Willa turned two on the 11th. Yay! I'm happy! Boo! I'm sad! The usual. For the rest of my life I will feel ambivalent about my kids' birthdays. Except maybe when they turn 18. I might be okay with that one because they give you a prize, right? But one thing her birthday (as well as
this excellent series over at
Design Mom) made me realize was that I still hadn't written up her birth story to share with the Internet. (I know! Someone's going to revoke my Mommyblogger badge.) Actually this is logical. It took me a year to post
Lowell's birth story so naturally it's taken me two years to get around to Willa's. Thankfully I am not planning on having a third because I think after that the difference in time spans become exponential.
So, here is her birth story. But first, do you like uncomfortable amounts of personal detail? Including details about bodily fluids and excruciating pain? Yes? Onward then.
Chapter 1: It BeginsWilla came early which was not part of my birth plan. Lowell was over three months late (actually only five days but try telling me that at the time) so I was pretty sure I'd be having her at or past my due date. And why did I think this? I'll tell you why: D-E-N-I-A-L. Because anyone will tell you that your first labor is NOT an indicator of your second labor in any way. In fact, you can almost be sure it will be completely different. And yet I was absolutely confident that I had lots of time. So sure in fact that, a week before my due date, I did not have my hospital bag packed. I mean, I had a bag. It was there in the corner of our guest room, gathering bacteria-laden, asthma-inducing dust. And there were a few things thrown in there. I think flip flops, some undies, and a half-thought out checklist. Not exactly pregnancy-manual ready, but I had time to find all the things I wanted to have with me during labor. PLENTY OF TIME.
Let's go back for a second, back to October 10th, 2007. It was a beautiful fall day. Lowell and I went to a lovely play date with some of his best buddies at my friend Emily's house. She and my other friend Laetitia asked me how I was doing because the day before I had woken up to some strong contractions. Fine, fine, fine, I told them I was fine and sure that I had several more days of bouncing this kid's head on my cervix. Ha ha. HA! The rest of the day was normal. No indication that Willa's birth was mere hours away. I remember I stayed up kind of late that night, puttering around, drinking tea, not packing my hospital bag, finally getting to bed at around 11:30. A little more than an hour after that I woke up, as usual, and started trying to get my enormous belly turned over to the other side. As I piloted the good ship Behemoth to starboard I twisted my hips a little bit to get comfortable and I felt a pop deep inside. And then, like some kind of bad sitcom, a big gush of liquid came out between my legs.
Oh. No.
My water had broken. All I could think was "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I AM NOT READY." But my body was all "Hey, go get that bag, we're going to have this baby tonight!" I shook Matthew gently and said "I think my water broke." (FYI this is a foolproof way to get your husband to go from being dead asleep to being completely alert within about .5 seconds.) I went into the bathroom and sat on the toilet and got another gush. It was a little pinkish which made me panic for a second because all I could remember from the books was that clear=good, any other color=panic. After another gush I had a serious contraction. "Fuuuuuuuuuuuck!" I clearly remember yelling that. Not in pain, the contraction wasn't painful, but in frustration because it was very obvious, even through my iron-clad denial, that this birth was going to happen within a time frame that was sub-optimal, i.e. the next 24 hours.
I called my midwife, Susan, and she was like, yep, you're going to have this baby soon. I asked her if I could go back to sleep. She said if I could sleep through the contractions then it would be good to get more rest and come into the hospital in a few hours. Then I hung up and called my sister, Kara. Kara was my doula when I gave birth to Lowell. And when I say that she practically saved my freaking life during my labor with him I would not be exaggerating one single bit. (I would be exaggerating if I said "literally" but notice I did not. Because I am smart that way. ARE YOU READING THIS, RACHEL ZOE?) I called Kara to let her know that unfortunately she wouldn't probably be able to attend the birth but if she got on a plane that second she might be there to take pictures of the placenta (a family ritual). Our plan (and looking back on it "plan" might have been too strong a term) was for her to attend this birth as well. But since she lives in North Carolina it was logistically challenging to pick a time for her to come up. We'd rolled the dice and came up snake eyes this time. But she said she'd get on the next plane and be there as soon as humanly possible.
