I began gearing up over the weekend. Contractions came and went but nothing too intense or too regular. Sunday night I went for a walk trying to bring them on a bit. Monday came and went and still the same. I felt really weepy that day, just over being pregnant and upset that I had developed stretch marks just when I thought I had made it through without them. “It’s time for you to come out” I said. Yves came over that night and gave me a massage and we watched a movie with Fanny, Finding Neverland. After watching it, I suddenly felt so grateful to be pregnant, to be carrying a life inside me, to be called to be a mother. I decided to enjoy my last few days of pregnancy for soon I would miss my belly, stretch marks and all.
I began to ponder the journey of labor from the baby’s point of view and wrote a bit about that in my journal. Just as I was finishing up my entry, around midnight, I felt something squirt out of my vagina. “Oh great,” I thought, “I’ve peed on myself.” I shifted and again another squirt. I decided to go check out what had come out. I was wearing brown pants and no underwear so I couldn’t tell the color. I figured smelling it would be conclusive, but it didn’t smell like urine. I surely didn’t want it to be my water breaking, however exciting that might be. It just sort of smelled like vaginal secretions, but more watery. Then I wiped and, lo and behold, bloody show! Now that was exciting! I did a pH test on the wet part of my pants and it came back negative.
It was about midnight by then, and, excited though I was, I decided not to inform my midwife or anyone else; instead, I put myself to bed.
I had strong menstrual cramps throughout the night and used a heating pad on my lower belly and back so that I could get as much sleep as possible. I knew from my experience as a midwife that the worst thing I could do was tire myself out in early labor.
My sleep was intermittent because the cramps came about every 10-12 minutes, but I managed to get some rest. In the morning, I advised my midwife, mother, and partner that I was beginning my labor.
I spent the day eating, drinking, resting, and doing yoga while the cramping continued in the same pattern. After Yves got off work, we went for a walk at a park alongside the Miami Bay. I had to stop now and then and breathe through the contractions, which were getting more intense.
Sometime around 8 pm, there was a drastic shift. The contractions got 3 times more intense and started coming one right after the other. I called my midwife and asked if she could come check me. I was now on hands and knees, moaning and vomiting.
I couldn’t believe how quickly it had kicked in.
When Devorah arrived, she saw how hard I was working and commented about how good I was doing. Then came the moment of truth.
She checked me. I was 1 cm!
1 cm! Ugh.
“But you’re paper thin,” she tried to reassure me, “You could open up really fast.”
She wanted to call the other midwives, but I felt it was too soon. I went back to my work, and sometime around midnight, the other midwives showed up. I wanted to be checked again.
Devorah was in there for a little while. Finally, she said,
“You’re 1 but you open up to 3 during a contraction.”
I wanted another opinion.
Mary checked me. She was in there for an even longer time.
“Ok, your cervix was 1, but you had tiny little adhesions. I broke them open, and now you are 3. Your cervix wants to be 3,” she said, “that’s why your contractions have been so close together.”
That LEEP I had 13 years prior must have left some scar tissue on my cervix. That’s why my early labor was taking so long!
I was grateful to have gotten through that gateway. There were more to come.
We were all tired.
I labored on my side and nodded off in between contractions, which had spaced out a bit just as Mary had predicted. Everyone else was lying down somewhere in my vicinity.
I remember feeling annoyed that Yves was snoring next to me. How dare he sleep when I’m suffering!
At some point in the wee hours of the morning, I felt a pop, and there was a gush of fluid on the bed. My water broke!
It was yellow-stained. Meconium.
My midwife mind sorted through all the potential outcomes and left me concerned. But I felt no intuitive sense of doom from my yet unmet mama essence.
Up until this point, I had only been present with and in service to laboring mothers. I had never been on the other side, and I spent much of my labor psychoanalyzing from a midwife perspective, which was not helpful.
Sometime around when the sun came up, I started to instinctively bear down. I found my body wanting to squat down into it.
After watching me through a few contractions like this, Mary offered to check me. I suspected I was close to completely dilated.
“You’re 6 cm,” she said, “You’re gonna have to breathe through this and try not to push.”
“Whaaaat????”
It didn’t feel like I had a choice. My body was taking over.
On top of the strong urge to push, I had a burning pain in my back. Counter pressure didn’t help. My mother, an acupuncturist, tried to throw some needles in, but I screamed at her to take them out because it felt like pure fire!
