Birth Story, #1

My oldest is six-and-a-half now. 😱 She’s tall and skinny, but still has baby-face cheeks. That one runs in the family. 🤷‍♀️ For lack of more exciting content, and because it seemed unfair that Cecily’s is posted here but not the other kids’, I thought I’d share her birth story with you this month as she enters first grade. 😭 (Luke’s to come….someday.)

• 

• 

*Usual warning about details about body parts and functions. Keep reading at your own risk.*

I was 41 weeks pregnant. I went to my routine—at that point semi-weekly—appointment with my OB. Everything was fine. She said I could eat dinner but I couldn’t tell the anesthesia team at the hospital that I had, and I couldn’t tell anyone she’d told me that. (Twenty-four hours is an unreasonable amount of time to expect a pregnant lady to go without eating “just in case” a worst-case scenario might happen, which probably won’t.) (It’s been over six years since then, and I’m with a different doctor in a different city, so I don’t think she’d mind my sharing it now, since I won’t include her name.)

We went out to early dinner, at my then-favorite restaurant in Houston, which is now SO SADLY closed as a result of covid. We went back home to finally actually pack a hospital bag. I don’t know why, but I’ve never packed the bag until “it’s time.” I think I would end up both bringing too many extra things and forgetting something anyway, so I just have a checklist ready, and the bag can physically be packed when it’s time to go. Perhaps I had a premonition that the baby would be overdue and a suitcase sitting in the corner for weeks would be silly. Now (so far) I’m three for three on overdue kids.

My parents arrived at our apartment less than half an hour before we headed out the door to check in at the hospital. See you tomorrow hopefully probably! We got checked in, got security stickers, got settled in a room. It was about 10pm. The nurse put a softening agent on my cervix and offered me a sleeping pill. The plan was to get things started in the morning. I think I was hesitant about the sleeping pill (Dependence! Oversleeping! Do I need it??), so I declined and tried to get some natural sleep.

Contractions began somewhere around 1:00am, by my retrospective estimation. At first, I’m not sure I realized it was labor. It was my first time, after all. What I knew was that I was very uncomfortable, and as a high-maintenance sleeper trying to sleep in a hospital bed, the addition of abdominal discomfort (beyond the huge belly itself) was disastrous to my getting any sleep. I think it was now when I actually took the sleeping pill, hoping to squeeze in a few winks before Pitocin, which I understood was lurking in my near future.

It must have worked for a while. My next memories of the day are from a room with sunlight in it, later in the morning. I was clearly in labor–so they didn’t think I needed Pitocin after all–but not making much progress (in cervical centimeters, that is) so they decided to go ahead and break my water, hoping that would speed things up naturally. They thought they had it cleaned up, when I needed to pee, and when I stood up, there was a second rush of amniotic fluid. I now have an established history of high-side-of-normal levels of amniotic fluid, but at the time the only thing that clued me in was the nurse’s reaction: surprised, but not upset. Oh, there’s more!

At my next check, I was 4cm. Progress! The pain of contractions was already making me nauseous, though. There was a definite increase in intensity after breaking my water. I asked if there was a trash can I could throw up into if needed. People were talking in the background and I just wanted them all to shut up. It was at this point that the nurse suggested the epidural.

I had already been 100% planning to use the epidural. I don’t remember the pregnancy books I’d read mentioning the possible complications or side effects from an epidural. My OB told me most of her patients chose the epidural, and I liked and trusted her; I was decidedly less crunchy back then; I was the first of my circle of friends to have a baby, so I hadn’t heard many differing experiences… So, the epidural seemed like the normal, expected, “of course” choice for me. Also, from what limited experience I could draw on, these two facts stood out the most to me:

1. My mom had an epidural and later an emergency c-section for her first baby. She had an unmedicated VBAC for her second. She went back to having the epidural for the three other (also VBAC) babies. It sure looked to me like she’d made her statement about which way was better!
2. My “Spanish grandma,” Pepita, whom I lived with for four months while studying abroad in Spain, had unhesitatingly declared, “The epidural. We used to give birth in pain,” when I’d asked her once what the greatest technological advancement she’d seen during her lifetime was.

In other words, women I trusted and respected seemed to advocate for the epidural; there was no question that I would get it.

There was a question, however, about when to get it. I was only 4cm, it was maybe 10am, and I imagined hours and hours of the drip numbing me and crossing the placenta, or labor being stalled. (Maybe the pregnancy books did mention some complications? This is what happens when I wait over six years to write a birth story. Postpartum amnesia is a thing.) Justin was very much ready for me to get the epidural! He was ready to see me not in pain anymore. He asked the nurse to explain the pros and cons of getting the epidural now vs. waiting a few more hours.

“If you get the epidural now, you have no pain now, and labor progresses. If you wait, labor progresses, and then you have no pain later when you do get the epidural.”