Funny thing about being in labor, it's really hard to go back to bed when you're in it. After about two minutes of trying to lie down I just got up and started pacing. The contractions were regular and strong, stopping me in my tracks, but not lasting that long and not too painful. But pretty soon I was looking for my old friend, the exercise ball, to sit on to get me through the contractions. Matthew called my Aunt Jill, who lives just around the corner, and asked her to come over in case we had to leave any time soon.
Chapter 2: Wherein I Learn The Value of A Packed Hospital BagI'd say maybe five minutes after Jill arrives we start thinking, yeah, time to go! It helped to have a neutral, normal-state-of-mind third party there. Basically the look on Jill's face said "Are you kidding me? Hospital. Go. Now." although she very tactfully said things like "You know what's best." or "I'll do whatever you need me to do." Matthew asked me if my bag was packed and I used my best wild hand motions to distract him. It would have helped to have had something shiny to shake in front of him but he pressed on. "Uh, no." "Seriously?" "Seriously." What you might not know is that Matthew is the kind of person that is packed a full week before he goes anywhere. I am the type that packs the night before, preferably as late as possible. One of our most consistent reoccurring fights is over packing, so you can imagine the string of expletives that came out of his mouth at that moment. Also, I may have lied a little that week about the readiness of said bag. I convinced him to just get the car ready and that I would be packed in a jiffy. I quickly grabbed vital stuff off the half-thought out list, stopping and bending over when a contraction hit. I remembered a few other things, like the newborn hat I still hadn't finished crocheting and threw it in there along with the yarn and a hook. And very soon I was done. Except for the camera. Hmmmm... now that might be important. Where was the camera come to think of it? Matthew came in to hurry me along and found me at the computer. "What the [more expletives] are you doing?"
And this is what I was doing:
Matthew just walked out of the room shaking his head but then stopped and said, "Do you have the camera?"
The camera turned out to be totally MIA. We did some triage and decided it was faster for Matthew to run over to Jill's house and borrow hers than to start turning the house upside down. (So here's a little PSA: Keep your camera in your hospital bag as your due date approaches. The More You Know.) Matthew went about 80 miles an hour for four blocks and returned with Jill's camera. I waddled out and climbed into the back of our Subaru. And we were off.
Chapter 3: At Least We Made It To The HospitalThe 25-minute drive there was dark and thankfully almost traffic-free. I think it might have been raining too but I honestly can't remember as I was starting to really need to focus on the contractions to keep from freaking out. At some point in the car I realized I hadn't felt the girlbaby kick in awhile. So I waited through a few contractions. Still nothing. I shifted positions, waited again, nothing. I started to get worried but didn't say anything to Matthew. I wanted him to focus on driving as fast as possible because the contractions were getting really painful and more frequent. We were almost to the hospital and still, no kicks. Just as the fear began to rise towards panic I felt one. And tears welled in my eyes I was so relieved. At that point I started the descent. The inward turn where the labor becomes your entire world. I was all business. I was going to get this baby born.
At the hospital they got me right into a room and did an internal. "Eight centimeters" the attending said. I kind of shrugged at that. With Lowell I was stopped at eight centimeters for almost ten hours. TEN HOURS. I figured, well we have some time. While we waited for Susan to get there I kept thinking to myself "Self, how the hell did you do twelve hours of active labor last time? How? This is really, really, really awful." I just couldn't believe how much it hurt. I remembered the pain being terrible but had it been this bad? I didn't remember it being quite this almost-very-nearly-impossible to bear. It didn't help that I was on a hospital bed with the monitor on my belly instead of in
any other position. Susan arrived after about twenty minutes and I was really happy to see her. She's just the kind of person you want in a delivery room. Calm, supportive and in charge. At this point the pain was becoming ridiculous. The contractions were very close together and I was having a really hard time. With each one I thought that panic might take over but I somehow got through it. Matthew was doing his best to help me and he kindly let me twist his fingers off during each contraction. We had left my beloved birthing ball in the car like stupid jackasses and now I wanted it badly but I didn't want him to leave for even a second. When Susan was giving me a quick check he extricated his poor hand and went down to get it. He must have ran the entire way, which is kind of funny to picture because it was a huge mint-green ball. He was back almost instantly and I can't even express how much I loved him at that moment. (And it made up for him complaining to the nurse about his headache and asking if she had any Tylenol when we first got in the room. Seriously. While I was IN LABOR. No, she did not give him any.) By now I think we may have been in the room for forty minutes or so. I got off the bed and on to my birthing ball and felt a hundred times better. Matthew rubbed my back and kept me from totally losing it. The nurse asked me if I thought I might want the jacuzzi and I said yes and she turned on the tap to fill it. I had maybe two or three more contractions and the pain was just epic. Unreal. Just as I was thinking I was going to have to start loudly insisting on an epidural, it happened. The unbearable urge they tell you about. The urge I never quite felt with Lowell. I stood halfway up and yelled "OH MY GOD. I THINK I NEED TO PUUUUUUSH!" My midwife came running in from the hallway. She hadn't even filled out the paperwork yet or changed into scrubs. She got me up on the bed just as another contraction started.
