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I felt that my pregnancy had gone beautifully. The nausea and minimal vomitting of the first weeks went away as expected in the second trimester, and soon we were at our 18-week ultrasound, getting a glimpse of our evidently healthy third little daughter! God is kind—we moved cross-country a few weeks later, and I was actually able to enjoy the smell of Indian food wafting into our windows each afternoon as our neighbors prepared dinner, whereas onions had previously been my nemesis. As I moved into the third trimester, I had no heart burn to speak of, and my back and hip stayed pretty pain-free as long as I kept up on my prenatal yoga once or twice a week. Everything looked great on the medical side, too.
November 25 was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and I spent it mostly on my feet, cooking. That was the first evening I really felt stiff and sore. I also felt like maybe the baby had dropped a bit; my belly just felt lower. I pushed myself through yoga that evening and it helped some, but I also spent a lot of time on my feet in the kitchen on Thanksgiving Day and could hardly walk by Thursday evening. I was 38 weeks pregnant and actually feeling it, as I told a church friend the next day! We spent Friday, Nov 27 walking around at a flea market, and then later took a pretty long walk to a park for the kids. That night, Ruthie was feeling sick so I brought her into bed with me for a few restless hours while John stayed up late on a work call with Australia.
John had finally come to bed around 2:30 AM, and around an hour later, I started feeling little warm gushes. (It’s funny that we had hardly slept the night before Ruthie was born, too, and it is actually very unusual for us to go to bed this late!) After the third gush, I got up and went to the bathroom. I was pretty sure it was amniotic fluid, but I just couldn’t believe it was happening ten days early! I didn’t know what to do, but when my water had broken similarly with Gemma, the midwife had told me to "wait and see" for an hour, so I decided to try that this time. I came back to the bedroom and announced the “bad news” to my sleeping husband. Just like last time, I couldn’t sleep for excitement! An hour later, the fluid was still coming, so it was decision-time. I called the midwife office and got patched through to Lin, the lovely, motherly, British midwife-on-call, who was sounding very sleepy. Once she heard that I was GBS+ (again), she said she had to tell me to come in to the hospital. I almost felt silly, like it couldn’t possibly be happening this early! I was the girl who always went late, right? Ha! I hadn’t printed my birth plan yet, the pack n play wasn’t set up, and Mom wasn’t coming for another eight days! Unfortunately, no one else was expecting me to go into labor this early, either, and we were having a hard time finding anyone awake enough to come watch our kids at 5 in the morning. I prayed. Finally I texted my sister in Kansas, figuring that she would be awake because of the time difference. I got dressed, braided my hair and woke up John. We finally agreed that we would just have to bring the girls with us, so we worked together bundling jackets over jammies and carrying the two sleepy heads to the running van. Suddenly my phone rang! It was some old friends of my parents who were in town visiting family. My sister and mom had contacted them for us, and they were willing to come over and help us out!
So, in that funny turn of events, Mr. and Mrs. V drove to our chilly apartment and took over the care of Gemma and Ruthie, who didn’t know them from Adam. I have known them for nearly twenty years, however, so we left them with confidence. It was around 6:30 AM when we finally began the very undramatic drive to the hospital in the quiet of the morning, just John and me.
I felt badly, though. I had felt badly about waking John after only an hour or two of sleep, about bothering so many people in the middle of the night, about waking up our children inadvertently by packing them into the car for no good reason and then bringing them back upstairs, and about making our unprepared friends come take care of our children in a cold apartment. I felt badly about leaving Ruthie screaming because she had no idea what was going on . . . and I hadn’t felt a single contraction yet.
We arrived at the little community hospital shortly before shift-change. The nurses at one desk glanced at my pregnant belly and casually pointed us in the direction of the maternity wing, and soon I was led straight to a labor room and asked to change into a gown. The sweet nurse who checked me in left for the day and the head nurse quickly confirmed that I was leaking amniotic fluid. I was relieved that this wasn’t a false alarm, though with no contractions yet, it still felt pretty surreal.
Time moved slowly as I sat in bed on the monitors. Baby looked great, and John and I stared into each other’s eyes and finally settled on her name—Jane for a middle name, after my grandmother Janet, and John was liking Mercy the best of our first-name options. I am so in love with Mercy Jane and her name!
