No, no new baby yet! But as this newest due date gets closer I've been spending a lot of time thinking about the birth of my boys, and I wanted to try to get their birth stories down before too much time has passed. I worry that with Conor, who will turn four in May, I've already gone a little fuzzy on the details. But this is how I remember it.
He was late, exactly one week overdue. I think that 41st week felt longer than the previous 40 put together. I was so sure I was going to go into labor every night, and every morning that I woke up still pregnant I was furious. Livid. I would look into his perfect nursery, at the crib that just needed a baby in it, and feel so sorry for myself. I may have cried a few times. And my mom had been staying with us in Brooklyn since my due date, and had nothing to do but stare at me and anxiously ask if it "was time" after any little sigh or groan I let out. Poor woman, I was so impatient with her. But day after day, long walk after long walk, evening primrose oil, acupuncture, entire pineapples, red raspberry leaf tea . . . nothing.
On May 21, in the early afternoon, I went to my scheduled midwife appointment. My midwife's office was two blocks from my apartment (and the hospital was only 6 blocks away) so Jon, my mom and I walked there. It was sunny and beautiful out. My midwife was encouraging, but said that if I didn't have the baby over the weekend (it was Memorial Day weekend) they would induce me on the following Tuesday. I was so upset; I had hoped and planned for an intervention-free birth. And then she took my blood pressure, paused, gave me a funny look, and checked it again. She said "it's high" and called the other two midwives into the tiny exam room. They said that they wanted to send me to the hospital for an induction - that he was probably very big ("maybe more than 10 pounds"), and my blood pressure was high, and it was a holiday weekend and they didn't want my blood pressure to spike while the midwives were out of town. I don't think any one of those reasons alone would have been enough for me to agree to an induction, but all of them together, combined with my mom being anxious about being away from home for so long, and my in-laws flying in from California the next day to "meet the baby," and my own exhaustion - I agreed.
My mom and I walked over to the hospital while Jon ran back to the apartment to get my bag (which had been ready for at least a month) and line up the dog-walker. Of course, my blood pressure was normal by the time I got to the hospital, but at that point "I was already there, might as well keep going." I checked in, and they got me set up in a delivery room. They hooked me up to an IV and started the pitocin drip. I think they started it at a very low level, and gradually increased it, but to be honest I didn't really know what was going on. I was on a monitor, but the cord was long enough that I was able to sit in a rocking chair next to the bed and rock through the contractions. It wasn't so bad at first, and my dad and sisters, who had driven down from Massachusetts in the meantime, were able to come in and visit with me a little between contractions. I snuck a couple of protein bars when the nurses were out of the room. I remember one nurse, a big woman with a gorgeous West Indian accent, who kept me laughing by telling my husband that he had done this to me and "was on vacation now."
But after a few hours, it got more and more challenging. If you don't like difficult or "negative" birth stories - and I wouldn't blame you - you should skip this paragraph. And most of the next one. Still here? Ok. The pain. . . well, that's almost impossible to describe. Having gone through a natural childbirth since then, I can safely say that pitocin contractions in no way resemble my body's natural contractions. You'll often hear women describe the pain of natural childbirth as intense, but understandable - they can process the pain, and understand that it's for a purpose. Not so with these contractions. I was insensible, out of my mind with the pain. I remember hanging from Jon's neck, clawing at his chest, trying so, so hard to crawl out of my own body. I requested an epidural after about 8 or 9 hours of labor. A few days later, my mom and I were talking about it and she said something like "I feel like you made a really informed decision to get the epidural." It didn't feel that way to me. It felt like I was dying, and the epidural was necessary for my survival. It couldn't have been less of a reasoned decision-making process - it was pure instinct, like grabbing onto a rope while drowning.
So they placed the epidural, and the relief from the pain was almost immediate. But then, the itching started. So I know I just described earth-shattering pain, what's so bad about a little itching? But I remember reading something about meth addicts, how they scratch at their skin because they feel like they are being eaten by insects. Yup, it felt like that. Not worse than the pain, but not exactly relief, either. Apparently I have a bad reaction to painkillers - I should have known, I've never been able to handle even Vicodin or Codeine without getting really sick. And then the pain started again, and I panicked - I thought I was going to be one of those women for whom epidurals don't work, and that it was wearing off already. I asked for the anaesthesiologist to come back in, but my midwife decided to check me first. She said I was complete, and what I was feeling was the pressure to push. I had progressed from 6 cm to 10 cm in about 40 minutes, either because the epidural helped my body relax, or because that's where my body was going anyway. So I pushed! That part was so much better - I felt like I could actively participate in the process, instead of just enduring it. And Conor was born about 20 minutes later, just before midnight on May 21, 2009, only 7.5 pounds and so beautiful. They put him on my chest, and he kept sticking his little tongue out at me. I stuck my tongue out back at him, and kept saying "Happy birthday, little baby" over and over again. They took him over to the little table to clean him up and my mom went with them, taking pictures - I heard her yell out "he has dimples!" and he did. They were (and are) big enough to drink soup out of.
The day after the birth, Jon kept telling me that "his tongue hurt" because he bit it during the labor. He kept saying it to visitors, too. It made me laugh so much - I had just gone through the most painful experience of my life, and had stiches in places I don't even like to think about, to bring his son into this world, and he kept talking about biting his tongue! I couldn't resist a sarcastic "I'm sorry that whole experience was so hard on you, hon." I still laugh about it, but he insists he bit his tongue really, really hard and I couldn't possibly understand.
The first Twilight movie was playing on the hospital movie channel. I watched it the day after the birth. I didn't know anything about it beforehand, and had no idea what a big deal it was for American teenagers, but thought it was pretty good. Jon insists that I had some kind of oxytocin-fuelled bonding experience with that movie, since I've now read the books and seen all of the movies, and it's the only way he can account for such a massive lapse in taste and judgment on my part. I don't know, I just think the series in pretty fun, but maybe he's onto something. He's already scheming about what he wants me to watch immediately after this new baby is born next month - I think he wants me to get hooked on the Simpsons.
We stayed in the hospital for three days. Conor developed a very mild case of jaundice, and they wanted to keep him under the lights. He looked like he was in a little tanning bed, with the tiny goggles on. Most of the staff was great, but we had several extremely unpleasant run-ins with a very young pediatric resident who kept talking about how much she had partied that weekend and making comments about "not understanding why someone would breasftfeed, I heard a story about a woman whose baby bit her nipple off" etc. I'm still angry about it. Eventually we had to give him bottles of formula to get his bilirubin levels low enough to be discharged, which I fought tooth and nail but finally agreed to. But we finally got out of there, and were able to walk the 6 blocks back to our apartment.
The sensations of new motherhood were so strange, and overwhelming. I wanted to eat his little face. Does that make sense? I wanted to devour him, I couldn't kiss him enough. And I cried, oh, I cried so much. Mostly I cried because he was so small and perfect, and I didn't want him to ever get any bigger. I wanted to freeze time in those first few weeks - the thought of him getting any older just broke me down. I think I was also feeling the days of my maternity leave slipping away so quickly, and I knew how limited my time at home with him was going to be. After a couple of weeks, I got the crying under control and started to enjoy the time more. He was a champion eater, and so easy to nurse (take that, horror show pediatric resident). He only cried if he wanted something - a diaper change, food. He was impossible to put down, so we just held him all the time. Nights were hard, as he took hours of convincing and rocking and singing to drift off to sleep, but we got through it. And, of course, it was all worth it.
Next up . . . Finn's (completely opposite in every way) birth story . . .
