We had a pretty good night last night despite feeding every couple of hours. Evelyn finally slept on something that wasn't either of us and I'm feeling pretty well-rested so I guess it's time for...


Some of the things that you hear about birth were true for me:

1) It did not go at all like I had "planned" - I really should have had contingency plans in place for a faster labor
2) Giving birth is, in fact, remarkably like the biggest, most constipated dump of your entire life
3) You won't care who sees you naked and (let's be honest here) crapping yourself
4) Doulas are worth their weight in gold (maybe more in my case, Renee is pretty small)

The timeline for this is a bit spotty and I'm sure I have wildly misremembered or exaggerated a few things but I'll leave it to Josh to fill in gaps or make corrections.

So I last left you hanging after a couple of hours of liveblarging with the last post around 6 am where things were getting intense. At this point I paged the midwife on call mostly to tell her that there was no way in hell I was going to that ultrasound and oh yeah, in labor - but "early" (i.e. don't come over right now) labor. It's a good thing I gave some heads up rather than waiting for 4-1-1 (contractions 1 minute long, 4 minutes apart, for an hour) as she was already at the hospital attending another birth. In an effort to buy time (mostly for me), she tells me to take two Tylenol, a Gravol, and get in the bath to try and ease the contractions off so I can sleep a little bit longer.

HAAAAAAA!

Josh is up by this time having heard me crying on the couch. After a bit in the bathtub where things did not slow down at all, I told him to call Renee (the doula) back and tell her to please hurry if she could. I'm not really sure what all happens during this time - I keep making crazy noises and secretly hoping it pisses off our shitty neighbors who have the dogs we hate. I'm surprised the dogs didn't hear me and start howling.

Renee finally shows up, I'd guess a little after 7, and is so incredibly helpful, along with Josh, in getting me through more of the contractions in the bath. Sometime between her arrival and 9 am, I tell them to get the midwife here NOW DAMMIT and we HAVE TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL. I think they know that I am not fucking around since I have started getting frantic at the peak of contractions because... I'm getting the urge to push already and can't stop. Renee works her magic at getting me to breathe through the pushing urge and I think there is some tense conversation with the midwife - who unbeknownst to me at the time is actually the emergency backup midwife¹ whom I have only met a couple of weeks previously and only as "Oh, this is Chloe. You'll only see her if she comes to a post-partum visit at your house towards the end of May so I guess you may as well meet her once." Fortunately, I think Renee had worked with Chloe before (maybe not. I need to ask Renee for her version of the story.). Renee is able to tell her all the relevant info and I think at this point I hear "maybe call 911 for transport". Sometime after this, I am pulled out of the bath and put on the bed. There's more back and forth with Chloe by phone. I don't know if she got held up in traffic or what, but eventually Renee starts attempting to put clothes on me to get me to the car for the drive. They get my green dress onto me along with my underwear and start walking me to the car in anticipation of Chloe getting there soon. Apparently we were leaving immediately and not waiting to check progress.

Finally Chloe arrives and then got a career first out of me by checking my cervix in the back of the car. She's relieved to find out I'm actually only 7 cm instead of fully dilated. This is thanks to the fact that the early pushing (which I am still screaming through - not out of pain but because I know I'm not supposed to and I can't stop) is causing the cervix to swell a bit thus keeping it from finishing dilating. This buys us enough time to make the Worst Car Ride Ever since Chloe wasn't sure if I would even be able to make it to the hospital initially (this is where 911 was called into question) - not St. Paul's where I'm registered which is about 20 minutes away in good traffic (i.e. not 9:30? am) or even Burnaby General which is much closer but I'm not registered for and the midwives don't have admitting privileges there (which probably would have caused its own set of problems).

We (okay, they) decide that perhaps it is okay for me not to wear a seatbelt just this once and I make the ride downtown with my head in Renee's lap on the backseat with my feet stuck up in the window. Apparently many red lights were run and much honking was done. (Good job, spouse!) After some weird twisty route, we get to the emergency entrance where doors are thrown open, wheelchairs are fetched, and I'm pulled out and put into one for the ride up.

Now... had you been walking down Burrard around this time, you would have seen a wild and very distressed lady not looking very ladylike at all since they gave up trying to put my underwear back on me after the backseat cervix check and instead just threw a towel over my lower half. I don't know that the towel made the entire journey up to Maternity. Chloe throws my purse to Renee who handles Admitting and then (and you know this means it was an emergency) we got to take the real elevators² upstairs.

