Labor with Wyatt was either incredibly long, or super short, depending on how you time it. I was in prodormal labor for about a month before he actually arrived – for days in November, I would have hours of contractions 20 minutes apart, 7 minutes apart, sometimes even 5 minutes apart, then they would stop. They were wonderful, interesting, and sometimes painful sensations – they were like warm waves rolling over my midsection. We used them to practice breathing techniques and concentration, but my husband, Aaron, and I stopped paying attention to them once December hit – we knew we would know the difference between these practice contractions and the “real thing.” I was pleased, at my 40 week nurse visit, to find the contractions had been doing their work, I was 50% effaced, and 2 centimeters dilated; Wyatt’s head was incredibly low in my pelvis.
Wyatt’s official due date was 12-12-04 – although at one appointment, the nurse had mistakenly written down 12-14-04, and I didn’t correct her, because I wanted to avoid an induction at all costs and though 2 extra days might help. I finished giving exams on 12-08-04, and all I had left to do was grade and wait for him to come. I spent Friday, the 10th, at a dog show, hanging out and watching the dogs. Aaron and I spent a quiet weekend, walking around downtown and eating good food. No indication that Wyatt would come, and 12-12-04 came and went with no signs of labor at all. Nothing, again, that Monday.
Tuesday night, the 14th of December, Aaron and I were grumbling that we thought Wyatt would never show up! At 8 pm, Aaron took the dog out for her last walk, and I packed his lunch. We were in bed by 8:30, which is normal for us. At 9:10, my body was wracked by a feeling utterly unlike those nice, warm, wavelike sensations I’d been having. Aaron started writing the times down, but we weren’t too excited, yet.
At around 10, the contractions had been sporadic but intense – sometimes 6 minutes apart, sometimes 4. But something must have shown on my face because Aaron said, “take your contacts out and take a shower, I’m walking Daisy one last time. This is it.” On my way to the shower, I lost my mucous plug. That was exciting for us, we’d waited so long! So I took my contacts out and got in the shower and the pain got so much more intense. I panicked and called for Aaron – it seemed like an eternity while he walked the dog, but I know it wasn’t. He called our parents and told them we were going in to the hospital. It was just about 11 pm, not even 2 hours since the first contraction.
We called the hospital and they said, since I was a first time mom, we should wait another hour before coming in. I got off the phone, got on the floor, and moaned in pain. Aaron and Daisy curled up around me and they helped me so much. I went to the bathroom and there was bloody show, but my water hadn’t broken. I told Aaron we couldn’t wait an hour. I just knew, we had to go. We ended up waiting about a half an hour, then we got in the car.
The car ride felt like an eternity. We hit literally every orange light, and got behind every slow car. I know, though, that it lasted as long as it always did – twenty minutes total. This scared me, because I knew I had had more than 5 contractions in 20 minutes. They were much closer than 4 minutes apart.
We parked at the emergency entrance – thank goodness there was a space! And we walked in the emergency entrance and down the hall to labor and delivery. I had a really strong contraction about halfway down the hall, it doubled me over, and I heard a security guard say to another, “she must be having a contraction.”
Inside labor and delivery we stood for about 20 seconds, while a nurse, right in front of us, ate her dinner. Finally, Aaron said, “can we have some help here?” and she looked up like she was totally bored and started asking for my information. It was then that I realized I’d left my wallet and insurance card at home! We had everything else of course – visualization tools for labor, essential oils, the quilt my dog had had puppies on – but no insurance card. This annoyed the nurse. She had to ask me a zillion questions -- all the while, I was standing up, doubling over with a contraction nearly every two minutes.
Finally, another nurse walked down the hall, took one look at me and said, “she’s going to have this baby NOW.” She took me into an exam room without making me finish the intake forms.
In the exam room she had me strip down and get on the bed, then she performed a really rough pelvic. I yelled that it hurt, and she said, “how are you gonna give birth, then?” I had been worried about this since a pelvic I had at week 36, when Wyatt’s head was so low that the nurse couldn’t get her fingers around it. I had imagined a nurse saying exactly this to me, “how are you gonna give birth?” But I knew it was different pain, and that I COULD give birth, and I didn’t let it bother me. Then she admitted that she’d done a particularly rough exam, hoping to “accidentally” break my waters and get the labor going. I was glad it hadn’t “worked.”
