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Quinn's Birth

Quinn's birth did not go anything like I had envisioned it. I woke up at 5:00 am Friday, October 20th, with a strange backache that seemed to come and go at four-minute intervals. I quickly realized that the backache was being accompanied by contractions, and immediately began wondering if this was It. I didn't want to get too excited, though, because of the several false alarms I'd had, so I sat on the computer for a while to time the contractions and see if they went away. After a couple of hours, I woke Rick up to tell him I thought I was in labor. At this point the contractions hurt, but I could still type or talk through them. The contractions weren't getting closer together, which I thought was odd, but they were becoming gradually more intense. We called the midwife around 9:00 to let her know what was going on, and she said she'd be over in a little while. After calling, Rick and I went to the co-op to pick up some labor food: Recharge (an organic version of Gatorade), soy yogurt, and some food for after the birth. Then we called my friend Helen, who went to Seattle to pick up Manya, another friend of mine. We tried calling Raven (my hypnotherapist and also a friend) but he had the flu and was not able to make it to the birth.

Helen, Manya, and Sarah (the midwife) arrived around the same time. Manya and Helen lit some candles and said a few prayers for an easy birth, and Sarah checked my cervix and found it only a couple of centimeters dilated, but well effaced. She said that it was unusual for a labor to begin with contractions so close together, but that it did occasionally happen and that they would probably not get any closer together, just more intense. By this time the contractions were getting pretty painful, but I was breathing through them and doing other comfort measures, like taking a warm bath and having Rick or Helen massage my lower back. (It was back labor the whole way through.) The night was a long, painful blur. At one point (I seem to remember it around midnight, but my time sense was distorted) we went out walking, trying to bring Quinn's head lower into the pelvis. He was still at about a -2, maybe -1 station, with a bubble of amniotic fluid in front of his head, preventing it from pressing on the cervix very well. Sarah saw that I was getting exhausted, so she said I had three options: get an IV to rehydrate me, break the bag of waters to bring the head lower, or go walking outside. I was terrified of getting an IV and didn't want my waters broken artificially if at all possible, so I chose to walk. It was bitter cold out as Helen and Sarah and Rick and I walked in the parking lot of our condo complex. (Manya and Christine, Sarah's student, were asleep inside.) Helen picked huckleberries and I looked at the stars. When contractions would come, Helen would hold me as I squatted with my skirt held around my waist because I would lose bladder control during the peak. I breathed, looking at the stars and visualizing the baby moving _down_, down from the sky to the earth. The cold wind was awful, but walking was helping me. Finally I couldn't take any more cold, so we went in and Sarah checked me again. Almost no progress. I went back to lying on the couch, breathing through contractions that made me want to climb out of my skin. At eight in the morning, still with very little progress made, Sarah ruptured the amniotic sac. The fluid left me in a slippery, pleasant rush. It was clear, which was a good sign. The baby was doing well, with a strong heartbeat.

After the waters were broken, the contractions got more painful (but still no closer together). I was able to sleep between them, but sometimes I'd wake up in the peak, not sure what was going on, and be unable to breathe right. I had nightmares about contractions while I slept. I tried to dream good things from my childhood, but it wasn't possible. My breathing was still good and still keeping me precariously on top of the pain. We went out walking again, down and then up the hill next to the condos. Helen held me while I squatted on the side of the road, and I couldn't help laughing at what the people who drove by must be thinking: here was a very pregnant woman, squatting in the arms of a large Welsh woman who was holding them both up by holding onto a street sign, while a third woman and an anxious-looking man carrying a glass with a straw watched. After we went back inside, Sarah checked me again and I was up to five centimeters, but the baby's head was still too high. I took a hot shower, sitting on a chair and watching the blood and fluid come out of me with each contraction. By this time I was moaning low with my out-breaths, and squeezing Rick's hand until it was red to focus my attention on my hands, on his hands, on anything but my uterus and my back. The pain had come forward a bit but was still strongest in my back. I stood or squatted during many contractions, rocking my pelvis around like a belly-dancer to move the baby lower. Standing through them at least gave me something to do other than to distract myself from the pain (trying not to think of the pain was like trying not to think of the word "elephant").

