Transition: My path to natural labor

Two weeks ago today I gave birth to a darling baby girl. She arrived in three short and (two) agonizing hours of labor. Now I know I am capable of giving birth naturally when six months ago I knew almost nothing about natural childbirth.

Our firstborn came after 19 hours of difficult and frightening labor. I yielded to every intervention short of a c-section. The waterfall of intervention one of my friends calls it. The doctor started a Pitocin drip around 7 AM. After six or seven hours I took some narcotics that rather than giving me some rest made me loopy. (Half conscious and calling my husband a name is funny memory though.) Essentially stuck in bed and (on my back most of the time) as a result of fetal heart monitors the doctor requires with the administration of Pitocin, I couldn't work through the growing pain. An epidural that only half-worked was next and it was dimness and fear and even pain for the hours that followed. Insensible to the pressure of my contractions I had to ask when to push. In the end, with the help of an episiotomy and vacuum extractors, my son appeared.

It was days before I recovered from the shock. I've blogged a little about that here. It's still true that I'd do it again...and more...to bring him into the world. But I didn't want to do it that way ever again.

It turns out many women share my experience with that labor and delivery: tons of medical intervention, confusion, disappointment, disillusionment. Uninformed, untrained and unhelped by their providers. Consequently they determined not to let history repeat itself.

My first indication that something was simply wrong, that there must be real alternatives to my experience, was the total lack of information about the consequences of induction. How is it logical to lie on your back, hooked up to a machine, when you are going to try to manage intense pain that is naturally relieved through walking, bathing or other movement? I was on my way.

Through a little bit of reading and lots of conversations with women, I began to understand that birth is a natural process not a medical procedure. This seems like common sense as I write it, but it was novel to me: Women should have the opportunity to let their instincts and their body's natural process guide them. Pitocin and comfort measures can interfere with this process, sometimes on a huge scale. For the most part, babies should be born on their own schedule, not the doctor's (or yours!).

My mom was the first person I recollect inspiring me to a natural birth. And this year a number of strong-willed friends unconsciously inspired me with their stories. From delivering a ten-pound baby without the aid of an epidural to a home birth with a midwife that produced a little girl after 40 plus hours, every story nudged me toward a natural birth. One friend even said with her usual frankness, "It's not like you're not going to die!" when I suggested that I couldn't handle the pain.

And finally a friend working on her doula certification urged me to use a doula. (A doula is a trained labor coach who, statistically, helps reduce the number of medical interventions during labor.) She went the extra mile and hunted down the name of a woman working locally. Initially I scoffed at the idea of a stranger helping me through what is a very private process. After reflection I realized a labor coach wouldn't be any more of a stranger to me than a roomful of nurses and a doctor that I know, if at all, only on a professional basis! Someone found her for me, and she turned out to be a godsend. Sensible, calm and empathetic I knew she would be a good fit. My husband liked her too, which was important to me for obvious reasons.

And without those two I wouldn't have succeeded.

The pain was mind-bending. Active labor lasted only three hours, two of which included back labor (the baby was posterior). This meant I had little relief between contractions. Crouched on all-fours, I didn't think I could move, but with the help of a highly skilled and persuasive nurse, they talked me into getting into the warm, deep jacuzzi tub. It helped. Every attention was paid to me; concessions were made; suggestions offered. None of these worked their magic like the calm I think you can response to my "I can't do it!"

In the end I didn't feel like I achieved a natural birth so much as it was achieved on my behalf by my husband and my doula. They fought for my birth plan by gently resisting my attempts to cave. Stick to the plan. You can do it. You're progressing nicely. Right down to her blessedly cold hands, which I sometimes found myself unconsciously clinging to, my doula did exactly what she was trained to do: advocate for me against me.

And my husband is my hero.

With my son's eventual birth, it was shock and confusion. I couldn't get up. I couldn't hold him. I missed his first bath. I resented the pain I'd undergone. This time relief and elation were immediate. It was over and she was here. I had undreamt of energy. The baby was in my arms immediately. I held her for hours before we gave her a bath. Photos of us in the hospital show me in my own shirt and blessedly free from wires and tubes.

After just a day, the memory of the pain was already fading to black and white. We left the hospital the next day, relatively strong and rested. I remarked on this incredible difference to my doula and she said it's amazing how we can feel when we don't have a bunch of drugs in our system. Combine that with an incredible sense of awe and accomplishment and you begin to understand why some women value a natural birth so highly.

It's best not to lie about these things: Labor is painful and not sexy or beautiful in the conventional sense of the word. Next time around I'll probably long for the epidural again. I'll whine that I can't do it. (More children? Never! Natural childbirth? Crazy talk!) An epidural might ease the pain, which is not nothing, but it might also prolong labor and result in unwelcome medical interventions. These things can, as they did in my case, lead to regret.

Today I am still on a high from the outcome. It was unspeakably difficult and painful but the reward was instant and long-term joy. No regrets. No bad memories. No fear. My body did its job and now I know that it can.

The Now and the Not Yet

A friend of mine recently spotted the huge, laminated bank check made out to the nonprofit I used to manage. It's perched conspicuously on a shelf in our garage. What was it about, she wondered.

