Here is Patrick's birth story... it's very very long. 
In the days before I went into labor, we had sex, walked around for a few hours at the zoo, and did nipple stimulation. On Sunday night Bill told me that he didn’t want to go to work the next day, so we both hoped that maybe I would go into labor overnight.
Sure enough—a painful contraction woke me up at 4:45 AM on my due date—Monday, August 10th. I had never had a painful contraction before, so I immediately knew that this was something different. I expected that if I was in labor, I’d probably spend the day taking it easy around the house and trying to get some rest while I waited for the contractions to build in frequency and intensity. I tried to go back to sleep, but had another contraction and then a third by about 5:00 so I got up to pee. When I got to the bathroom I discovered that my water had broken, and was slowly trickling out. I also noticed some green flecks in it and assumed (correctly) that it was meconium. When I wiped, I found a clear slimy glob on the toilet paper that must have been part of my mucus plug. I went back into the bedroom and told Bill that he wouldn’t have to go to work today after all because I was in labor.
Since I’d already had three contractions in 15 minutes, we called the birthing center immediately. They suggested we come in when the contractions were coming every 3-5 minutes, though I knew I was close to that point already. I told them I would take a shower and then head North before too long, since rush hour would be coming soon and we were easily an hour away. I had a few more contractions in the shower, and Bill asked me how far apart they were. I couldn’t really tell because I didn’t have a very good sense of time, so Bill sat outside the shower and wrote down what time it was each time I told him I was having a contraction. We discovered that they were already 2-3 minutes apart, so Bill went to quickly pack some things. By the time I was done showering, he’d already packed the laptops and chargers, camera and charger, fed the dog, and gotten dressed. I called my mom to tell her I was in labor, and she sounded a little concerned that I was that far along already, though I might have imagined that. She agreed that it was time to go. We grabbed the last of our things and headed out at about 6:00 AM.
I called Lysa as soon as we got in the car, then put on one of my Hypnobabies tracks and closed my eyes. I was having a lot of pain in my back, especially on the turns. For the first time in my life I was really grateful that Bill had the radar detector, because I wanted him to get me to the birthing center so I could get out of the **** car as quickly as possible. I kept my eyes closed almost the entire ride, and concentrated on my breathing and relaxing. I learned later that Bill had driven 100+ mph most of the drive.
We made it to the birthing center at about 7:00 AM, and checked in on the third floor. For a moment they had lost my chart and didn’t seem to know that I was coming, but then someone found it and commented that they hadn’t expected me so quickly. They sent me to triage, and I remember thinking “this is no time for triage, I’m in labor!” They put me in a large room full of birthing beds that could be separated by curtains, but I think I was the only patient in there. The nurse, Tiana, attached the fetal monitor and the contraction monitor. I didn’t pay much attention to what the monitors were saying, because within a few minutes my parents, my sister Brenna, and my doula Lysa all showed up. A new nurse, Debbie, took over for Tiana, and was very concerned about me for some reason so she put me in a wheelchair. I told her I could walk, but she insisted that there wasn’t time for that, forced me into the wheelchair, and rushed me down the hall into my birthing room. I had no idea what the big deal was at the time, though I think she was concerned about Patrick’s heart rate. I changed into a hospital gown and gave Debbie the pad I was wearing, which by this point was soaked with amniotic fluid and showed the flecks of meconium. She set me up on the fetal monitor in the birthing room and made me lay on my left side. Since my water had already broken and she thought I might be dehydrated, she pushed me to get IV fluids. She tried to put the IV in my left wrist and failed, so she put it in the right wrist instead; I didn’t realize that until I discovered a massive bruise on my left wrist the next day though.
Jana, the midwife until 7:30, checked my progress before her shift ended. I remember her saying “hmm… you’re at about 1.5 cm, but hold on, this is going to feel weird… okay, now you’re at a 4.” I think I cheered at that point. Jana introduced me to Robyn (one of the two midwives I’d never met), who was taking over for the next 12 hours.
I was still having terrible back labor, so I had Bill push on my sacrum during each contraction. Lysa pushed on my right hip (since I was still laying on my side), and that helped quite a bit too. From then on, I had three people—usually Bill, my mom, and Lysa—push on my sacrum and the tops of my hips during each and every contraction. At this point I told Bill that I didn’t think I could do this anymore, and he and Lysa were instantly by my side insisting that I could and reminding me that I was already doing it.
Breakfast arrived soon, but I had no interest at all in eating so I let my birthing team eat it all. Bill said it was the worst French toast he’d ever had. People kept trying to get me to eat things, but the thought of eating anything with a strong flavor or anything I had to chew was disgusting. I consented to a carton of yogurt, and someone fed me spoonfuls of the yogurt that came with my breakfast between contractions. I remember being surprised that it wasn’t the Tillamook vanilla yogurt I had brought, and wondering where the heck this yogurt had come from.
