A Baby Story: She Said

(A few disclaimers before we begin. First, I am Annika, not Eric. Second, I am a woman, not a man. Third, I have labored and given birth to two children, not watched from the sidelines. Finally, the first three disclaimers guarantee that this will be long-winded, detail-filled, and did I mention long? Just wanted to give fair warning.)

Tuesday, November 14th
I woke up to more contractions, but these felt different than the Braxton Hicks contractions I’d been feeling for weeks. They were a bit more painful and lasted longer. Got my “second wind” of nesting instinct and spent the day cleaning, organizing, and assuming “this was it.” But the contractions never came too close together, so we just stayed home, went to bed that evening, and figured we might go to the hospital during the night.

Wednesday, November 15th
5:00 am
I woke up to much stronger and even more painful contractions. I laid in bed timing them; they were coming every 10 minutes for awhile, and then I had 3 contractions in 8 minutes. I got up and got in the shower, thinking for sure that today would be the day. After my shower and breakfast, however, they stopped coming so frequently and I was so disappointed. Went back to sleep for a little bit.

9am-12pm
Contractions were coming about 3 per hour on average, but they were getting longer (lasting about 1-1 ½ minutes each) and were also getting stronger and more painful—i.e. it was getting harder to do anything while I was in the middle of one. I was confused because they were increasing in strength and length, which is a sign of real labor, but were decreasing in frequency, which is a sign of false labor. I called two different friends who are doulas (birth coaches) and asked their opinion. Both said I was most likely in early labor and probably had awhile to go, and that I should stay home while I could because if we went to the hospital now, they would most likely rush me and start pitocin—and wouldn’t I rather see how things went on their own? Yes—I did NOT want to be induced or “rushed”—so Eric and I just kind of sat around that day, wondering if Eric should go to work at all.

2:00-4:00 pm
I started to time my contractions again because they seemed to be coming more often. Sat on couch and watched TV for two hours; when I looked at my list of times I realized the contractions had come consistently, ten minutes apart, for the past two hours…this was progress! Within the next hour they started coming every 8 minutes or so.

5:00 pm
My friend Becca (friend from childhood and also my doula during Jack’s labor) brought her daughter Samantha over and we took the kids for a walk. Experienced multiple contractions during the walk. By now I was having trouble even talking during the contractions. I was feeling them very strongly in my lower back, but also in my lower abdomen which was a new experience for me...I had back labor with Jack and I got my epidural before I really even felt the contractions in my uterus—that or the back labor was so bad that I didn’t even notice the uterine contractions! Anyway, this time I was having back labor again but was definitely feeling it in my uterus as well, and these “up front” contractions were starting to burn badly.

6:00 pm
Another friend, Amy (from church), came by to check in on me, and Janet (from downstairs) came up, so it was becoming quite a party. I was glad we had made a double recipe of chili in the crockpot that morning (yes, still nesting!) so we all ate dinner together and everyone watched me hoo-hawing through contractions every few minutes. By this point they were so bad that I had to stop everything, close my eyes and just breathe through them. They were no longer exciting indications that labor was coming; by now I could barely even think straight and somehow was still in denial that this was the real thing. I figured I’d still be sleeping in my own bed that night and would endure another day of contractions Thursday, only to be induced Friday.

7:00-9:30pm
Eric went to work for a few hours; Becca and Amy stayed to keep me company. Becca ran home and grabbed a bunch of chick flicks…and after unanimously agreeing on a movie we knew all of our husbands would hate, we stuck Save the Last Dance in the DVD player and sat down to enjoy. Well, I enjoyed about every few minutes of the movie…during these two hours my contractions were getting closer and closer together. The odd thing is that this time period is kind of a blur in my memory; I have a vague recollection of Amy writing down the intervals of my contractions, and of Becca transforming from girlhood friend to professional birth coach every few minutes, and I remember enduring one particularly difficult contraction and saying to Becca through tears and shut eyes, “I don’t know how much longer I can do this!!” After which point she said something to Amy, who apparently went and called Eric and told him to hurry home. And I have a fuzzy memory of hearing Becca on the phone with the Labor and Delivery Unit at the hospital, telling them I would be coming in; and I remember thinking, “Great, they’re just going to send me home.” (HA!)

