This is the story of Astrid's birth. I wrote it all down just before her first birthday. Reading over it, I'm struck both by how clear the memories are (as though these events happened weeks or months ago rather than years) and how much has changed in my life since then. Most notably, the fact that I've become estranged from my friend Debbie, a person who was so intimately involved in the births of both my children. It's something that was unimaginable three years ago and yet today, it is. Things evolve in ways we can't foresee but always, somewhere, there is joy. Astrid is one of my joys.
I woke up feeling like complete dog shite. I was exhausted despite eight hours of sleep, I felt nauseous, and my gag reflex felt like it had a hair trigger. I spent a considerable amount of time that morning trying to convince Lola to snuggle with me so I wouldn’t have to get out of bed. When I finally gave into the fact that all my ploys weren’t working and Lola was determined to start the day, I got out of bed and went to the bathroom. My efforts to become vertical were rewarded with a huge blort of cervical mucus in my underwear. “Hot damn!” I thought, “Maybe this is finally it!” Still feeling like crap but invigorated by my discovery of bodily fluids, I got Lola and myself up (Dan had long before left for work), dressed, and fed, made the beds, did the dishes and prepared for what else but a trip to Costco. Can you say, “nesting”?
While en route to Costco, I called my good friend Debbie. She was at Lola’s birth. At that time she lived about three hours from where we were in western Massachusetts and worked as an L&D nurse while attending midwifery school. When we moved to Minnesota while I was pregnant for a second time, I was heartbroken that geography would likely keep Debbie away from Astrid’s, then “Baby Gogo’s,” birth. As fate would have it though, Debbie got her first job as a midwife in Madison, WI, just four hours from the Twin Cities. As I drove, I told Debbie that I felt awful but that I wasn’t having any kind of organized contractions. I told her that though I wasn’t certain, I felt like labor was afoot and that she should be ready to hop in her car sometime during the next day or so.
Lola and I schlogged through Costco, me carrying things that would have been ungodly heavy even if I hadn’t been at 40+ weeks pregnant. We got home, I unloaded the car and pretty much nothing happened for the rest of the morning and afternoon. Talk about an emotional tease. I felt completely discouraged.
My memory of the middle of the day is a little fuzzy. I know I napped when Lola did and I remember talking to Debbie in the late afternoon. I also remember Dan feverishly cleaning. Men nest too.
After dinner I started having noticeable contractions and I started doing everything in my power to encourage them. I squatted as much as I could, got down on my hands and knees, and I bounced on my physio ball. I had noticeable but irregular contractions for the next several hours.
A little bit after 10:00 that night, things got more serious and I could tell things were happening. I was hesitant to call it labor though since I’d felt very similar a week earlier and had had that come to naught. Not long after 10:00, I asked Dan if he had a watch so I could time the contractions. Neither one of us wear a watch but Dan usually keeps a cheap one around for when he was traveling. It was a comical moment when we realized we didn’t have anything in the house with a second hand. It was even funnier still when Dan sat down and downloaded a shareware program for my Palm Pilot specifically for timing contractions.
It took a little while to get the program loaded on my Palm and I remember lying on the bed staring at the glowing computer screen across the room. Dan finally got everything working and the first contraction that I timed began at 11:11 p.m., a good omen I thought.
My contractions were consistently five minutes apart from the time I began keeping track and seemed to be steadily ramping up in intensity. Around 1:00 in the morning. I called Rachael, my midwife, to let her know that I was having regular contractions. After I got off the phone with her, I called Debbie. We talked for a while but I was still hesitant to say definitively that I was in labor. We decided that I’d try and get some sleep and give her a call in an hour.
An hour later, I was finally willing to say that labor was indeed underway. I called Debbie to tell her to get in her car and start driving only to find that shortly after she’d gotten off the phone with me she done just that. She’d been unable to get back to sleep and despite my protestations to the contrary, she couldn’t shake the feeling that I was, in fact, in labor. She was about 45 minutes into the drive when I called her the second time.
The next three hours were peaceful and lovely. Dan and I laid in bed, held hands, and managed to sleep between contractions that were still coming five minutes apart. Around 4:00 or so I was no longer able to lay on my side or back comfortably and so I got out of bed. It was sometime after that that I looked up at Dan and said, “I’m so sad it wont be just the three of us anymore.” At the time Dan very wisely just nodded and said nothing. Later though he confessed that in his head he kept thinking, “And you’d like me to do what exactly?”