By the afternoon, I was completely drained. I was on the couch, sleeping between contractions again. I would sometimes regain consciousness and realize that while I'd been sleeping, I'd had, and breathed through, a contraction. My body was on autopilot but it still hurt. There was pain between contractions now. The contractions were longer, with two or three peaks that shuddered through my body, creating pressure on my tailbone and making me feel like I needed to go to the bathroom. My arms and legs shook uncontrollably between contractions--I'd know the next one was coming because I'd start shaking. (The shaking had begun much earlier, but it was becoming more intense.) I heard Sarah say something about transition, and I hoped this was it, so I'd be almost done. When she checked me, though, I was still only at five centimeters. No progress at all in many hours. I almost cried. I went into the bathtub, and Sarah suggested an IV again. I said that if I was going to have any needles in me, they might as well contain drugs, because my control was fading fast.

While I was in the tub, someone called Raven to get him to talk me into getting an IV. When I talked to him, though, I realized that what I really wanted, more than anything, was for the pain to stop long enough for me to feel normal again, and sleep or read or concentrate or something. This was around the thirty-sixth hour of labor. I had Sarah come into the bathroom and talk to me about epidurals. I decided that the risks were pretty minimal, and that maybe I'd make better progress if I could get some rest. I, the person who feared needles and doctors more than anything, decided to go to the hospital. Sarah called the transport in while Rick packed and Manya and Helen helped Sarah get her things together. Sarah checked me one last time (I decided that if I was even up to seven centimeters I could handle it at home) but I was still only at five centimeters.

At the hospital, they put an IV in me while I was having a contraction. I was calm, not scared of the needle at all, and although I felt it go in, the pain seemed insignificant compared to the crushing pain in my back and uterus. It took a while for the anesthesiologist to arrive. They pulled him out of surgery to do my epidural. I was surprised by how nice all the nurses and doctors and even the anesthesiologist were. (I had expected medical coldness.) When the epidural took effect, I felt good for the first time since labor had begun. I lay there in a blissful cloud of no-pain and enjoyed the numbness. Nurses hooked me up to machines, replacing the external contraction monitor (on which my unmedicated contractions had gone to the top of the scale) with an internal one, but not the kind that clips on the baby's scalp. Helen read to me from Dave Barry's _Babies and Other Hazards of Sex_. Nurses kept coming in to listen to Helen read. My progress was still very slow, so they hooked a pitocin drip to my IV. I watched my uterus contracting painlessly. I just felt pressure on my tailbone and a tightness at the top of my uterus. My white blood cell count was high so they gave me some antibiotics. I slept a little, called Raven and my parents, and enjoyed feeling well and taken-care-of. My shakes had gone away, and I felt peaceful. Around nine or ten, I was about eight centimeters dilated and my contraction pattern was becoming irregular. The OB, an ancient man about my height with tiny hands, came in and felt the baby's head. Quinn was posterior (no wonder I had back labor!) and had his head tilted back. The OB turned the baby and had me push a little. Somehow, that did it, and next thing I knew they were telling me to push!

I pushed lying down, then as the epidural wore off I squatted. Pushing felt powerful and good. I squatted and leaned my whole pelvis forward like a waterskiier. People were watching my vulva intently, looking for a bit of head. Someone brought in a mirror (they had to go get one because I asked for it on my birth plan), and I watched the quarter-sized piece of head grow. Finally I realized that I couldn't watch and push at the same time, so I just pushed. Next thing I knew, I glanced up and Quinn's head was out and they were moving a loop of cord! A couple more pushes, pushing _into_ the good pain I felt in my vagina, and I looked in the mirror and there was a baby between my legs! "I gave birth!" I said incredulously. "I gave birth to a baby!" I could hardly believe it was over and I had done this amazing thing. They put Quinn on my chest long enough for Rick to cut the cord. He was grey and wet and bloody, but he was beautiful. They had to help him breathe then, so he lay in a warmer where I could just barely see him. (His apgars were 5 and 8, kind of low because of the long labor and two hour pushing stage.) When he started crying, I sang to him the songs I'd sung when he was in my womb. They stitched up the three little places I'd torn, and I kept looking over at Quinn and thinking how just a few minutes ago he'd been inside me, and now here he was.

Quinn weighed 7lbs 8oz and was 21in long at birth, with a 13.5in around head. When I held him on my chest I could hardly believe he'd ever fit inside me, let alone come through my vagina. They took us down to the mother-baby unit and gave us a room for the night, but I was too excited to sleep much. When the nurse came to take more blood in the morning, to check my white blood cell count, I wasn't afraid at all, so I think I've gotten my medical phobia beat.

Quinn and I are doing well now, but my arms are still sore from holding myself up on the squat bar and playing tug-of-war with an assistent midwife while I was pushing.

--Shelly mom to Quinn, 10/21/95