This is when the bustle of activity began. Eric arrived home and started packing up cameras and other odds and ends. Rob and Janet came up and got Jack’s monitor and his six-page instructional manual I had typed earlier that week (come on people, I got it down to six pages from ten!!). Amy started cleaning up dinner dishes and Becca began following me around asking what I needed to pack. I was in such a fog that I literally found myself standing in my bedroom, looking around the room, having NO CLUE what to do next. Thankfully, since I’m such a dork, I had made out a list of every item that still needed to be put into my bag, so like a robot I found these things and handed them to Becca…pausing every 3-4 minutes for a long, hard, terribly painful contraction.

10:20 pm
Eric and I left for the hospital. As we got in the car I told him he’d better drive fast, not because I thought I was going to have this baby in the car, but because I didn’t want to have any more contractions than necessary while driving. (To the moms out there: aren’t car contractions the WORST? And don’t even get me started on the railroad tracks…I yelled out to Eric, “SLOW DOWN!! SLOW DOWN!!” and he looked at me in confusion as we drove over the tracks at 2 miles per hour as I hoo-hawed through a contraction…)

10:35 pm
Arrived at the hospital…I was in a lot of pain and couldn’t even find it in me to make kind small talk with the desk receptionist who wheeled me up to Labor and Delivery, with the nurses who took me to my room, or even with my husband. I posed for one last picture (since this poor child doesn’t have more than 2-3 in-utero pics of my belly)—FORCING a smile—and then changed into my oh-so-NOT-glamorous hospital gown and got into bed.

Looking around the room I realized this was not the same delivery-type room that I had been in with Jack; I asked the nurse about it and she said they were all full, but that this room could be transformed into a delivery room if necessary, and that she had already delivered a baby in that same room earlier in the evening. Remembering my hospital experience with Jack (at the hospital for almost 17 hours before delivering him) I figured by the time I had this baby there’d be a delivery room open. How wrong I was.

She cheerfully announced that she was going to “check me” (something I assure you is NOT a cheery experience) and see where things were. You might remember my previous weeks of being “checked” and told nothing was happening down there... I told her as she was doing her thing that if I was not dilated more than two cm, then she had to LIE to me. At least a three, I begged. After an uncomfortable minute or two she said, “What did you want to be? A three?” Pause. “How about a seven?” I was ELATED.

Then, with her hand still inside me, she yells to another nurse in the hall, “Can somebody please page Dr. Kagan? We don’t have much time in here.” Now my elation turned to a little bit of panic. Before I could ask questions, another contraction came and, with the nurse’s hand STILL inside me, Eric rubbed my head and assured me I was doing great…at the end of this contraction other nurses had arrived, and I remember hearing the nurse with her hand in me tell another nurse that I had already contracted to an 8, with a “bulging” bag of water, and that if she took her hand out my water would break. (i.e. the contractions would intensify, labor would progress—all very quickly)

11:00pm-12:15 am
My memory of the next hour is quite hazy as I had my eyes closed for much of it, partly due to the insanely bright fluorescent lights above me, but mainly because of the scale of pain I was in…the contractions were coming one on top of the other now, and I barely had time in between to talk to anyone or even look around the room.

We were told there might not be time for an epidural, but they’d do what they could. The nurse finally (and gently) took her hand out, and then announced that there was “a bit” of green fluid down there, which might be an indication that the baby had passed her first bowel movement inside (which Jack did also) and so they were going to call the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) team in for the delivery. Great…another four people to squeeze into the room.

Next I heard nurses calling out to one another, “I need one of these, two of those, don’t need that, syringe for that, saline bag, tubing, tape…” as they transformed this room, yet again, into a delivery room. The doctor came in at some point and checked me…I was 100% effaced, 0 station, and almost dilated to 10 cm (full dilation). They were working frantically to get my IV started, and I found myself SO worried that in their rush they would miss my vein and I would be the victim of multi-poking before they got it right. Thank goodness my nurse was brilliant and she got it on round one.

The anesthesiologist finally made his way in, and told me he would do his best but that we didn’t have a lot of time. Greaaaat.

I have to say that one of the WORST experiences ever is having a contraction WHILE you are receiving your epidural. You have to lean forward and curl over into a ball, and hold still like your life (or ability to walk) depended on it…all the while wanting to scream and writhe in pain as your uterus burns and contracts. It is almost worth NOT getting the epidural at that point.

