Saturday morning (March 29) I woke up around 7:30 with some bloody show and mild contractions. Joe woke up about an hour later and I let him know what was going on. We both knew it didn’t necessarily mean we were in real labor, but in my gut I was pretty sure we’d be having a baby that weekend. Being the well-educated Bradley Method students that we are, we tried changing activities – eating, showering, walking around – and when the contractions didn’t go away we knew this was the real thing. We spent the morning playing Baldur’s Gate together on our computers. Joe couldn’t tell when I was having contractions unless I said something. Nesting instinct kicked in too – we got the laundry done, dishes done, bathroom clean, things picked up. My parents called in the afternoon and I was still able to talk through everything, but by the end of the phone call it was taking a little more concentration to relax each time.
Around 3 we went for a walk around campus. By this time I was letting Joe know each time a contraction started, and we noticed they were ranging less than 10 (more like 5-7) minutes apart. The walk definitely sped them up a bit. I remember mentioning during our walk that I was really feeling them in my lower back, which I hoped wasn’t going to be bad news. Joe told me not to worry about it then so I didn’t. He started timing and recording the contractions once we got back. We puttered around the house some more, got the laundry put away and packed our bag for the hospital. He kept me well-supplied with water and I felt like I was going to the bathroom every 5 minutes. We tried some of the different positions for relaxation and he coached me through the contractions as they got stronger and closer together. (Joe came to the realization that it’s pretty much impossible to both time contractions and coach at the same time! I think at some point he decided coaching was more important.) At some point the back pain was getting uncomfortable enough that I decided to try pelvic rocking to ease it (which I had had to do every night during pregnancy). That worked until another contraction hit and I realized that it is impossible to completely relax during contractions while on hands and knees.
By 8pm my contractions had been about 2½ minutes apart for over an hour, so we decided to call the doctor. Our goal had been to labor at home as long as possible, and the best we could tell from following along in our Bradley Method book (which has a handy chart describing some of the things to expect at different stages of labor) we figured we were in pretty good shape to head in. Joe called both sets of parents to let them know we were going in, and optimistically told my dad he thought we’d have a baby in a couple of hours. We got to the hospital around 9pm. Joe’s parents met us there to pick up the car so Joe could stay with me and not have to worry about parking it. Contractions slowed down in the car and as we got settled in, probably due to the stress of traveling and nervousness about being at the hospital. I was hooked up to a monitor when we got there, which I expected, but they left it on for more like an hour rather the 20 minutes we expected. Joe had to call the nurse in to take it off so I could use the bathroom and we could try walking and moving around to keep things going. It turned out (as I recall) that they wanted the monitor on for 20 minutes out of every hour, instead of just 20 minutes at first. So between that and the fact that they wouldn’t come in to remove it unless we called them, I ended up being on the monitor for most of the time. We stood our ground on the IV though, I did not want one unless it was actually needed, and “you might get dehydrated” was not a good enough reason. We were both very committed to having a drug-free birth. We’d come bearing bottles of water and Joe was very good about making sure I was drinking. “IF she gets dehydrated, THEN we can do an IV, but for now she’s staying hydrated on fluids.” I did compromise and let them put in a hep lock (starter IV in a vein but not hooked to anything) since they said they needed to draw blood anyway. Joe said later that he was afraid we were giving in too easily by allowing that, but it worked out. Overall he was not really impressed with the night staff (honestly, I was too tired and busy to care much), especially when, after the hep lock was in place, the nurse wheeled in an IV pole with a bag of Pitocin hanging on it, and left it by my bed. But after that, he says he’s pretty sure they forgot about us, because we just did our thing, quietly, and didn’t ask for anything, except occasionally to get the monitors off.
