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• Labor of Love

  Here's a list of nine highlights of my labor to bring baby Axel in to the world:   1.  Fancy schmancy hospital room.  The labor and delivery room, where we spent the evening of the 31st and the approximately 9 hours of labor on the 1st, was twice the size of our bedroom, with a view of the suburbs spreading out across the plains toward the center of Denver.  The recovery room, while a bit smaller, still felt homey for a hospital room, and I could order anything I wanted from the decent food menu.  Good food is necessary for a good birth and recovery experience.  I could have done with some chocolate cake on the menu, but other than that, it was good stuff.    2.  Supportive, positive nurses and doctors.  My thin, blond OB GYN cheered me on with such honest enthusiasm during the pushing phase that I wasn't even a tiny bit annoyed that she was being so chirpy while I was doing something that's not so comfortable feeling.  The nurses - who we brought chocolate, it being near Halloween and all - responded quickly to our questions, helped us understand the monitors and medical equipment, were cheerful and patient, and seemed to genuinely like us.  I liked them, too.   3.  Electronic Pocket Boggle.  It got me through the first three hours or so of labor.  My scores plummeted as labor progressed, and I found out that Pocket Boggle is child-friendly and does not accept profane words in the past or present tenses, but it provided a great distraction.  It was one of my non-medication pain management techniques, along with sitting on the big plastic exercise ball, deep breathing, gripping on to and falling in to my husband, and trying to visualize the contractions as waves on a beach in Hawaii, crashing over me and receeding.   4. The epidural.  Boggle only gets a girl so far.  And the waves I visualized rapidly turned to tidal waves and I started to get irrationally angry at Hawaii for being surrounded by water on all sides and having so many damn waves.  About five hours in to labor, I'd only dialated three centimeters, and the pain had started to make me throw up.  I went in to the process saying I'd see if I wanted to have an epidural or not, depending on how it went, and thinking that, since most narcotics do not agree with my belly, an epidural might not be particularly belly-friendly, either.  The idea of having movement restricted during labor didn't sound that great, either.  Well, since I was already vomiting, and none of the movements from my prenatal yoga class seemed to be having much of an effect, I went for the drugs.  I admire all you women out there who went the non-medicated route, and I know meds aren't for everyone.  For me, modern medicine really has its perks, and the epidural was fabulous.  I was able to rest through the afternoon and save up energy for pushing, and I could still feel the contractions, just without the nauseating edge.    5.  Pushing.  Yeah, it hurt.  Regardless, I liked how productive it felt, after hours - actually, after nine months - of feeling that my body had some crazy plan that it had failed to inform me of, and over which I had no control.  It was refreshing to tell my body to do something and have it do it.  It took a little less than an hour, and I didn't believe the doctor and my husband when the told me that we had a boy, because I didn't think I could possibly be done.  Maybe all those squats during prenatal yoga, and running before and during the early parts of pregnancy, helped out.  More likely I was just lucky to have a pretty easy time - and that my little guy wasn't a 10-pounder.    6.  My man.  He rubbed my shoulders when I asked him to, and quickly got his hands off of me when I demanded that a minute later.  He gave me ice chips, he watched the monitors as intently as I did, he didn't even react to the various fluids that gushed out of me, he told me again and again how well I was doing - he aced the supportive husband role.    7.  The monitors.  I know that some women find being hooked up to monitors during labor to be unnecessary, and I've heard that some have felt it leads to unnecessary interventions.  Being induced and getting the epidural both meant that the monitors were required by the docs.  Seeing the rise and fall of the contractions made me feel less crazy - it proved that the pain wasn't just in my head.  Watching the baby's heartbeat on the monitor provided a tangible reminder of why I was going through this whole labor thing.  And, when Axel's heartrate plummeted during some of the contractions, it showed us that, too.  It turned out the cord was wrapped around his little neck, though he made it through just fine.   8.  The lacation nurse.  Oh, she was fabulous.  Everything I did, she thought was great.  My colostrum - which, since it's an automatic creation of a pregnant woman's body for her baby didn't seem like a notable feat - was lovely.  I talked to Axel so well and was so patient with him.  She provided me with tips and got us off to a great start breastfeeding, and she also did what I think all people should do with new mothers: reassure them, boost their confidence, and tell them they're fabulous.  So, all you mamas out there reading this?  You're fabulous.    9.  Axel.  Who wouldn't love a mug like this?     You'll notice I left out the bad parts.  Aside from the pain and a few bouts of vomit, the few stitches that have to heal, the huge ick factor of amniotic fluid dripping out all over the place, there weren't so many bad parts.  Sure, I felt achy the next day, and I still do, I've had a few bouts of overwhelmed and exhausted weepiness, and I'm breaking out with more zits than I've had since I was fifteen, but overall, it was smooth, and more than a little worth it.  Look what I got out of it:             Posted Nov 05 2007, 06:38 PM by knockedup with | with 25 comment(s) Filed under: labor, good labor stories, boggle