I was told it could take up to 15 or 20 minutes for it to “kick in.” That sounded like an eternity to me. Especially since I was beginning to experience a phenomenon I had only read about, but never experienced myself: I began to feel the intense urge to PUSH. I panicked, yet again, and talked to myself in my head… “If you tell them you need to push, they will make you push now, and the epidural isn’t working yet. Just wait a few more minutes…just hold it in…you can do this!!”

It was a few minutes later that in desperation I yelled out to no one in particular, “IS THIS THING GONNA WORK??” by which, of course, I meant, “Is the epidural going to take away the pain any time soon, because I’m ready to push but I don’t want to push unless the epidural has kicked in, so please, when will it start to work so we can get this labor going??” I don’t even remember if anyone responded to my question; I was already into another contraction at this point.

The doctor came in again, this time in full scrubs and masked, which further freaked me out because I knew it meant we were approaching the end. As the bed was being transformed for delivery and there was talk of “pushing when you’re ready” I just about had a meltdown, realizing this was it; there was no pain relief to be found. I was going to have to do this naturally.

Now, I have nothing against people giving birth naturally; in fact, I think it’s amazing and I was so proud of my sister for doing it. But me? I had never planned on this and so hadn’t given it much thought…and here I was confronted with what seemed to me to be an ENORMOUS feat ahead of me—and I felt near panic.

The doc checked me again and broke my water, and suddenly, after being at the hospital for 1 ½ hours, it was time to push. I kept crying out, “My back, my back!” and finally one of the nurses gently said to me, “Honey, I’m sorry to tell you this but if you’re having back labor pains then the epidural isn’t going to take those away; the epidural takes away the pain, and you are feeling the pressure from the baby laying on your back.” I wanted to quit then and there (as well as hit somebody). Why in the WORLD didn’t she tell me that before I went ahead and got the stupid epidural? Instead they gave me false hope that soon I would feel better…only to be then told that actually, it’s not going to help much at all. I was so, so mad, as well as a little afraid. All those stories about women getting to the hospital and not having time for an epidural—that was me!! I didn’t want that to be me!!

November 16th—12:15-1:00 am
Ellie's Birthday
And so, the pushing began. And continued. I thought my back would break in two. I wanted to scream things so mean and wrong and not-kind, but instead I just cried. The fluorescent lights above me were so bright that I kept my eyes closed almost the whole time. I remember panicking, once again, at one point because I realized that no epidural effects meant that I would probably be able to feel the “ring of fire” (i.e. when the head is crowning) and also that I might feel them cut me for an episiotomy…and these two thoughts made me SO afraid.

What was amazing about this part, the pushing part, is that I could feel her coming down! I felt her head as it moved, and she also twisted around a lot in there, which I could feel. And every time I leaned forward for a push, I could feel her feet pushing back against my ribs, as if she were helping me from the inside. I did feel her head come out, but didn’t feel any rings of fire or episiotomy cuts (turns out I didn’t need one, thank goodness). I remember Eric counting through one of my pushes, and as he neared ten he said, “7-8-9-we have a baby!!” To which I cried out, “All of her?” I remember knowing how stupid it sounded, but I didn’t know if that meant her head was out, or that he could see her head, or that she was mostly out, or if I was, in fact, done. Because funnily enough…the epidural was finally kicking in as I pushed her little body out—so once she was out I could not feel my legs or toes or anything “down there.” Imagine that!

I finally opened my eyes long enough to glimpse a tiny white body being whisked over to the NICU table where they checked her for meconium in the lungs (turned out she did NOT poop inside). They cleaned her up and cleared her lungs from the amniotic fluid; she was weighed and measured and scored (passed the Apgar with flying colors) and finally brought over to me to hold.

Is there any way to adequately describe what it feels like to hold your baby for the first time? No. Not in a million years. It is truly one of those indescribable parts of life; an experience so wonderful and overwhelming and intensely personal and private that it doesn’t even seem fair to try and explain it. There are myriad emotions, hormones, smells, touches, sounds all present—it is a very sensory moment, which I am certain helps us to remember it distinctly. The way they look into your eyes, searching for you. The way they smell strangely familiar. The little sounds and gurgles, and even their cry—all precious to you immediately. The warm little body against your skin; feeling their little heart beat beneath their very pink, wrinkled skin. The first time their finger wraps around yours. Simply wonderful.

