Sunday evening we went to our Bradley childbirth preparation class, class ten of twelve, and as usual we were running late. There were some disappointed murmurs when we arrived.
"Nope, baby's still inside," I said cheerfully. Why should I go early? We were heading into due date week, but why should any calculated date get all the attention?
Tuesday around 2 a.m. I woke up feeling nauseous.
During some of the practice of second stage, pushing positions, I received a few vehement kicks. I started giggling. "The baby's not ready to come out yet," I explained.
Monday at supper I could not get comfortable. The bench, the chairs, I simply could not sit down. I paced around restlessly while everyone else finished dessert.
But two hours later I was the nine months' pregnant lady sitting cross-legged on the floor, putting another layer of paper mâché on the piñata for my soon-to-be-five-year-old's birthday.
Tuesday around 2 a.m. I woke up feeling nauseous.
"Why don't you go in the bathroom?" asked my husband sleepily.
"Because it's not a throw-up kind of sick," I countered.
I was awake for several hours. I flipped from side to side, but just could not get back to sleep until after 4 a.m., which is when I had a snack of yogurt and granola.
When I woke up Tuesday morning, I thought, "Oh! I feel better! I can drive the kids to school." And as soon as that thought finished, I felt absolutely terrible. There was no way I was getting out of bed, never mind getting the kids to school. My husband took care of it.
He called me on his way to work to report how drop-off had gone. Monkey2 had howled herself into hysterics on the ride to school because mommy hadn't done her hair.
I called the midwife. I told her about my restlessness, inability to sleep, and nausea, "but no contractions!"
She basically laughed at me. She didn't say much during our conversation, mostly monosyllabic nonwords of interest, but talking with her cheered me up.
"I'm around all day," she said, "Call me later if you need to."
"Or see you tomorrow?" I asked. I had my weekly prenatal appointment with her the next afternoon.
"Or see you tomorrow," she agreed.
Someone came over, and we cooked a meatloaf and made crumb chicken. Meals for several days.
One of my friends brought the Monkeys home from school. She said that I was the talk of the playground by not showing up at school. She relayed a message from another friend that "when I got nauseous, my water broke and #3 was born that day."
I laughed. I really didn't think that was going to happen. And I wasn't feeling sick any more. I had had a largely restful day of no running around.
Homework with the first grader. Supper. Books. Bed.
Around 11 p.m. I woke up with a contraction. This one seemed a lot longer than usual. In the next hour I had maybe three or four contractions. After midnight, now Wednesday, they started to pick up, so I woke up my husband, and he started timing them. I worked on relaxing the rest of my body while my uterus squinched away (remember my sock explanation to Monkey2?).
Eventually my husband reported that my contractions were about a minute and a half long, and 2 minutes apart, then 4 minutes, then 7 minutes, then 4 minutes, then 2, and back up again. They were definitely coming in waves of a predictable frequency even if they were not evenly spaced.
We moved downstairs, away from the bedrooms and the sleeping Monkey1 and Monkey2, and moved back and forth from the floor next to the dining table, the large exercise ball next to it, and the bathroom.
According to my cell phone call record, my husband called the midwife at 1:36 a.m. (at my request). She came over, her assistant following soon after.
They moved in quietly, extracting the necessary items from the birth kit supplies I had ordered, and unobtrusively checked on the baby with the fetoscope from time to time, throughout labor.
At some point I threw up, neatly into a bucket.
"That's good, right?" I asked the midwife.
"It can help with dilation," she replied.
I took that as a Yes.
Labor went on in the dimness of night. My husband said later that he knew exactly when Transition happened, which is the spell between simply contractions and the pushing stage, because I started saying crazy stuff. "Take my belly off," "I want to pause this and finish later," and "Is it too late to go to the hospital?" He knew that the end was in sight, though he did not tell me. As a runner, he finds the most aggravating part of a race to be when observers along the sidewalk start shouting, "You're almost there! Just around another corner!" Their idea of being close to the finish line is completely different from the reality of the physical effort he as a runner must experience. So he just kept encouraging me, without promising anything.
This is mostly what I remember, that he was there the whole time.
He says he wasn't, that once the kids got up he got pulled away a few times, such as getting them breakfast, seconds, and getting out the presents bag. The week before I had wrapped a few gifts and labeled them for the Monkeys "from the baby." A Harry Potter Knight Bus Lego set for Monkey1, a make-a-panda Lego set for Monkey2, and a few books. The Monkeys played in the basement, though every time I made a noise, one of them came running up to ask, "Is the baby out yet?"
