The Birth Story (howie)

Hi everyone – below is my version of the birth story.  Its kind of long, but I needed to let it unfold the way it wanted.  Turns out I have a lot to say on the subject of Kate’s labor and Eliza Jane’s birth.

December 30th was pretty much the same as all the days in the previous 2 weeks.

Our baby was supposed to arrive at any time.  We were somehow supposed to go about our day like everything was normal.  I was going to work every day.  Kate was with her mom all day.  Everyone was waiting on one thing to happen, but no one could make it happen – and dwelling on it wasn’t that helpful.

It was the elephant in the room.  The only variable was, at any given time, how comfortable each of us was with that elephant.  Amy, Kate and I all had our moments of Zen-like resignation to the whim of labor.  And we all had our moments where the anticipation was just too much.

Especially Kate – who was wedged claustrophobically between motherhood and daughterhood.

There were lots of activities designed to make the baby come – but in doing those activities, we mostly talked about other things.

Acupuncture, massage, spicy foods, hiking.  What I remember best is the walking.  Window shopping in boutiques.  Going to the grocery store.  Past all the beautiful arts & crafts homes in our neighborhood.  In ever wider concentric rings, depending on the level of our determination to induce labor.

Once Kate and I even walked to the UC Berkeley campus and back at 3 in the morning – 2.6 miles round trip.

At nights Amy would make dinner and we’d sit around our little coffee table, just talking and listening to music.  Not that much tv watching.  Then Amy would say good night and head back to the apartment she was staying in – with everyone simultaneously but silently wondering whether she’d get a call from us that night.

So Tuesday, December 30th, was just like most other days.  I came home from work.  Kate and her mom were either cooking or working on some house project.  Or both.  I can’t remember.  We hung out, ate, talked.  Amy went home.  Kate and I went to bed, talked about the day, wondered aloud why our baby hadn’t come and talked about the anxiety created by overly-prolonged anticipation.

We pulled out our birth class “cards” – the ones with our birth fears on one side and our birth wants on the other – to help us focus on all the other things that could still go well.

Not an overly long labor.  Safety and security.  Health.  No complications after birth.  Team work.  Home birth.  Manageable pain.  Privacy.  “Front” labor.  These could all still go according to “plan.”

That night around 12:30 am, the strong contractions started. Kate said they were stronger than any she’d felt before.  We lay with each other in bed for a while, noticing them.  And then, maybe because we didn’t want to jinx it, we read our books for a while. But the contractions were too intense to read through.

Kate hung out in the bathroom for a while, and then came back to bed – saying she was pretty sure this was real labor.  And that I should call her mom.  Then she went back to the bathroom.

I called Amy and asked her to come on over because we thought “this is it.”  I could hear the smile on her face.

I also called Maura, one of our midwives, and let her know that the game was afoot.  She said to notice if the contractions settled into a routine and to call her back then.  Looking back – Kate’s contractions were already locked into a routine in terms of duration and time between them.  Its just the intensity that changed.

And the contractions got more intense at this point.  Kate was audibly moaning in the bathroom.  I put some candles on the floor in the hallway outside, and set some pillows out for her to lay on.  When she came out – she lay on them for a couple of contractions, and then we went back to the bed.  I put some classical music on, not even realizing that we were pretty much beyond music at this point.

We were only an hour in, and Kate was already having the kind of contractions where she really had to focus inward & couldn’t talk, and in between she needed to rest.  The contractions were coming pretty fast – each one lasting about a minute or a little more, with about 45 seconds between.

This was a really hard period for me.  The time between when the contractions started and when Amy arrived.

It was just me & Kate, and I felt utterly helpless.

Kate had already run too far down the birth path for us to communicate at all, and I was running behind her trying to keep up.

Trying to give her what she needed in that moment, and barely being able to think enough to anticipate what she might need in future moments.  And trying to really be present with her through each contraction, hard as it was to watch her go through it.