As the clock ticked on, John dozed off, and I was just thinking about waking him up to get some snacks for me out of the suitcase when our new nurse, Olga, came in. She asked if they’d brought me a breakfast tray yet and commended the bacon. “I’ll put on some fresh coffee in a minute, too,” she said in John’s direction, her hands busy at work starting my IV. “It’s good—it’s Peet’s.” (Throughout the entire day, she repeatedly encouraged me to eat, which I greatly appreciated!) She also helped me get into the telemetry belts so I wouldn’t have to stay in bed. Then we discussed my situation. The bad news was that I hadn’t had any contractions to speak of and this hospital’s policy was to give me only 6 hours with ruptured membranes for labor to start on its own. That meant a Pitocin drip starting at 9:30, which was only an hour and a half away. Once Olga left the room, I started manual nipple stimulation and kept up with it on the sly even though she kept popping in and out. I ate my breakfast (she was right about the bacon!), and John updated my mom over the phone (who just about died when she heard the hospital was letting me eat eggs and bacon!).
By the time 9:30 came around, I had gotten out of bed and was bouncing on the birth ball. Thankfully I was contracting often enough and hard enough to make them happy. “I guess you just needed breakfast!” Olga exclaimed, and the threat of Pitocin was withdrawn. I think it was now that I had a dilation check—3-4 cm, -2, and 70% effaced. We decided to try walking a bit, and as proud as I had been of not having an IV pole during Gemma’s labor, it was not a big deal at all this time! “It’s kind of like having a walker,” I told John. During our 5-10 minute walk, though, I had no contractions at all. Nada. I realized I needed to get back to the room and resume stimulation. In the meantime, I encouraged my hungry husband to go get himself some food while things were still so calm.
I settled back on the ball and continued stimulation every so often, wishing I could remember the frequency Meg had advised me to try five years ago. But, without the threat of Pitocin looming in my mind anymore, I listened to my wimpier side and would take breaks after having a couple of good, intense contractions. This gave the ticker papers the funny pattern of two nice peaks followed by longer periods of not much at all, followed by a couple of nice peaks as I gave in and started trying to induce contractions again. I faintly wondered if the baby was not in the right position yet, and whether I could really force-start labor myself in that case.
John brought back food from Wendy’s, and I was thankful that the smell didn’t bother me. He ate while I sat on the ball and we watched the latest episode of Blue Bloods. My brother called, and John took a picture of me talking to him, elegant giant gown and all . . . I had to set the phone down twice to breathe through contractions, but Derek waited and encouraged me each time! A lunch tray came and I nibbled on the bits that looked good.
Around 1 pm, Lin arrived. When we discussed the similarities between this labor and Gemma’s, she asked if I’d tried manual nipple stimulation, and I nodded my head, glancing sheepishly over at Olga. (Thankfully, there were no hard feelings!) It was nice to have the midwife there and in charge now. I was 5 cm and 80% effaced, and she thought we needed to move things along and get this baby born. “I’m having a contraction now, but I can talk through it,” I noted as she helped me get into bed. The first thing she did was to have me lie on my right side for a change with my feet up on a large inflated ball shaped like a peanut. She instructed me to continue with nipple stimulation, but I only needed to induce one more contraction this time before things continued quite nicely on their own. She showed John how to gently rock my hips back and forth during the waves in an effort to get the baby to rotate down. John also put on some soft music, which I actually appreciated this time! We would listen to Michael Card’s lullaby CD, some Jenni Campbell, Fernando Ortega and “My Cry Ascends” over the next several hours.
After twenty minutes in bed, Lin unhooked my IV. I sat up, feet dangling off the end of the bed, and she cinched a sheet around the lower part of my belly. After calling John and Olga over to help, the three of them pulled on the cloth, and with a “good girl!” I stood up. Now I was supposed to walk about the room for twenty minutes, slow dancing with John during contractions and wiggling my hips a la Rumba. Those twenty minutes went by quickly. Soon, Olga returned and they removed the belly cloth, encouraging me that I’d done a good job but it was making things a bit intense for the baby. They eased me back into bed and encouraged me to rest, even sleep if I could.
