Space Ninja

“Hi Scott, it’s your mom. Annie’s water just broke. The midwives are on their way, and I wasn’t sure if you wanted to come home?” was how I found out my wife was in labor. I didn’t realize it at the time, though. I got the phone call at my desk at work, while reading email after lunch, and my first thought was that this is what both the midwives and our childbirth class warned us about.

As I recall, the statistic was something like “only 1 in 10 women actually go into labor after their water breaks,” and even if Annie was in that 10 percent, the average length of labor is like 12 hours. I figured Annie was fine, though probably uncomfortable, and that I didn’t need to go home immediately. We needed the money, so thought I would finish out my day, and then head home, where Annie and I would probably spend the night working through early labor before we went to the hospital for the actual delivery. We would have to go to the hospital, since midwives are only allowed to do a home birth in the “safe zone” of 37-42 weeks – which was still two days away.

I remembered the midwives warning us that we shouldn’t be offended if they didn’t come right over after the water breaks, since there’s usually plenty of time. They said if I called, I also shouldn’t be offended when they asked to speak to Annie. They said that a large part of the decision on how quickly they need to get to the home is based on how the mother sounds. I figured I could use the same trick to decide whether to leave work early, so I asked Mom to hand the phone to Annie.

I’ve heard Annie in pain over the phone before, because she’s been in several car accidents, and has struggled with back pain. So, I figured that when she got on the phone, she would sound strained, but largely in control. Along the lines of “Hey baby, I’m in some pain, but I’m doing okay. Your mom and I are going to make some tea,” or something like that.

I heard Mom say “Annie, it’s Scott,” and then a slight pause, followed by “HHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGHHH” as Annie bellowed into the phone.

I said “I’m on my way.”

Actually, I’m not sure exactly what I said. After Annie yelled, she talked to me briefly. I don’t remember what she said, just that she sounded like she was in pain, and she was panicking. I know I tried to reassure her, and that I told her that I would be home as fast as possible. That seemed to calm her down a bit.

I shut down my computer, and told my boss I was heading home early because Annie’s water just broke. I think I babbled something about how it was probably not the real thing yet, and that I would be able to finish my work up later on. He just grinned, and offered me a ride home, so I wouldn’t have to take the bus. I actually thought about it for a second before I said yes. Thankfully, I came to my senses and took him up on the offer.

The ride home is a bit of a blur. My boss had a phone conversation scheduled with a service provider that we work with, so he was dealing with that the whole time, which is just as well, because I’m not sure I would have been much of a conversationalist. I still didn’t really believe that Annie was in labor, but all the same I was nervous and excited, and the ride home seemed to take forever.

When I walked in the house at about 1:45pm, Annie was on her hands and knees on top of our bed, with a lot of towels lying around her, screaming into a pillow. There was a wet pair of jeans on the floor in the bathroom, and she was wearing a pair of stretchy black maternity pants.

Between contractions – which is what they obviously were, even though I still didn’t really believe it was all happening now – Annie told me to pack a bag for the hospital. This had been on the to-do list for a few nights now, but hadn’t happened because it didn’t seem like a huge priority.

About half-way through packing the bag, Annie told me she needed to pee, so I helped her down from the bed, and walked her into the bathroom. She was sitting on the toilet, and I was holding her hands through a contraction when the midwife, Wendy arrived. Annie squeezed my hand, shut her eyes, and hollered “WEEEEEEEEENNNDYYYYYYY!” Apparently at that point, Wendy, who was still standing in the entryway, looked at my mom and said, “You didn’t tell me she was already in labor!”

Sometime after this, I made a quick phone call to Rose, and left a voice mail for Taya. Meanwhile, Mom was calling Annie’s mom and my dad and several other people.

I helped Annie back into the bedroom, and went back to packing the hospital bag. Mom was puttering around, helping Wendy unpack her kit, and Annie was back on hands and knees on the bed, yelling her way through contractions every few minutes. When Wendy checked to see how dilated Annie was, she stepped back and said “Well, you’re at eight centimeters, so we’re not going anywhere.”

We were all shocked, even Annie. Seriously shocked. It was like “Surely what you meant to say is that Annie has eight centimeters to go,” but no. At this point, it kind of clicked for all of us that Annie must have been in labor for awhile now without really realizing it. The discomfort she was feeling over the past couple of days, and the complaints that it felt like her hips were separating suddenly fell into place.

