I had been visualizing the baby’s birth to take place on Thursday. I had all the details planned out. She was going to be born on September 23rd, because it was both a full moon and the autumnal equinox. I mean, that’s just so cool. I wanted labor to start around 11 a.m. so that I’d already have Dot fed. I’d call Virginia to come get Dot, have Rob come home, and watch this really funny movie to allow the laughter to release pain-relieving endorphins. Then it would be all about hypnobirthing for the next few hours as we made our way to the hospital and brought our baby girl into the world in very short order.
A few pieces of that visualization came to pass, but there was just no holding her off until the equinox. We did get an 11:00 start time. Unfortunately, it was 11:00 P.M. and was the 19th. I’d suspected labor would be starting soon, as my body had been giving me a few signs during the day. Still, I’d really committed to my visualization, so I was perhaps a tad surprised on Sunday night when it seemed really likely that I was in labor. No, I didn’t really believe I could determine the exact time and circumstances of something as complex as childbirth, but I did my best.
Mom, Rob, and Dot were all asleep, and I didn’t want to wake them if it was just “practice labor,” so I went ahead and watched some TV and practiced relaxation exercises. Dot woke a couple of times upstairs calling for me, and the second time I found myself crawling up the stairs during a contraction to pick her up, I figured I’d better go ahead and wake Rob to help. It was probably about 1:30 a.m. at that point. He got her back to sleep and lay down on the little couch with her.
I had my heart set on watching Tropic Thunder during the birth, and amazingly enough, it was available On Demand until the 20th. Mom decided to use the opportunity to get some more sleep, and Rob and I watched the movie for quite a while. During each contraction, I would put my head phones over my ears to listen to my hypnosis processes, put myself into a deep state of relaxation, and focus on “breathing the baby up.” Before the movie had ended, I let Rob know that I needed him to join in, so he put Dot back in bed and sat next to me to hold my hand, offer support, and even do some of the hypnosis processes himself.
I was also getting curious regarding my “progress,” so I had him time the contractions. He sat next to me as I lay on the couch listening to my processes. When a contraction would start, I’d squeeze his fingers, and then I did it again when it subsided. In this way, we were able to communicate without me being distracted from my relaxation. Around 4:00, I asked him to give Virginia a call, as she would be staying at the house with Dot when we went to the hospital. Mom got up around this time, and she would sometimes take over timing contractions or stroking my hair while Rob went around and gathered all the essentials for our hospital stay. Again, I’d kind of convinced myself I had a couple more days than I did, so we weren’t 100% packed.
When we had Dot, we used the Bradley Method, and in that we were taught “the 4-1-1.” It’s a method for determining if you’re ready to go to the hospital yet. It’s time if your contractions are four minutes apart, last for a minute, and have been in that pattern for one hour. Rob sort of got a little confused, and when I asked if we should head out, he said he didn’t think it was time because my contractions weren’t four minutes LONG yet. Oops. It turns out they were as little as two minutes apart, so we realized it was definitely time to load up and go.
Mom, Rob, and I got into the car, and I would pull my headphones on whenever I felt a contraction coming on. I may have been a tad critical of the condition of Spokane roads at that point, as the bumps were definitely not my friend! The hypnosis made a huge difference, though, and I was really in very good spirits throughout this whole thing.
We went in through the ER, and they wheeled me up to the birthing center. I had decided that I did want to get an epidural, despite the fact that I had managed extremely well with nothing but hypnosis at that point. My decision was based on the fact that my bag of waters hadn’t broken yet, and I knew that once it did, the discomfort was going to increase a fair amount. I had gotten to a point during my first birth where I’d just lost control of myself and my ability to deal with the situation, and I was very fearful of feeling that way again.
Nearly every aspect of laboring at the hospital went better this time around, though, and the mood was totally set when I went into triage and found out that I was already seven centimeters dilated! We did all of that relying on nothing but hypnobirthing, and I felt like such a success. I’d like to take the opportunity to point out that Rob was an amazing birth partner. We put quite a bit of time into practicing and preparing, and it paid off in such a big way. Many times, Rob would just have to begin speaking in his calm voice, and my mind and body just immediately melted into relaxation.
