Ruthie's Birth Story, part 2

In case you missed it, here's part 1.

We had just gone to bed on Christmas night a few hours earlier.  Suddenly a sharp wave of tightness came over me, but I ignored it and resumed my focus on sleep.  Again.  I let out a long, slow exhale like we’d been taught to do in birth class and when it subsided, went back to sleep.  Again.  Ok, they weren’t stopping.  This time, after blowing through it, I reached for my phone and pushed the power button.  It was around 2:45 a.m.  I started timing them, and they were 4 or so minutes apart and about 40 seconds long.  Quite awake by now and feeling like I had to go #2, I went and sat on the toilet for a few minutes—no success.  Oh well.  I was supposed to page the midwife if the contractions lasted for an hour or more, but these were strong enough that I was pretty sure this was it!  I headed back into the room and started throwing the last-minute articles into my suitcase.  I found my glasses and pulled back my hair.  John soon woke up, and I was glad—I had purposely not been particularly quiet, because I knew that I would need him soon!  In fact, I couldn’t wait to get to the hospital and get on a birth ball . . . this was a lot harder than I remembered it! 

“Why does it have to be now?” John had gotten probably 2 hours of sleep and was not too excited.  When he saw me doubled over on the bed, though, he knew this was it.  “I don’t want to go natural anymore,” I groaned between contractions.  Some of them were as close as 2.5 minutes apart now.  By around 3:45, I paged the midwife on call to tell her that it had been an hour.  It was Susan again!  She said to come on in and they’d check me out and also asked about my stomach bug.  John brought Gemma’s baby monitor up to Heidi and told her what was going on while I climbed into the back seat of the car in my pajamas. 

We were about a mile down the road when I asked John if he’d brought my pillow like I’d asked.  Nope; he’d misunderstood.  He offered to turn around, but I said just to forget it.  I didn’t want to have to deal with too many contractions in the car!  John gunned the gas and took hard turns, and since there was no traffic, the fifteen-minute drive to the hospital became less.  “I might have to puke.”  I was sitting on my knees, hovering over Gemma’s car basket of books and toys, not buckled in.  John handed me back a fast food bag and I stuck it inside a plastic grocery bag I found on the floor.  He pulled up to the Children’s Hospital entrance and told me to wait.  I saw him run in and say something to the security guard before turning around and strolling triumphantly out with an enormous wheel chair.  What a relief not to have to walk!

Sliding into the wheel chair was what brought my nausea to a head, and I hurled about three times into my bag.  John quickly moved the car a few hundred feet out of the drop-off area and then wheeled me inside, where the kindly security guard accompanied us up the elevator.  My contractions had gone back to about four minutes apart, but they were very intense and I felt like I was just barely getting through them. 

John answered the few questions they had at the desk, and then they waited for me to finish blowing through a contraction so I could sign a consent form.  “She’s handling them so well,” I heard one lady say, and was encouraged!  Soon I was wheeled to a triage room where I changed out of my now-sweaty pajamas and into a gown.  I had another contraction standing before settling Indian-style onto the gurney, and reiterated to John, “I don’t want natural anymore.  Don’t give them the birth plan!” 

“Ok,” he replied.  “What does the birth plan say?” 

“To have me try the water first!”

The nurse came in to take my vitals and hook me up to the monitors.  Going through a contraction with my movement and position restricted wasn’t so great, and I started to wail a little at its peak.  I had a feeling that the midwife was waiting to come in until she saw it on the monitor outside, which annoyed me.  I was clearly in labor.  Come on!

“Can you tell them I want an epidural as soon as possible?”  I asked the nurse when it was over. 

“Yes, definitely!” she soothed.

Susan bustled in shortly after that and checked me.  I was guessing 5 centimeters, and I was happily shocked when she announced “8 centimeters with a bulging bag!  I’m not going to break your water because of the GBS.  We’re going to try to keep that sac intact.”  I expected to let my water break on its own, anyway, so that comment surprised me . . . but it was good!  The nurse mentioned our request for the epidural, and she said that she’d called anesthesia right away.  “I’m going to recommend a CSE—combined spinal and epidural—so you won’t have to wait the 20 minutes for it to start working.” 

I was relieved at the prospect of pain meds and that we were so far along!  They wheeled the entire gurney down the hall to an L&D room, with me gripping the rails the whole way and the Christmas song “Three-quarter time” on repeat in my head.  I wanted to be thinking about something more relaxing, so I tried to push it out of my mind!

I got onto the bed in the L&D room and everyone else moved about doing their jobs while I turned inward and tried to ride out the contractions.  I barely felt the nurse, Bo, putting in the hep-lock for my antibiotics, even though John said she was moving the needle around and had to try more than once.  Susan announced that they were going to give me some fluids, too, “just because you’ve been so puny,” she explained, referring to that stomach bug and my dehydration.  The anesthesiologist was up in a flash and started rattling through the necessary questions.  “Since you’re already so progressed, we’re going to try to give you a CSE,” she said, to which Susan replied, “That’s exactly what I was thinking!” 

John had to leave to actually park the car and get my bag, and that was just the worst.  I wailed out “Help me!” with the contractions that came when he was gone.  I can see how a doula would have been super helpful in moments like that!  When he returned, I started bossing him around.  “Can you get a wet washcloth for my forehead?  Hush!  I need a drink of water!  Come back, I need you!”  I was lying back now, gripping John with one hand and the bed rail with the other. 