Bill offered to put on a Hypnobabies track for me, but after about five minutes I changed my mind and asked him to put on Josh Groban instead. To my birthing team’s dismay, we listened to Josh Groban for the next ten hours or so. At one point I remember my mom mentioning that she had never heard “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring” sung before.
I tried to move around as much as I could throughout the labor, though I never left the birthing room. Early on I spent a lot of time on the toilet because I remembered from Ina May’s books that it helped open the sphincters, and it felt to me like it was helping. I moved to the tub for a bit, which was a crazy tub shaped like a seat that reclined once it was full of water, and I didn’t like the feeling of being reclined under water. Besides, the seat part was too long for my legs, so my back didn’t quite reach the back rest, which put uncomfortable pressure on my back. It wasn’t very comfortable and I felt like I wasn’t making much progress so I got back out. I spent a lot of time on my knees on the bed, leaning over the inclined head of the bed. I also spent a lot of time sitting on the birthing ball, standing up bent over the foot of the bed, and squatting. I tried to walk around as much as possible, too, though I could only do so between contractions. I also drank as much water and Gatorade as I could between contractions. I was usually really hot and thirsty at the end of each contraction, and the birthing center had provided a one-liter plastic mug with a straw that my team kept full of ice water. I probably went through 4-5 liters of water throughout the day.
Someone must have gone to Safeway across the street and picked up some food, because I remember various people eating lunch. Bill came into the bathroom with a sandwich at one point, and I kicked him out because it was too aromatic. I remember my family eating almost an entire bag of mini Payday bars, too.
The contractions were continuing to build in intensity. At about 4:45 PM the nurse, Debbie, suggested that I do a deep squat during the next contraction to help Patrick descend into my pelvis. I had to have Bill sit on the floor behind me to help me down and then back up. During one of the squats I felt like I would probably poop a little, so I told Bill that on the next squat he’d have to hold my gown open so I wouldn’t poop on it. I didn’t realize that I’d already pooped on the previous squat, and he and Brenna shared disgusted glances. He objected to my request, but I insisted and had him put a towel on the floor so to catch the poop. A few squats later, either Debbie lost Patrick’s heartbeat or his heartbeat decelerated significantly, and she panicked. She made me get back up on the bed and lay on my left side, and gave me oxygen. Within a few minutes I got nauseated, and rolled onto my right side and vomited three times into a clear plastic basin. While I was wiping my face with a wet washcloth I pulled out my nose ring, and Bill suggested that I just take it out but I quickly pushed it back in. I think it’s strange that there are chunks of time lasting several hours for which I don’t remember anything, yet I remember putting my nose ring back in after puking.
Whatever concern there was about Patrick’s heart rate soon passed, and I was able to get back up again and move about freely. I ate another carton of yogurt (the Tillamook vanilla this time) and walked laps around the birthing room. Debbie had me on constant fetal monitoring and an IV, so I had to push the IV cart around with me the whole time. I didn’t mind too much because it gave me something else to think about and something to hold on to. There were a lot of people in the room at this point—my parents, Bill, Lysa, Brenna, and Sabrina, plus Debbie and sometimes Robyn, so there wasn’t a whole lot of room to walk around, but I did my best. I tried doing some shallow squats, rotating my hips, and lunges too. Lysa regularly reminded me to go to the bathroom, and sitting on the toilet was much less comfortable at this point but it did sometimes feel like it was helping me open up so I always consented. I’d spend 3-4 contractions on the toilet with Bill in front of me to hold on to, and then would be too uncomfortable to continue. He fed me two fruit snacks. I also spent some contractions sitting on the foot stool, since it was almost like squatting but didn’t require as much leg muscle.
Debbie made me stay on the fetal monitor for her whole shift, and spent most of the day frowning at the fetal monitor and making comments under her breath about things not going right. I wasn’t consciously aware of her actions at the time, but I think her concern must have impacted me because my labor slowed down significantly. My contractions were a bit weaker and were only coming every 5-7 minutes. I laid on my side in the bed for a while and actually fell asleep between some of them.
Robyn and Debbie’s shifts ended at 7:30 PM and they were replaced by Kelly and Tiana respectively. Kelly was the only other midwife I’d never met. She reviewed the printouts from the fetal monitor, declared that there was absolutely nothing wrong, and took me off the continuous fetal monitoring and IV fluids, though she left the IV in place. I remember her somehow capturing my attention and assuring me that I was healthy and my baby was healthy, and that she had complete faith in me. My contractions sped back up again.
