Our Lovely Birth Story

This is the story of the birth of our daughter on April 27th. A more medically complete account exists in a note on Facebook, but I wanted to post this story here with some photos. Enjoy!

My water broke at about 2:20 am, after some really mild contractions for maybe half an hour or so. I called our midwife Louisa, and went back to bed, but didn't sleep much as contractions continued sporadically and built up toward the morning. While having a little breakfast, Kevin called his parents, and we got in touch with both of his brothers; Connie and Rory planned to be there and arrived early afternoon. My brother Matt left for school and other brother Michael was on his way home. My dad, unfortunately, was out on his only trip for the three weeks surrounding the due date and was stuck in Orange County. He made it home a few hours after the birth wrapped up. My mom was right there with us all along and busied herself with a final clean up, getting me anything I needed, cutting up fruit for snacking on, being generally an amazing grandmother. Lastly, aunt Tara and my 5 year old cousin Iris came over for a few hours in the morning, with flowers and snacks and hugs of encouragement.

We had a bunch of family surrounding us, which I had really wanted, but all the activity kind of slowed down my early labor. It was a good trade-off, though, I thought, to have the family support present even if it added a couple hours to the labor. Louisa and her assistant Christina arrived a little ahead of noon and started tracking my vitals, contractions, and everything. I had a heplock put in for IV antibiotics. I used a birth ball and really found that helpful for back labor, as well as counter pressure. We eventually put a towel in the floor of the shower so I could be on my knees leaning into the ball with hot water on my lower back.

When we moved toward pushing, I spent some time on the bed, still leaning over the ball, and Louisa, birth assistant Christina, Kevin, and my mom were standing all around massaging me from four corners- awesome. Then, apparently, I pushed for about an hour on the toilet. I was surprised when Louisa said it had been that long; of course it felt like it was dragging on FOREVER, but I was so far in labor land I don't really remember anything. That's not exactly true. I remember flashes of images, and feeling everything in my abdomen trying to shift downward with each contraction. Pushing became really effective and I moved into the main room, where I actually delivered the baby on my hands and knees on the floor.

The two grandmothers ended up exclaiming a gender announcement ("It's a...." "Girl!!!") as I rocked back and scooped her up- Kevin was super supportive and wonderful all the way through but became pretty deer-in-headlights at this moment. Time kind of stopped and my sense of the world expanded back out of my body. Eventually he did announce her name: Edythe Irene Connally. 

So that's the birth. Kevin cut the cord and the whole birth process was just shy of nineteen hours, start to finish. When stuff kind of settled down and Edie and I were a bit wiped up, Kevin read a blessing written by st. Patrick and his dad prayed a thanksgiving/blessing, which was really meaningful for us. Both grandmothers, one grandfather, and two uncles were present, as well as Louisa, Christina, and Julie, the RN midwife from class. A splash of wine was passed around to toast. The baby's measurements were taken and we were both checked over for vitals.

Then came the only drama part: I tried getting in the shower. The heat was the last straw I guess, on top of reasonably solid blood loss and anemia, and I passed out a bit. I had a really weird dream that was like a commercial that I couldn't understand what to buy. So we did some oxygen via mask, a catheter, and two IV bags with another dose of pitocin to wrap everything up. I was shaking pretty hard with adrenalin but emotionally felt stable. I'd rather have the complication after the birth than during... so poor Louisa slept on the weird little chair in our room for a few hours until I was completely stabilized.

I was so happy with the decisions we made, and feel super blessed that no complications arose to change the plan. Our family is settling into the baby routine pretty well, and while nights are kind of long, I actually feel fairly high energy during the day. A lovely birth, a supportive community of family and les sages femmes, and a gorgeous, happy baby!

Ninth Month

Two days from now, the baby will be full-term and officially invited to come any time it wants. First babies tend towards later, rather than early, and we certainly don't have a history of early on my side of the family, so I Could go into labor next week... but I won't. That is my psychologically stable self-talk.

The exact mechanism of what starts labor is not fully understood by Science. Science is notoriously good at offering a few impressive explanations on a surface level, and becoming enmeshed in unmeasurable and existential unknowns as the questions tighten in relevancy. That aside, it is generally accepted that the baby initiates the labor process by communicating with the placenta, it's advocate and ally throughout pregnancy. It's pretty phenomenal how it all fits together, really: a specific protein is produced by the infant lungs when they hit the developmental maturity to make the amniotic fluid to air transition. Anyway that's how it worked with mice at the University of Texas in 2004. Mice gestate for 19 days, compared to my projected 280 days. I anticipate that the complexity of mouse birth to human birth reflects that ratio, but I like the idea that the baby will let me know when it's good and ready. Like most westerners, I am somewhat reassured by a rationale, a Knowledge that diffuses the otherwise arbitrary, uncertain mysteries of Life. 

Beyond contemplating such mysteries, the pregnancy is going quite well. My catchphrase has become, "I don't love pregnancy, but expecting has been wonderful." We are delighted to be so close to meeting the baby, and I have a huge sense of relief at the promise that no pregnancy can go on forever. As for the baby, we still get tremendous activity. I think the little one is awake quite a bit more these days, and certainly is much stronger. Over the last few weeks, I notice he/she seems pretty curious, stroking or jabbing at anything that comes into contact with my huge abdomen. First "bad mom moment:" calling my kid butt head when it nailed me against the dining table. Probably hurt its own knee as badly as it hurt me. Yes, I admire the efficiency of pregnancy and relative cleanliness of this form of parenthood, but I feel like changing diapers and nursing are actually a pretty fair trade-off for being able to evict the little camper off my bladder and esophagus when it's important. Parents of outside children just laugh here, "How little do they know... ha ha!" But seriously.

I've been motivated to read and research all these pregnancy related questions, and I feel about as prepared as they come for labor and birth. For me, a deep comprehension of the whole process is so important, and I am pretty relaxed about the outcome because the variables aren't unexplored. I have a lot of trust in everyone involved- Jesus, my family, my husband, my midwife, my baby, and myself. I say this because people keep asking if I'm getting nervous, especially since we are planning an unmedicated, natural home birth. Honestly for my personal psychology it would be more disruptive to plan a hospital birth with epidural, because hospitals have nervous energy to me and experimenting with drugs has never been a good experience. No one can tell for sure what my body would do in those conditions. No, I'm not nervous to give birth, and I'm not nervous to give birth at home. I've spent an academic year studying pregnancy and birth, with lots of hands on lab work, and I'm more prepared for this final than any other test in my life. It will be hard, but most people pass one way or the other...

Our next post will probably have baby pictures of our own real baby!

A new blog.

I would like to let everyone know that I have been working on and have lately published another blog on this same site entitled "The Industrial Devolution."  The address is "theindustrialdevolution/blogspot.com."  I hope you all read it and find it beneficial, pass it on to your friends and relations, and come back for more.