After our arrival at the hospital, I pretty much lose all sense of time. I was first checked at 11:15pm and was 4cm dilated, which I have to admit was a little disappointing, but I got over it. By 1:30am I was up to 6cm. (Joe says he thinks this is when the nurses started to take us seriously – he thinks they were surprised to see I’d progressed because I wasn’t making any noise. Someone down the hall was making a LOT of noise, by comparison.) Most of the night is really a blur. Joe coached me through contractions, rubbed my back, made sure I kept drinking water, and got me to the bathroom as needed. I rested the best I could between contractions. We walked around a little, bounced on the birthing ball, did some swaying together, tried different positions in the bed. Joe was keeping an eye on the chart in our Bradley workbook which he’d brought along, trying to determine whether I was in late first stage or transition. I think, looking back on it, we guessed I was probably bouncing back and forth between the two for the whole night. I remember feeling nauseated a lot of the time and throwing up twice (hours apart) which are supposedly indicators of transition. The frustrating part was, transition isn’t supposed to last very long, but I didn’t seem to be coming out of it. Joe kept trying to reassure me that it would all be over really soon, but as the hours ticked by, even he was starting to sound more frustrated than reassuring.
Sometime around 3:30 or 4am, I measured at 8cm. By 6am I was still at 8, and the contractions were starting to slow down. The midwife wanted to break my water to see if that would help things along. She had mentioned breaking my water a few times earlier in the night and we had declined the intervention, but now it seemed prudent to go ahead with it. Shortly after that, shifts changed and one of the doctors from my practice came in (the overnight doc was no one we knew) along with some new nurses. Joe and I had been unsure of Dr. Lauria when I’d had prenatal appointments with him because although nice he seemed a little TOO laid back, but it turned out to be a good quality as he was willing to let us keep going for the birth we wanted without pushing unnecessary interventions on us. I was continuing to fluctuate between hard labor and transition as the morning wore on, with the contractions still spaced a little too far apart (though I can’t tell you how far) and at some point Dr. Lauria mentioned that we might want to think about adding Pitocin to get the contractions a little stronger and closer, and encourage the last 2cm of dilation. Joe asked for another hour to think it over, and called our Bradley instructor Brigitte for some advice. She told us to try walking, pelvic rocking, and squatting, letting gravity help the baby down. We paced back and forth and tried the birth ball again (I was exhausted by this point, too tired to do actual squats). At noon I was still at 8cm (if you’re counting, I’d been at 8cm for 8 hours by then). The doctor brought up Pitocin again and explained that we should try kicking up the contractions and see if that would make my cervix progress the last little bit. The other possibility, he said, was that the baby just might be too big to fit through my pelvis, but we wouldn’t know that unless we got the contractions going to do their job. The way he said it made logical sense to both of us, but I was pretty nervous about it – I knew that adding Pitocin was going to make the contractions harder to deal with, and they were already pretty tough. I agreed that we needed to try it though, and the nurse reassured me that I’d be on a really low dose, “just a whiff” as she called it to get things moving. So the hep lock that was already in my arm ended up being used after all as they started the drip.
