"Oh my gosh, I think I'm in labor!” I blurted out confidently as I sprung straight up in bed quicker than I had in nine months.
"Huh?” My husband mumbled still half asleep.
I got the feeling I needed to explain myself a little further, considering the past two weeks I had spent many evenings sitting on the couch timing contractions wondering if it could be the real thing. "I just had a contraction that was so painful I awoke out of a dead sleep moaning." My feet had already hit the floor. This was the moment I had anxiously been awaiting, especially these last three weeks. I grabbed my hospital bag and started stuffing it with last minute items. I was prepared with music, massage gadgets, and other important personal comfort items. My husband and I even prepared a whole cooler loaded with snacks and beverages.
“Are you sure? How far apart are they?" Joey was starting to come to.
Why did he have to be the voice of reason at a time like this? Maybe I was jumping the gun, after all, sometimes labor could go on all day. I looked down at my watch. It was 2:30am, only two days before my due date. Ten minutes later as I was scurrying around the house, another contraction began. I stopped in my tracks bending over placing both of my hands on the back of my hips. These contractions were painful and radiated around my back unlike the Braxton-Hicks I had experienced before. But about a minute later when the discomfort passed, I was right back to work.
By the time I had gotten myself ready and my husband was starting on a cup of coffee, the pains were already 6 minutes apart. As I relaxed and really started to time and observe the pains, I found myself confused that some contractions were much more intense and lasted longer than others. And since the stronger contractions were separated by more tolerable ones, I wondered if the latter even counted. I decided that I should let the doctor be the judge of that; After all, if the weaker contractions did count, they were only four minutes apart, some times three! But other times closer to five.
When I called a doctor at 4am, I explained this by saying, “I’m wondering if I should come in to the hospital now? I’m having contractions, but I’ll have a really strong one and then one that’s not so strong. The bad ones are about six minutes apart.”
A sleepy voice yawned on the other end of the line. The doctor answering the call asked me a few questions about my prenatal history and wanted to know my due date. Then she explained.
“Well, you sound like you’re doing pretty well. You can wait at home until the pain gets unbearable. I’ll call the hospital and let them know you are probably coming in this morning.
“O.K.” For some reason I felt reassured. Just before hanging up the phone, she cheerfully added.
“Hopefully this is the real thing!”
I put down the receiver, puzzled by her gesture. I knew it was the real thing! I relayed the conversation to my husband who was patiently awaiting the verdict. When I finished, he just kept looking at me as if he was still listening for more information.
Just then another pain gripped me. I slid my body off the couch and rested my knees on the floor while draping my arms and upper body over the seat of the sofa. I had heard that sitting on all fours was a comforting position during labor. My version of this posture I had instinctively taken on, felt right.
It was during this moment I realized I needed to tap into the concentration I had practiced in my prenatal yoga class. I remembered how we would assume a challenging pose and hold it while focusing on a stationary object at eye level. As a student of the class, I never knew how long I would be asked to hold these poses. My teacher, Anne, was teaching us how to perceive a moment without knowing when a time of total relaxation would follow. This situation with my labor pains was similar. After all, I could not watch the clock and know for sure when a contraction would end. I could only deal with the discomfort one moment at a time being sure that a break would follow. My focus was not so much on the couch upholstery in front of me as it was trying not to expend unnecessary energy on tensing up my whole body as Anne had suggested. I also savored my periods of rest as individual moments, slipping into deep relaxation states much like those I had achieved during prenatal yoga class.
Most of the following hour I spent kneeling in this position listening to uplifting CD’s. I tried walking outside for a little while, but I quickly found myself back in front of the couch. Even though the contractions were getting stronger and closer together, I felt like I should try to make it until 5am before leaving for the hospital, at least an hour after speaking to the doctor. Especially since I was planning on declining an epidural if possible.
Meanwhile, my husband was upstairs on the computer sending emails to family and friends to make the announcement that we were about to have a baby! I started to get concerned and called out to him.