My labor team was really tired of Josh Groban by this point, so I switched to the Hypnobabies “Easy First Stage” track. We listened to it three or four times, and I learned later that my dad and Brenna sat in the corner laughing about how silly the suggestions were. They were especially entertained by the comments about my cervix being a golden ring, melting away like butter. My dad commented later that it made him want to take a dump. It helped me though, I guess, because I continued to stay very calm and inwardly focused. I had completely lost all track of time. I remember being surprised when the sun set because it couldn’t have possibly been an entire day yet.
Kelly checked my progress at 9:00 PM and discovered that I was only 6 cm dilated, which meant I’d only made 1 cm progress in the last seven hours and only 2 cm during the 12 hours of Debbie and Robyn’s shift. She suggested that I should try pitocin to speed up my labor since my water had been broken for so long. I was really hesitant to try the pitocin, since I was afraid it would make the contractions too strong and I’d cave and ask for an epidural. On the other hand, there were several times where I thought a c-section would be easier than labor. Kelly agreed to let me labor for two more hours and then reconsider. I wanted that two hours to be as effective as possible, so I got out of bed. I remembered some of the birth stories from Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth saying that women’s labors sometimes stalled if there was something affecting them psychologically, like a fear that their partner wouldn’t love the baby or a desire to be married first. Ina May would try to recognize these factors and take care of whatever the issue was, and then labor would progress quickly after that. I couldn’t think of much that was affecting me, but on the off-chance that the gallery of people watching me was making me uncomfortable, I asked my dad, Brenna, and Sabrina to step out for a bit. Once they left, I confessed to the remaining people (my mom, Bill, Lysa and Tiana) that I was afraid of transition and that maybe I was avoiding it. Lysa commended me for admitting that.
By this point my legs were exhausted to the point where I could hardly control them enough to walk around between contractions. I tried to lay on my side to rest them for a bit, but they were so exhausted that I couldn’t relax them. I moved to the tub, but the air jets in the tub kept hitting my legs and they would shake uncontrollably, and when I was in the tub I couldn’t have anyone push on my hips or sacrum. I gave up and went back to walking around, hoping to make enough progress that Kelly would give up on the Pitocin idea. It didn’t work though, and at about midnight when she checked on me she suggested it again. I didn’t know what to do, so Bill asked Lysa and my mom if they’d had any experience with it. My mom told us she’d used it when she gave birth to Lindsay, and Lysa said she’d had clients use it before without any trouble. I was exhausted and wanted Patrick to hurry up and be born, so I told Kelly “Okay, let’s do it.”
Tiana hooked the Pitocin up to my IV and set it to level one, then two, then three. My contractions got more intense, and I withdrew even more inside myself. I heard Tiana say that she was increasing the Pitocin a few times, but the highest I ever heard her declare was level seven. People would occasionally ask me questions, and I would completely zone them out until the contraction was over. Tiana commented that she couldn’t even tell when I was having a contraction because I was so calm. In fact, I had been completely silent during every contraction except to ask for the hip and sacrum pressure. Occasionally someone would remind me that it was okay to make noise, but it didn’t feel right to do so—there weren’t any noises that seemed to fit the occasion. It was easier to just concentrate on breathing and relaxing.
At around 2:30 AM I started making what Lysa called “beautiful birthing sounds”—a low moan during the more intense contractions. Eventually the sounds were coming out of me during every contraction, and they grew louder and louder. I spent most of this time bent over the foot of the bed, or on my knees on the bed bent over the head of the bed. I ate two grapes. Tiana was far more hands-off than Debbie had been, and I remember her climbing under the bed to hold the monitor against my belly so she wouldn’t interrupt my concentration. While she was on a break at one point, another nurse came in and heard my moans and suggested I make lower sounds. I remember reading in Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth that low noises are the best—however goes the throat, so goes the cervix, and lower notes open the throat more. Not only were the lower notes supposedly more helpful, it gave me something to concentrate on, so with every contraction I would concentrate on keeping my moans as low as I could. By 3:30 I was dilated to 8 cm and at +1 station.
After a while of moaning, I suddenly experienced a contraction that felt entirely different—my body involuntarily pushed, and my mouth flew open and I groaned much more loudly. From then on the peak of each contraction caused that same sensation, sort of like dry-heaving out my vagina. It was definitely an unpleasant feeling, but it really felt right, like this was exactly what it was supposed to feel like. I discovered that I could provoke that feeling by having Bill push particularly hard on my sacrum, and though we never discussed it I think he realized that too because he would wait until my mom and Lysa had assembled themselves around my hips (getting whatever leverage they could find to push as hard as they could), and then as soon as he would push on my back the vaginal dry-heaving would commence. I know I was making dreadfully loud noises, but I didn’t care. I was vaguely entertained by the thought that other laboring women were probably laying there calmly, enjoying their epidurals, wondering what on earth was going on in my labor to cause such a racket. I wasn’t a bit embarrassed about the sounds—it’s just what my body had to do; I couldn’t have stopped it even if I’d wanted to. The noises frightened Bill a bit, but Lysa and my mom assured him that this was totally normal.