Sometime after the Pitocin was started, Joe and/or I mentioned that I’d been feeling the contractions in my lower back the whole time. Not sure why this hadn’t come out before, I guess we hadn’t really thought to mention it and figured if it was really important that someone would have asked. A midwife (different from the night shift midwife who broke my water) came in and felt around my belly a bit, and determined that the baby was in occiput posterior (sunny-side up) position. Well, that might help to explain why I wasn’t dilating. She had me turn onto my right side to try and get the baby to rotate, and did some pushing on my belly and back to help it along. Added to this, the Pitocin had the contractions feeling like they were one on top of the other, and even when one would “end” the back pain was no longer going away in between. This was undoubtedly the most intense pain I’d felt, and I started moaning my way through everything (up until now I’d been able to get through just with breathing). Joe told me later that the nurse had been steadily increasing my dose of Pitocin as well, which I’m just as glad I didn’t know at the time. Around 1pm Dr. Lauria checked me again and I remember him saying “LOP” to the midwife (“left occiput posterior”), so for the next hour she turned me onto my left side instead. I remember asking Joe when I could roll back over because lying on my side was SO uncomfortable (and that is an understatement). He told me to continue to stick it out, we just needed the baby to turn and then I could push it out, the position would help the baby turn. So I stuck with it, moaning, for most of the hour. At 1:48pm (Joe made a note of the time) I had two extremely intense contractions that were so strong I thought my body might finally be pushing. Another thing I didn’t know was that apparently the doctor had given a “deadline” for 2pm – if I wasn’t ready to push by then, then my body probably wasn’t going to be ready at all. So Joe’s note of 1:48 was significant, if the baby had finally popped into place and I was feeling the urge to push. He called the nurse in, who checked and said (unfortunately) I was still at 8, but she thought maybe the head had come down further. (I think we were all, including the nurse, so disappointed that there was no more progress, she was really trying to find something positive to say.) Dr. Lauria returned, checked me and affirmed that I was still at 8cm. He gently told us that we had tried everything and the baby just wasn’t going to come down, and it was time for a c-section. After 31 hours of labor (since Saturday morning) – back labor no less – and 10 hours being stuck at 8cm, and 2 hours of Pitocin, and all of this with no pain medication… Joe and I agreed with his assessment, and a c-section it was.
I will admit that by the end, getting the spinal and putting an end to all the pain was a welcome relief. The nurse was very upbeat as she got me ready, saying she thought we would have a big baby and guessing at the weight. (She guessed 8lbs 8oz.) Once I was prepped and the nurses brought Joe into the operating room, I could focus on what was about to happen – we were really about to meet our baby. We both wondered one last time whether it would be a boy or a girl. When Dr. Lauria pulled the baby out, the nurses told Joe to stand up and look. He looked and then told me, “It’s what we thought.” I said, “It’s a boy?” and he said yes. Our son, John Archie, born at 3:03pm on 3/30/08 – Divine Mercy Sunday. They brought him around so I could see. He had a cone head and a healthy cry. All I could do was touch his foot, and then they took him outside the room to get cleaned up and measured while I got stitched up. Joe followed along and I could just lay there, tears running down my face, listening to his cries and Joe telling him it was okay. I heard them announce his weight at 8lbs 11oz and his length of 21½in, and I also heard someone mention that his Apgar scores were 9/9. One of the nurses handed him to Joe to hold, which he only did for a minute or so. The nurses wanted to bring John to the nursery for the rest of his tests and whatnot, and to make sure his breathing was okay (someone said he was “a little gunky”), so they wrapped him up and brought him in so I could give him a kiss before he went. I didn’t get to hold him until 2 or 3 hours later.
After all the studying and planning we did to prepare for a natural, drug-free Bradley Method birth, I think it would be easy to feel disappointed that we ended up with a c-section instead. But I can honestly say I don’t feel that way. We were lucky to have the doctors and nurses we did (even the night staff that Joe didn’t like as much), who let us try things our way for as long as possible. I truly feel like we gave it our very best shot and didn’t get pushed into anything we didn’t want. When we finally had to admit that we needed to do the c-section, Dr. Lauria and the nurses said they were sorry and they had all been pulling for us, and I really believe them. The doctor said that 70% of women don’t get as far as I did without asking for something. Joe said he was proud of me and impressed at how well I handled everything. (I couldn’t have done it without him as my coach!) Another blessing was that John handled everything beautifully, always a strong heartbeat with no signs of distress. It was wonderful to see him wide-eyed, alert, and yelling as soon as he was born. Anyone who says “oh it doesn’t matter how the baby comes out as long as it’s healthy” is wrong… there is a certain amount of disappointment and grieving when you don’t have the birth you want, even (or especially) when you get a healthy baby at the end of it. But I am satisfied with the way things turned out for us, because I don’t have a lot of “what ifs” to deal with, thanks to our great doctor and nurses. And now I have an awesome labor story to impress everyone with!