Humor aside, I think that emotional component was just as important in getting Astrid born as any contraction. We were loosing something and acknowledging that was a part of welcoming a new baby into our lives. Even after doing that it still seemed unfathomable that I could love another child as much as my first.
Dan called Rachael and told her to come sometime before Debbie arrived around 5:30 in the morning. Rachael got there at 6:00 and Jesse, the doula we’d hired to be with Lola during the birth, arrived shortly after that.
The mood after everyone arrived was quite and peaceful. Lola woke up and Jesse left us to be with her. They had fun playing together and pulling out everything from Lola’s “birth box,” a box of goodies we’d accumulated to be opened once I was in labor. The highlight of Lola’s day was getting her toenails and fingernails painted orange and purple.
Around 9:00, Dan, Rachael, Jesse, and Lola all migrated into the kitchen to eat breakfast. Debbie stayed with me and suggested that I get into the bath tub. As soon as my body hit the water, all of the pain I’d been experiencing just seemed to melt away. I told Debbie I was a little concerned that my labor had stalled but I needn’t have worried. When I finally got out of the tub I was met with the mother of all contractions. I had to grab Debbie in order to remain upright. I can only liken the way I felt after that to the way I imagine a women with an epidural feels when it begins to wear off. Total dread.
Dan and Debbie helped me back upstairs where I moved straight to my birth ball. I struggled to get comfortable and kept moving my hips around trying to find the right position. When I couldn’t, I got up. Dan supported me as I continued to do my little hip dance and with the next contraction my water broke with a gush. That was around 10:30.
Rachael came upstairs about then and Debbie told her that my water had broken, that it had been clear, and the time it had happened. She responded by methodically getting all of her supplies ready. When she was done, she suggested I get down on my hands and knees. I did and I was met with the sensation that my body was splitting in two. Sometime during all that, Jesse brought Lola upstairs where she sat quietly in Jesse’s lap watching.
Time seemed to slow considerably once I got on my hands and knees. I know it was only between 30 and 40 minutes from the time that I knelt down on the floor to the time Astrid was born but it felt like for-bloody-ever. I didn’t have any real urge to push but eventually did anyway in an effort to stave off the pain. It didn’t do that but it was something different so I kept it up.
With all my effort, I became drenched in sweat. Our bedroom has off-white berber carpet so we’d put plastic down to protect it from becoming a bloody mess. With all the sweat I began to skate around on the plastic as pushed. It was all I could do to keep my legs underneath me and not splayed out on the floor with me resting on my ample belly. In retrospect all the slipping and sliding was utterly hilarious. At the time, it just seemed to make my job harder.
Before too long I began to feel the “ring of fire” (how I hate that sensation) and began begging for hot, hot washcloths to be pressed against my crotch. After some good pushes and Lola asking “Is that poop?” Astrid’s head was born. With Lola I remember feeling a tremendous sense of relief once I began pushing and her head was delivered. The same was NOT true with Astrid. I kept thinking to myself, “Why isn’t this getting better!?” It never occurred to me that I maybe I was pushing out a baby who was nearly a pound bigger than her sister at birth.
When Astrid’s head was born her color was rosy pink. Not long after though she began to turn blue. Being on my hands and knees, I was completely unaware of anything but feeling exhausted. Upon reflection though, the change in mood that took place in the room was palpable. Things weren’t panicked but the energy changed from relaxed to urgent and on alert. Rachael calmly asked me if I had the urge to push. I responded that I didn’t (I just wanted to rest a little, dammit!) and the next thing I knew Rachael’s hands were all over my nipples tying to stimulate contractions. I remember hearing Debbie say something like, “I guess she just needs to push through it.” Afterwards I learned that the cord was wrapped around Astrid’s shoulders twice. After about two more pushes, Astrid was born and placed against Dan’s bare chest since I wasn’t in a position to have her placed on mine.
She was somewhat slow to start but was snuffling and sneezing relatively soon after birth. The next several minutes were spent trying to get me onto my back. During that time not a single person, including Dan, thought to tell me whether I’d just delivered a boy or a girl. After all that effort I finally blurted out in an annoyed tone, “Dan, what is it!?”
It was an Astrid, of course.