Since the water-birth tub wasn’t getting delivered for another week, Annie didn’t have a designated spot to have the baby. The bed wasn’t prepped yet for that kind of action (you’re supposed to put shower curtains over the mattress and use some disposable sheets and blankets and stuff, but we hadn’t bought all the materials yet). So, Annie ended up in the bathroom again, sort of by default.

Side note to the uninitiated: This isn’t nearly as weird as it sounds. For a variety of reasons, labor can be slightly easier for the mother in the bathroom. For one thing, it’s a smaller room, so there are necessarily fewer people crowding around her. For another, it’s a familiar space, which can be relaxing. And finally, sitting on the toilet can help lift the pelvic floor, since we’ve been trained our whole lives to release on the toilet, it can subconsciously encourage a woman to push.

Annie started on the toilet, then she stood for a bit, then dropped to her knees on the floor, and gradually moved around until she was leaning on the edge of the bathtub. Each time she moved, the midwife would reposition towels and disposable medical pads around her. I was sitting on the edge of the tub next to Annie, the midwife was kneeling behind Annie, and the backup midwife (who had arrived at some point when I wasn’t paying attention) and my mom were standing in the hallway. Mom was taking some photos, and I even managed to grab one or two of Annie, but I handed the camera back to Mom quick, for fear of accidentally triggering a flash in Annie’s face and being kicked out of the room.

Part of the reason Annie ended up on the floor instead of staying on the toilet is that during one intense contraction, Annie was supporting herself with one hand on the corner of the sink, and the other on the toilet paper roll, when one bar of the holder snapped off in her hand. Unfortunately, what it left behind was two big nails sticking out of the wall, and I just knew she was going to hurt herself if I didn’t take care of it. Wendy and my mom looked supportive and somewhat bemused as I tried to hammer the nails down. Annie was really annoyed and couldn’t figure out why I would choose this moment to deal with that instead of helping her.

The worst part of the story? After a minute or so of hammering, I realized I couldn’t get the nails to lay completely flat, so I just grabbed a roll of packing tape and taped the part of the roll that broke off back to the wall, so at least the nails were covered. A few days later when I got around to fixing it, I discovered that the reason the nails wouldn’t bend flat is because they were screws. Oh well, I never claimed to be Mr. Handyman.

The next hour or so are a complete blur in my mind, with little moments that stand out. I remember that Wendy’s phone kept ringing the whole time, and she was mortified about it (I didn’t care, and I doubt Annie even noticed).

I remember offering Annie a sip of water every other contraction, from her big green Nalgene. It had a straw, which kept falling into the water, and I would have to fish it out before each sip.

I remember holding a cold washcloth against Annie’s face, at her request, and thinking how strange it looked to have a washcloth over her face as she was screaming.

I remember that there was a big rubber birth ball in the bathtub (placed there on purpose, in case Annie wanted to take a shower during labor and needed something to sit on). Whenever a contraction hit, Annie would press her face into the ball and yell, and it would echo inside the ball.

I also remember leaving in the middle of the whole thing to go pee. Again, thinking that we might be there for quite awhile, I became increasingly aware that I hadn’t been to the bathroom in a really long time. Eventually, after Annie finished a contraction, I told her that I had to go pee, and I would be right back. She grumbled something, and I stood up to go upstairs. Wendy offered to step out to let me pee, which cracked me up, picturing me standing there peeing, with Annie having a contraction on the floor behind me, with both midwives on the other side of the closed door. Needless to say, I went upstairs to Sean’s bathroom instead, and could clearly hear Annie have another contraction while I was up there. On my way back down, I got some water and then sat back down on the side of the tub, ready for the long haul.

Annie was incredible. When a contraction would hit, she would grab onto whatever she could reach and just yell through it. Then as it tapered off, she would catch her breath and just rest, or sometimes quietly talk to herself. “Down… down… down…”

She also never really lost it. Childbirth class had prepared me for there to be at least one total meltdown where she would tell me that she couldn’t handle it, or just kind of freak out. That never came. Instead, with each passing contraction, she would breathe, and stay calm, and focus herself.

Sometimes, Wendy would quietly give instructions, like “Annie, you’re doing great. Very soon now, I want you to start trying more sort of short, grunty pushes. You’ll know what I mean.” Or she would say “Annie, you’re making great progress, but I notice that your yells are getting higher, up in your lungs. I want you to keep focusing down. Keep those yells lower, in your belly.” They never made much sense to me, but each one came with praise, and with each one, Annie would nod, and breath, and incorporate the advice into the next contraction.

