Milo's Birth Story

After days of on again, off again contractions, my uterus was sore and tired. I was completely disheartened and confused by my “false” labor. Everything felt like real labor, but it seemed that every time I was distracted—by guests, by blogging, by making dinner or playing a board game with Steve—the contractions would stop. And yet, every time they would start again they would be stronger and closer together than the previous set of contractions. On the morning of June 17th, we went to our midwife Lorri’s office. She wanted to check me to see what could be causing my false labor contractions. We started off by discussing the possible interventions we could do. Either giving me a sleep aid to stop the contractions and allow me to rest, or put in a foley catheter to help start “real” labor. I hated to do anything, but I was afraid of being too tired once real labor began. As it turned out, no interventions were necessary because Lorri was surprised to find that I was already at 6 centimeters dilated. She then laughed and told me that she had had a dream about my cervix that night, and that in her dream I was 6 centimeters dilated. We declared her a Cervical Psychic, and Steve and I headed out, certain that the baby would come that day. For me, it was a huge relief and validated that I wasn’t crazy and what I had been experiencing on and off over the past two days had been real labor.
Lorri, and her assistant, Cassandra, arrived at our home around 2:00 that same afternoon. My contractions had been stronger and harder and I was confident that they would continue and Milo would soon be with us. After the equipment was set up and paperwork was filled out, we all settled in the living room and began to chat about an upcoming wedding that they would be attending. As we talked, I noticed that my contractions were once again fading. I excused myself to the restroom, and as soon as I was alone they picked up fast and hard again. When I came out, I told them that I would just need to be alone in my bedroom for awhile, and there I paced back and forth and allowed the contractions to come.
Steve joined me (I never had a problem laboring in his presence), and the two of us stayed in the quiet room and would pace and rock and breathe together. He would make a joke, and I would tell him it was time to be quiet, and we’d pace some more and breathe some more. After a while, Lorri came in to do an internal exam and saw that I was still only at 7 centimeters. She suggested breaking my bag of waters, saying that my cervix was very soft, and she expected things to move quickly once my water broke. I was already pretty tired, and decided that moving things along quickly sounded like a great idea. So at around 4:30, I laid down on the bed and she poked a small hole in the bag of waters and slowly released the hot amniotic fluid. She left Steve and I alone again and soon afterwards, the contractions picked up with a new intensity. They were so much stronger and harder than I remembered from my first labor with Huck. I was tired and sweaty, and it seemed to be taking a very long time. Soon my body was drenched in sweat and I needed to pee. It was difficult for me to walk, so Steve helped me to the toilet, and from there I decided that I felt disgusting and needed to rinse my body off. I crawled into the tub and crouched on the floor as Steve ran the cool water over my back. It felt great and horrible at the same time. Steve helped me back out of the tub, attempted to dry me off, but I ended up flopping back onto the bed still mostly wet.


I’m going to pause here for a moment and talk about the pain of this labor. During the earlier contractions, I remembered a particular phrase said by midwife Ina May Gaskin in one of her books. “Don’t think of it as pain,” she said, “think of it as in interesting sensation that requires all of your attention.” So with each of my early contractions, I would exhale and think, “this is an interesting sensation that requires all of my attention,” and repeat it over and over until the contraction passed. The “ interesting sensation,” of course, was pain, but having a long mantra to repeat in my head helped me through much of the early labor. Sometimes I would think, “This one is reeeeallly interesting,” and occasionally, “this one reeeallly pretty f***ing interesting,” and it would still help, or at least make me laugh at myself a little. Once my water was broken, though, that stopped working and it was clearly pain. Lots and lots of pain, unlike anything I have ever experienced.
When I was in labor with Huck, I made a conscious and deliberate decision to never say, “I can’t do this” during the process. It is a pet peeve of mine to say “I can’t” when what one means is “I won’t” or “I don’t want to,” and often I think that “I can’t” only becomes true once you say the words. The phrase takes away personal responsibility. I can’t do it. It is an impossible task. Versus, I don’t want to because it hurts too much, or whatever. So when I was in labor with Huck, I thought, “this is incredibly painful,” and “this would be easier with drugs,” and, “Man, I could seriously go for some drugs right now,” but I never said or thought, “I can’t do this.” I knew it would be hard and I knew it would suck, but I also knew it was possible.
That was not the case this time. I made the same decision to never say “I can’t,” but the pain was far more intense. It would sear through me and I often felt like my body was about to split in half. Many times, I almost broke. I would be desperate to say, “I can’t do it,” but instead I would shake my head and say, “No no no no no.” There were times when the pain was too blinding for me to even speak, and all I could do was cry out or make a strange, guttural noise. At one point I was leaning on my mattress, staring at the black and white checkered bedspread, unable to walk myself to the restroom, when I thought to myself that maybe this was not possible. That all I had to do was open my mouth and say I had had enough, and I needed to go to a hospital. But I didn’t. It was probably the bravest moment of my life.
Back to the labor.


