Sunday, September 12, 2004

Suburbs of Chicago.

27 years old.

This morning I woke up to the onset of mild contractions. Of course, I wasn’t sure if that was what they were or not. Two or three times before this, I had been convinced I was in labor. I had been convinced I was having contractions. I had been convinced my water had broke. Once, I even went to the hospital and was monitored for a while. But nothing came of it.

This time, though, I was only one day shy of my due date.

And so, when the fairly mild contractions continued throughout the morning, I was again convinced that something was up.

I immediately set about trying to reach my mom on the phone. She had been far from home, visiting her sister in the hospital. Even knowing this, I still had a difficult time tracking her down. Finally, I learned that she was staying at the house of her other sister. I thought this was odd, as it was not a place she usually stayed.

I can’t quite remember how I finally reached her. If I ended up catching her, or if she ended up calling me. Either way, I remember she was crying.

“Aunt Kay died last night,” she told me over the phone.

Oh my God. Aunt Kay had been invincible. And now she was gone.

For some reason, at this point, I was sure my baby would be born soon.

“I think I’m in labor,” I told her. And I remember she thought I was, too.

By the time we hung up, I was convinced.

This afternoon, my husband was thinking of leaving the house for some reason. To help a friend move…to watch a game with a friend…what it was exactly, I can’t remember. I encouraged him to go. Even though I thought I might be in labor, I wanted to be alone. I wanted to think about what was going to happen, if it was going to happen, and what would happen after it happened. I didn’t want to be stressed out. He stressed me out. I couldn’t afford anxiety at that time.

When he left, I asked him to bring me a footlong roasted chicken sandwich from Subway. Because I was so sick during my pregnancy, I hardly ate anything. But this day, I was famished. While I waited for him to come home, I ate two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The contractions continued, but proved to be erratic. I had read that you weren’t supposed to eat much while you were in labor. But, because I didn’t fully trust I was in labor, I ate the entire footlong sandwich my husband brought home, too. I laughed because I thought how hilarious it would be if I had eaten that much when I wasn’t supposed to. Especially when I had hardly eaten anything during the rest of my pregnancy.

But now I know my body was preparing itself for the big job ahead. It would need the energy that food provided.

As the day wore on, I remember requesting that my husband pick up some popsicles for me. I remember eating one while talking on the phone with my sister. I had been trying to reach her all day to tell her about the erratic contractions that had become stronger and more frequent.  She told me that the night before, upon learning of Aunt Kay’s death, she had sat bolt upright in her bed and said, “Lori is going to have that baby now.”

By the time I heard this story, I had already decided to name my baby after my beloved aunt. I had been thinking about it all day. Her middle name was supposed to have been Dianne. Now it was going to be Kathryn. I knew that if my baby had half the spirit my aunt possessed, she would turn out to be a remarkably special girl.

*********************

At around 8pm, we received a fairly strange call from my dad. He was in a different world, still distraught over the loss of his dog a few weeks before. I talked to him for a short while, then put him on the phone with my husband. While I sat on the bed, listening to him console my father, something shocking and obvious happened.

There was no question this time. My water had broke.

Somehow, it did not get all over the bed. I don’t know how this happened. It should have been everywhere. I jumped up and ran into the restroom. For some reason, my husband then handed the phone to me.

“My water broke!” I told my dad. “The baby is coming!”

“Don’t you think you should call your doctor?” He asked.

“Yes!” I replied.

And with that, we hung up and called my doctor. She told me to get to the hospital right away.

At that point, the contractions started coming fast and hard. All of a sudden, they were excruciatingly painful and only two minutes apart. My legs began giving out from under me in response to the extraordinary pain.

On the way to the hospital, my husband tried to drive as slowly as possible. Every tiny bump and turn made me wince in agony. At the same time, I was thrilled. This was the moment I had been waiting for. I was finally going to have my baby.

When we pulled up to the emergency room, my husband pulled the car up as close as he could without violating any parking rules.

“Wait here,” he told me as he ran inside.

Soon, he returned, pushing a wheelchair to my side of the car. Then, he opened the door and helped me get in. As he pushed me inside, I saw the emergency room was full of other people. I nearly died. Oh my God. I couldn’t sit there in that much pain waiting for everyone else to go through admissions.

My panic dissolved, however, when one of the admitting nurses looked over at my husband.

“Sir,” she asked him, “is she going to have her baby now?”

”Yes!” We both replied frantically.

“Then you can take her on up to Labor and Delivery,” she said, waving us toward the elevators. I had never been so relieved in my life.

As we pushed through the doors to Labor and Delivery, I felt a surge of excitement and validation. This was a special time. This was when I was going to have my baby. I had been waiting so long. Almost 40 weeks exactly. And now, she was almost here.

Soon, we were ushered into a private room. It was big and luxurious with a television and couch. The adjoining bathroom had a large spa bathtub. When I saw it, I remembered how I thought it would have been nice to labor in the water for a while.

