We moved cross-country while I was pregnant with Lilly, just as we did with the two sisters before her! But this time I was looking forward to returning to the small hospital-based midwife office I had so appreciated for Mercy’s birth.
In God’s kindness, everything continued to go smoothly throughout pregnancy. I always test positive for Group B Strep and gain roughly the same amount of weight. This time around, I got some ugly spider veins and went in for extra screening at the end because of my age. I also found some relief from the heaviness of late pregnancy in a maternity support belt and thought, as I strapped it on the mornings, “well, I really have arrived!”
I so rarely had to wait to be seen at my prenatal appointments that I was surprised one day when the midwife was running quite late. But as my husband always watched the kids and sent me off alone, I treasured the quiet time and spent some of it praying for baby. I didn’t want to take the normal progression of events for granted, so I asked the Lord that the baby would turn head-down and that He would help me bear another labor when the time came. Amazingly, when the midwife finally stepped into the room, her first announcement was that the hospital had just gotten nitrous oxide after years of trying. It was this halfway measure which had so helped me in Susanna’s birth, so I rejoiced with her. When she palpated my belly a few moments later, she told me with full certainty that baby’s head was already down. How kind of the Lord to hear and answer my petitions so quickly!
On the Saturday before my due date, our church sisters hosted a shower for us—a beautiful afternoon tea on the lawn. I really didn’t need anything new for baby, and they are all just as busy as me with their own families, so their lavish kindness in celebrating daughter #5 with us was so meaningful. On the Tuesday following, one sister stayed late after Bible study to give me a personal acupressure session intended to induce labor. It didn’t, but it was tremendously relaxing and I felt so loved. I drove to the airport afterward to pick up my mom and dad.
One thing I did not do in preparation for baby was to drink raspberry leaf tea. I actually forgot it even existed until I was listening to a birth story podcast and heard it mentioned. That was rather funny because I had brewed and consumed it by the quart every day at the ends of my last three pregnancies. Though I’m only aware of anecdotal evidence in favor of raspberry leaf tea helping with labor, it seems strong in my case!
For the first time in a few babies, my due date came and went! We kept busy with Mom and Dad and enjoyed their visit, but at my 40 wk appointment, I agreed to have my cervix checked and membranes swept. That was an odd experience! “2-3cm” she said. I did have some prodromal labor after that, but nothing more promising yet.
A day later, it was Tuesday Sept 24, and after a slow and short evening walk, I started having a few more contractions. By 9 pm, the children were in bed, and I was still getting contractions regularly! When I was expecting Susanna, one of my midwives in NC looked at my medical history and then looked me in the eye. “Don’t wait until 5-1-1. When you’re sure you’re in labor, please come to the hospital. We just had a baby born in the car, and we don’t want to do that again!” Ruthie’s labor had been very quick, and that could happen again! Convinced that tonight was the night, we finished packing up the bags. Dad and Mom put their hands on us and prayed before we left for the hospital, and that remains a precious memory.
I called the midwife on the way, saying I was in labor but declining when she asked if she should rush right in. By baby #5, I surely had a good sense of how far along I was in labor! Ha. Hahaha.
We pulled into the hospital parking lot and took a selfie for a memory. Apparently we parked a good ways from the ER entrance, which was the after-hours entrance. As we walked around to the proper door, I started to feel uneasy about how easy that walk was. My contractions had spaced out a bit. I confided to John my concern that I’d only be 4cm and they wouldn’t want to admit me! We went through the process of the sign-in, the wheel chair ride through the hospital, and arrival at L&D with no drama. I changed into the gown and climbed into bed as instructed for the monitoring period, and we played some Skip-Bo. But when the nurse checked me, she said I was in fact only 2 CM dilated!!
The doctor on call came in to discuss our situation, undoubtedly classifying me among any number of hopeful ladies past their due-dates experiencing some labor symptoms. Thankfully he was kind. He sent us home with a “see you again soon!” and we found our way back out of L&D, through the winding halls of the hospital and out again through the ER. No wheelchair this time. It felt like a bit like a walk of shame.
It actually was nice to get home and back in my own bed for a while. I was still contracting, but we were able to sleep from about 12 to 3. That’s when I heard a dull popping sound and felt a small gush of water! Contractions picked up and I headed to the bathroom tenuously to change. There was no doubt now! I knocked on Mom’s door and she helped me wake John, because it was challenging to walk the length of the house back to our room without doubling over in a fairly hard contraction.
John really didn’t want to have a second false alarm, but we eventually convinced him and got on our way again. This time we mercifully parked closer to the ER entrance, and this time I found the wheelchair ride was most comforting!