“Joey! Come on, we gotta go!” My husband is such a dilly dallier, much like myself, so it took him way too long to properly respond to my distress call. I knew instinctively that there was no time to waste now. Thank God everything was all packed sitting by the door, and out we practically ran. Once in the car, there was of course an issue with a missing license, but I sternly informed my husband there would be no running back in the house to look for anything! At the intersection on Limestone and Waller with the hospital in sight, my husband asked me how long it was between contractions at that point. To his surprise, I said, “There is no in between anymore!”
Thank goodness the hospital was in sight, because I was in transition, I was pretty sure of that now. I remember being a little frightened by how violent my contractions had become. I really felt like my insides were splitting and there wasn’t much time to recover in between. We missed the dang turn going into the hospital because it was under a bunch of construction, and then, leaving all our bags in the car, we walked what seemed like a mile from the parking garage to the delivery unit.
Checking in, they had trouble finding our papers, but luckily not many people were there at this early 5:30am hour. Finally, they took me back to the exam room and gave me a gown. As soon as I put it on, I grabbed my husband’s hands as I had done for some of the contractions on the walk in, and I called out for the nurse. She quickly came running in and scurried to put on her gloves. I could hardly stand her doing the exam.
“Who did you say your doctor is?” She asked.
“O’Nan.” I replied.
“Well, we’ll see about that.” She smirked sarcastically, “You’re just about fully dilated! This baby’s coming now! Let me go find you a doctor while the other girls are getting you on a stretcher.”
In no time, I was being wheeled down a corridor with three nurses at my side. I told the one that scolded me for waiting too long to come to the hospital that I was feeling the urge to push now. She gave me the blowing out candles line, so started puffing all twenty-five of them out! Believe it or not, it really helped.
Now, they were moving me on the delivery bed, starting an IV and asking me all sorts of questions about my health history. It was everything I could do to answer them. Just then, the doctor walked into the room.
“Holly, hi!” She said with a warm grin. It was Doctor Thompson, a doctor I worked with at the Markey Cancer Center. I was never so happy to see a familiar face that I trusted. She examined me again, and gave me the go ahead to “do what your body wants to.” So I did and with my first push warm water squirted down my legs. I was immediately corrected that rather than arching my back and making a grunt when I pushed, that I should hunch forward and hold my breath.
Right when I was starting to get into the swing of things, Dr. O’Nan dashed in. She really wasn’t even my doctor. She was just on call that night for the team of doctors and a midwife I had been seeing at St. Joe. She took the helm and started coaching my pushes.
I asked her, “Can you see the head yet?” But, she confessed the baby still needed to work his way through the birth canal. So I inquired how long she thought this would be. When she told me a half an hour, I was even more motivated to push harder, despite my concern of inflaming my hemorrhoids even worse. I then understood why they call it labor. It was a lot of work pushing a baby out. However, my doctor was impressed with my pushes. She attributed it to not having an epidural, but I knew that my kegel exercises had a lot to do with it also. She began massaging my perineum.
Fifteen minutes later, he was crowning. YEE HA! Almost home with a baby! I remembered a friend’s advice that the harder you push, the sooner you’re going to get to see your beautiful baby! My husband and my mother were at my side. As we were sharing a special moment of excitement, the nurses started joking about how I was smiling, like that was unusual at this time.
My next push his head was coming out. This was a funky feeling, but not all that painful as I had feared it would be... After his head passed, that was it, there he was! My gorgeous baby! He wasn’t even slimy or bloody. I couldn’t believe how precious he was! He was laid on my chest in a blanket after briefly being wiped off and having his nose suctioned. His head was even perfectly round with very fine strawberry blonde hair. We quickly noticed that he had a dimple in his chin like my husband’s. His big dark eyes probed the room. I was overjoyed to finally have him in my arms.
Meanwhile, the placenta had come out. As my belly collapsed, I realized the discomforts of third trimester pregnancy were over! I also had to be stitched up from the episiotomy I wasn’t even aware had been done.
After all that was taken care of, I spent some time trying to breastfeed Adrian. Then, without warning, the room got very still and I felt a holy presence come over me. I gazed up from my newborn to find only my husband standing next to us with tears in his eyes. We pondered our little miracle for almost an hour together. Then, my husband and the nurse carried him to the nursery for a time of testing and observation. “What a beautiful day to be born,” I thought, as I looked out the window at the bright dawning of this new day.