I felt bad for Annie having to lean on the hard edge of the tub, so I had tried to slide in front of her early on, but she just said no, and pushed me back. So I was relieved when she turned towards me. I slid over in front of her, so that she was leaning on me, with her arms on my legs.

From this position, I felt like I was able to help by giving Annie something to push against. Whenever a contraction hit, she would bend forward and down, which didn’t seem to be helping. When she leaned against me, though, I was able to hold her arms, and kind of pull her up as she was pushing down – which sounds weird, but it really seemed to help.

It didn’t seem like it had been very long when I suddenly realized that the instruction that Wendy was giving this time was directed at me. She was telling me that when the baby came down, she would grab it and pass it between Annie’s legs to me, and that I should catch it in a towel, because it would be really slippery.

Next thing I know, there’s a really big contraction, and Wendy says that the head is out. She had me lean down in front of Annie and have my baby-catching towel ready. Annie leaned on my shoulder, and pushed, and with a huge gush of water, the baby came down, turned around, and plopped into my towel.

She was wet and squirmy and covered in slime and goo. But she didn’t look gross at all – she looked perfectly natural. I didn’t have that moment where I looked into her eyes and realized she was mine. Mainly because her eyes were closed and she was screaming, but still, it seemed totally natural to help Annie lift her up to her chest.

My mom had thought ahead enough to get Annie’s mom on the phone for the last bit, so she got to hear Zoe’s first cries, and then talk briefly to Annie and myself. Wendy said the time of birth was 3:30pm – just over an hour and a half since I got home.

We brought her back down so that the midwife could take a quick look at her, and discovered that there was a knot in the cord. It was very loose, and wasn’t stopping the flow of blood at all – in fact, Wendy was able to slip her finger through it – but it was still a pretty strange sight. After the cord stopped pulsing, she put a clip on it and asked if I wanted to cut the cord. Call me strange, but the idea of taking a pair of scissors to a part of my newborn daughter’s anatomy, even a part with no nerves that is meant to be severed, just isn’t something I’m all that keen on doing. When I passed, Wendy asked if anyone else wanted to, and after both Annie and my mom turned it down, Taya (who had just arrived a few minutes before) took the scissors and did the job. That part was just as bloody and gross as I had imagined.

Now, if the birth seems like a bit of a blur, the stuff that came after is even more so. I remember that Annie was shaking pretty hard, apparently from all the adrenaline in her system. I remember draping towels around her shoulders to help her stay warm and keep her from going into shock or something. I remember holding Zoe for the first time, wrapped in a towel while Annie was helped back to the bed, and I remember putting her back onto Annie’s chest and wrapping a blanket around Annie’s head and shoulders while we sat there looking at her.

After awhile, though, the midwives became concerned that Annie wasn’t passing the placenta, so they had me take off my shirt and hold Zoe on my chest, while they took Annie back in the bathroom and did various things to motivate her body to finish up, including a shot of Pitocin and some acupuncture.

Nothing did the trick, though, and after awhile, the decision was made to get Annie to the hospital. Since we didn’t have a car seat yet, Zoe had to stay at our house, and Annie wanted me to stay with her. It was difficult to watch Annie get taken off to the hospital and not go with her, but everyone assured me that she was going to be fine, and that she would probably be home in just a couple of hours.

Long story short, a couple hours later, we got word for me to bring Zoe to the hospital so Annie could feed her. The doctors were all done with Annie, but she couldn’t go home for another two hours, because she had to finish up her I.V. of antibiotics. In the meantime, Dave and Rose had arrived (with a newborn car seat for Milo that we could borrow), and the midwives had weighed Zoe (5 pounds 5 ounces) and run some tests and declared her to be in perfect health, other than a bit of jaundice, which they said should clear up on its own.

After a relatively uneventful trip to the hospital, and Annie feeding Zoe, everyone got to come home with a clean bill of health, so by 10pm that night, we were all home and happy.

It’s been just over a week now, and Zoe is still healthy and strong, and both her and Annie have managed to figure out breastfeeding, so after the initial drop in weight that all babies experience, she’s gaining weight again, and her jaundice does indeed seem to be clearing up on its own.