Good timing, a room has just opened up and we are finally in. Chloe checks me again and finds I'm a little farther along but still have swelling that's holding things up. They throw me in the bath to try and get the baby up and off of it to give it a chance to rally on its own. Somewhere in here I am also poked full of needles - some for blood testing and some acupuncture to try and help with the swelling/dilation. At some point, Chloe gives up on this plan since I am still screaming through the pushing parts of the contraction. We're moving onto Stage 2, cervix be damned.

I'm pulled out of that bath and put onto the bed on my hands and knees and told I can push all I want now - I don't have scream through them anymore. Holy shit, this is the biggest relief EVER. Pushing is intense, for sure, but it isn't painful or scary. Chloe keeps her fingers next to my cervix and pushes it around the baby's head so that there is finally some progress.

...

And then I push for the next 3 hours (or about 10 hours in Labor Time). Hands and knees, squatting (this was quite the athletic endeavor), on my side, on the toilet... anything a squirrel can do, wait, no, that's prepositions. Anyway, they kept telling me that I was actually making progress each time, it was just slow-going. Apparently it is some kind of crazy maze up in there that the baby is navigating. Or maybe I am one of those cosmic jokes of a woman who has wide "birthing" hips but a narrow pelvic opening.

After about 3 hours Labor Time (about 1 hour real time), they're saying "almost there!". They are still saying this 9 hours LT later. I haven't eaten much of anything all day and I keep being fed the vilest apple juice known to man. I think it had electrolytes (it's what laboring women do NOT crave). Somehow I have the strength to get through all of it. Eventually I start feeling this curious sensation - like there's something stretching me apart. O hai, it's a head.

Now the Ring of Fire is often talked about as being one of the worst parts. I'm sure it is if you have one of luge-like ³ birth canals. If you're just glad that SOMETHING IS FINALLY HAPPENING then it's more of a somewhat stinging release. I mean, yeah, it's not a thrilling sensation, but it is kind of a relief to know things are almost over even as you're thinking "Well, I guess they'll be reconstructing all those holes that have just been blown into a cloaca." I was expecting it to hurt the worst at the perineum, but for me the most painful part was thinking that my peehole was about to be torn in twain (it wasn't. thank God.).

At this point (I discover later when reviewing the photos on my camera), Josh got a little trigger happy so the first photo we have of Evelyn is her half-hanging out. Her shoulders come out next without much ado and the rest of her follows close behind and suddenly this gasping, purple-y Gollum creature is writhing around on my abdomen and trying to cough up a wad of birthing phlegm. She's having a little trouble which makes for a tense moment as they had to go ahead and cut the cord to get her onto the warming tray (whatever that thing's called). Peds are called and then canceled a few seconds later since they manage to get her lungs cleared. Now pink, she is dumped back onto me and I immediately do a thing which she will hate later - I lick my finger and wipe a couple of bloody smears off of her leg (a fairly futile act considering it looks like a murder story everywhere else in the room).

I'm about all pushed out by this point and contractions have stopped thus stalling the delivery of the placenta. They ask me to push voluntarily while they (gently) tug and eventually this big sac of gross comes out. I decline to look at it but ask for photos for later. I also decline to keep it (not that there's anything wrong with that). Finally the reconstruction starts - some second degree tearing (expected) and I get some unknown quantity of stitches (Josh apparently knows all the details. I will ask for them in a few months. Right now, I won't even look at them.). I think I mostly tore to the sides. At least I don't remember feeling too many needles farther back. Then again, I was also numb.

All in all, it honestly was not that bad. I think I had a great experience with it having gone drug-free (not that I had any choice in the matter due to the timeline). The leg cramps I got after it was all over were worse on an individual basis than any of the other pains. Right now my stitches are starting to tighten up and my new hemorrhoids make sitting and coughing dicey propositions, but other than that, I haven't had any fall out.

Hooray for baby!

Edit: tots time start to finish was 10 hours.

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¹ A brief explanation about the midwifery practice I went with - throughout pregnancy I saw a rotating group of three midwives who work at the same clinic and it is assumed whichever of them is on-call catches the baby or calls one of the other two if she can't make it. Chloe, the fourth midwife, has her own set of clients separate from the other three even though she works out of the same office. I think she is only called in for the other births if no one else is available.

² St. Paul's, though a fantastic hospital, is very old and the elevators they make all the peons take can take up to 15 minutes to show up.

³ I guess that should actually be skeleton-like unless you deliver breech.