Also – applying lots of pressure to her lower back, and trying to get her to drink water in the rests between.  I remember offering words of encouragement, and I also remember those words seeming absurdly unequal to the occasion.

When Amy arrived around 1:30 am, the two of us were able to work together to make things as comfortable for Kate as possible.  Comfortable being a relative term.  I could tell that just having her mom present was a comfort and relief to Kate, which in turn made me feel better.

I can happily say there was no space for egos between me & Amy.  Our love for Kate just took up too much room, and early on we settled unconsciously into a unique teamwork.

Basically, from this point until Maura arrived is a blur to me.  I can see it in flashes –

Kate lying on her side in our bed, Amy behind her with a hand on Kate’s upper back and a hand on her lower back, me sitting in a chair next to the bed holding Kate’s hand in between contractions.   Flickering candle light.  Kate soaked in sweat, which made it all the more frustrating that she was only taking a small gulp of water every now and then.

Or me behind Kate, applying pressure, while Amy held her hand and talked to her about how women all over the world were giving birth at that moment.

Or the three of us droning during each contraction.  Kate would start us out, and then Amy and I would join in.  I remember concentrating really hard on having my drone be perfectly in tune with Kate’s and Amy’s drones, which wasn’t easy as Kate’s would tend to pitch higher as the contraction became more intense.  But when the 3 of us were all droning on the same tone – there was a resonance there that calmed me down and cleared my head a little.

Or filling up the birthing tub, while Amy stayed with Kate.  Once it was filled, Kate got in for a few contractions.  I noticed the water was a bit hot.  Foreshadowing.  Being in the water at this stage didn’t seem to help her all that much, so she went back to the bed which was about 5 feet away.

Or freezing orange juice in the ice tray, while Kate labored (briefly) in the living room on the yoga ball.  (A couple of days ago Kate told me she didn’t like laboring in the living room because it felt like too large a space – and she needed to feel closed in.)

Or getting the video camera and then deciding this was too intimate to film.  And then getting the camera again, and then deciding this was too intimate to film.  I finally opted for just turning it on and setting it on my dresser pointed at the bed.

Watching Kate go through the contractions was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.  No joke.

Its one thing to feel pain yourself, but to watch someone you love experience pain is pretty unbearable.  And for me this is something that all the books, conversations, classes and birth movies fail to prepare partners for.  Honestly, it was a bit traumatic.

I constantly had the urge to leave her side to go do other things – like get her more water, or make OJ ice cubes, or call the midwives – because it was just so hard to sit there and watch her writhe and sometimes scream during contractions and because I had an overwhelming desire to want to DO something to make it easier for her.  But I also knew that my place was next to her, even if the closest we could get to communicating was through droning.

Part of what made this period so difficult was that none of us had any clue how far along Kate was in labor.

I had spoken to Maura on the phone a few times, checking in with her about how Kate was doing.  At first it just didn’t seem plausible that Kate’s labor was progressing as fast as it was.  Everyone was waiting for her contractions to settle into a more “regular” pattern with longer spaces in between.

But after 3 hours, it finally seemed apparent that 45 seconds in between contractions WAS Kate’s pattern.  Kate had exclaimed several times that she wanted to go to Kaiser for an epidural.  Hearing this broke my heart and made me feel torn between doing what she was saying and doing what we had talked about before the birth.

Around 3:30 am, between contractions, Kate leapt up out of bed and said, “I’m going to Kaiser,” and she walked over to her dresser and started to pull out some pants.  No sooner had Amy and I glanced at each other, than Kate was hit with another debilitating contraction that put her right back in bed.

With Amy’s agreement, I called Maura and told her that Kate was in a lot of pain, and that I didn’t know how much longer she could last at home.  We all agreed that now was the time for Maura to come over and check things out.

Looking back, it would have been nice if Maura was there earlier – because then she could have told us that Kate was almost fully dilated, and it would have made it easier for all of us to know that.  But we couldn’t know at the time that that’s what she would say.  What if she had come and told us that Kate was only 4 cm dilated?  That would’ve been quite a blow.  Its tricky because it felt like we needed more information, but what if it wasn’t the information we wanted to hear?