• Birth Eve

  Tonight, we go to the hospital to begin the induction of labor.  Our baby should arrive sometime tomorrow.  I had hoped we'd be bringing our baby home to a warm, comfy, cosy home.  Nothing fancy, with immaculate white carpeting or even all of the window and door trim in place, but a house with a full set of cabinets and an inviting glider chair in the bedroom corner.  While there's a good chance we'll bring the baby home to our house rather than returning to my parents' lovely home, where we've been staying, we'll only be half-settled, at best.   I had such a clear picture of the three of us coming home from the hospital, to our little white brick bungalow, the baby wrapped in the lopsided, wobbly, soft blue blanket I knit, sinking into the couch together on a crisp fall morning.  As it is, we'll be lucky if we can find a place for all of us to sit.   I know that our house isn't what matters.  My brother slept in a dresser drawer for a week, before his crib was put together, and he turned out fine; babies can't even see much past their own noses, let alone evaluate the interior decor of their new outside of the womb environments.  I know we're lucky, and this baby is lucky, that we have a house, even if it is in a state of disarray, and that we're blessed to have family and friends who've helped us try to scramble to make up for some of the contractors' delays, cleaning and painting at the eleventh hour.  I know what matters is our love for this little person we've never met, and that we can't wait to meet him or her and spend years finding out all about him or her.  But I can't let go of the cosy picture of us in our house, and I can't stop crying, thinking about all of the things that I wanted to do to prepare for the baby's arrival - stock our freezer with stew, set up the dresser/changing table that my parents saved from my babyhood in the perfect spot, count again the onesies and the socks and the stack of tiny hats, arrange the gifts of childrens' books.    It's been a frantic few weeks, with Sean and me scrambling to get things done at the house.  Sean and my father have done amazing amounts of work, all things that I couldn't do, even if I weren't pregnant, trying to get things ready for the baby, from laying the eco-friendly manufactured floor to hooking up the new sinks.  My mom has gone on countless trips to buy cleaning supplies and towels with me, and all three of them have tried to keep me sane during my days of despair over the slow progress.  I haven't even thought about labor, though I've thought about the baby almost constantly.  I haven't worried about how I'll handle the pain, or what emergencies might occur, other than to think that I'll get through it.  That's the only good thing I can think of about our contractors right now - that they've kept me distracted from worrying about something that can't be predicted or controlled.   We will make do.  We can pile clothes on a chair and change the baby on a towel on the floor.  We will still be able to hold him or her, and sing to the baby and read stories.  There will still be diapers and baths and moments of feeling totally incompetent to care for such a tiny being and totally in awe of our baby.  And, in a few weeks, or perhaps months given contractor speed, the walls will be painted, cabinets will be hung, carpet laid, tile installed, and everything put in to its place, and we can go on a walk in the late fall air, return to our house, and settle on to the couch.    November first will be the first day of what I hope are many, many days we will spend together.      I     Posted Oct 31 2007, 01:04 PM by knockedup with | with 24 comment(s) Filed under: labor, remodeling while pregnant, birth eve

