And with no further ado

the Birth Story.

Precis: A short labor without any interventions (and thankfully not at home, Ms. J!). The longer version involves hours of hospital fumble, endless waffling on whether to go home or get the labor started, baby comes out, followed by further hours of hospital fumble. At least you've been warned.

Wednesday was a regular, busy day. Moping in bed (see previous post) followed by work, lunch with a friend, work. Picked the fusspot up from daycare early and took her to art class. Wandered home across campus collecting cigarette butts and chasing pigeons. We got home a few minutes before 5 and I realized that my stomach felt weird. Tingly, funny, no pain at all. But since the midwives had me duly terrified of needing to contact them early and it was so close to closing time, I decided to suck it up and call. The office is supposed to close at 5 pm.

At 5:05 pm I called and my favorite midwife answered. I reiterated that I felt "weird" and had been feeling "weird" for a good half hour, but was in absolutely no pain. She told me that she was waiting in the office anyway, why didn't I just come down and see her? Since it was already after hours and I felt bad keeping her even later, I immediately rushed the fusspot out the door, deposited her at the exceedingly nice neighbors with a set of keys to our apartment and a disposable diaper in her hand and promising to be home in an hour, hopped in a cab ...

5:25 pm arrive at midwives' office. She decides to check me. Another centimeter of progress (putting me at just about 5 cm) but even she couldn't tell if I was in labor. Great. So she suggested I head over to L and D, get some antibiotics (which would be good for 12 hours) and then head home and hope that I went into labor overnight. They'd also do a quick NST to see if the baby was ok, and I should be out of there in a half hour. Fine.

Arrive at hospital at 5:45 pm (it is literally 2 blocks from the midwives, and also conveniently 2 blocks from Jamba Juice). Settle into L and D waiting area. 6 pm my favorite midwife shows up and informs me that even though they have 4 beds available (she'd checked before sending me over) they weren't going to get me through triage for at least an hour.

6:01 pm exit hospital with directions to get a snack, walk, and return around 8 pm to be checked in the birthing center.

Which explains how I waltzed into the birthing center shortly before 8 pm with a large Jamba Juice in one hand and a collection of shopping bags in the other hand (did you know that GAP has been having 40% off coupons on Wednesdays?). Yeah. The nurse and midwife basically cracked up at the thought that I was in early labor for a presumed speedy second delivery. All fine, they decide to do an NST and send me home.

8:15 pm or so I get hooked up to the NST and all 3 of our jaws drop. Real contractions. Huh. Nurse orders antibiotics. I call JD and tell him to go home, put fusspot to bed, and then get ready to head to the hospital when I call. The midwife is still talking about sending me home for a few hours (as per my request, and especially since I had literally run out the door with nothing but wallet, keys and cell phone in my pocked). The same neighbor who has been watching the fusspot all evening agrees to come sleep in our bed once the fusspot and her kids are asleep.

Hospital fumble #1: The antibiotics do not arrive in the birthing center until 9:45 pm. Also, since this is a rather unusual drug choice no one realized that the IV drip would take an hour and a half to empty. Brilliant. IV finishes at 11:15 pm. Labor has 100% stalled at this point. Midwife agrees to send me home, but suggests that I consider just taking a nap at the hospital and waiting to see if labor progresses. I cave and call JD to come join me. He arrives a little before midnight and finding me still in absolutely no pain, promptly exists kindle in hand to the closest diner to finish up some work and get dinner.

12:30 pm - 5 am. I doze, pace the halls, and get increasingly frustrated that I'm not in labor. 3 other women arrive (there is practically no sound proofing in this particular hospital). 2 are 2nd/4th labors which proceed quickly and result in babies. 1 is a 1st labor and the woman exits screaming for pain meds upstairs. Still waiting.

5 am midwife arrives for a consult. We now have a little less than 5 hours until the 1.5 hour IV drip has to be repeated, not a contraction in sight on the NST strip, and very little sign that labor is going to start soon. Enter long protracted debate about what to do. We all agree that the most "natural" thing would be for me to go home and wait for real labor to start. Of course, that means repeating antibiotics (which are Class C in pregnancy. lovely) and potentially rushing back to find our room taken at the birthing center (see above, 2 moms and babies resting comfortably in the 2 other rooms). Option 2 is breaking my water and wait for labor. The risks are a harder, speedier labor and finding meconium in the water (which would necessitate continuous monitoring as it can be a sign of fetal distress). Blah, blah, blah we waffle.