Chapter 4: The Ring of FireWith Lowell I had to push for an hour (which is not all that long) and it was incredibly hard work. For whatever reason, maybe the epidural, the first pregnancy, his position, whatever, it took a lot of work to get him out. Because my labor was so long and the pushing took so much out of me, I never really understood the baby born in the car or in the elevator or in the burning building stories. I just had a hard time relating because my own experience had been so different. Ahem, I no longer have this problem. Because let me tell you, when I felt the urge to push there was nothing I could do to stop it. My body took over completely and the baby was coming right then whether I liked it or not. After I got back up on the bed the next contraction came and I pushed like crazy. Susan said, "She's right here, she's right here, you can do it!" And I am pretty sure I responded with something along the lines of "OH HELL NO, I CANNOT DO IT!" Because the prospect of being split in half
did not appeal to me at all, and I was confident that if I pushed again that's what was going to happen to me. But again, my body had no time for that shit and made me push. Again with the being split in half and the "you can do its!" Then one more, right on top of the last, and, dear Lord, Willa passed through me into this world. Pink, vernixy, curly-headed, and wailing. Matthew was right there, tears streaming down his gape-mouthed face. "Oh my goodness," I said, stretching my arms out for her.
The birth moment is often described by midwives as a "ring of fire" which, quite honestly, is something of an understatement. When I was telling the story the next day to my friend Emily, who had a very similar delivery with her second daughter, she said, without a trace of hyperbole, "Yeah, I was focusing on the view from the room and decided that either the baby was coming out right then or I was going to jump out of that window." That is closer to what I experienced, a pain that truly made me want to do anything to make it stop. But, to be sure, it was something. Not something I necessarily want to re-experience (in fact one of my first thoughts was "THANK GOD I NEVER HAVE TO DO THIS AGAIN") but something I cherish as a memory. I love my little girl so very much and it was what needed to happen to get her here. Both my babies taught me how much I can withstand. And now I know I could go through a hundred rings of fire for them and come out ready for a hundred more.
Chapter 5: CodaSusan put Willa on my chest and she stopped crying almost right away. She nestled herself in between my breasts and went to sleep. It was one of the sweetest moments of my life. We looked at the clock and it was 4:30 AM, less than 4 measly hours after my water broke. The pain of the labor made sense to me now because I had been in transition, the most intense phase, without even knowing it. At some point somebody turned off the faucet on the Jacuzzi tub. Matthew snapped away with the borrowed camera and got beautiful shots that will forever make me cry. (We found our camera almost a year later, smushed in the bottom of a folded umbrella stroller in the garage. Again, excellent planning.) Kara arrived that morning from NC via plane, cab and train, powered by the unstoppable urge to see her niece on the day she was born. Then she went back to our house and picked up Lowell and drove him to meet his beautiful new sister. I'll never forget him barreling into the room, sitting on my lap and then delivering the tenderest kiss possible on his little sister's cheek. And I finished crocheting the hat that I had stowed in the bag, and put it on her pretty little head.
We brought Willa home a day and a half later. And she nestled herself right in there, too.
Happy birthday, my darling girl.