She said that I was about 6 centimeters dilated, and fully effaced, and that I’d be having the baby within two or three hours. I knew I was about to enter transition. She asked what kinds of pain relief I wanted – she offered nubane and an epidural. I said I wanted to give birth naturally with no drugs, and she asked “why?” I can’t remember what I told her. I told her that if things got horrible, I would accept nubane, but not an epi. She said, “I guess I’ll be your nurse then,” and I felt irrationally, insanely, grateful.
I got moved immediately to a delivery room.
We walked into the room and I entered transition. Within literally a half hour of getting to the hospital I was in transition. I couldn’t believe it. I needed to puke, and did, twice. Then I laid down on my side on the bed and felt an unbearable agony. My water broke, and I yelled “get him out of me NOW.” Then I started my mantra – instead of yelling negative things, I yelled “I love you, I love you, I love you.” I also repeated, in my head, the Ben Harper song that we’d had on when we pulled into the emergency room – “Amen, Omen” – I panted, over and over, “Amen, Omen… Amen, Omen.”
All of a sudden, there was some concern about Wyatt – there was meconium in my waters. They didn’t tell me that, but I head the nurse tell the doctor, who she had recently called. I said, “that’s not good, is it?” but they gave me some reassurances. I was on an external fetal monitor, and we could hear that his heart rate was decelerating during the contractions, and taking a bit too long to get back up. The nurse, Phyllis, and the doctor, were having a disagreement – the doctor didn’t think I was ready to deliver and Phyllis did. Phyllis told the doctor I was in too much pain, I heard her say, “she was almost off the bed!” – yes – I was writhing around, but I wasn’t crazed with pain! It upset me that Phyllis thought I was inappropriately out of control.
She asked me, then, if I wanted drugs. I said no again, and she asked “Why not?” I told her, “Because I think I am doing fine without them.” She didn’t ask again.
At some point, they had given me an oxygen mask, and I was really grateful for it – the air was so cooling, and I was sweating buckets. Sometimes, I was really cold and wanted my socks on, sometimes, I was really hot and needed them off. I was so thankful to Aaron for listening to what I needed, for taking my socks off and putting them on me. For holding my hand and talking gently to me.
I also had an IV in, and I was grateful for that, too – I could tell I needed hydration. I had always imagined walking around in labor, but this pain was so intense, and the labor so quick, I didn’t mind that I had to be laying down the whole time.
Phyllis asked me, “what kind of labor did you envision, so I can help you achieve it.” I said, “I wanted to have the baby in the ocean, in Belize, with dolphins.” She didn’t respond. I guess she knew I wasn’t gonna have that kind of labor
Aaron heard what I said, though, and he started to remind me of the dolphin and whale images I’d had throughout the pregnancy. He kept saying, “you’re swimming with the dolphins and whales, they’re here with us.” That helped me so much! He also said, “be gentle.”
Then, Phyllis told me it was time to push. I said, “I don’t feel pushy yet.” I really didn’t – no unbearable urge to push at all. I knew I should wait for that. But Phyllis said that the baby was in distress, and that we needed to get him out and I needed to start pushing. Suddenly the room was full of people – way too many people, two doctors, a pediatrician, a couple of nurses. They kept telling me to “get mad and get this baby out.” But I didn’t want to have my baby in anger! I didn’t want to “get mad!” So I tuned them out completely. I just went inside, really up to my third eye point, into my own head – I listened only to myself, “Amen, Omen.” And Aaron, “dolphins and whales.” And “gentle, gentle.”
I could hear that they were getting worried about Wyatt and I knew I had to push. I tried two cycles of pushes way before I was ready, then, miraculously, I felt ready! Pushing was so frustrating to me!! For some reason, no one in the room except Aaron and I knew when my contractions were starting, so with every new contraction I’d start pushing. They wanted me to push for the count of ten – but I’d start and no one would notice, so I’d be on “four” when they’d start at “one” and they kept getting upset with me for not pushing for a full “ten” count – when I was!, just not their ten count. My breath capacity is really strong, so I was incredibly frustrated that they thought I wasn’t trying hard enough. Also, the doctor kept telling me to push her hands out of me, to push everything out. But that wasn’t what I needed to do. I finally figured out, for myself, that I needed to gather all my strength and push down and inward – I needed to push so fully inward that everything would come out, if that makes any sense. I felt like I was doing crunches and squats, like I was gathering my energy, rather than dispersing it.