It just so happened that my doctor was in the birthing center that night, although I didn’t think to ask why. We got set up in our labor and delivery room and they allowed Mom to join us. As someone who is terrified of needles/IVs, I suppose it was only Murphy’s Law at play that caused the nurses to miss the vein on one hand so we had to go through the whole tear-filled process again on the other hand. Mom did have to leave, however, when the nurse anesthetist and nurse anesthetist intern arrived to do the epidural. Unfortunately, they also had considerable difficulty with their placement, and it took a very uncomfortable hour for them to insert the catheter. We waited for an hour or more to determine that they hadn’t found the right spot, and some time later, another nurse anesthetist came in, removed it, and set up a new one.
At this point, I was pretty much dilated to nine centimeters, and we had done all of this with hypnobirthing. I’m so glad we had that tool!
My progress slowed down a ton at this point. Later, a nurse told me that if she had to pick a number, she would have said I was at “9.75” for hours. There was a little anterior lip of cervix that was stubbornly sticking around, and while we tried to work around it, it just wouldn’t allow the baby to be born. We went ahead and burst the bag of waters in case that helped. My doctor had to leave at noon, and at that point, we had agreed to some pitocin to pick the contractions back up because they were pretty erratic. As they got stronger and the baby moved lower, the epidural became less helpful, and Rob jumped back in reading our hypnosis scripts.
My Aunt Julie had also arrived at some time during the last couple of hours. I’d called her that morning, and we’d assumed the baby would be born by the time she arrived. When I was still in labor, we invited her to stay, although, I’m pretty modest and asked her to step out of the room or turn around at certain points. She was so kind and followed my wishes and therefore got to actually be in the room when our little one finally arrived.
That happened at 2:16 on Monday afternoon. The new doctor arrived, and he and the staff were very thoughtful about my requests. I didn’t want anyone to pull on the baby as I was pushing. I didn’t want anyone to shout “push” or count at me. I also wanted the umbilical cord to stop pulsing on its own before it was clamped or cut.
Because I was able to feel the pressure without the pain, I was able to let them know whenever I felt it was time to push. My mom and a nursing student held my legs while Rob stayed by my head. He read our scripts between contractions and held my head up for me when I was bearing down. I did great, and she was at a “plus two” station, so I only needed to push for about twenty minutes before she arrived. Again, I was amazed how after each contraction, I would lie back, and as soon as Rob started with a script, I would just totally relax.
The little one arrived weighing exactly eight pounds and measuring twenty and one half inches. She was in the 90th percentile for both height and weight, which was a huge surprise since I’m so small and Dot was teeny tiny at birth. Before they did any of their busy work, however, the medical staff put the baby on me, and we got her to nurse within the first few minutes. This was also such an important feat, as we’d had such difficulties with nursing her big sister. It just felt like everything was coming together so beautifully this time around, and I couldn’t stop smiling.
After a bit, we were put into a new bed and wheeled to our recovery room. It had a beautiful city view, and the staff were all very nice and accommodating. Rob, Mom, and Aunt Julie were all there, and in the evening, Virginia brought Dot by to meet her baby sister. Dot was absolutely enraptured, and consented easily to the idea that the baby would come home and live with us forever. In fact, I stepped out of the bathroom to find her holding her new little sister, and when I asked her what it was, she replied, “It’s a baby for me.”
We spent quite a while trying to determine what the new baby should be called, and after quite a bit of discussion, Rob and I decided that we wanted her to be Lucille Pearl Brewer, and that we will call her “Lucy” and “Lucy Pearl” for short. Rob took Dot home, and everyone else cleared out, leaving me and Lucy to get acquainted throughout the night. I hadn’t slept since Saturday night (it was Monday night now), so I appreciated a couple of hours here and there. It’s Thursday now, the day I had been hoping for Lucy to make her arrival, and I’m still riding high on adrenaline and am slowly catching up on sleep.
I’m so proud of my little family. Rob has stepped up to take care of us while also starting a new quarter in college. Dot has been a great big sister who can’t quite kiss the baby enough. And I have remained calm and positive while transitioning into being a mother of two. For her part, Lucy has been a good sleeper, a good eater, and pretty laid-back and mellow. Things are very, very good at the Brewer house.
o_my_goodness here on LiveJournal). I'd be so pleased if you friended that blog, as I'm going to use it to talk about what I'm doing with the challenge. One of the things about giving gifts is that they shouldn't always be something that is easy. That's a big part of why I decided to pick the blog back up. I stopped writing there because it wasn't easy anymore...but it's always bothered me to have let it go. For the next few weeks, at least, I am going to see what I can do about getting back into the practice of updating it and paying attention to the positive things I can do in my life.
