The story of Samantha Claire

When Alice went to bed at 10 p.m. on Monday, June 3, her Mommy was very, very pregnant. When she woke up at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, June 4, she had a new little sister. This is the story of what happened while she slept...

I never had a chance to go into labor on my own with Alice; at 13 days past my due date, I was induced. Alice's hospital birth was not a pleasant or empowering one. Even before I got pregnant this time, we were planning a homebirth.

I didn't feel any differently on Monday night than I had been feeling for weeks -- that is to say, I felt achy, swollen, and tired. I was about 8 days past my due date. The baby was low in my pelvis, I was having strong but painless contractions a few times an hour, and I was simultaneously sure that the baby was about to fall out, and that I would never go into labor on my own.

We went out to eat that evening because Anth had worked late and we were both too tired to cook. By the time we got home, it was almost Alice's bed time so we hung out and watched a little TV until she fell asleep around 10. After we put her to bed, I was sitting on my birth ball and reading email. Just before 11, I realized that I was having some stronger, more frequent, contractions, and that they actually had some sensation with them. I started timing them and they were coming very regularly every 5 minutes, lasting about a minute. They were strong enough that I had to fully concentrate and relax through them. As long as I was on my birth ball, closing my eyes and breathing through the surges, I felt really fine with them. At one point, though, I had to go pee and didn't get back to my ball fast enough and I got caught standing up for a contraction. That one was much less manageable!!

After an hour (around midnight), they were still very regular and getting slowly stronger and we decided it was time to call the midwife. As I got up to call, I realized that my water was leaking, so I put on a pad.

I'd had an internal at my last midwife appointment, 5 days before, and I'd been 2-3 cm dilated and 75% effaced but posterior (i.e. tilted towards my back, not centered and ready for delivery). My midwife (Patti) was a little concerned about coming to check me too soon and finding me still at 2-3 cm, but after she heard that I'd had over an hour of very regular contractions and that my water was broken, it sounded to her like I was in full swing. She said she'd be there within 45 minutes.

A little before 1 a.m., the midwife's assistant (Cindy) arrived. Patti had another woman in labor, so Cindy would be our labor support for the time being. She's a registered nurse in her own right, and has delivered her share of babies, so we were reassured by her presence. She stayed in contact with Patti via periodic cell phone calls, and the two of them conferred and worked on gauging which of the two laboring women would go first. Cindy checked me and found me at 5 or 6 cm but still posterior and not yet fully effaced. I labored for another half an hour or so on the birth ball, by which time the contractions were getting stronger and I was having more trouble relaxing through them. When one would start, I would shake and feel chilled, then I would close my eyes and focus on breathing and keeping as much of my body relaxed as I could. Once the pain had peaked, I would feel hot and flushed. Anth and Cindy stayed near me, stroking and rubbing my back and covering and uncovering me with a blanket as I alternated hot and cold.

I was getting up to pee fairly frequently during this time, and during one of my bathroom visits, we noticed some light meconium staining on the pad I was wearing. It was very light, so we weren't overly concerned about it, but it was something we kept an eye on as labor progressed.

Around 1:30, we decided that the birth ball wasn't working so well anymore, so Anth pulled out the sofa bed and we tried to get me settled there. I ended up sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning forward onto the back of a chair, which worked for a little while.

(Apparently at some time around here the midwife suggested I try a contraction on all fours, so I got up to pee, then did a contraction on my hands and knees in the hall outside the bathroom. I told them that it "felt like something was ripping" during that contraction, so we abandoned that position. I don't remember any of this, but Anth says it happened, so I'm trusting him. Anyway, it was back to the edge of the sofa bed for me...)

I started to feel nauseated as well as flushed at the end of contractions, so Anth brought over a trash can for me to throw up in. After I threw up about 8 times, completely emptying my stomach, we all pretty strongly suspected I was in transition, so Cindy checked me again.

Progress! I was now at 7 or 8 cm, but still posterior. By this time it was about 2:15. Cindy called Patti and they decided that (a) I was definitely going to go before the other laboring woman, who was still at 4 and had been at 4 for some time, so Patti would come on over, and (b) I needed to change position to something more reclining, to take the downward pressure off my cervix and help it to move forward. We tried laying me back in a semi-sit on the sofa bed, propped up with pillows, but the "mattress" wasn't supportive enough and I couldn't handle the contractions at all in that position, so they put me in the tub.