I cried a little during the first part of pushing, more from frustration than anything. Phyllis got angry with me and told me not to waste my energy crying. Then I growled a little – a deep, primal, guttural growl, and she told me not to growl. She was so wrong! I needed to feel that deep animal sense! So I growled away and listened to Aaron talking to me.
It also became clear to them that I wasn’t really feeling the contractions any more. Apparently, I’d been in back labor (thank goodness no one told me!) and the pain had gotten so intense that there was no longer any start or stop to it. I had no sense of when contractions were beginning. They recommended pitocin to make them more regular and intense. I agreed to it, but asked to be allowed to wait a while. We didn’t end up needing it.
I was so happy to feel Wyatt’s head crowning – it wasn’t the ring of fire I had heard about – instead, it was this wonderful pressure. So heavy. The doctor had Aaron come around and see his head, and Aaron told me later that he saw this beautiful patch of skin and hair.
For some reason, though, I couldn’t get his head out. Well, actually, for good reason, we found out soon. The doctors let me try one more set of pushes, but then they said they would have to use a vacuum to extract him. This meant a really long, 3rd degree, episiotomy. I didn’t care one bit at the moment! They said on the next push I’d see my baby – and I did! With the next push I felt the most amazing feeling of release I’ve ever felt in my life, and I felt his entire body slither out of me in a warm rush. It was Awesome.
And the reason his heart rate was decelerating, and the reason I couldn’t get him pushed out, was that he had the cord wrapped twice around his neck. Aaron said that he wasn’t blue, though, or in distress, and that when the doctor moved the cord away he started crying immediately.
But because of the cord, they didn’t let me hold him immediately. Then they weighed him, and said he weighed only 4 lbs, 2 oz. !! So they let me hold him for a brief brief moment, and then took him to the nursery to be put under lights. Aaron split his time with me, and with Wyatt, and for six hours we waited for him to be brought to me. They pressured me to let them formula feed him, but I demanded a breast pump and said I’d pump for him before they could give him formula. THEN, the morning shift nurses came on, and said, “that baby doesn’t look that small” and they re-weighed him and he was 5 lbs, 12 oz!! The scale in the delivery room was wrong!
They brought him to me immediately, and he nursed right away, and has been nursing on demand ever since. I am angry that we lost those 6 hours, but everything happens for a reason, I know that Wyatt was in charge of his entire birth (from getting the nurse to right down his actual real weight, to refusing to be pushed out slowly because of the cord).
I had hoped that his birth would be gentle. It wasn’t. It was the most powerful thing I’ve ever done. Now, when I nurse and hold him and bond with him and love him, now I can be gentle. I am forever grateful to him for teaching me both – I can be powerful and gentle, strong and soft – a mommy!!
Wyatt’s official due date was 12-12-04 – although at one appointment, the nurse had mistakenly written down 12-14-04, and I didn’t correct her, because I wanted to avoid an induction at all costs and though 2 extra days might help. I finished giving exams on 12-08-04, and all I had left to do was grade and wait for him to come. I spent Friday, the 10th, at a dog show, hanging out and watching the dogs. Aaron and I spent a quiet weekend, walking around downtown and eating good food. No indication that Wyatt would come, and 12-12-04 came and went with no signs of labor at all. Nothing, again, that Monday.
Tuesday night, the 14th of December, Aaron and I were grumbling that we thought Wyatt would never show up! At 8 pm, Aaron took the dog out for her last walk, and I packed his lunch. We were in bed by 8:30, which is normal for us. At 9:10, my body was wracked by a feeling utterly unlike those nice, warm, wavelike sensations I’d been having. Aaron started writing the times down, but we weren’t too excited, yet.
At around 10, the contractions had been sporadic but intense – sometimes 6 minutes apart, sometimes 4. But something must have shown on my face because Aaron said, “take your contacts out and take a shower, I’m walking Daisy one last time. This is it.” On my way to the shower, I lost my mucous plug. That was exciting for us, we’d waited so long! So I took my contacts out and got in the shower and the pain got so much more intense. I panicked and called for Aaron – it seemed like an eternity while he walked the dog, but I know it wasn’t. He called our parents and told them we were going in to the hospital. It was just about 11 pm, not even 2 hours since the first contraction.
We called the hospital and they said, since I was a first time mom, we should wait another hour before coming in. I got off the phone, got on the floor, and moaned in pain. Aaron and Daisy curled up around me and they helped me so much. I went to the bathroom and there was bloody show, but my water hadn’t broken. I told Aaron we couldn’t wait an hour. I just knew, we had to go. We ended up waiting about a half an hour, then we got in the car.
