I'm not sure how to start this story because it doesn't have a clear beginning and the middle is a little fuzzy. With my other births I could say, "I woke up having contractions at x time and they were y minutes apart and z hours later etc." but on Sunday I had decided that my uterus and I were no longer on speaking terms. I'd feel a contraction and think, "Tell it to somebody else, girlfriend, because I am not listening, do you hear me? Not listening. Talk to me when you've got something worth my time."
So all I know is that there was a change in the contractions in the small hours of Wednesday morning, because I remember thinking vaguely as I went to answer Joe's call that it finally felt like we might be getting somewhere, but la la la I was pointedly not listening. And I remember feeling not quite myself on Wednesday morning -- I knew that I just wasn't up for the half-mile walk to the library -- but I thought I might just be tired from finishing that poultry post the night before. My husband says I called him around eleven to say I was suspicious that this pregnancy might actually be a temporary condition, but this puzzles me because I was at the library at eleven, resolutely not listening. (Maybe he got a call from my uterus -- "She won't listen to me! Will somebody listen to me?!")
After lunch I took a nap, thinking that it might be wise to get some rest, and a couple of times I had to roll out of bed to stand up and move with a contraction. (By the way: does anyone else hate lying down for contractions? The Bradley books recommend sidelying for maximum relaxation but ouch does that make it more painful for me. With my first labor I got panicky because it hurt so much lying down. "This is supposed to be the most comfortable position and I'm miserable!" I thought fretfully. I wish I had known to go wash the dishes instead of lying in bed trying to pretend it didn't hurt.) When I woke up I called the midwife. "What do you say to a Thursday baby?" I asked her.
At that point, I thought we might have a baby sometime after midnight, or maybe the next morning. In the next 24 hours is my guess, I said. I told her I was going to pick up my husband and drop off the kids at a friend's house, and I'd get back to her in a couple of hours about how things were progressing. All right, she said.
Snag A: the friend who lives right by my husband's office wasn't home. Snag B: my neighbor had class Wednesday night and I couldn't see asking her husband to watch my three in addition to his four. Snag C: the other friend I was going to call lives in a subdivision I've never been to and the thought of trying to navigate twisty subdivision streets with rhyming names made me a little queasy. Snag D: Joe fell asleep in the car on the way home from picking up my husband. We decided we'd just keep the kids at home until my mother-in-law arrived to take them to her house for the night. She left for PCT at 4.
I had thought a lot about how I hoped the birth would go, and the verse that kept coming to me was "in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his Body, which is the Church." It has always struck me as a rather audacious claim, but I figure the Apostle Paul knew whereof he spoke. I had envisioned myself beatifically offering up the sufferings of labor for the needs of the world, but beatific proved to be a lofty goal. For one, the kids were grating on me. In the car they had been fighting about the baby's name. "It's going to be a girl and we'll call her Rayquaza," said the oldest. "No! A boy! Peter-the-pickup-driver George Spider!" insisted the youngest. "Rayquaza and that's final!" shouted the oldest. Oh, my word, it gives me a headache just remembering. "Listen!" I burst in. "I am IN LABOR. I am trying to drive and I am already distracted. Stop it right now." Usually, that would have done the trick -- my oldest is a compassionate kid who listens reasonably well. Not on Wednesday, though. "Rayquaza!" he interjected once more, sullenly, prompting shouts of "Peter-the-pickup-driver George Spider!" from the 2yo and lobbying for "Starfire!" from their brother. Thankfully, my husband was waiting out front for us and he drove us home before I could cause any property damage.
They continued to squabble at home, and I continued to be exasperated with them. I remember thinking, "Boy, am I edgy. I skipped right over that happy excited part of labor this time." I was also getting more uncomfortable physically. I wondered if the baby was posterior, because the contractions required more of my attention than I expected them to at that point. Maybe some music will help, I thought.
I put in a CD I hadn't listened to in years, a recording of Newman Center choirs from ten years ago. I put on our little choir's first song and suddenly flashed on a memory. The months after our first miscarriage took a heavy toll on our marriage, and I remembered leaving the recording session and complaining bitterly about my husband to my friend Kate -- the same Kate who has given me so much long-distance love and encouragement this last month. Then as now, she patiently encouraged me that things would get better. And she was right both times, as it turns out.
So I was thinking about this as the song changed, to John Michael Talbot's "Magnificat." Kate had started us out with a solo, and it was so comforting to me to hear her voice, clear and true, singing, "My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, and my spirit exults in God my savior." The other women's voices joined hers, and I thought about my friend who delivered a daughter last week, down on the alto part, and another friend, also a mother now, who sang soprano with me. I remembered gathering around the piano with them, working out the harmonies, and I felt comforted again thinking about my women friends around the country praying for me.
