Zoe’s Birth Story

Early Thursday afternoon, (2/22) I was feeling very proud of myself, and very organized because I had taken a big shower and gone to the bathroom (which is a big deal when you’re nearly 37 weeks pregnant) and I was getting ready to go out with my mother-in-law, Annie, who was going to take me shopping for the comforter for the birth blanket and to pick up some things at Freddy’s.

After she showed up, we got in the car at just about one o’clock, and after I put my seatbelt on, I immediately sat up again in my seat, saying “Oh my god, oh my god, I think my water just broke.” Annie said “Okay,” and we got right up and went back into the house to call the midwives. I was in disbelief because I didn’t think I’d been in early labor up to that point, although, looking back of course I was, I just didn’t know what to call it.

From Tues night ’til Thurs morning, I’d been having waves of pelvic pain and had had to shower in the middle of the night and things like that, but didn’t connect it to labor because it wasn’t contractions up high or back pain. What I kept saying was it felt like my pelvis was expanding. On Wed I actually was out all morning and afternoon, going to coffee and meeting friends and a little babysitting. I didn’t make it to the library because I decided the only thing I could do at that point, (about 4:30) was go home and take a shower. Hmm…. I should have called the midwives…but I digress.

It quickly became apparent that my water had broken, and something bigger was going on. I was getting all hot and sweaty, I couldn’t get comfortable, and I made Annie page the midwives twice. She asked if I thought we should call Scott, and I said yes, because at this point, I was seriously having contractions and shedding my clothes.

Scott, hearing the panic in my voice, said he would come right home. He actually beat the midwife there, because he got a ride from his boss. Wendy, my midwife, showed up shortly after Scott did, not knowing what sort of state I was in. (She had warned us a couple nights before that most women don’t go right into labor after their water breaks, so even though we should call right away, we shouldn’t be offended if they didn’t drop everything and run right over.)

By the time she got there, I had made it into the bathroom with Scott’s help, and was having contractions on the toilet. I remember when I heard her walk in the front door, and I just yelled “WENDYYY!” and she came in and went “Okay, you’re in labor!”

It gets a little fuzzy for me at this point. I know we went back into the bedroom, where she checked me and declared me eight centimeters dilated, much to everyone’s shock. I hadn’t realized I was so far along, and since I was already in transition, she said we weren’t going anywhere. If it had been earlier in the labor, we probably would have had to go to the hospital, because technically it was still a few days before my official home birth start date.

At this point, it had only been about an hour since my water broke, and Scott and I were back in the bathroom, laboring, while Annie called my parents, sister-in-law, and a friend I wanted to attend the birth. Wendy called the backup midwife, since the other primary midwife wasn’t available on such short notice. I guess she was also preparing the bathroom for birth – there were a lot of towels and drop cloths everywhere is all I know.

I was still laboring on the toilet, with one hand on the sink, and the other on the toilet-paper holder, which I actually snapped off. All I know is that everyone was freaking out about nails, and Scott was actually hammering right next to me, and I couldn’t even see any nails, so I couldn’t understand why they were all paying attention to that instead of my contractions. Eventually, he just taped something over the nails sticking out of the wall and we moved on.

I don’t know when I started pushing, but I know I made it over to the tub, which fortunately had a small birth-ball in it. I stayed in that position (on my knees on the bathmat, leaning on the edge of the tub) for the rest of the birth, alternating between leaning on the birth ball and leaning on Scott, who had come to sit in front of me.

I remember thinking that I wasn’t totally in labor-land, which was weird, because all I could think about (between contractions) was how dirty the bathroom was, and I couldn’t believe I was birthing a baby in the middle of it. I was also wondering how I was going to get through this without the birth tub I had “planned” on. I also remember a lot of noise, because I was yelling during every contraction.

I don’t ever remember a point where I thought I couldn’t do it, except for a several-second-long period where I was pushing her head out. Once her head was out, her body quickly followed, and I immediately forgot about that pain.

I remember being excited when I could feel her crowning, and how cool that was to just be in that moment. There wasn’t pain so much as a lot of pressure, and I got really excited when I heard the midwife telling Scott how to get prepared to catch the baby and put her on my chest. That’s when I knew she was coming soon.

So there I was, on my knees, on my bathroom rug. I yelled a lot, pushed real hard, and the midwife caught the baby, and passed her between my legs to Scott. I remember him being surprised at how slippery she was, even though he had been warned about that. I don’t remember whether Scott brought her up, or if we both did, but we got her on my chest, and I immediately started shaking from all the adrenaline.

Someone held the phone up to me, with my Mom on the line (she was in the car on her way down with my Dad), so Mom got to hear Zoe’s first cries, and she reminded me to check that the baby was in fact Zoe, and not Hank.

As we were getting ready to cut the cord, we discovered that it had a knot tied in it. It wasn’t tight at all, in fact the midwife was able to slip a finger through it, but it was still pretty interesting. Scott wasn’t going to cut the cord, so my friend Taya, who had arrived just in time to see Zoe born, got to cut it.

After the cord was cut, they got me up and back into the bedroom, where I lay on my back on the bed with Zoe on my chest, surrounded by blankets to try to get rid of the shakes. Once I calmed down a bit, we decided that it might be easier to try to get the placenta out sitting on the toilet. After a little while trying that, it became obvious that I wasn’t having contractions, so we tried a variety of things to get those going, including Pitocin and acupuncture. When those didn’t work, and it had been about an hour since the birth, we started talking about going to the hospital, because if the placenta stays in too long, it will cause infection.

In the middle of trying to figure out who was going and where we were going, and whether or not to call an ambulance, we realized that we didn’t have a car seat for Zoe yet (we were planning to get one that weekend). This meant that Scott and Zoe had to stay home with the backup midwife. Wendy decided that we could just take a car, so Taya drove Wendy and I to the nearest hospital.

We went into Labor and Delivery, where a team was waiting for us, because it had now been almost two hours since the birth. They wanted to put an I.V. in me right away to pump me full of Pitocin to get my contractions going, which of course took another twenty minutes, since my veins are so bad. The hope was that the Pitocin would get my body’s natural processes going again, so that I wouldn’t have to go into the OR and have a DNC.

So basically, for the next hour or so, I had Pitocin, painkillers, and antibiotics pumped into me, and much poking and prodding of my abdomen. By 6:30, a full three hours after Zoe’s birth, the placenta was out. What was weird was that we discovered that the placenta was in two lobes, so it was whisked off to Pathology, and we’re still waiting to hear what, if anything, that had to do with the early birth.

Shortly after this I learned that my parents were there, and I could see them soon, which was a great relief, and also that Scott was on his way with Zoe. She was coming in a borrowed car seat, so she could nurse, because they needed to keep me on the antibiotics for another two hours.

So about nine hours after my water broke, I was safely back home, in the bosom of my family, with Zoe in my arms. I learned that while I was gone she had been weighed and tested and declared healthy and perfect.

It is now a week later, and Zoe is gaining weight, and nursing well. She’s got a little bit of jaundice still, but the midwives seem confident that her pooping powers (which are prodigious) will take care of that naturally.

I’m still kind of unbelieving that’s she’s really here so soon, like many events involving children, I’ve had to completely throw out the window what I thought I doing and let go of plans I had to tend to my child. Towards the end of my pregnancy I was saying things to Scott like “did you know that she’s going to be here every morning? And all the time?” He’d say “I know!” in a much more excited tone than my slightly panicked voice. Now I’m saying, “Hey, you know what’s cool? We get her every morning.” :)