The car ride felt like an eternity. We hit literally every orange light, and got behind every slow car. I know, though, that it lasted as long as it always did – twenty minutes total. This scared me, because I knew I had had more than 5 contractions in 20 minutes. They were much closer than 4 minutes apart.
We parked at the emergency entrance – thank goodness there was a space! And we walked in the emergency entrance and down the hall to labor and delivery. I had a really strong contraction about halfway down the hall, it doubled me over, and I heard a security guard say to another, “she must be having a contraction.”
Inside labor and delivery we stood for about 20 seconds, while a nurse, right in front of us, ate her dinner. Finally, Aaron said, “can we have some help here?” and she looked up like she was totally bored and started asking for my information. It was then that I realized I’d left my wallet and insurance card at home! We had everything else of course – visualization tools for labor, essential oils, the quilt my dog had had puppies on – but no insurance card. This annoyed the nurse. She had to ask me a zillion questions -- all the while, I was standing up, doubling over with a contraction nearly every two minutes.
Finally, another nurse walked down the hall, took one look at me and said, “she’s going to have this baby NOW.” She took me into an exam room without making me finish the intake forms.
In the exam room she had me strip down and get on the bed, then she performed a really rough pelvic. I yelled that it hurt, and she said, “how are you gonna give birth, then?” I had been worried about this since a pelvic I had at week 36, when Wyatt’s head was so low that the nurse couldn’t get her fingers around it. I had imagined a nurse saying exactly this to me, “how are you gonna give birth?” But I knew it was different pain, and that I COULD give birth, and I didn’t let it bother me. Then she admitted that she’d done a particularly rough exam, hoping to “accidentally” break my waters and get the labor going. I was glad it hadn’t “worked.”
She said that I was about 6 centimeters dilated, and fully effaced, and that I’d be having the baby within two or three hours. I knew I was about to enter transition. She asked what kinds of pain relief I wanted – she offered nubane and an epidural. I said I wanted to give birth naturally with no drugs, and she asked “why?” I can’t remember what I told her. I told her that if things got horrible, I would accept nubane, but not an epi. She said, “I guess I’ll be your nurse then,” and I felt irrationally, insanely, grateful.
I got moved immediately to a delivery room.
We walked into the room and I entered transition. Within literally a half hour of getting to the hospital I was in transition. I couldn’t believe it. I needed to puke, and did, twice. Then I laid down on my side on the bed and felt an unbearable agony. My water broke, and I yelled “get him out of me NOW.” Then I started my mantra – instead of yelling negative things, I yelled “I love you, I love you, I love you.” I also repeated, in my head, the Ben Harper song that we’d had on when we pulled into the emergency room – “Amen, Omen” – I panted, over and over, “Amen, Omen… Amen, Omen.”
All of a sudden, there was some concern about Wyatt – there was meconium in my waters. They didn’t tell me that, but I head the nurse tell the doctor, who she had recently called. I said, “that’s not good, is it?” but they gave me some reassurances. I was on an external fetal monitor, and we could hear that his heart rate was decelerating during the contractions, and taking a bit too long to get back up. The nurse, Phyllis, and the doctor, were having a disagreement – the doctor didn’t think I was ready to deliver and Phyllis did. Phyllis told the doctor I was in too much pain, I heard her say, “she was almost off the bed!” – yes – I was writhing around, but I wasn’t crazed with pain! It upset me that Phyllis thought I was inappropriately out of control.
She asked me, then, if I wanted drugs. I said no again, and she asked “Why not?” I told her, “Because I think I am doing fine without them.” She didn’t ask again.
At some point, they had given me an oxygen mask, and I was really grateful for it – the air was so cooling, and I was sweating buckets. Sometimes, I was really cold and wanted my socks on, sometimes, I was really hot and needed them off. I was so thankful to Aaron for listening to what I needed, for taking my socks off and putting them on me. For holding my hand and talking gently to me.
I also had an IV in, and I was grateful for that, too – I could tell I needed hydration. I had always imagined walking around in labor, but this pain was so intense, and the labor so quick, I didn’t mind that I had to be laying down the whole time.
Phyllis asked me, “what kind of labor did you envision, so I can help you achieve it.” I said, “I wanted to have the baby in the ocean, in Belize, with dolphins.” She didn’t respond. I guess she knew I wasn’t gonna have that kind of labor
Aaron heard what I said, though, and he started to remind me of the dolphin and whale images I’d had throughout the pregnancy. He kept saying, “you’re swimming with the dolphins and whales, they’re here with us.” That helped me so much! He also said, “be gentle.”