Sometime around 5:30 am we decide to break my water. Also call the doula at this point.

6 am doula arrives and JD bolts out the door to Starbucks for coffee. No noticeable contractions and we all enjoy a relaxed breakfast.

Sometime shortly after breakfast we move from the happy/chatting/shopping/snacking phase of my unusual labor to intense labor (see, it was bound to happen eventually). The rest is a bit of a blur. Back and foot massage lying on the bed. Walking in the hall. And as soon as I reached 6 cm the midwife suggested that I get in the jacuzzi. I thought they might be a bit daft since most people save the jacuzzi for transition, but apparently 6 centimeters and transition were much the same for me. I remember distinctly telling everyone that I didn't feel well, that I wanted to get out of the water, that I wanted to talk about pain meds, and being told that instead I should just push the baby out. 3 pushes later and there was a loud, angry, lobster red baby on my chest. And while this baby was a good 1.5 lbs heavier than the fusspot, it turns out that while her head circumference has always been near 99th percentile, the dumpling's is closer to 25th percentile, meaning a lot less tearing. Since JD yet again had no interest in cutting the placenta, I did it myself this time.

8:47 am baby born.

One of the coolest things is that I had remembered to tell everyone that I wanted to see the placenta this time around. Since our doula was still in training (helping with the whole budget issue) the midwives (2 at this point, we were close to a shift change) and nurse (same one as with the fusspot) spent a long time showing off the placenta. They picked it up, they showed where they had broken my water, they turned it inside out. It was pretty neat. And JD was cognizant enough to focus on holding the baby so he didn't have any "issues" like the ones which had him removed from the room post-delivery with the fusspot.

And while the labor was much faster and the pushing SO much better than labor #1 (3 pushes vs. 3 hours) the afterbirth pains were much, much worse this time around. Which leads us to Hospital Fumble #2: Midwife orders up some top-quality-hard-to-get ibuprofen for me. It takes a full six hours to arrive (by which point I had of course sent JD scurrying to the drug store and surreptitiously doped myself).

We were all settled on a 5 pm discharge so that we could pick the fusspot up from daycare (8 hours postpartum) but since I was in rather a significant amount of pain from cramping at that point I decided to stay for another couple of hours and sent JD home to pick the fusspot up, feed her dinner, put her to bed, find a babysitter, and then come back for me. In total her schedule was disrupted only so much as she woke up to find our neighbor at our apartment and was promptly rushed off to daycare an hour early. Otherwise JD tucked her into bed and waited until she was asleep to sneak out both nights.

9:30 pm JD returns to the hospital. Hospital Fumble #3: It takes until 1 am to complete discharge and more frustratingly to find someone to escort us out through the ER (since of course the front door was closed by 1 am). I really do think that our "hospital escort" must have just finished her shift on the janitorial staff. Not only was she not at all careful with the baby, but she tried to take us out of the locked front door and asked us 4 or 5 times where we'd parked our car (uh ... still going to go stand outside the ER at 1 am and try to hail a cab, thanks dear).

1:30 am arrive home to JD's very enthusiastic friend who is thrilled to be the first to meet the dumpling in person. 2 am in bed at last.

In summary, very glad that we were seriously given all of the options relating to the labor. Also exceedingly glad that the midwives took our concerns seriously and that we decided to go ahead and start labor when it had stalled. Still puzzled as to how I could be having real contractions without feeling them, and increasingly convinced that my not feeling contractions/not feeling the baby move is a result of some missing nerve endings.

And just in case you were wondering how JD is holding up, I sent him off to goodwill this morning to clean out a few bags of stuff from our closet (a lovely errand I'd been stalling on for weeks). He quickly poked through the bags and pulled out a book and said "Do you really want to get rid of this?" Me, "Yes, dear." The book in his hand was "What to Eat When You're Expecting" (which is awful and outdated and was given me by someone. You should definitely avoid it), but JD thought it was the far more common "What to Expect ..." So yeah, I think we're doing ok for 5 days postpartum.