Anth filled the bath with nice warm water, we turned off the lights and lit candles, and I laid back in the water with an inflatable bath pillow behind me. I couldn't get the water deep enough to really feel any of the much-touted benefits of laboring in water (only about the bottom 1/3 of my belly was ever submerged), but I was able to relax a bit more and take some contractions in a more reclining position. Soon after I got in the water, Patti arrived, so Anth faded out of the room and let the midwives support me for a while (up until that point, he'd been at my side for just about every single contraction of the labor, rubbing my back and telling me how well I was doing). We kept having to add more hot water as the tub cooled off; I was still getting the chills and shakes between contractions and the hot flushes after the contractions peaked, so I was covering and uncovering my chest with a semi-wet towel. By this time, the contractions were much stronger and I was having very little success in tolerating them. I was doing a lot of sounding (many many low, deep, loud "Oh, oh, oh, oh"s during the peak of each surge), and concentrating on relaxing my body, which served to at least dissipate some of the pain.

While I labored in the tub, Anth moved Alice from our bed onto the sofa bed, where she would sleep soundly for the rest of the night. He also helped the midwives with last-minute set-up (double-sheeting the bed, unpacking Patti's supplies, etc.)

About 20 minutes after Patti got there, she checked me and found me to be about a 9 or so. She said that I was almost completely dilated, but that there was a small section of my cervix that was still "thick", so we waited a few more contractions to let that area thin out. (I wonder if this part of my cervix was the same part that remained as a "lip" for a while during Alice's labor and birth.) By this point in the labor, the contractions were really getting unmanageable -- my sounding and relaxing was coming perilously close to whining and thrashing -- but Patti and Cindy did their best to keep me focused and calm.

(Around this time, I really began to feel the baby rolling and moving between contractions. It was not a very comfortable sensation, and it made me say "oh baby oh baby oh baby!!!", but the midwife reminded me that it was the baby working to find the way and the position necessary to get out...)

Patti checked me again 15 minutes later and found that the lip had thinned considerably, and I was pretty much completely dilated. She suggested that I try pushing with the next contraction and see if that felt any better. When the next contraction came, I tried a few tentative pushes.

Now, I read a lot of birth stories during my pregnancy, and one of the themes that stood out in story after story was the idea that many women almost enjoy the pushing part of labor because they can actively participate in their baby's birth (as opposed to simply trying to relax and get out of the way during first stage contractions). I'd heard and read a lot about how great it can feel to push, and what an overwhelming and amazing thing it is to experience the famous "overwhelming urge to push". Pushing Alice out was a frightening, painful, and totally external experience -- the doctor and the nurses yelled and counted and instructed me on when and how to push -- and I was looking forward to experiencing something more normal this time around.

So I pushed. It hurt. I guess I writhed quite a bit at this point, because the midwife said, "Okay, maybe it's not time to push yet" but that wasn't the problem. When the contraction was over, I managed to gasp out something along the lines of "No, it's good to push, it just hurts!".

Everyone helped me out of the tub and I headed for the bed. Unfortunately, I didn't move fast enough and I got hit with a contraction when I was still en route from one room to the other. What a horrible feeling!! I remember panicking, screaming, crying that I was having a contraction and it hurt so much and I couldn't make it to the bed!! When the surge passed, I was able to lay down and rest for a few minutes before we started the serious work of pushing this baby out.

I sat on the bed, Anth on one side, Cindy on the other, and Patti at the business end of the process. When a contraction came, I would put my chin to my chest, Anth and Cindy would each hold a leg back with one hand and give me the other hand to pull on, and I would puuusshhh. I never did feel that "overwhelming urge" (I guess that's just something I'll never experience in this lifetime, kind of like reading War and Peace or learning to play the french horn), but I cognitively knew that I needed to push, and push hard, with each contraction, because that was the only way to handle the pain. It was like a big hill of pain, and the harder I pushed, the more it hurt until if I got to the top of the hill and pushed the absolute hardest I could, I actually went over the crest and it hurt less.

While I was pushing, I made an immense amount of noise. I think Patti kept trying to tell me something about saving all my energy for pushing instead of wasting some of it by screaming, but I was screaming too loud to hear her. I really felt like I needed to make that much noise, though -- it didn't feel like a waste of energy so much as a necessary vent to the intensity of what I was feeling. (I still can't believe that Alice slept through all of this. Yes, she was down the hall, and yes, the bedroom door was closed, but I know I was being loud enough to be heard throughout the house!)

So I pushed. The baby seemed to descend fairly quickly, but I had a hard time getting her all the way out. Anth and the midwives gave me a lot of encouragement. (At one point, Anth started counting at me -- "C'mon, Jen, push! 1, 2, 3..." I immediately growled at him "Don't count at me!!" He admitted later he'd had a temporary hospital-birth flashback.) While I pushed, Patti worked on helping my perineum to stretch with massage and arnica oil. She did some very deep massage and stretching as the baby descended, which wasn't always comfortable. I think that I kind of begged her to stop a few times, but a lot of this is a blur. I know that the baby crowned fairly soon after I began pushing, but then it seemed to be harder than expected to get the baby's head completely out.