Not 2 minutes after I called Maura, Kate had a contraction and said, “I’m having the urge to push!”  Amy and I had a meaningful glance over that one.  Throughout the labor, so much was communicated between us just with our eyes.

So I left the room again to call Maura and tell her.  Maura said she was literally putting on her clothes.

She arrived at 4:30 am, sat at the foot of the bed for a bit, observing Kate’s contractions, and then did a quick pelvic check.  Kate was 9 1/2 cm dilated! It was finally time to have the baby.

Kate got back in the birth tub.  At first she was on her knees, leaning forward over the edge while her mom rubbed her head.  I knelt behind her and put pressure on her lower back.

Maura wanted to check the baby’s heartbeat with her monitor, so Kate had to lie back in the water.  I sat behind her, supporting her body.  The heartbeat was fine, except that it slowed a bit during contractions.

Now that Kate was pushing, she was much more lucid.  She could actually string words together into whole sentences to express how she was feeling physically and emotionally.  This was a big step.

Each contraction brought us closer to the birth, which felt just amazing.  To know that the labor was actually progressing and that things were moving forward (and normally) was more than a relief.

The water in the birth tub was too hot.  I had only had 1/2 a bagel and a glass of water since labor began, and with my arms higher than my head & draped over the sides of the birth tub – I began to feel like I might faint.

Maura fed me the rest of the bagel, and Amy poured in buckets of cold water – which felt so good.

And then the baby’s head was showing.  I couldn’t see it, but Amy and Maura could.  And then the baby’s head was out.

And then Maura said, “Kate, reach down and pick up your baby.”  And then there was this gray-blue-purple, frightened, fragile, beautiful little creature staring up at me from Kate’s shoulder.  Her eyes were wide open, she was looking at me and I instantly felt like I knew her.  And Kate was saying, “I can’t believe you’re here.  I can’t believe it.”

A few minutes later, we were out of the tub and in bed.  Maura was checking out our baby girl, while Kate looked on – exhausted and elated.

I felt mellow but very high.  I took some pictures, and then lay down next to Kate in bed and marveled at this amazing little girl who was inside Kate not 10 minutes before.

At some point Amy came in with 2 plates of pancakes, eggs and bacon for us.  She sat in the bed and fed it to me because I was holding Eliza at the time.

Shortly after that I fell into such a deep sleep that I don’t remember falling asleep and I don’t remember waking up.

Epilogue:

They say that for a few weeks after giving birth, women tend to be more emotional than usual.  This hasn’t really applied that much to Kate – its like she’s always been a mother.  And also – she doesn’t remember that much from laboring.

But for me, I still remember quite a lot, and I’ve felt pretty emotional.  In the 8 days since Eliza Jane was born, each day has been painted with pretty much every emotion available in the human palette.

There’s been unspeakable awe, boundless joy, heart-melting nurturing instincts, and love like I’ve never known.

There’s also been a little nostalgia for the way things used to be.  Some sadness that its not just me and Kate anymore.

There’s been moments of intense frustration – mostly late at night when I’m changing her diaper and she’s crying and she pees all over her clean clothes & the new diaper I’m in the process of putting on her, so I have to start the process all over again while she wails even louder.

There’s been a fair amount of trauma for me to get over.  For me, Kate’s labor was a little like being in a combat zone, except that there were candles lit everywhere – making it all the more surreal.  I can’t really describe it – but the feeling of how hard it was to watch Kate labor has stayed with me, though diminishing each day.

And that’s pretty much where I’m at.  So many different emotions, sometimes several at a time.   I don’t usually consider myself someone who rides emotional rollercoasters, but lately that’s been me.

Its funny – little Liza’s only 6 pounds, 11 ounces, but she’s had me in the palm of her hand since day one.  And this is just the beginning.