• Fear Factor

  Up until yesterday, I hadn't been too worried about much of anything related to labor and the baby.  I figured, hey, women have been doing this for thousands of years, and women all around me seem to have gotten through this A-OK, so, though there will be some rough spots and a lot of pain, I'll get through it, too.  Labor will be temporary and, as for worrying about anything being wrong with the baby, I'd somehow reached a peaceful zen place where I understood that I can't know or control that now and, if something is wrong, I'll just have to deal with it when it happens.    And then, in the middle of our Baby Care class at a local hospital, the instructor held up the demonstration doll and said, "People sometimes think this one is pretty big - actually, it's about the size of an eight-pound baby, just not as floppy."  Thinking about that doll, with its huge plastic doll head, coming out of me was far, far worse than any visual from the labor class video.  I went from peaceful to panicked, and thought that there is no way that something that size is coming out of me.  Maybe a 5 1/2 lb baby I could manage, but a big old 8 or 9 pounder?  Whose idea was this whole baby thing?  How could I have ever thought it was a good idea?  Get me off this crazy pregnancy train now!    The labor panic then lead to a panic pile-up.  While we walked home from the labor class, in the rain, with my stomach doing this evil late-pregnancy morning sickness thing (yes, the morning sickness has returned, the bastard, likely because of my stomach shrinking up.  For most people, this causes heartburn.  For me, it causes disgusting burps and occasional vomit.  It's delightful.), I freaked out about the doll's huge head, leaving the baby at day care, how little I'll sleep, how unmanageably huge my boobs will be once the milk comes in, juggling work and the baby, and on and on.  By the time we got home, I was a mess.  This morning, I feel a bit more calm, but the next time I see a doll or a baby, I'm afraid I'll lose it once again.  I need to find my way back to the naive sense of capability I had before, but I have no idea how I'll get there.    Posted Sep 06 2007, 08:31 AM by knockedup with | with 17 comment(s) Filed under: pregnancy hormones, labor, how will I get through labor, fear of labor

• War Stories

  A friend told me the other day that she thinks that stories about labor and pregnancy are a woman's version of war stories.  Since some women also go to war, there are many out there who have actual war stories, but, still, I get where she's going on this one.  My brother is an officer in the Navy and, ever since he was at the Naval Academy, old men have accosted him with their tales of battle.  About ten years ago, we were on the subway in Washington DC, he was in uniform, and a 70-something man didn't really want us to get off to go to the Smithsonian, because he wasn't yet done talking about his time in Korea.  My brother is very good about this sort of thing, patient and polite and full of yes sirs.    I would probably be a better person if I could follow his lead in my responses to the pregnancy war stories because, my lord, they sure do flood out there as soon as you appear to be pregnant.  I'm not quite sure what people are trying to accomplish with these stories - scare me with their tales of 33 hours of labor?  Make me realize that episiotomies are not so fabulous?  Bond over the hours of pain we will soon have in common?  Get me to stop bitching about my vain weight gain worries and hip pain by putting them in stark relief against the death of their second cousin's firstborn?  Encourage me not to depend on my husband because he'll faint in the delivery room, just like their husbands did?  Make me even more paranoid about ending up on bed rest for weeks, with nothing to do but watch 90210 reruns?  The best I can manage is a half-hearted smile, and a mumble of something like "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," or "That's interesting about your, umm, tearing situation," before I walk away.    Whatever it is that they're trying to do, I wish they would stop.  There's a reason Francis Ford Coppola never made a pregnancy version of Apocalypse Now - no one would watch it.  I already have nightmares about losing the baby - though I also had one fabulous dream in which my baby, on its third day of life, slept all the way through the night and, worried, I called the doctor who said, "Oh, you're just lucky.  You have a perfect baby."  Alas, it was just a dream.     As for the pain of labor, I don't really see what these stories about hours of agony will accomplish.  It's not a mystery that giving birth hurts.  A lot.  I will get through it, as women have for thousands of years.  Instead of talking about the excrutiating pain, why don't women who've been there tell first-time pregnant ladies about the things that helped them get through?   Even my husband (he's a firefighter - they're big fans of the war story genre) got in on the action the other day, talking about a call he'd gone on with a woman who was in labor, and how he almost got to perform an emergency episiotomy in the ambulance - once again, not helpful.  I do not need to know quite that much detail about the leg and umbilical cord dangling out of her.  At least I don't have to worry about him passing out.    I've got a doctor, I've got a labor class, I've got pregnancy books - so the rest of these graphic and gruesome stories, unless they've got a more positive spin, can be left unsaid.  Keep it to yourself, people, and try not to scare the pregnant girl.  My mother, ever the optimist, told me that labor wasn't so bad, and that she imagined the pain when I broke both the bones in my forearm, which had to wait for two days to be set in surgery during which I was throwing up from my allergy to the pain meds, was probably worse than labor.  I have a friend who gave birth in her living room in a birthing tub, and raves about her experience.  I know another who had a c-section, and says, if you have the chance, go for the it and avoid the whole labor thing.  I'm neither a homebirth nor an elective surgery kind of girl, but I really appreciate both of these positive stories amidst the tales of excrutiating pain and endlessly long labor.    What about the rest of you?  Any horror stories told my well-meaning little old ladies that sent you running?  And, more importantly, any good labor or pregnancy stories?   Posted Aug 16 2007, 04:22 PM by knockedup with | with 25 comment(s) Filed under: pregnancy, positive labor stories, labor, labor horror stories