After about half an hour, everyone started telling me things like "One more good push and you can get this baby out!" I pushed one or two more times after that, and then asked, "Can I really get this baby out with one more push, or are you guys just lying to me?!?" They assured me that I was very, very close, and told me to reach down and touch the baby's head -- it was almost half out! Touching the head was amazing, and it gave me the motivation to push just a little harder once or twice more and...

At 3:23 a.m., our daughter was born! The first three things she heard after her birth were: Anth joyously announcing, "It's a girl!", Patti laughing and saying, "It's a sister!" and poor shocked me going "A girl?!? Oh no, what'll we name her?!?" We'd all been so sure that I was having a boy, we hadn't even picked a girl's name!

Our as-yet-unnamed baby had to be suctioned immediately after birth because of the meconium, but other than that she was pink and healthy and responsive. Her APGARs were 8 & 9. The midwives cleaned her up, checked her out, and weighed and measured her while we waited for the placenta to come, which only took about 10 minutes.

After I delivered the placenta, I started to bleed. And bleed. And bleed. I remember the sensation of laying on the bed and feeling a rapidly-expanding pool of warmth spreading under my back. Patti estimated I lost about a liter of blood, total. She and Cindy quickly hung an IV bag to replace fluids and gave me intramuscular methergine, and pitocin in the IV drip. Then came the really fun part -- "vigorous" massage of my uterus, which forced out a bunch more blood and some good-sized clots. I completely lost what little was remaining of my composure at this point, and was actively fighting Patti (grabbing at her arms, trying to push her away, begging her to stop) while she was trying to do this. *blush*

The whole post-partum hemorrhage was identical to my post-partum experience with Alice; I'd hoped that, by taking better care of myself pre-natally and having a gentler, less managed birth this time, I could avoid another severe bleed, but apparently it wasn't to be. I was pleased and impressed, though, with how well Patti handled the situation; she was very calming and took really good care of me.

Once the bleeding was under control (and they got it under control very quickly), Patti checked my perineum -- I'd had two large episiotomies while in labor with Alice, and when she was delivered, those cuts had torn into the muscle. This time, I had only tiny lacerations (first-degree tears, or "skid marks")! Not only that, but Patti said that, upon examining me, she could see that my OB had not sewn me up correctly after Alice's birth, which explains the stiffness and tenderness I'd had at the scar sites even 4 years afterward. Wondrously, this baby had re-opened the botched area and Patti expected me to heal back better than I'd been.

I was unbelievably pleased to hear all of this -- I'd been expecting and dreading that I would tear severely along my scars, so it was a wonderful surprise to hear that I wouldn't even need a single stitch. This was all the more amazing because this little girl had been born with her arm next to her head (this is called compound presentation, and it probably accounts for how painful pushing was, and how long it took to get past crowning)!

Once everyone was stable and we were tucked into bed and nursing, Patti left (around 5 a.m.). Cindy stayed for another half an hour and gave me a sponge bath in bed (I was too weak from the blood loss to get up for a shower until days later) and went over our "discharge" instructions.

The entire labor, start to finish, lasted just over four hours, which is not very long at all, believe me -- I wouldn't wish a four-hour labor on anyone. Everything happened so fast that there was very little I could do to try to cope or work with the contractions; all the techniques and tools that I'd gathered and planned to use laid idle while I did my best to just get the heck out of the way of what my body was doing.

During my pregnancy, we'd planned to give Alice the option to be present for the birth, and I'd spent a lot of time preparing her by talking about labor and birth and babies. We had watched a lot of videos, looked at a lot of books, and had a lot of discussions about the kinds of noises I'd make, how much blood there would be, etc. As it turned out, Alice missed the entire thing, and I have to think that was for the best since there was more noise, more blood, and more etc. than any of us had expected.

Recovery has been both difficult and surprisingly easy. The hemmorrhage left me quite weak; it took me two days before I was strong enough to walk to the bathroom instead of crawling. Besides that, I've been pleased at how fast my body has recovered. I know that being able to rest and recover at home instead of in some hospital room somewhere has made a huge difference in how I feel.

It took us a day or so to decide on a name for our newest addition. If she'd been the boy we'd all expected, we would have named her Sumner Harrison, Sam for short. Samantha was the obvious choice once we discovered we had to find something more feminine than Sumner, but we were a little slow to commit to it. Still, nothing else seemed to fit, and Anth remarked that his name is in the name Samantha, so she was named for her Daddy. The midwife suggested Claire; she said it was the first name that came to her and she thought it went well with Moquin. I agree; I also think it goes really well with Samantha. So that's her.

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