1:00-4:00 am
We spent the next three hours in recovery, then moving to the Mother Baby Unit, being observed and tested, resting (or trying to) and settling in. We finally decided on a name; we were pretty certain we would use “Elisabeth” in some way, shape, or form; after trying out a few of our top picks on her we decided that her squishy, scrunchy newborn face didn’t really look like much more than a little alien creature. (Am I allowed to say that?) So there wasn’t as much of a “she looks like a _____” moment as I had expected. We finally agreed on a name we have loved all along, and have danced around ever since finding out we were having a girl…Elisabeth Kate, with “Ellie” for the nickname. Actually, on our way home from the 20 week sonogram we were so excited about having a girl, and at one point Eric said, “Little Ellie.” And we both just melted. So it seemed just fitting that she ended up with the first name we tried on her.

Around 4am we decided that Eric should just go ahead and go home so that he could be with Jack that day. When I was in the hospital with Jack I remember not wanting Eric to leave my side; this time around I felt really good about him going home—there’s something in the Mommy part of me that longed for one of us to be with Jack. I missed him already. Eric left, promising to bring Jack in as soon as possible the next day.

Between all of the vitals checks, breastfeeding attempts, uterus-checking…I got about a total of one hour sleep that night.

Thursday-Friday
Thursday was filled with phone calls, visitors, lots of pink, and very little rest. The highlight of the day was around lunchtime when Eric arrived with Jack. Everyone talks about how big your firstborn looks after your second is born; for some odd reason I did not experience this feeling—Jack looked just as he always does to me, a rambunctious, busy toddler. He was excited to see me, was more excited to see the TV in the room, and didn’t even notice Ellie. He sat next to me on the bed, where he discovered there were BUTTONS that made the bed move, much to his delight. He then found my cell phone on the table, next to the TV remote control, Daddy’s phone, the hospital phone, and our cameras. He was in button heaven.

At one point Ellie started to cry and flail her arms in her little bassinette; Jack did pause long enough to look, but didn’t seem to have any interest. We even tried to put her in his lap and he pushed her away saying, “No, no!” It was amusing to see his lack of interest, knowing that could well change very soon.

My parents also arrived during lunchtime, which added to the family fun. It’s always a joy to place your child in your own mother’s arms; another one of those hallmark moments in life. My mom appropriately wore a pink shirt, so she and Ellie matched beautifully. Dad, of course, is a pro with baby girls, having had two himself; for some reason, watching him hold Ellie reminded me of pictures of him holding me when I was a newborn, more so than when he held Jack for the first time. Must be a father-daughter thing.

Thursday was a long day, and I looked forward to sleeping that night. Unfortunately, Ellie had other ideas, and she was awake and hungry most of that night. So as Friday dawned…I hadn’t slept much in a few days. Can we say borderline delirious?

Had a few more visitors on Friday, including Rob and Janet and the ever-popular Simeon. I think Simeon missed me more than Jack, judging from his big, sweet hug. The boys ran all over the room, excited to see one another and to be in such an exotic place. It was a joy, too, watching Rob and Janet meet Ellie, as they have become almost like aunt and uncle to our family. It was a special time.

I was told that I could stay another night and come home Saturday, but I was so exhausted and annoyed at being interrupted every other minute to sign some paper, have my temperature taken, my uterus monitored, asked if I wanted my baby’s picture taken in some cheesy hospital photo, and asked repeatedly about vaccinations, flu shots, and whether or not I wanted to go to the discharge class (i.e. parenting for dummies). I finally told the doctor that I really wanted to go home that night, and she gave me the ok.

We got home around 6ish to find Rob and Janet had cooked a YUMMY meal of grilled steaks and mashed potatoes…it was so delicious! And we were grateful not to have to think about cooking that night. (Thanks, guys!!) After eating and calming the over-excited boys down, we got Jack in bed and settled in for a good snuggle with our newest child.

So there you have it. The long-winded version. Hope it was all you dreamed of and more. J (Probably just “more”) Thank you for reading and walking back through the journey with me. I have loved thinking back over all the details and relishing the miracle of it all. God, once again, has astounded us with His creation. We are blessed and humbled by the responsibility given to us in the gifts of our children, and we pray that we will be faithful in surrendering them to Him over the years, and in teaching them the joys of serving Him, as well as living lives that display our love for Him. May they each grow to be “called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendor.” (Isaiah 61:3)