my home birth

it's taken me five weeks to work up the courage to post this story.

i don't know precisely why i've put it off for so long. i had the story written nearly two weeks ago and for some reason i just haven't been able to put it up.

it's incredibly long, but that's how labor is.

so w/out further ado:
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March 25th

It’s fitting that on Max’s estimated due date that I write this. I’m just starting to understand what it is to be a mother, what it is to be caught with your pants down and keep running b/c you have no choice.

The tiny-but-adorable train that was Max and his little astonishing life arrived at the station three weeks early.

See? My pants were down… way down, as in, around my ankles.

The First Wave

On march 2nd, I forced myself to go for a run at Nick’s bidding despite feeling rather uncomfortable and having nearly no desire to do so, but he was going to vacuum w/ our horribly loud (newly bought and regretted already) hoover (bagless!) and I hated having to be around the noise (I imagined it stressed max out), so I waddled down the stairs and grunted through the joyless process of getting into my running shoes.

Less than a mile into the run, in the damp deep squooshy tide-is-in sand, a new flaring sort of pain jarred me out of my normal lumbering run. I attempted to breath through the pain, but my legs and back were both starting to holler in a way that was impossible to ignore or attribute to the typical muscle ache that accompanies my growing pregnant whale status.

I slowed to a walk on the sand, focusing on the deep squishing sensation of the water-logged shore. Still, the pain increased until it filled my mind w/ a new fear.

Oh god, perhaps I should walk back b/c something was wrong. I turned around wincing and drawing in my breath, eyes on the ground, afraid to look up as I focused on the increasing waves of pain radiating up from my thighs and lower back.

By the time I got home, I was starting to feel terrified that I was going into premature labor.

Two days short of thirty seven weeks, I sat on the edge of the bed in my running clothes and breathed and waited, talking myself down from my fear.

After 15 minutes of this quiet wide-eyed sitting, Nick comes in and casually glances at me, asking me if everything is okay.
I raggedly say, "I don’t know." He stops as he hears my voice. We decide to wait for one more contraction before calling our midwife, the pain subsided and
I went about my evening, eventually falling into an uncomfortable sleep at the end of the night.

And then things get serious:
As was usual—for the past three or four days, I was awakened early by a dull but tough muscular ache in my back and legs (now I realize, those were preliminary contractions), so I rolled out of bed at seven and went to fill up the bathtub to relieve the ache, as it would allow me a few more hours of sleep afterwards (it had for the past few days anyway).

As I pad to the bathroom buck naked, I find myself standing in the hallway with water dripping down my leg.

Did I just pee myself or, oh shit-- did my water break?

With my trademarked stubbornness, I decide that no, my water didn’t break. No way.

Max was not allowed to come early.

I gently lower my thick body into the bathtub after drying up the floor in the hallway. Fifteen minutes later, I struggle out of the tub and dry myself off before falling back in bed. Just to be certain, I put my towel between my legs as I close my eyes and try for another hour of sleep.

I fitfully doze through increasing waves of muscular back ache for about 45 minutes until I feel a gush of fluid between my legs. I sit upright and face the thought that has suddenly become unavoidable:

Yes, my water has broken.

What else can it be?
Crap.

Again, I don’t know what to do but a rising sense of anxiety makes me wake Nick and tell him.

I start making breakfast to regain a sense of control over the day, agitatedly popping the cinnamon rolls out of their little can to bake. I make Nick’s coffee and as I wait for the stove to pre-heat, I begin to feel the pain of contractions that I had felt during my short run the day before. My throat is tightening with the sense that this is all moving faster than I want and my head is straggling around like a small child half-awake and afraid of the truth.

Around 9:30 Nick calls our midwife and tells her he thinks I may be in labor.
I run my hands through my hair and laugh humorlessly: just the night before I had said to him, we have to go shopping for all the birthing items and final baby items b/c I do not want to be caught w/ my pants down if I end up going into labor unexpectedly.

My midwife shows up around eleven in the morning. She is hopping mad because Nick told her about the run that I went on yesterday and she already knew that—contrary to her advice, I had chosen not to stop running even though that was the first thing she had told me to do when we started meeting at 34 weeks.