It felt wonderful to rest. I don’t know how long I was there, leg up on the peanut ball again, but it was probably a couple of hours. Lin massaged lavender essential oil into my neck and upper back, and I dozed, letting the music and the aroma relax me. I did awaken to blow through contractions, but for quite a while, this was enough. John sat near me; I may have held his hand. Over time as the contractions intensified, I began asking him to apply counterpressure to my hips/lower back, and for a while, with the pressure from his hands on my free hip, this was enough. I kept my eyes closed and he listened for me to cue him with my exhaling every time a contraction started to come. As evening approached, I told him I would need a change soon, as it was becoming too intense to remain lying down.
Lin and Olga came back in, surprised that I was still resting and we hadn’t had a baby yet. I didn’t share the surprise or the rush; contractions were plenty intense and it still felt like the baby was coming so early! John had started to whisper to me “what do you think about an epidural?” and I didn’t know what to think; I just knew that we needed a change. Lin asked if I’d like to try her labor tincture. “What’s that?” John wondered.
“Oh, just herbal stuff,” Lin explained, but I declined because I thought the contractions were already hard enough on their own! She asked if I’d like to try the shower instead, and that sounded good.
Olga started the shower for me while Lin unstrapped the telemetry belts to give me a break for a bit. Then she and John helped me walk to the bathroom. I said I was feeling pressure—“that’s good! “ Lin encouraged--and I stopped on the toilet to relieve myself before getting in the water. (It was nice to get that taken care of now before I started pushing! This was actually my second #2 of the day. I think part of the reason I would later feel normal so quickly after the birth was because my digestive system had continued its normal cycles all through labor.)
I walked right into the shower in my gown and sat on the little chair, water beating down on my belly. Lin turned off the main light in the bathroom and put some little battery candles on the soap dish. John had brought the music in and stood right outside the curtain so I could grip his hand as I breathed through every contraction. I felt comforting hands rubbing my shoulders and neck again. “More lavender?” John asked.
“Rose, too,” Lin said.
Labor was very intense, but the shower was the change I needed. I think I was having hot flashes, because several times I had to fiddle with the faucets to make the water cooler, and then hotter, and then cooler again. After twenty minutes, Olga came with a Doppler to check the baby’s heart rate. After the second twenty or thirty minutes, she told me they wanted me back on the monitors to check on the baby, so they brought me warm blankets and a dry gown, and John helped me get slowly up, dressed, and warm. I said I felt nauseous, and they brought me a little bag, but thankfully just a teeny amount came up. I think John mentioned being concerned about how far we had to go, and maybe something about an epidural again, but Olga reassured us that “The baby is coming soon!”
With help, I made my way onto the bed slowly and deliberately. I dearly wanted to lie down on my left side, but baby’s back was still curled up over there and they needed me to rotate to my right in order to get the monitors positioned. She was still doing great. Lin did another check, long and unpleasant this time. I think I remember hearing “8 cm” but mostly I was thinking “get your hand out of there!” When a couple expressions of “ouch!” didn’t convey the message, I finally asked her directly to take it out and she finally did. At this point, I believe I quickly moved into transition. I could no longer just breathe through the waves—I gave in to the compulsion to moan and the moaning soon rose into a primal wailing with each contraction. I was gripping John’s hand and the bed rail like a vice until they noticed and told me to loosen my grip on the bed. I obeyed. The intensity was like with Ruthie’s birth, but that time I was riding the waves, keeping my mind focused on the Lord’s help, and this time I felt so weak of faith. Thankfully my husband did not leave my side for a moment. “I need a drink of water but I don’t want you to let go of my hand!” I exhaled between contractions. John reached for the water while Lin soothed, “Of course he won’t.” Then suddenly, with one horrifying contraction, I felt the baby descend significantly. With the next wave I began to push.
They were ready, and--praise God--it did not take too long. Olga was holding back one of my legs, which I didn’t like at all, but as I tried to adjust my position, Lin warned me clearly that if I pushed like that, I was going to tear. So, as much as I wanted to resist her, I complied. All three of them—nurse, midwife, and husband—were very present during this time, full of affirming, encouraging words and shaping the supportive environment which I so desperately needed. Not everything they were saying really “worked” for me—like when Lin said “breathe your baby down,” and it just seemed fluffy and impossible. John knew how to reach me, though. He told me later that he could hear the despair in my voice, and he spoke tenderly as if to one of our daughters. “I can see her head! She has hair!” I had almost forgotten about the prize, so it was good to reach down to feel for myself.