"I can't get rid of it. I'm so proud of the money I raised." And then I found myself nearly adding, "Believe it or not I used to do something productive and worthwhile in this world."

The implication of that unspoken thought...I shudder.

Today I am parenting a toddler and nurturing a future toddler in my womb.

Instead of clinic management it's whether or not to read a book, do "crafts" or schedule a play date that consumes my thought life. No more the preoccupation with soliciting our piece of the financial pie by positioning our small clinic as crucial to the health and welfare of Idaho's underserved. Brain development, spiritual development, physical development, and when my next nap is coming: these preoccupy my time.

I'd join the chorus of "moms have thankless jobs" except it isn't true. We know instinctively that we're doing something important and the thanks we get are the chubby, outstretched arms, the attentive look, the shared laugh. No one else snuggles with me the way my son does.

Knowing this, I still felt the tug to my old life and all its attractions and tangible rewards. In my secret soul, it felt like more productive work than marriage and parenting. My feelings (sight) was bumping right up against my faith. I suppose that rubbing will go on as long as I walk this earth in these shoes.

A funny thing happened in a casual email...

This week my brother started an email thread about the new Nampa (ID) chief of police, LeRoy Forsman, a man one of my parents taught in Sunday School roughly 200 years ago.

That email quickly turned into a series of "Remember whens" between us kids and our folks. The conversation centered around the four or five years we lived in a trailer.

Yep, we lived in a trailer. Two of them in fact. And those years compose some of the happiest memories of my life.

"Remember when we camped outside and listened to "Wind in the Willows" on the tape deck?"

"Remember when we had been warned there wasn't much money for Christmas, but mom and dad still managed to give us each a huge, warm fuzzy blanket that we still cherish today?"

"Remember when this sister fell down the stairs and had to have stitches or this brother was chased screaming back home by a horde of angry wasps or the baby would walk around with her thumb in her mouth and her hand in her diaper?"

Eventually we stopped camping outside. Our new house didn't have air conditioning, but it was cooler, so no more nights of mom spraying a mist of water over us and telling us to imagine we were at the beach. Four bedrooms meant I didn't have to share a room with my little sisters any more. We got older and started babysitting and mowing lawns and giving our own gifts at Christmas, many of them forgettable plastic trinkets.

When we got more, we lost something. So why have I been preoccupied with my own "stuff"? A new piece of art, shelving for all our books, storage for the baby's clothes, even a new house? I ought to be re-learning how to make much out of, well, quite a bit. I can't really say we have "little" especially compared to what we had those five years.

Our family shouldn't need a lot to build a happy home and create a memorably happy childhood for our kids. The trailer park stories are my evidence.

When we had nothing, we had it all.

girlfriday: Check your familiarity at the door

"Familiarity Breeds Contempt."

I've always thought this translated that if you got too comfortable around folk you would come to resent them.

What if it means instead that to treat people in a too-familiar manner is to breed contempt?

You don't have to belong to the Dear Sirs crowd but email leaves us especially vulnerable to the temptation of over familiarity.

I have some whoppers of examples. Do you?

The Truth?

I love that my husband is such a man's man that it's a constant struggle getting grease and dirt stains out of his nice slacks.

If I were to lose him, I'd miss his refusal to try anything new in the way of toothpaste, shaving cream or shampoo.

I'm happy that he's not a woman. I didn't marry a woman. I married a man and even if I harumph around, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

Look for my triumphant return in coming days.

your

girl friday

Where did everyone go, and other points of contention...

When last I visited the Good Ship Girlfriday, there were people bustling about on deck, brass was being shined, and the enlisted was busy sucking up to management. Maybe that was just me. I get confused sometimes.

So, anyway, after entirely too long an absence, I wandered back aboard, shamefaced, prepared to take my lashings like a man (ok, fine. I was going to whimper like a scolded Great Dane), only to discover, well, a ghost ship.

I heard the creaking up in the rigging. I heard the tinny sound of girlfriday's radio blaring away in her cabin, tuned to some random 80's rock station. I heard the slopping and sloshing of water in the bilges. And I heard an assortment of birds, gathered in a cluster on the poop deck (yes, I liked writing "poop deck") and talking smack about Keith Olbermann.

But there is no one here. Le sigh.

Without going into a lot of stupid reasons why (ok, it was mostly simple convenience), I had taken to ranting on Facebook when I had something disputatious to say. What I have concluded, however, is that FB really isn't the place for that sort of thing. I discovered this when I found myself annoyed at something someone else had posted...and then wondered who might be annoyed with something that I had posted. So. I have resolved to cease ranting on Facebook and have resumed ranting over at Moonbat Central, my old and sadly neglected blog. I came back aboard here to tell everyone, but there was no one here to tell.

Instead, I spent some time communing with the birds, learned a few new things about Mr. CrazyRants that have to do with his medications and the lack of supervision regarding their consumption, and decided to leave this note, pinned to the wheel.

Oh. And I ate the cheesecake that girlfriday had hidden in the freezer behind the frozen hash browns. Should have taken it with you or hidden it better, 'cause it was GOOD.

So, anyway, if any of you wander on board here, come on by and see me at Moonbatville. I shall endeavor to be both interesting and annoying. You know. As usual.