With My Own Two Hands

On Tuesday January 12th, my due date, we decided to go into Albuquerque

and have lunch at Pros Ranch Market. It’s a big Mexican market that has a food court area. They serve the closest thing to L.A. street tacos we’ve been able to find here and we thought Shane would enjoy it. Since we were in Albuquerque we also went to Keller’s to buy meat and The Herb Store so I could get more nettle and Red Raspberry leaf for tea.

I drank Red Raspberry leaf, nettle and alfalfa tea through out my pregnancy but in the last trimester I brewed it stronger and drank a lot more of it.

At lunch Lee asked if I was going to have a baby today. I told him today was the one day I knew I wasn’t having a baby because giving birth on your due date rarely happens. Then he asked if I was going to have a baby the next day on the 13th. I said no again, I didn’t want to have a baby on the 13th, I’d be ready to go anytime after. And that’s when I jinxed myself.

We got home at 6:30pm. I put away groceries, brewed up a strong pot of tea and talked to my mom on the phone for about 2 hours.  Later in the evening I was talking to Lee in his office when I felt a low crampy feeling. Nothing exactly new, just like at the end of my pregnancy with Jack I’d been feeling those for weeks. The only thing that was different was a downward pressure and it occurred to me that I had had a few at regular intervals. I checked the time – 9:50. I felt it again at 10:05 and again at 10:15. I decided I needed to get up to do some laundry just in case.

A little before 11pm I had no doubt that I was in labor. I told Lee I was pretty sure this was it. I emailed my midwife to let her know and told her I would email again once the baby was born. Up until then I hadn’t said anything to anyone. I didn’t want any false alarms.

I spent some time walking around the house and finishing laundry. I cleaned the bathroom and Jack and Olivia picked up the living room for me. They were so excited, it was like Christmas for them.

Around 12:30 a hot shower sounded like a good idea. By then the contractions were strong enough that it felt better to squat through them while stretching my body upward. It cut the intensity by about half.

I stayed in the shower for about 30 minutes, then went to the tub. I had a few requirements for finding a house to move into and one of them was a garden tub. It was so nice to be in deep water with room to move around. Though I mostly laid over the side or sat back on my knees during contractions. I had towels at the bottom of the tub and on the side so I had soft surfaces.

Lee knows I like to be left alone while I’m in labor so he’d come to the door every little bit and check to make sure I was okay and if I needed anything. After I’d been in the tub for a little while I started to feel really tired and shaky. I wanted the baby to come soon so I could lay down. I laid back in the tub a couple of times between contractions and it felt so nice to rest, but it did not at all feel nice to get caught on my back when a contraction hit. How women go through labor and delivery on their backs is not something I understand. That is the worst position for me to be in. It turns something completely manageable into hellish pain.

Because I was feeling shaky I asked Lee to stay in the bathroom with me. And again, he knows me well … he didn’t stay by the tub attempting to coach me through anything, that would have gotten him kicked out in a split second. He pulled a chair in and sat in the corner and stayed quiet unless I talked to him first.

Soon after Lee came in I felt my body pushing with each contraction. That told me the shaky, tired I want this to be over feeling was transition. I got my second wind and started pushing with the contractions. I could feel his head moving down, he was about half a finger’s length from crowning when my water broke. A couple of pushes later his head was ready to be born. Unlike my first two unassisted births his head didn’t just pop out. I was able to ease it out slowly over a few contractions and had no tearing.

Usually once the head is out I get a feeling of relief. But with Van there was no relief at all, I was in more pain than I had been the entire time. I felt for the cord and instead felt the source of my pain – he had his little arms folded up on both sides of his neck.  I wasn’t having a contraction but I gave a huge strong push and birthed him into the water right into my hands.

 

I pulled him up to my chest and asked Lee for the time. It was 1:37am. He came out wailing and had excellent color. He was pink from the start and started nursing right away.  We stayed in the tub for awhile with warm towels over us.

After Van was born the water started to turn red. Compared to my first two unassisted births it looked like a lot of blood. It had never looked like I was sitting in a tub full of blood before so I decided to get out and deliver the placenta. It would also be easier to see how much I was bleeding out of the water.

The placenta came easily and I bled surprisingly little afterwards. An earlier ultrasound had showed that my placenta was low though not covering my cervix. Later my midwife told me that with a placenta positioned higher the blood gets trapped in the membranes but because my placenta was low I saw a lot more of the blood. I never felt dizzy or lightheaded or tired so I wasn’t worrying about it too much.

After about an hour I decided to cut the cord. I wanted to get in bed and snuggle my baby without a bowl of placenta beside us. As I was getting ready to cut Jack said he wanted to do it. That surprised me. I tied off two sections of the cord and told him to cut in between. A drop of blood appeared as he started to cut and he looked at me like he thought he had just hurt the baby. I let him know the wasn’t hurting Van and he cut through the cord with a grin.

I tried to get the placenta into a ziplock bag but I fumbled and it flopped all over the place making a bloody mess. Poor Olivia was right next to me when this happened and she left the room gagging. She came back in a few minutes later after she knew I had it cleaned up.

We all decided to try and get some sleep around 4am but I lay awake for hours snuggling my sweet baby boy.

He’s 16 days old now. He stays awake longer and is more alert every day. He makes the funniest faces at us and sometimes I swear he is smiling. We all love him so much.