I hadn’t been anxious to hurry things along before, and I certainly wasn’t now. There was the burning and stretching along the right hand side where I tore with both previous births. I rested with her head half-out until another contraction came, and Lin talked me through each one. “There’s her head!” Break. “Ok, another big push for the shoulders!” Break. “Take your baby!” Was it really over? I felt like I’d been hit by a truck, and yet so relieved. “5:58 p.m. Cord loosely looped once around her neck,” came Lin’s voice. I reached down to where they were massaging her with towels and they passed her sweet form up.
“My darling!”
The nurses helped me to wriggle out of the old gown so I could get her on my chest. John took a quick, precious video of those moments, in which, wanting to soothe my brand-new, sobbing daughter, I actually apologized to her. Here at last.
And yet where was the euphoria that attended the final moments of Ruthie’s birth? This aftermath felt more like my experience with the epidural. “No tearing,” came the good news. All the news was good. So why did I feel so exhausted, almost defeated? They had hooked the IV back up for Pitocin after the birth, undoubtedly to prevent the hemorrhaging I’d experienced last time, so I was still having to huff through contractions while trying to bond, and maybe that was it. But it wasn’t until they transferred us to our second room a few hours later that I remember consciously having some positive feelings about the birth for the first time.
Early in the labor, Olga had shared a little about laid-back breastfeeding and had given me a pamphlet about the famous “breast crawl” and the fascinating stages of alertness a newborn experiences. Now, she encouraged me to relax and let Mercy take the lead. Finally she found her own way to my breast and I gave her just a bit of assistance with the latching. She was a natural from the beginning. At some point I asked, “did we confirm that she’s a girl?” and Lin replied, “With that sweet face? There is no doubt.” We took the requisite photos before John gave me a kiss and ran off to put the girls to bed for the babysitter. When they came back in to weigh Mercy and give her her newborn exam and first bath, I was alone. She was 8 pounds, 3.8 ounces! My only regret in not having my birth plan at the ready was that I had wanted to delay the bath for 24 hours, but at this point I was too tired to care.
Thankfully, every single nurse and staff member I interacted with were at least quite professional, and some of them were exceptionally sweet and friendly. It was my best hospital stay to date. They offered me to go home a day early, but I wanted the extra night of room service!
The next day was Sunday, so John whisked home again to take the girls to church. I was fine with this; it helps to be experienced as a mom, I guess! I couldn’t wait for their afternoon visit to meet baby sister, though! They showed up in stringy hair and funny outfits, and I laughed inside, knowing that the photos would reflect the reality of daddy-care. We got some sweet pictures, though we learned the hard way not to give them their little presents before meeting the main attraction! Our pastor’s wife had some small gifts for them which I had reserved for this day, and they were so excited about their new toys that they really needed some coaxing to look at Mercy at all at first. They were also thrilled to be treated to chocolate pudding from the floor’s refrigerator, and ate it at the little round table in the corner.
The second night in the hospital was rough. The poor babe squirmed and fussed all night long, her tummy as hard as a rock. I blamed it on the broccoli which came on my dinner tray, I blamed it on the sips of coffee I had guiltily taken . . . I was determined that WHATEVER it was, I needed to NEVER eat it again! I let them take her to the nursery from midnight until 3 a.m. and that was all the rest I got that night. Toward morning, she began to pass gas repeatedly, and finally settled down and slept in my arms.
I was in no hurry to leave the hospital, but the time had come. Before long, we had completed all paperwork, packed up the minivan, and headed home. In God’s kindness, a friend who works for Southwest Airlines had been able to change my mom’s ticket and she arrived that night, most welcome!
In retrospect, I sometimes wonder if I would have torn at all if encouraged to push in a position that felt natural. Quite honestly, the tear at my second birth was almost certainly along a repair from my first birth, and that second repair didn’t take . . . I still ha. With both those births I had relative freedom to push in whatever position felt right. My recovery was remarkably better with no tears, so I bless Lin’s experience in that, but it remains an open question and may partly explain my ambivalence about the birth. Looking back now, I’m proud of myself for having had two med-free births, and of course I would do it again! But there were several weeks in which I compared stories with my sister-in-law whose epidural birth was easy and beautiful, and wondered if natural is really qualitatively better for the woman.
There is no doubt about one thing, though. Mercy Jane is unspeakably precious and loved, and we praise our heavenly Father for the gift of this third daughter!