I was pacing around our downstairs and trying to pray: a contraction in the kitchen, offered for the conversion of Robert Mugabe and peace in Zimbabwe; one in the music room, for an end to abortion; one in the living room, for the souls in purgatory. I thought about the saints who were mothers, like Monica and Elizabeth Seton, and about saints who had no children but offered their physical suffering for the glory of God, like Perpetua and Felicity. And I thought one more time of Kate, who gets a giggle out of that particular pair of names, and smiled to myself.
I headed into the dining room, knowing I needed to eat between contractions to fuel up for what I thought would be a long night. I nibbled at some cottage cheese and a slice of toast, but I wasn't very hungry. In the kitchen I happened to notice the clock: contraction at 5:11, one at 5:13, one at 5:16. After the third one I called the midwife again.
We're having a baby tonight, I said. Oh? she asked. Not right now, I told her, not in the kitchen floor as we speak. But with my other labors I've known things were cooking when I started getting flushed after a contraction, like my uterus was hogging all the blood it could during the contraction, and that's where we are now. It's probably better if you come sooner rather than later. She had a couple of quick things to take care of, she said, and then she'd head right down.
I wanted to write what should have been a quick post, but the interruptions kept coming. I would get up to sway through a contraction and the boys would say, "Can't we use the computer now?" As soon as I hit "publish," I started looking out the window for my mother-in-law. I needed the boys to go. At 6:15 I called her. "Where are you?" I asked curtly. "Oh, about 15 or 20 miles away," she said. I asked M to start a bath for me so I could hop in once the kids were out the door.
The midwife's assistant got there soon afterward and we chatted for a few minutes. She told me a little bit about herself (she's a mother of four sons), but I had to ask her to tell me most of it again afterward because I seemed to have Teflon ears at that point. I don't think I'm very far along, I told her, but I'm pretty uncomfortable. I'm worried about pushing, I said, and I don't want to make this stage of labor harder than it needs to be because I'm thinking ahead. Can you help me stay where we are? Sure, she said. She asked if she could rub my back while I rocked on my hands and knees, and I said yes gratefully.
Finally my mother-in-law pulled in. I said a quick hello to her and hugged and kissed the boys goodbye. I had tried to get them to help me make a labor nest a little earlier, but they wanted to play Darth Vader instead, with the shower curtains as cloaks. Penny and I double-made the bed, and spread a shower curtain over the living room floor. I headed for the tub.
I had labored in a tub twice before and found that it made an immediate difference for me, so I was surprised that I was still uncomfortable in the water. It was too hot at first, and even when the temperature was right I just didn't feel the relief I expected. My husband joked gently, "If you have the baby tonight, we'll have to have another so we can hit the 28th." [The three oldest boys have birthdays on the 29th, the 30th, and the 31st.] "Don' t talk to me about that right now," I snapped at him. "Wow," I thought to myself, "you are awfully cranky."
The midwife arrived and I climbed out of the water. "Can we see how things are going?" I asked. Baby sounded great, but I was more curious about my cervix. She checked me and said, "Jamie, how did you get that Studebaker in your uterus?"
Okay, okay, she said nothing of the sort. But I could not have been more surprised by a Studebaker than by what she actually said, which was this: "My fingers are stretching, stretching [I interpreted this as "you're not very far along but at least your cervix is stretchy" so imagine my shock when she concluded by saying] --I'd say eight, almost nine."
Can we have a moment of collective jaw-dropped-ness? Can we laugh out loud with relief and surprise? I spent the next ten minutes trying to get my mind around that number. I wanted to say, Are you sure? What units are you using? Does the baby have such a big head that I have to dilate to 17? How can I possibly be almost complete? I said, Okay, God, I asked for a gentle birth but I never imagined it would be this easy to get here.
My husband came down the stairs with the pair of sweats I'd asked him to bring me. "How far along do you think I am?" I demanded. "I'd say about four," he guessed. (That's exactly what I would have said.) "Nope," I said. "I don't think I'm going to need those pants after all."
I climbed on the birth ball (I had been looking forward to the midwife's arrival because rocking on the ball sounded so good) and relaxed through the next couple of contractions. Of course I'd been uncomfortable -- I was in transition! No wonder the kids were bugging me! No wonder I didn't want to be talking about having another baby! I am having another jaw-dropped moment just remembering. Lucky for you I can type with my jaw on the floor, or I'd never get this post written.
It wasn't very long at all before I began to have the beginnings of a pushing urge. I said to the midwife, "I'm worried about pushing this baby out. But you think I can do it, right?" She looked into my eyes and said steadily, "Yes. I think you can."
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