I snapped over this at some point, of course. "STOP asking that!" I don't know whether this instruction or the arrival of the sibling doula (someone to sit with/keep the siblings busy during labor) kept them away after that.
When I reached the pushing stage, I thought, "Oh good... 45 minutes left." (I had pushed for 45 minutes, on drugs, for Monkey1's birth.) Good thing I did not have my glasses on and could not read the clock because it took longer than that!
Pushing went on and on. I was tired, so I kept trying the side-lying position, which in retrospect did not get gravity to help, and my husband says, a lot of pushes were ineffective because I did not put my chin down and hold my breath. He tried to keep reminding me. The midwife suggested different positions from time to time, and we'd try them, but I kept going back to the floor, on my side.
At some point I told the midwife I wasn't sure how much longer I could do this. She encouraged us to try the 45 degree sitting/curling up position, with me leaning back against my husband. She said that she might suddenly flip or turn me sideways during a push to help things along. This was not necessary; the baby came out soon this way.
I remember the midwife saying, "Maria, catch the baby."
"No!" I said.
"Maria, catch the baby!" she yelled, and so I reached down and did, lifting the slippery little person right up and on to my warm chest.
I called to my girls, and they came, heavy-footed running up the basement stairs, crowding around, putting their hands right on their brand-new sibling before a minute old, welcoming.
It was 9:49a.m. on a Wednesday.
I moved the baby around a bit and discovered, and told everyone, we had a girl. Another girl! I felt so lucky!
When she opened her eyes, I exclaimed, "She has brown eyes!" Minutes later, the color had changed to the dark blueberry blue that one usually sees on babies.
Who ever gets to see the first color of their baby's eyes? Suddenly the real reason I had been able to head down the road towards a home birth became clear. I had wanted to hold my child from the beginning. The very beginning. Not have her taken to another part of the room while I was stitched up. Not have her taken to the nursery on some suspected ailment. Not weighed and measured and wrapped up and returned. All wet, right on my chest, and a blanket placed over the two of us. We were so blessed it could happen this way!
"Let's say a prayer of thanksgiving for our baby," I said to Monkey1 and Monkey2. They readily joined in, "Hail Mary, full of grace..."
She latched on and started nursing, though she suddenly turned purple. I disengaged her, held her up, and she coughed, breathed, and her color returned to normal. Nursing and breathing at the same time is a learned skill!
"Would you do it again?" my husband asked, as I still leaned back against him.
"Not tomorrow," I said.
"No, not tomorrow," he agreed.
At some point the sofa was covered, and I moved off the floor and my husband to recline on the sofa, baby next to me. Once the cord had stopped pulsating, instead of cutting and clamping the cord, the midwife burned it through with a couple of candles. This sealed it off from bacteria and infection. It took awhile, but we were just hanging out resting anyway.
Time to weigh the baby.
"What do you think?" the midwife asked me.
"Oh, ten pounds," I said. Monkey1 had been 9 lbs 8 oz, and Monkey2 had been 9 lbs 12 oz, and babies just get bigger, right?
Eight pounds.
The midwife and her assistant actually checked the scale and re-weighed her! Eight pounds even. And 20.5 inches long (right between the other two, who were 21 and 20 inches at birth.)
Well within the "ideal" parameters for a successful VBAC!
The midwife and her assistant cleaned up, gathering the soiled items for laundry into a bag, mopping up the floors, taking out the trash. The Monkeys came and went, checking on the baby, and then taking a walk and a little picnic outside with the sibling doula. This woman, who had been the last piece of the puzzle, the final addition to our birth team, was touched to her soul beyond words. Birth outside a hospital was foreign territory to her, but she had wanted to help. She had prepared by attending a Bradley class with us, read a book about siblings at birth, watched some home birth videos. And she played with my girls, keeping them busy and calm, throughout the day. We were so blessed to have her with us!
At the end of the day, I was helped up the stairs to bed. We talked a little about names, but set that aside undecided. We had taken our time, a day or two, with the other Monkeys as well.
It was the end of a day, the end of the birth day, and we were all home together. All five of us. A home birth. The best thing we've ever done.
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