Then, Phyllis told me it was time to push. I said, “I don’t feel pushy yet.” I really didn’t – no unbearable urge to push at all. I knew I should wait for that. But Phyllis said that the baby was in distress, and that we needed to get him out and I needed to start pushing. Suddenly the room was full of people – way too many people, two doctors, a pediatrician, a couple of nurses. They kept telling me to “get mad and get this baby out.” But I didn’t want to have my baby in anger! I didn’t want to “get mad!” So I tuned them out completely. I just went inside, really up to my third eye point, into my own head – I listened only to myself, “Amen, Omen.” And Aaron, “dolphins and whales.” And “gentle, gentle.”
I could hear that they were getting worried about Wyatt and I knew I had to push. I tried two cycles of pushes way before I was ready, then, miraculously, I felt ready! Pushing was so frustrating to me!! For some reason, no one in the room except Aaron and I knew when my contractions were starting, so with every new contraction I’d start pushing. They wanted me to push for the count of ten – but I’d start and no one would notice, so I’d be on “four” when they’d start at “one” and they kept getting upset with me for not pushing for a full “ten” count – when I was!, just not their ten count. My breath capacity is really strong, so I was incredibly frustrated that they thought I wasn’t trying hard enough. Also, the doctor kept telling me to push her hands out of me, to push everything out. But that wasn’t what I needed to do. I finally figured out, for myself, that I needed to gather all my strength and push down and inward – I needed to push so fully inward that everything would come out, if that makes any sense. I felt like I was doing crunches and squats, like I was gathering my energy, rather than dispersing it.
I cried a little during the first part of pushing, more from frustration than anything. Phyllis got angry with me and told me not to waste my energy crying. Then I growled a little – a deep, primal, guttural growl, and she told me not to growl. She was so wrong! I needed to feel that deep animal sense! So I growled away and listened to Aaron talking to me.
It also became clear to them that I wasn’t really feeling the contractions any more. Apparently, I’d been in back labor (thank goodness no one told me!) and the pain had gotten so intense that there was no longer any start or stop to it. I had no sense of when contractions were beginning. They recommended pitocin to make them more regular and intense. I agreed to it, but asked to be allowed to wait a while. We didn’t end up needing it.
I was so happy to feel Wyatt’s head crowning – it wasn’t the ring of fire I had heard about – instead, it was this wonderful pressure. So heavy. The doctor had Aaron come around and see his head, and Aaron told me later that he saw this beautiful patch of skin and hair.
For some reason, though, I couldn’t get his head out. Well, actually, for good reason, we found out soon. The doctors let me try one more set of pushes, but then they said they would have to use a vacuum to extract him. This meant a really long, 3rd degree, episiotomy. I didn’t care one bit at the moment! They said on the next push I’d see my baby – and I did! With the next push I felt the most amazing feeling of release I’ve ever felt in my life, and I felt his entire body slither out of me in a warm rush. It was Awesome.
And the reason his heart rate was decelerating, and the reason I couldn’t get him pushed out, was that he had the cord wrapped twice around his neck. Aaron said that he wasn’t blue, though, or in distress, and that when the doctor moved the cord away he started crying immediately.
But because of the cord, they didn’t let me hold him immediately. Then they weighed him, and said he weighed only 4 lbs, 2 oz. !! So they let me hold him for a brief brief moment, and then took him to the nursery to be put under lights. Aaron split his time with me, and with Wyatt, and for six hours we waited for him to be brought to me. They pressured me to let them formula feed him, but I demanded a breast pump and said I’d pump for him before they could give him formula. THEN, the morning shift nurses came on, and said, “that baby doesn’t look that small” and they re-weighed him and he was 5 lbs, 12 oz!! The scale in the delivery room was wrong!
They brought him to me immediately, and he nursed right away, and has been nursing on demand ever since. I am angry that we lost those 6 hours, but everything happens for a reason, I know that Wyatt was in charge of his entire birth (from getting the nurse to right down his actual real weight, to refusing to be pushed out slowly because of the cord).
I had hoped that his birth would be gentle. It wasn’t. It was the most powerful thing I’ve ever done. Now, when I nurse and hold him and bond with him and love him, now I can be gentle. I am forever grateful to him for teaching me both – I can be powerful and gentle, strong and soft – a mommy!!