Apparently, it’s my fault—my stubborn insistence on running six miles six day a week-- contrary to her advice to just stop running altogether. So, that’s why I’m in early labor. Based on my experience yesterday, I’m inclined to agree with her.

At this point, it’s irrelevant though and she lets me know that we need to focus.

She checks to see if it is indeed amniotic fluid I lost.
It is.

She checks Max’s heart rate— it’s at a stellar 140: he was calm, cool, and collected compared to his laboring mama.

Labor is confirmed and we’re heading into the abyss
The day commences with my admittance that I don’t want to go to a hospital unless that’s what she recommends. She looks me in the eyes, her lips tighten into a thin line and we both know: we’re doing this just the way we planned – at the very least I can do it at home in the mental space I’ve just started to prepare.

The truth is: I’m not physically, mentally, or emotionally prepared for the pain that will come.

My cervix is only slightly dilated at this point.

The pain of labor moved through my body in ways I had not anticipated: deep within my spine and upper thighs. I had expected that uterine contractions would be felt much more deeply within my torso and pelvic region. Instead it was a flaming steadily rising stream of muscular ache that radiated out from my back and upper legs completely by-passing that deeper intrauterine pain I had thought would happen (as that’s where the contractions originate).

The pain wasn’t sharp but mounted to an intensity (especially later) that had me protesting out loud. As I look back on this day, it was patently clear that my experience of the pain was hugely influenced by the fact I was not prepared to go into labor early, and therefore was not ready to accept and emotionally manage the pain that I had been slowly working on mentally prepping for every day in little ways (including the oh-so important perineal massages Nick was giving me every night).

I labored until about five in the evening, stepping into the shower every hour to let the hot water help relax the muscular tension that accompanied the contractions. My midwife had me walking up and down the single long flight of stairs which our second floor apartment shared with our newly moved in neighbors one floor below.

It was the worst and perhaps best part about the labor. While on those horrid steps, I could focus on the rounds and quickly fell into my running mentality, the goal was simple: get up the flight of stairs. The next goal was to get back down those stairs, rinse and repeat for twenty minutes.

My midwife—who’d had another birth the night before had been trying to catch some sleep on our couch while I paced the floor of our bedroom, huffing and puffing and generally groaning like a woman in the depths of some hellish agony. At five in the evening, she came over to check max’s heart rate (still awesome, the little man was a champ) and sat me down to look me in the eye after checking my cervix again (still only a bit dilated).

"Mara, I don’t know if you’re able to deal with this. From the way you sound, you should be giving birth any minute— but your body tells me that you’re still in early labor."

As she’s speaking to me, I start to understand that this is only the beginning, that the pain will get worse, and that I need to hunker down and focus on the task at hand.

"I think I can do it."

"Well, I’m going to go home and have some dinner and if anything changes, give me a call."

In a way, I was glad to see her go. Now it’s just Nick and I in the apartment (and our mildly distraught kitty, who managed to stay completely out of sight the entire labor process). This was my labor—mine and Nick’s.

The Change Over
I took another shower to help me focus, changed into a bikini as the heat had been turned on for hours full-blast in our now-sweltering bedroom. I lit three candles as the sun fell below the ocean and closed the door to let myself sink deep into the dark round center of this process and its primal pain.

Sitting on the edge of our bed, my back straight a la meditating Buddha, I start counting through the waves of pain and realize that around 40 the pain subsides. This clear goal focused my mind and the pain became tolerable as I mentally understood my limits within it. I stood up and continued pacing the room slowly.

Some time in the middle, Nick brought me some gorgeous cream of tomato soup – the only food I’d managed to consume all day, and more water to make sure I’m hydrated.

I lost time pacing in our room, showering every so often, stretching out with my hands to elongate my spine and let the hot water pound relief onto my lower back. At one point, I even managed to lay down with Nick for 20 minutes, closing my eyes and letting the radiating pain slip over me lightly, counting and breathing and knowing it was no longer beyond my control to relax in the center of it.

Approximately four hours later I feel a growing pressure on my rectum and I know Max has dropped. I tell Nick to call our midwife and let her know I think it’s getting close.

She shows up in less than twenty minutes and I ask her to check my cervix… she’s astonished at the quiet focused woman walking around in a bikini—this was not the same person she’d left here.

