot of the bed, so I could see the top of her head I and eventually I was able to reach down and touch it, but getting past that point was more than I could do.
As it turned out, this gave the OB plenty of time to use mineral oil, warm compresses and perineal massage, which I thanked her for when all was said and done. I didn't even get her name until afterward, but she was a patient person and didn't rush me. That was a huge gift, because I needed to take my time. The room was full of people -- god knows who -- and every time I'd start pushing, they'd all lean forward and encourage me to keep going. Then I'd run out of energy and they'd all slump back or sit down. The room would be completely silent while I caught my breath and we all waited for the next surge to come.
I had lost the strength in my arms and could no longer hang on the birthing bar. Instead, I reclined back in the raised bed, with my feet braced against the bar, gripping the handles where the ends of the bar met the bed. My legs were shaking with hormones and exhaustion and it was hard to keep the traction going. Suddenly, at the very end of a particularly difficult push, I felt something snap in my chest. I gasped and clutched at my sternum. "Something very bad just happened!" I cried. I was afraid that it was my heart or something equally deadly, but what it really felt like was that my sternum had just cracked down the middle. The medical people were obviously concerned, but after some questioning, they decided I wasn't in imminent danger, and that the most important thing was to get the baby out ASAP. They let me catch my breath, and then ordered me to keep pushing. I realized I had no choice and, still terrified, got back to work.**
The OB coached me to stop vocalizing and move that energy into pushing. It was hard to switch gears from what I'd been doing all day, but once I did, I was able to make more progress. Finally, I heard the Mister say that he could almost see the baby's face. And it was that word "face" that made think "Right, this is a baby with a face, and it's time to get her out!" About that time, they finally removed the girdle! Woo-hoo! I pushed as hard as I could, and this time, when I reached that familiar "I can't do this anymore" place, I didn't stop. The room erupted in cheers as the baby's head popped out. The OB suctioned her quickly, and then the rest of her body slid out easily. I think she was screaming before she was fully out in the air. "It's a baby!" I rejoiced in surprise, as they lay her on my chest. And then "Oh my god, I feel SO much better!" She was still yelling when she reached my arms, mad as hell to be pushed from her warm uterine home, a slippery bundle of purple wrinkled skin, covered in blood and sticky white vernix, and absolutely perfect.
Per our birth plan, we had lots of time to bond. We waited until the cord stopped pulsing before the Mister cut it. The OB delivered the placenta and gave me two small stitches. They compressed my uterus from the outside and dumped a final full bag of Pitocin into me to help stop the bleeding. At last, I would be free of Stanley! Our doula helped me start breastfeeding, and the baby latched on right away. We called our parents, and then relaxed as the medical staff took care of cleaning up the mess and getting me and the baby ready to move. The Mister helped with her first bath and I lounged around like a lady of leisure. Our little girl was born at 10:36 and we didn't get settled into our room upstairs until about 1am, but I was grinning the whole time.
I was fine, the baby was fine. After 46 years, 3 IUIs, 2 IVFs, two chemical pregnancies, one 11-week miscarriage, one last-minute adoption, 3 years of sleep deprivation, two generous donor families, one failed FET, one little heartbeat, 39 weeks of nervousness, one external version, a 3-day induction (two doses of Misoprostol, one Foley catheter, umpteen bags of Pitocin), one mysterious mid-birth chest injury, and not one single pain medication, we had a 6-pound 13-ounce daughter, 19-1/2 inches long, who scored a perfect 10 on the Apgar scale, "and we never give 10s!"
Was I a proud mama? You betcha.
**[We never did figure out what happened to my chest. The doctors' best guess is that, due to the amount of relaxin in my body peaking during labor and the strain of pulling on the birth bar, I either popped out a rib or tore a ligament. Either way, the pain of that injury completely overshadowed and out-lasted all of my other post-partum discomforts. I went through a 12-hour labor with no pain meds, but had to take Vicodin for my labor-related chest injury. Go figure.]