And then, suddenly, with the next contraction, I curled up to a sitting position again, let out a huge “HUH!”Hi”Hi”H”jjjjj and felt my body doing the reverse-vomit thing I had only read about before.

“She’s pushing,” Bo said. 

Susan hurried over and did a quick check.  “Yes, she’s complete!”  I don’t remember the exact words, but the next thing she said was something like, “Well, honey, it looks like we don’t have time for the epidural.  We’re going to have a baby!”

“That’s wonderful!” I said.

“I could give you a shot of something, but that would just make the baby sleepy.”

“I don’t want that.”

“Are you ok, then?”

“If you think I can do it . . .”  Everyone in the room sounded their encouragements, and so I turned to the anesthesiologist and said, “Thank you for coming up, anyway!” 

John had to go to the bathroom, so he rushed away now.  The next time my body pushed was the worst push of all, with him being gone.  I felt a warm gush of fluid, though, and knew that my water had broken.  Susan announced that there was meconium in it, so they would have to suction the baby as soon as she was born.

Nearly everything about this labor had been different from Gemma’s so far, but the pushing phase was the most different thing yet.  It was profoundly intense, but in a sense it was easier because it was so instinctual.  There was no trying to figure out when and how to push—it just happened, and I went with it.

A few things got me through the 12  minutes of this phase.  Susan said I was having good breaks between contractions, and I focused on relaxing my body during the resting moments.  I knew that my mother was awake, praying for me.  I was encouraged that we were making good progress, and I tried to bring my mind back to Psalm 34.  But I also know that I did a lot of wailing out “Help me!”

During one break, Susan asked if we’d chosen a name yet, and I said, “Yes!  Ruth!”  She and Bo offered me soothing, encouraging words—mostly, anyway.  There were moments when I was annoyed by the conversation they were carrying on with each other. 

“When she starts to emerge, we’re going to take the pushing nice and easy to hopefully avoid tearing,” Susan coached.  John bent over to kiss me, and I started kissing him back passionately!

Then suddenly, “She’s crowning now!  You can touch her head if you want to.”  John recoiled and she clarified that she was mostly talking to me.  I reached down and felt her sweet, downy head emerging.  There was a lot of pressure there, but I tried to relax in spite of it.  I started running my fingertips around the edge, stretching back my tissues while I waited for another contraction.  Everyone seemed surprised by this; Susan even said, “You’re doing my job for me!”

With another push or two, Ruthie’s entire sweet head emerged and her body slipped out shortly thereafter.  Amazing relief!  It was 5:18 a.m.  I reached down and stroked her head with a “Hello, sweetheart!” but Susan took her gently and swiped through her mouth with a large bulb syringe.  I vaguely remember her saying something to John about cutting the cord, but I didn’t realize until later that he did!  Then they took her over to the table to suction her some more, I guess, and wipe her off.  I leaned back in bed and started effusing, “Praise God!  Thank the Lord!  He is so good!”

“8 pounds, 6 ounces!” I heard someone say.  And later, “21 inches long!”

Soon my sweet baby girl was on my chest.  It was instant love, and everything about her was beautiful, from her bulging blue eyes to the faint stork bite on her forehead.  Her hair was long in the back, like Gemma’s, but less thick overall.  She was happy to start nursing within a half hour of her birth, and I couldn’t believe how well she already knew what to do!   She latched beautifully and her little jaw just started working away.  It was during this time that I asked John to put on the music I’d brought to possibly labor to—Jenni’s CD.  My heart was full as we listened to her gentle Irish affect reciting Psalm 34 and the relaxing praise songs.  How good, how good He was to us!

In general, I was amazed by how much more energetic I felt after this birth than after Gemma’s.  The memory of the pain quickly slipped away and, next time, I want to try to go without pain meds again.  I was kind of amazed, also, by how manageable the after pains were.  I took Motrin, but with Gemma I had happily accepted Percocet for two whole days!  They’re supposed to be worse with each succeeding birth, but I also knew to expect them this time, and in comparison with the labor pains they were nothing I couldn’t easily breathe through.

John called Heidi  to announce “Her name is Ruth!” but she hadn’t even remembered us leaving a few hours earlier!  The report later was that she eagerly woke up Derek, Liz and Gemma, and by 8:30 a.m. they were all in the recovery room to meet Ruth with freshly made blueberry muffins!  I was delighted that they had already taught Gemma to say "Baby Roof!"  

"Baby Roof!" (while I chew a delicious muffin!)

By that time we had agreed that her middle name would be Caroline. Gemma did not want to leave with her aunts and uncle, so Heidi stayed with me for a while and John took her home. 

Later that afternoon, my poor sister got hit hard with the stomach bug.  Liz got a mild case the next day.  And when we went home on Friday, John’s buddy, Keith, had set up his rotisserie in our kitchen and made us tons of food—chicken, beans, and chicken soup!  John went straight to work patching up a hole in our closet ceiling while Ruth and I went straight to bed only a few feet away from the construction project.  It was a memorable Christmas, to be sure. 

And now she is going on five months old and sitting on my lap as I finish up this post.  Wow...

That is it, my friends! If you have any questions, ask away!  And I love reading other people's birth stories, so if you have any to share, please do!