I felt serene and ready for anything as I laid on my back on our bed while she checked my cervix.

"Ah, great! He’s really low now… but your cervix is still not softened, I’m going to help a bit."

And all my carefully engineered serenity went flying out the window as my neat little circle of control dissolved into nothingness under her gloved fingers mashed about in my cervix creating new deep sharp violating pangs that radiated out of my core and had me gasping and nearly crying like a child.

She was back in control and I was feeling suddenly disoriented and shocked by this new land of pain I’d dropped into.

Once again it was time for the dreaded stairs. I tried to excuse myself from this task by arguing (nearly whining my excuse to Nick) that it would be rude at ten o’clock at night to have a woman groaning loudly past our new neighbors’ front door.

Infuriatingly, Nick neatly side-stepped the issue by kindly informing our neighbors that I was in labor. They amiably congratulated Nick and apparently, groaning women on the stairs at 10:00 at night were just fine with them. (Or so I’ve been told).

Round the bend, down the stairs, up the stairs, the pain never ends
More or less the pain of my contractions were swelling to an ever-increasing intensity which I tried to steel myself against as I silently and raggedly breathed down and up what I would later laughingly label as "the stairs o’ doom."

It is difficult to accurately recount those last hours before max was born as time seems to shimmer in fitful blurs when I try to recall the events around the intensity of the pain.

I do remember the heat of our bedroom, the dark wavering soft light of the candles I’d placed around the room, the sweat dripping down my body dampening my hair, my shuffling steps across the floor because I simply could not sit back and endure the pain—the movement provided me with something to focus on. Of course I remember Nick always there, patient, anxious, vicariously in pain, and always trying to find someway to give or relieve me.

Ah but here’s a memory after all: I had just finished the stairs o’ doom and was now experiencing the most intense and deep pain of my labor yet as my contractions had taken on the depth and breadth that signals that final phase before pushing becomes necessary.

There I was: taking a two minute edge-of-the-bed sit-down before the pain would make me rise up and start moving when Nick comes in with a glass of cold water and I quietly moan to him, "make it stop, please, please, make it stop. Help me."

Somewhere in the middle of all that immense pain, pleading senselessly for something no one could do, I understood the magnetic power of drugs that promise to take it all away. If someone had offered me that chance at that moment, I highly doubt I would have been able to restrain myself.

As ever, looking for a practical solution, Nick squats in front of me his beautiful eyes full of love and concern and says:

"I think you should walk the stairs again."

I almost start crying and shove at him with my hands. The horror of his suggestion has awakened my most primitive selfish child. He stumbles back nearly falling over a look of disbelief crosses his face as he realizes I’ve just shoved him.

"No, don’t say that. No! Why would you say something so cruel? Just go away!" I tremble and whine on the edge of full-fledged tears.

He steps back and leaves me in the room alone, making my small shuffling circles around the bed and past our closet.

The Final Frontier: 10:50 pm
Sometime within the next hour or so, I emerge from the pain enough to realize we’re very close. The pressure in my rectum is growing and I’ve started to feel the urge to push.

My midwife comes in and ascertains that, yes, Virginia, it’s time to push.

But I can’t lay down as requested.

My labor-torn body lets me know: there is simply no sense in lying down now and I immediately reject the position and start to squat on the floor. I need gravity. I need every little bit of strength the earth can give me.

My midwife positions Nick behind me holding my arms so that I can squat with upper and lower body support and I enter the strange concentrated universe of push because we all know it’s time.

It’s time to push from the center of my being.
It’s time to push until I feel that my eyes will pop out.
It’s time to push until I’m nothing more than a wild animal: grunting loudly and straining, all muscles and pain and push push push push until I fall out of the universe of push into some other place. But I can’t even think that far. I can’t think beyond the pushing universe.


He’s coming
My midwife tells me to reach down and feel his head, and somewhere in between these agonizing pushes, I manage to draw my hand down and lightly feel a soft little mound of something emerging from me.

At this moment, everything moved to a new level.

No ultrasound or Doppler playback of his heart was like this real physical sensation. Yes, there’s another human in there, I felt him—my hands touched his body just like that.