I wasn’t intentionally pushing, but my body did so anyway. Bill asked me if I felt like pushing yet, and I told him that I did sometimes, but that it wasn’t the continuous sensation I had been expecting. I only felt like pushing during the peak of each contraction. The sensation continued to grow more and more intense though, and he used the intercom to tell the nurse station that he thought I was ready to push. I almost wished he hadn’t done that because I felt like I was on a roll and I didn’t want anyone to interrupt it just to tell me that I was almost there.
Kelly came in at about 6:10 AM and told me that I was neck-and-neck with another laboring woman who had been pushing for three hours so far. I thought that was a very strange thing to say, since that meant she had a three hour head start. She had me lay up on my left side, and between contractions she felt my progress and discovered that I was 10 cm dilated, Patrick was at a +2-3 station, and I was ready to push. She explained to me that pushing doesn’t come naturally to many women, and that I should wait until the peak of a contraction, take a deep breath, and hold it while pushing as hard as I could for about ten seconds, and try to do that three times during each contraction. I recalled reading in one of my childbirth books (probably one of Ina May’s books, though I’m not sure) about “purple pushing”, where doctors encourage you to push for ten seconds but really six seconds is a more natural amount of time to push, so I decided I would just push as long as was comfortable each time.
On the next contraction I took a deep breath and pushed three times as Kelly had suggested. She was astounded at my pushing abilities. I did the same for a second contraction, and Kelly declared that Patrick would be born within the next 15 minutes or so. I was so excited that I put both fists up in the air and cheered. Someone called Brenna and had her come back in. She rolled me over onto my back and assembled the birthing bar over the top of the bed, and helped me get me feet up onto it.
Once I got to the pushing part, I couldn’t even feel contractions anymore. Kelly kept telling me to push with each contraction, but I couldn’t tell when I was having them. The back pain was completely gone. I’m not sure if the contractions were less painful because he had descended so far, or if the back labor had stopped and the regular contractions were just less painful in comparison. I asked Tiana to tell me when I was having a contraction so I would know when to push, but she only pointed out the very next contraction and then stopped doing so, so I just pushed whenever I felt like it. After a few pushes Kelly said she could see the head, and assembled a mirror so I could watch his head appear too. Everyone else could see him before I could, since they were closer. My mom held my left hand and Bill held my right, and everyone around me cheered me on. I didn’t have to push very many times at all—that part came really easy to me. When his head was most of the way out, Kelly ran her fingers around his head to help stretch my vagina. The sides and lower portion didn’t bother me, but when she ran her fingers along the top, closest to my urethra, it really burned. I’d again been silent for a while, but I said “Ow, that part hurts.” She laughed a little and said, “I’m sorry, but you are really stretchy.” I gave about two more pushes and his head popped out. She suctioned his mouth, helped him turn over, and with one more push he was out. He was born at 6:47 AM. The sun was rising, which was strange to me because I didn’t know how it was possible that so much time had passed. I’d been in labor for almost exactly 26 hours. Brenna recorded the whole delivery on her digital camera.
They set him on my stomach and put a warm towel over him, and he cried immediately. He was loud and bright pink, and looked so perfect and tiny. His one and five minute APGAR scores were both 9. He seemed a little bigger than I’d expected him to be, which was fine with me—now that he was out I hoped that he was extra big since I’d had to work so hard to get him out. After a few minutes I easily pushed out the placenta. Kelly gave me a few injections of a local anesthetic and stitched up my second degree tears. Honestly the injections hurt worse than pushing ever did, but I just concentrated on Patrick and tried not to think about it, and it was over in a few minutes. Brenna recorded a video of Kelly stitching me up, and she commented that no one had ever recorded her sutures before. I’m glad Brenna made the video because it was interesting to watch later.
Someone covered me up with a blanket from the waist down, and my dad came in to meet his new grandson. They let me breastfeed him soon after, and he latched on pretty quickly. He nursed on the right side for about half an hour, while I visited with everyone. Kelly did a little show-and-tell with my placenta and amniotic sac, and showed us where he’d lived and where the membrane had ruptured. It was fascinating. My family left soon after to let us spend time with Patrick in peace and get some sleep.
As I said in the other posts, Patrick had some respiratory trouble that developed two hours or so after he was born, but after four days of supplemental oxygen and a week of antibiotics, he was good as new and we got to take him home. He is an absolute joy-- loves to eat and sleep, loves his mommy and daddy, and rarely cries. He is so ridiculously handsome. We adore him!!
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Patrick Hunter - 26 hrs + pitocin, no pain meds
. You did an awesome job and your son is so so cute!
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