We were on the bed, Steve behind me and me leaning back on him for support when I began to feel the urge to push. After a few pushes, nothing seemed to be happening. Lorri suggested that we try a squatting position. Steve sat at the edge of the bed, and I supported myself by hooking my arms over his thighs and squatting at the foot of the bed. Directly in front of me were our closet doors’ large, full mirrors, so I could see the whole thing. It was surreal to see myself this way, and I didn’t much care for it. It had been a long time since my water had been broken, so Lorri checked my cervix again and found that I was still stuck at 9 centimeters. She was doing something she described as “like pulling the turtleneck over the baby’s head,” and it hurt like hell. I wanted to scream out, “STOP” and push her away, but pain was such that I couldn’t even speak. She didn’t manage to get the “turtleneck” over, saw the pain on my face, and stopped what she was doing. Once again, I moved to the bed. I was on my side and closed my eyes and felt like I needed rest. I could feel a contraction coming, but I relaxed myself as completely as I could and actually felt like I was holding off the next contraction. It was the weirdest thing, to feel myself on the edge of a great amount if pain, but be relaxed enough to stop it from happening. Eventually, the contraction would come, but it was really cool to be able to have such control over my body at a time when I felt so out of control just a moment before.
The contractions continued again. After a few of them, and some failed pushes, Lorri once again was going to attempt to manually edge my cervix over Milo’s head. Just like the first time, the pain was excruciating. It was at this point that I gave up. I was ready to beg for drugs and go to the hospital. I opened my mouth to say, “I can’t.” But the second before I did it, Lorri said to me, “It will stop in one minute. In one minute you can push your baby out.” This surprised me. I was expecting several more hours of horrible pain.
“It hurts so much,” I said.
“I know,” she said, “In one minute it will be better.” The thing I like about Lorri is that she has a calm confidence about her, and when she told me I only had to endure that pain for one more minute, I believed her.
And she was right. The sensation to push came quickly. Transition was over, I had reached 10 centimeters, and immediately I could feel Milo’s head traveling down the birth canal. You would think that this would hurt more, but it doesn’t. It still hurts, but not in the same way. Also, the sensation of having him inches from being born gave me a renewed energy. I was on my side at the edge of the bed. Lorri was in position to catch the baby, Cassandra was helping hold my leg up and Steve stood at my side and was hunched over my body. I had my arms around his neck and with each push I would press my head into his neck. I could feel his sweat and tears on my face and he would tell me that the baby was almost here and we were so close to meeting him and that I was doing really well and it would all be over soon. With each push I would grab onto him as tightly as I could, using him for leverage and support. I could feel Milo’s head crowning, and with that came the sensation of the “ring of fire.” I knew that if I pushed again he would come out, but I also knew I would tear. I tried to pant through the next contraction, but I thought to myself that the last tear really wasn’t so bad and I didn’t know how much energy I could muster up again if I lost my momentum. So with the next contraction I gave another good push and I heard Lorri tell Steve to come get the baby. I let him go and he leaned down. I could feel Milo slip out, and Steve placed him on my chest, naked, slippery and giving us big, healthy cry. Altogether, I pushed for only eight minutes.
Afterwards I was in disbelief. I felt like I had done the impossible, especially since the moment before I began pushing was the moment I had given up. I kept saying, “I can’t believe I did that.”




more pictures here: click!

I just re-read this, and I know a lot of pregnant women who I’m afraid might be discouraged about natural childbirth after reading these descriptions of blinding pain and tearing in half. So I’d like to say that, even after all of that, given the option of pain-free labor and natural labor, I would still choose to do it this way. Hands down. I think that there are very few opportunities in life to push yourself to your absolute physical and emotional limits. When you do, it changes your perception of yourself. I have a new respect for myself, and I think I am a stronger and wiser person than I was a week ago. Not everybody wants that or needs that, but for me it is worth it.