But back to the pushing…

For 18 minutes from beginning to end, I pushed like I never pushed before.
I was groaning and grunting like the primordial earth heaving up a new mountain.
I pushed until my labia tore in four different places -- completely unbeknownst to me at the time.
I pushed until my son almost casually slipped out of my body and into the arms of my midwife.

Immediately and unconsciously both Nick and I found ourselves crying from relief, from amazement, from sheer exhaustion and disbelief that I had emerged from hell alive and added one tiny five pounds and eight ounces of human to the planet.

As I was handed my tiny perfect boy wrapped in one of Nick’s old t-shirts (we had no receiving blankets), Nick cut the clamped umbilical cord, and I just laughed in amazement at Max:

"So you are real!" We stared at each other for the first time, unsure but open and completely fascinated at the sight of one another.

For all his moist tiny delicate newness, Max was rather astonished at all the changes but ready to adjust thanks to the warmth of the room, the dimness of the lights, and cried only briefly before he stopped and stared around trying to take it all in: this new big space around him, the new light air in his lungs, and just who were these beings passing him around making noise over him constantly?

The reward was not only my son, but the end of labor-- in the minute after Max arrived: the endorphins came rushing in and I was alert and bouncing, talkative and energetic as if none of the pain had ever existed. The exhaustion I had been laboring under simply disintegrated even as I pushed out that mass of bloody placenta—joking about how I was done pushing and I would never voluntarily poop again.

My mind rebounded, my body slaked of any pain barely flinched as my midwife stitched up my torn labia (but I didn’t tear down in my perineum at all thanks to Nick!). I had been through hell – what was a needle being pulled through my tenderest womanly bits but a tickle of the tritest sort of pain?

I did it. Like billions of women before me, I’d lived out the nine odd months of being a human incubator and trekked through the valleys and caverns of physical pain to add my little slice of life to this planet.




Oh, and I still have Max’s placenta in our freezer. I really don’t know what to do with it. At the very least, it’s an interesting conversation piece.

Best.

Labor story.

Ever.


You wrote it so well, I felt like I was there with you on those stairs of doom! Congrats, Mara, I'm so proud of you  

I feel like I just read a really good book the way you described it! Congrats on your little man even though its a few weeks late. Good job mama!!

Quoting ♥ June Cleaver:“ Best. Labor story. Ever. You wrote it so well, I felt like I was there with you on those stairs of doom! Congrats, Mara, I'm so proud of you  ”

Agreed... I've never actually read a labor story and felt like I was there. I wish I had your way with words.....

Thanks for sharing. You are a remarkable woman. I hope I can be that strong!

Quoting ♥ June Cleaver:“ Best. Labor story. Ever. You wrote it so well, I felt like I was there with you on those stairs of doom! Congrats, Mara, I'm so proud of you  ”

^ i agree. i was actually close to tears  

congrats  

WOW! That was such a beautiful story!! I couldn't stop reading. You have a wonderful way with words! Congratulations on your baby boy!

Quoting Mara:“ In a way, I was glad to see her go. Now it’s just Nick and I in the apartment (and our mildly distraught kitty, who managed to stay completely out of sight the entire labor process). This was my labor—mine and Nick’s."

Ya gotta love the cat...where as a dog would be fretting and running around a ball of nerves, the wonderous feline gives a flick of the tail as if to let you know "you are on you're own lady" and retreats to a cozy private corner...cats are awesome!

Amazing  
I read the whole thing, even though I knew the outcome I was still captivated.

That was like the best labor story ever! lol
Congrats to your new baby and CUDOS! on having a natural home labor and delivery.. I would have cried if I didn't get the pain meds.

That is a story to envoke emotions for sure! I have yet to read one that made me want to have my baby and know what the experience is like, I was captivated, haha!!

That was seriously the BEST labor story, I have ever read. Congraulations Mara and Nick!

wow
just wow
thats all i can say after reading that

Reading this gave me the chills! You did a great job, and I am so glad that you took the time to write it out and post it for us. Gina is right! It is seriously the best labor story ever.

  That was intense. I sat and read that with many distractions so it took a while but...omg your labor sounded very very painful. I believe it made me want an epidural even more. lol
Congrats on your little boy. I know it was worth it. I can't wait until my little girl is here...only 9 more weeks. It sounds so far away.