When we got to L&D, the person pushing the chair was acting impatient to move things along, but I needed time to breathe through a contraction as I deliberately stepped up and out. The L&D nurse came right over, most gently identifying herself as Elizabeth and asking permission to hold my belly while I exhaled. “That was a good, strong contraction,” she soothed. “I’m going to call the midwife and tell her to come in right away.”
As far as I can recall, I was measuring 4 cm at admission, which was also around 4 am. Sitting in the bed was hard and I was relieved when the monitoring was over and I could sit on a birth ball—my favorite laboring position!
Finally, around 6 in the morning, the midwife showed up with a chipper “good morning! Let’s see how you’re doing and if there’s any time for the shower!” I was 7 cm, hooray! Thinking transition was just around the corner, I requested the nitrous oxide instead of the shower. I wanted to be sure I had the gas option with me during the hardest part.
They wanted me in bed with the gas, which I understand; it made me so lightheaded that the cards which we had started playing again slipped out of my hand. We were still able to be creative with position changes, though—sitting up in bed, leaning over the back of the bed, and lying on my side. At 7, the nursing shift changed and I was delighted to ses the same nurse I’d had with Mercy’s birth show up!
Time was passing and I was still in hard labor. I took a bathroom break at some point, feeling heavy in the bowels, but felt only a little relief. The hip-squeezing which the nurse and John took turns at helped some. The lavender oil which the midwife massaged into my ankles was a comfort, but a small one. When she reached for my hand and started massaging pressure points, I pulled it away and probably stared daggers at her! “Oh, you know all my tricks, don’t you?!” We also listened to music throughout. From now on, Fernando Ortega’s album Come Down, O Love Divine will always make me think of Lilly’s birth!
8:00. 9:00. Between periods of light-headedness from the nitrous oxide, I began saying and thinking things like “I will never be able to do this again” and “Adam, what were you thinking?!!” But she was starting to say things like “Something is wrong. A fifth baby should not be taking so long.” I was getting to the “just cut the baby out of me” point and would have liked to have heard some affirmations, but instead was hearing things like “maybe your uterus is mushy. Maybe you need some pitocin.” That just didn’t make sense to me because my contractions were plenty hard!
Finally, she checked me again and I was at 9 cm with a cervical lip. That’s why I had been stuck in transition for 3 hours! The solution offered was not very appealing. “Lie on your side. During the next contraction, push a little while I push the lip back.”
My natural response to this was “I can’t.”
And of course they retorted back with “Yes, you can! You’ve had four babies!”
But as anyone who has had four babies probably knows, pushing is something mostly involuntary. When it starts to happen, you can go along with it, but it’s hard to know what to do when it’s not already happening. When the next contraction came, we tried the plan. I don’t know if it worked; I suspect it didn’t. In the fog of nitrous oxide and prolonged transition, I was seriously doubting that I would ever actually give birth to a healthy baby.
The midwife took a break while I labored on, and John started sending out SOS prayer texts. “Get the people praying!” I said. A minute later, the midwife came back in with some fresh ideas. Would you like to try a birth stool? And if that doesn’t work, maybe an epidural and pitocin can be next. Yes! A position change is almost always a good thing! They brought in the stool and set up a little station in front of John so I could lean back on him. We got me over there with some difficultly.
The stool experience was awfully uncomfortable (hard to find anything not awfully uncomfortable at that point of labor). Thankfully it proved effective. The one really nice thing was being held by my husband during it all. Having been told to push as much as I could with the contractions, I did my best, and...it became a stool birth in more than one way. With the next contraction, I suddenly felt the warm, squishy baby head emerging, and the midwife guided me through the gentle process of easing her out. “At last! At last! And she’s alive?” Praise God. It was 9:13 am.
All told, I spent a very short amount of time on the stool, and everyone helped me back into bed to rest with baby and deliver the placenta. She was purple at first but quickly pinked up with some rubbing. She then latched on as if nursing were already an old habit, depositing some big squirts of meconium on my belly! Though I typically like to delay the bath, because it had been such a stool birth, I agreed to let them bathe her after she had nursed. She weighed 8 pounds 13 ounces. Second biggest.
We sheepishly had to admit to everyone who asked that we still had not settled on her name! But we agreed on Lillian Rose, for my Grandma Lillian Reid, before all the big sisters came to visit around lunchtime that day. Oh how exciting that time was!
In retrospect, as much as I appreciated my midwife’s bedside manner and personal interest during office visits, I think that during labor I did better with the more hands-off approach of my NC midwife group. They weren’t there to be my friend; they were just there to catch my baby. They weren’t emotionally invested in me, but they trusted my decisions. But overall, I have nothing to complain about—I’ve been given five beautiful little girls, all born healthy and without complications. What treasures, what trusts!