They talked me into getting it. It was likely the best choice. Justin left the room, the anesthesiologist heard nothing about my dinner the evening before, and when Justin came back in, I was—in his words—“all sunshine and rainbows again.” I guess I’m not my pleasantest self while in labor. Who would have thought? All pain was immediately gone and I stopped feeling nauseous. I could bear background conversation. I could enjoy watching the contractions and hearing the baby’s heartbeat on the monitors. Shortly thereafter, my contractions began coming too close together or maybe irregularly, so they did give me Pitocin to try to help regulate them. I never felt a Pitocin contraction, and I can’t say I’m sorry about it.

At one point, the baby’s heartbeat indicated mild distress, so they gave me oxygen to make sure the baby was getting plenty, and I got so serene I actually went to sleep. I took a nap while I was in active labor. The epidural is, indeed, a wonder of technological advancement!

At another point, I was very annoyed about my restricted diet: sugar-free popsicles—“so you can feel like you’re eating” was my assessment—and ice chips, but I’ve never been an ice chewer. I sent Justin to the freezer for purple and red popsicles throughout the day. Never orange. If he didn’t know I don’t like orange-flavored things before then, he learned that day. Don’t you dare bring me an orange one.

Meanwhile, my brother-in-law brought burgers from a local place for Justin and my mom. They proceeded to eat them in front of me inside my L&D room. The epidural and oxygen must have been working their magic on me, because in hindsight I cannot believe I didn’t tell them to go eat in the waiting area. I was hungry! And I was in labor. Seriously. Maybe it’s partially that I was still a nicer, more people-pleasing person back then, and my 30-year-old, more-assertive, less-benefit-of-the-doubt-giving (in other words, more realistic) version of myself can’t believe what my 24-year-old, in-labor self was capable of putting up with. But I’m mostly blaming the extra oxygen for my unfathomable complacency.

Labor progressed. Eventually they checked me and I was complete. They asked if I felt any urge to push. Nope. Not feeling anything at all, honestly. The nurse told me how and when to push for a few contractions. Baby was making obvious progress down the birth canal, so the nurse advised me to rest up and wait for the doctor. Okay.

The doctor arrived. I pushed some more. At 5:35pm, the baby came out. It was really an uneventful delivery, and I was thankful for that.

Well, “uneventful” relative to all the births I’ve lived through and heard about since then, anyway. Straightforward, for a birth. Uncomplicated, for a birth. But obviously it was still a birth, which was a totally new thing for Justin and me.

Justin had wanted to announce the baby’s sex, since we hadn’t found out ahead of time. However, he was quite flustered from having witnessed what he just witnessed. The doctor asked, “So, what is it, dad?”

He couldn’t respond for a moment. Finally, he blurted out, “I don’t know what I’m looking for!”

The doctor looked at him funny, realized he was serious, held up the baby with one hand, pointed to the correct region, and said, “Right there!”

“Oh! It’s a girl!”

(This particular bit of the story is better when Justin tells it; and he does love telling it. Ask him about it sometime.)

Meanwhile, my dad had been walking by in the hallway, tired of sitting in the waiting room, I suppose, and thought he heard Justin’s announcement, but wasn’t confident enough in what he’d heard to tell my mom whether the baby was a boy or a girl. He was sure the baby was born, though, so as the minutes passed and no one texted or called or came out to tell my parents this news, my First Time Grandma mama was fretting that something had gone wrong with the baby or me. We’ve since adopted a policy that Justin texts the grandmas ASAP so they can change their prayers from supplication to thanksgiving (or, perhaps in future, to more specific supplication, although I hope that won’t be needed).

In the end, Miryam was a healthy 8lbs 11oz, born with rosy, chubby cheeks ready to go. Justin may have been praying for a chubby-cheeked baby, because he thought I might not love a scrawny baby as much. All else equal, I admit I do prefer the cheekies.

The “golden hour” ensued. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was in love with my new baby: the only girl, yet the biggest babe, born in the hospital that day.

Someone got me some real food from somewhere, thank goodness. I was moved—that epidural ensured I could not move myself an inch anywhere—to a new bed and rolled to a recovery room. My parents were finally informed that baby was here and we were both doing okay. They probably came to visit. That’s what they were waiting for, after all, but I have no recollection of it.

I do recall being interrupted endlessly throughout the night. We would get Miryam to sleep, and then someone would come to check her or my vitals, or need to prick her heel for the newborn screening, or something. We theorized that they interrupt your opportunities for sleep so you’ll want to go home as soon as you can. Who knows. It was our first time, so we didn’t have anything to compare it to, then. In retrospect, after birthing at two other hospitals, this first one had my favorite L&D nurse and my least favorite postpartum care experience. Can’t have it all.

Well, that’s about it. I feel like this birth story reads kind of boring. I’ve had too much time to forget details and momentary emotions. But there you are and there you have it: Miryam was born.