there's the plan and then there's the birth - part I

Nine days late, I didn't feel like going anywhere. As I've said, we'd pretty much done everything we needed to do, and had several days of things we wanted to do. Aaron needed to take a video back, and go to the grocery store, and I decided to stay home and finish up my New Yorker. He was gone maybe five minutes or so and I decided, on a whim, to hand-vac the expansion spaces in the concrete floor. (Sister Hillary had bought this for us while in town helping us get the house settled the week before, so this had never been done in our two years in the loft.) About half way through, around 2PM, I felt a small gush that I could only imagine was my water breaking. I stood up, yep, there it was; thank goodness I made it to the bathroom for the crescendo - that doula wasn't kidding when she said you'll know it when the orchestra begins.

Although I was excited we were finally seeing some signs that this was getting going, the sight of the "water" wasn't exactly encouraging. My mind went immediately to the acronym they taught us in childbirth class: Time Amount Color Odor (yes, that spells TACO). It was the Color that set my alarm. Not a good Color. I grabbed "the book" and was reminded about this lovely thing called meconium, which is prevalent in babies delivered after due date. It's a fancy way of saying she had her first poop, in the bag, and she's been floating around in it for God knows how long. This makes doctors slightly nervous, and means right out of the gate that skin-to-skin immediately after birth is not going to happen because they need to make sure she doesn't have any of that in her lungs, etc. I think this is the last item on our birth plan - we'd ordered things sequentially - that did not go as planned; essentially, we worked our way backwards through the list from that moment forward.

I called the doctor and the doula and learned that once in the hospital with a broken bag of meconium-stained waters, they don't let you leave. You're pretty much GOING to have this baby in the next 48 hours, one way or another. Aaron, miraculously, came back to the loft in between his errands and so I didn't even have a chance to call him. We took our time getting ready, knowing that labor hadn't started and that I would be admitted to the hospital for the long haul. We finished packing; we made the bed and wrote notes for those who would take care of the house and Choco while we were away; the house we would return to was absolutely immaculate.

My eyes filled up with tears as we opened the door with our coats on, our roller bags behind us, it was my last moment of pre-birth grief for what we were about to lose, albiet by way of what we were about to gain. Aaron said he loved me, for about the thousandth time that day, and said it was going to be alright.

We gathered our bags (all four of them, including camera and various technologies), got in the cab, and arrived at Swedish triage around 3.45. I spent the next hour producing more water so everyone could take a look for themselves. (Meconium was confirmed by the nurse and doctor.) We shared our birth plan with everyone and when they realized that we hoped to have a natural childbirth they told us they'd get us a room and leave us alone (but I was indeed there to stay). They sent me to the cafeteria for my 'last' meal, our doula arrived, and we made our way to the birth center and my room (via seven flights of stairs, hoping to get things going) by maybe 6PM or so. Nothing real active was happening labor wise, so we sent the doula home and told her we'd call her when things got a little more interesting.

Between 7pm and 12.30am my labor progressed steadily. I can't really remember the passage of time over that period, only that the contractions became more prevalent and more frequent. Aaron and I tried to get into the rhythm of things that we learned in our birth class, but couldn't quite get into a groove with each contraction. The breathing was "off" and the queues we were using to get through each one seemed out of synch. Our nurse, Juliet, says to us "did you fire your doula?" and we said, no, we just sent her home until things really got going. "Well now is when you need her," she informed us. I think we just didn't know when to call it; thank goodness she was there. Once the doula arrived, she immediately reminded us of a few tricks for getting through the contractions together. She pointed out that with each one, I tended to isolate myself and cut off any feedback from people in the room (shutting eyes, not listening to verbal queues), which didn't allow Aaron to help me cope. She helped us shift to touch queues to help get the breathing in synch; this helped tremendously. Aaron's hand sliding up my arm meant breath in, and down my arm meant breath out. This helped me regain my ujjayi (yoga breathing) and this stayed with us throughout the rest of my labor.

Sometime after 1pm I got into the tub; this helped manage the pain of the contractions tremendously. As with the arm movements, we found a rhythm with the water that helped me cope with each contraction as it came and went. For each breath in, Aaron would scoop water out of the tub, and for each breath out, he'd pour it over me. By the time I left the bath, I was feeling like we had several hours under our belts, good progression of labor over that time period, and we had successfully created "the bubble" we needed where just the two of us were coping and working through labor together. The doula, nurse, and doctor were available supports to us, and their presence was helpful, but more importantly, it *felt* like it was just the two of us in that room. I spent the next several hours walking the halls, walking the room, swaying back and forth 8th grade slow dance style, sitting on a rubber ball, and even sitting on the edge of the bed - but it wasn't for several hours that I realized that my labor had slowed significantly. I'd climbed the first major hill, and it felt like I was headed if not already in active labor, but over the course of those morning hours, I was actually losing momentum, not gaining.

At 7AM I knew my doctor's shift would soon be up and Juliet told us that if we did not request that the doctor examine me, we would not know how far I was dilated. There were two reasons: first, because the water had broken on its own and there was meconium present, they didn't want to mess with me too much, keeping exams to an absolute minimum. Secondly, my birth plan indicated natural childbirth and so they assumed that I did not want to be monitored for dilation.

Side note: this was a mistake I made in my birth plan document - I should have made clear that I *wanted* to be regularly monitored for dilation so that I would know if things were progressing on a schedule that I could live with. Second thing I wish I had done in my birth plan: think about timing. How long was "too long" to be in early labor? If I had known that I'd be in labor for many hours and only get to very minimal dilation, with labor retreating instead of advancing, I may have made a decision to induce more quickly, and thus reduce the time I spent in labor that really wasn't getting me anywhere, or getting me there fast enough for me. In retrospect, I still see that its difficult to find the right balance between being totally patient and letting your body take over and move things forward in its own time, and the need to move things along for the health and safety of mom and baby. I also see looking back that the longer I was in "non-productive" labor, the more exhausted I became, and the more difficult it was to take in what was happening play by play, or make decisions about what I wanted to do next.

The doctor, nurse, doula, Aaron had been incredibly supportive and helpful - and we did have the intention to "be patient and let labor/delivery take the time it requires" (or something to that effect, is what we had said in our plan, but when I wrote that I suppose I was imagining something that took 10 or so hours, start to finish).

Bottom line, I wanted some analytical evidence that things were progressing now that I'd been in the game for at least 12 hours, if not more.