I was struggling.
Yves went around pulling down all the blinds, and though I wasn’t able to vocalize it at the time, I was so grateful. The dim lighting was soothing and helped me focus. It was taking all of my effort and focus to keep myself from pushing.
I kept saying, “My back!….It burns…it burns.”
I began to undulate my pelvis and spine as if trying to roll the sensation off of me. I don’t know if it alleviated my back pain as much as it just gave me something else to do and focus on.
Hours passed.
I rocked and swayed and prayed for it to end.
I felt like a zombie – tired, altered, and yet somehow still able to be caught up in my midwife mind.
Around noon, I started to squat and push again. Again, my midwives checked me. Again, I was 6 cm. But now my cervix was swollen.
I knew I would need to be transported! I thought to myself.
I know what happens in these kinds of births. I’m gonna end up with a C-section.
I was sure my midwives were plotting my transport on the couch.
To avoid them, I decided to get into the water. Best decision I ever made.
I spent the next hour in the bathtub (which was extra deep and had jets). I had been fairly vocal over the last several hours, but when I got in the water, I got really quiet.
It took every ounce of my focus and attention to breathe through these waves that were screaming to me to bear down.
Each time a wave would come, it felt like a train coming in the distance that then ran right through my body, and I had to use my breath to completely surrender in order to avoid pushing.
I entered another dimension. Thoughts came and went, and once they passed through, I could no longer remember them. It was a fluid, mindless state similar to experiences I’ve had on psychedelics. I remember thinking at one point,
“To what dimension must I go to bring this baby out of me?”
I got in a groove and finally seemed to find a way of breathing and focusing that worked.
Until it didn’t.
Once again, I found myself involuntarily pushing. I just couldn’t stop it anymore.
I looked at Yves, who was seated on the toilet, and said,
“I can’t do it. I’m failing.”
He looked concerned and left to tell the midwives. They all piled into the small bathroom.
“Do you want me to check you?” Mary asked.
“I guess,” I shrugged, “I’m sure I’m the same.” After all, it was only about an hour from the last time she checked.
“You’re 9 and 1/2,” she said.
I couldn’t believe it!
Since the urge to push was unstoppable, Mary offered to hold my cervical lip back. I was happy for the support – until she did it.
It was excruciating, and I screamed at her to “get her fuckin’ hand outa me!” I was surprised at myself and a little embarrassed.
“I’m just holding back your lip,” Mary said calmly and matter-of-factly, unfazed by my profanity.
I was on a birthing stool. I looked around at my midwives and all of the equipment.
“Where’s the DeLee?” I asked because of the meconium.
Devorah laughed and said, “Stop trying to be the midwife. Be the mama.”
I think that was the hardest part of my birth.
Even in my choices not to get into the birth pool and to push lying on my side, I was drawing from my experience as a midwife.
At that point in my career I had found it hard for first time moms to have enough umph in the water to push effectively and I wanted the shortest route to her being out of my body so I opted not to get back into the water even though I had loved it just a few moments ago.
The side-lying position was coming from both the instinctive laboring mama (I was tired!) and the midwife mind (fewer tears in this position).
I pushed. And I pushed. And I pushed.
I remember thinking, People always talk about how good it feels to push. This sucks!
It was a bone-crushing, tissue-splitting kind of pain. I felt like I was tearing in pieces, and no matter how much force I could muster up, it didn’t feel like she was moving.
But slowly and gradually, she emerged.
I mean really slow.
In part because my contractions had really spaced out-about 7 minutes apart, which gave me time to rest in between pushes. Her head crowned for roughly 30 minutes! And oddly enough, I didn’t feel a ring of fire (I did with my other two daughters, who came much quicker!).
The warm compresses my midwives placed on my perineum felt divine. I remember stretching my top leg up to the sky between contractions, giving everyone a real crotch shot.
What did I care? I had been totally naked for hours, and it just felt good to stretch my leg out.
Finally, at 3:19 pm, on May 2nd, 2007, Nehama’s wet, slippery body was on my warm, sweaty chest. I had passed through the final gateway and over the threshold!
I was a mother!
I looked around the room at my 3 midwives, my sister, my mother, and Yves, and felt an overwhelming wave of love.
“I love you all so much!” I exclaimed from my oxytocin bubble of bliss.
“Now, I really know why we say it’s the mama that does the hard work.”