The Story of Miriam's Birth

I finally wrote out Miriam's birth story (I know, I know...it's been 13 months!). Don't worry, you don't have to read it all...I just needed a place to post it. Related to this is a post on my other blog that I (finally) updated.

My Miriam,
Your due date was Monday, May 7. You had measured small for weeks inside of me and my doctor didn’t want to wait too long to get you out. She decided that she would induce me the Wednesday after my due date. I didn’t want to be induced—I had read a few natural childbirth books, I had scheduled a doula to be there to help me through labor and birth, I didn’t want to use any drugs—so I thought that I should try to get labor started on my own.

On Saturday, May 5, I worked out in the yard pulling weeds off of the fence for several hours. I remember talking to your Grandpa Rob on the phone while I was sweating outside in the Saint Louis summer heat. After a while I just couldn’t take the humidity anymore, so I went inside and walked up and down the stairs to the basement about twenty times. I had been drinking red raspberry leaf tea and cumin seed tea and taking evening primrose oil for days. Around two that afternoon, the contractions began. Your dad and I went on a walk that evening—I had to stop walking every five minutes or so as the contractions became more and more intense. I felt kind of silly stopping and having a contraction along a busy road! Your dad and I tried to go to bed that night, but neither of us slept as the contractions became longer and longer, but less regular. After being five minutes apart for hours, they began spacing out—sometimes as long as eight minutes apart—but they were a minute and a half long. Around one in the morning on May 6, my whole body began shaking and trembling all over and all I could do was cry through my contractions.

We finally decided to head for the hospital at about 2:50 that morning after calling my doula, Sarah. I felt so unsure regarding this decision—I wanted to stay home as long as possible, but I also felt that something was just not right. Your dad called your grandma Kathleen on the way to the hospital and your grandma still tells people how your dad told her, “Daisy isn’t looking very happy.”

It seemed to take forever to get me checked into a room at the hospital. I just sat in a chair in the waiting room with your dad and Sarah feeling absolutely miserable. A nurse finally got me into a triage room so that she could make sure I was really in labor. After being in labor so long already, I felt such a sense of despair when the nurse told me that I was 50 to 60 percent effaced and only one centimeter dilated. She even mentioned that she might have to send me home. I felt like crying—I was in so much pain I could hardly move and the thought of being sent home was completely overwhelming. However, the fetal monitor showed that weren’t moving very much, so the nurse decided to keep me on the monitor for awhile to make sure you were doing ok. The nurse gave me some orange juice and left the room.

By 5:00, you had started to move more, but there was some variability in your heart rate so I was instructed to stay on the monitor, which meant no walking. I felt too miserable to move anyway.

Because your heart rate never improved, my nurse, Barbara, checked me into a labor room at 7:00 that morning. I was so hungry, but Barbara told me I couldn’t eat or drink. I think Sarah snuck me a granola bar after Barbara left the room. By 7:50, my cervix was 90 percent effaced and three centimeters dilated. I couldn’t believe it—after nearly 18 hours of labor I was only 3 centimeters dilated. I think this is when I lost my resolve to this labor without drugs. My doula, Sarah, wrote this about this time (I do not remember it): “Your dad was so sweet to your mother and came and kissed her and told her he loved her and that love takes time.”

I tried sitting on a birthing ball for awhile, but I was just as miserable there as in bed, so I decided to curl back up in bed. I was so incredibly exhausted that I began to sleep between contractions. It doesn’t make sense that you can sleep between sessions of the most painful experience of your life, but I couldn’t help it—all my body wanted was sleep—and an epidural.

By 8:30, I decided that I couldn’t do it anymore and I asked for an epidural. And I waited…and waited. At 9:45, the anesthesiologist entered. The one thing worse than experiencing an incredibly slow and painful labor is experiencing an incredibly slow and painful labor while waiting for the anesthesiologist for an hour and fifteen minutes, measuring the time contraction by painful contraction.

It was the best feeling of my life: the epidural was sweet heaven for me. I was able to sleep, I was able to smile for the first time in hours. However, I was still only three centimeters dilated by 10:15. Twenty hours, three lousy centimeters. So much for all the natural labor books I had read. Your daddy and I both went to sleep.

At 1:00 in the afternoon, Dr. Super came to check on us. Your heart rate was still not great and I was still only at three centimeters (Twenty-three hours: three centimeters). Dr. Super wanted to put an internal monitor on you so he broke my water at 1:10 (which is a very funny feeling). It was full of meconium, which meant you might be in distress and not tolerating my contractions very well. He had the nurse give me oxygen to see if that would help. After about five minutes, your heart rate dropped dramatically and the doctor said something about my uterus not reacting very well, either. He told me he was going to do a c-section. I started crying and the nurses began to prepare me for the surgery. They gave me a shot that makes labor stop, but it also makes your body shake all over uncontrollably. It is not very pleasant. At 1:20 I was wheeled in my bed out of my room, down the hall, and into an operating room. This all happened so fast, that I don’t remember many details at all. Your dad was not there yet and I was so scared. Because of the extra drugs I was given for the surgery, I could not feel myself breathing, which was terrifying. I remember saying over and over, “I can’t breath, I can’t breath.” The doctor (Dr. Super?) let me know that if I was talking, I was breathing. Plus, I had an oxygen mask on. Another doctor stood on my right and told me that I could hold his hand. I think I must have dug my nails into his hand because he told me to be a bit nicer. Finally your dad arrived and I held his hand, too, all the way through the surgery.

The surgery was the strangest experience. I could feel Dr. Super cutting and pulling on my skin, but I could not feel any pain. My head was uncontrollably turning right and left because of the drugs. It was horribly uncomfortable and really quite scary.

At 1:38 you were born! I didn’t get to see you after Dr. Super pulled you out of me, but I could certainly hear you crying! You cried the whole time the doctors were sewing me up. Your dad left me and went to the other side of the room where you were getting weighed, getting a bath, and being wrapped up. If I looked backward over my left shoulder, I could just see you. You were 6 pounds, 4 ounces, and you had lots of dark hair. Your apgar scores were 7 and 9 at 1 and 5 minutes after birth. A nurse gave you to me as I was being wheeled back to our delivery room at about 2:15. My arms were so numb from the epidural that I thought I was going to drop you. You were so little and your face was swollen and bruised. At first your dad and I wondered if you were really ours since you looked so funny. I loved you the minute I saw you, though…the most beautiful baby on earth even if you were swollen and funny looking.

Sarah, my doula, helped you to nurse for the first time at 2:50. You latched on so well and nursed for 25 minutes. I still couldn’t feel my arms, so she held you up to me. I was still shaking all over, but by 3:30 I was doing better.

We stayed in the hospital for four days to give me time to recover from the surgery. During that time you changed from funny-looking to just plain adorable.