But, because I was in so much pain, nothing about labor seemed nice. Instead, I felt like screaming and crying. The pain was unbelievable. I felt like I was being stabbed with butcher knives and I was bleeding. At any minute, I was sure I was going to be irrevocably ripped open. I knew that contractions were supposed to hurt, but nobody had said anything about this.

I did not learn until the next day that I was experiencing an especially painful brand of back labor.

For a while they had me in the restroom because of the blood and water situation. The nurse came in and told me to lean forward and push on my husband when a contraction hit. That did not help. I did not want anyone touching me. The misery I experienced was absolutely eyecrossing.

At around 11pm, the decision was made to go ahead and give me an epidural. It was something I had known I would want, even before I went into labor. I had repeatedly joked that I wouldn’t mind getting my epidural months before the baby was due. For good measure, you see.

But at last the time had come.

Let me say at this point that I know there are women who wish to experience natural childbirth for any number of good reasons, and I admire their fortitude.

But I am definitely not one of these women.

I just wanted to have my baby with as little pain as possible.

It was around 11:30pm when they finally administered the epidural. Early in my pregnancy, I had winced at the thought of the needle and wondered how much pain it would cause. That night, the needle was no longer a concern of mine. The pain from the contractions was so horrible I knew nothing could measure up to them.

And nothing did. The epidural was a welcome friend. After it was inserted into my back, they lowered me onto the bed and left me alone with my husband. It was at that point I started calling people and people started calling me.

Everyone wanted to know what was going on. I chatted happily with them. I was going to have my baby. I couldn’t feel a darn thing. Nothing could have been better. I talked until I wasn’t allowed to talk anymore.

That night, my husband slept on the couch. He was really too tall to fit, but tried anyway. I laid awake and watched the History Channel.

I admit that part of me was nervous that my husband might have one of his paranoid fits. That he might get angry and start yelling for no apparent reason. While I knew I could do nothing to stop this, nothing was more upsetting than being awoken by one of his tirades. And so, I sat up keeping a watchful eye on the situation. All night long.

Throughout the night, the nurses rushed in and out. They checked dilation. They attached every tube and gadget they could find. In addition to the regular fare, they added a tube to replenish my waters since my labor had continued so long after they had originally broken. They also had to attach monitors to the head of a feisty Em, who did not enjoy having belts tied around her through my tummy.

And through it all, I was in the best mood possible. The epidural was working a bit too well. The nurses had told me that I should notify them if I started to lose sensation in my chest. But losing sensation in my chest felt so good I let it go until I couldn’t feel my fingertips anymore either. Just a tingly, delicious sensation. Lying in bed, I planned what I would do during birth.

I would, I thought, just take my cues from the charts when to push and then push with all my might. I would never let them know I couldn’t feel it myself. It was a perfect plan, I thought. I had masterminded my own painless birthing experience.

But, because the epidural had been administered so early in the process (I had only been dilated 1 cm at that point) and because it was probably on much too high a level, my progress was significantly stalled.

I did not reach full dilation until noon the next day. Then, they had to wait for the doctor to get there. I told them that I didn’t care if the doctor was there or not, that I would be having this baby in the next few minutes. By that time, they had probably figured out that I couldn’t feel a thing. So, they turned my epidural down. A lot. During the actual birth, I could feel everything. My ingenious plan had backfired significantly.

While waiting for the doctor, my husband decided he needed to get something from the car. What it was, I can’t remember now. What I clearly remember was how I heard him yelling at the nurses in their station outside my door. He was exceedingly angry and it was very scary. I’m sure they had been laughing or something when he returned, and he assumed they were laughing at him. Those were the kinds of things that would incite that kind of behavior.

When he came into my room, he pretended like nothing had happened. I remember crying and begging him to go home. To leave me alone. To let me just do this on my own. But he insisted it was important to see his daughter being born. So, he stayed.

And I was a wreck.

By that time, I hadn’t slept in at least 30 hours.

At 2pm, I finally started pushing. The nurses and other hospital workers immediately flooded the room. They brought in tools that looked official and everything you would need for a baby who was going to arrive very soon.

“We can see her head. She should be here any minute,” they told me. I had only been pushing for 15 minutes at that point.

During that time, I was assisted by a wonderful nurse. She wrapped up a towel and handed me the end of it.

“Grab this,” she told me.

And I did.

“Now, pull!” She commanded.

All of a sudden, I found myself in the midst of a very strange tug-of-war game.

But it worked. During that time, Em made a lot of progress. But she still had not arrived. One hour into the pushing process, there was a shift change and my fabulous nurse left.

Little did I know I would be pushing for another hour and a half.

Finally, after some measures were taken to ease the process, Em was born at 4:20pm on her due date. She weighed 6 lbs., 13 oz. and was 21 inches long.

It was the most amazing moment of my life.