Library Everywhere

I am going to tell you what happened a year ago today. I have told bits and pieces of this story to various people with varying points of emphasis and degrees of drama depending on my mood and my audience. However I have yet to document the experience in any form and so I think one year after the fact is a good a time as any.

This is a story about me giving birth so don’t read it if you get freaked out by thinking about where you came from.

Here is what I remember.

My due date (12/6) came and went. My doctor scheduled me for an induction at 6 am on the morning of the 12th. I had it in my mind that I did not want to use any kind of pain medication. I wanted to be fully conscious of what was happening to me, both mentally and physically, while I was giving birth. I wanted to know what it felt like. I did not want the experience to be diluted or altered in any fashion. I was also concerned about the baby’s well-being and did not want to use medication for that reason. I told this to my doctor a few days before I was scheduled for the induction. She told me to go easy on myself and to remember that I always had options.

I asked her about the Pitocin, which was the drug they were going to use to induce me. I asked her if the Pitocin would make my contractions more painful than if I were just having the normal, natural kind of contractions. She said she didn’t think so. She told me to ask for a birthing ball and to use the hot tub. I said I would.

I had kind of a panic attack the day before. I was afraid of the Pitocin and I was angry that I was scheduled to be induced only a week after my due date. I had always heard that your due date has a two-week margin on either side which is considered safe. You could give birth two weeks before or two weeks after and still be in your window. I was angry at myself for letting them schedule me so soon. I called my doctor’s office. I talked to a nurse and told her that I didn’t want to come in in the morning and that I wanted to wait and see if I could go into labor on my own. She put me on hold. She came back on the line and spoke to me in a very even, quite tone that I could tell was meant to be comforting. She told me that the doctors at the practice were still going to recommend that I come in at the scheduled time. She said that after you go one week past your due date, certain risks to your baby increase significantly. She explained that the doctors at my practice commonly scheduled inductions at a week after the due date. She said something about how babies are growing very quickly toward the end of pregnancy and how that can translate into a more difficult labor for both the baby and the mother. I told her I would call back.

I called my friend Kristin because I knew she had been induced. I wanted to ask her about it. She told me it was the most painful thing she had ever experienced. She told me she was in labor for twelve hours. But she told me I was tough and that she had faith in me. This is not what I wanted to hear. Soon after I got a message from another friend who had been induced. She said her labor was so great that she fell asleep until it was time to push. She said her doctor had to come in and literally wake her up from a nap to tell her that the baby’s head was crowning and that it was time to push. She said I should be in and out in a few hours and then she said “you’ll love it”. I guess that’s what I wanted to hear. I called the doctor’s office back and said I would come in as scheduled. I think the bottom line was that I just couldn’t stand any more waiting and thinking about it. I felt like I should have handled it differently but I just wanted to have the baby and stop worrying about having the baby.

That night I slept on a pallet in the front room. Actually I just lay there staring at the lights on the Christmas tree for most of the night. I might have slept a few minutes here and there. My sister slept near me on the couch for a little bit I think.

Jay and my sister and I got up very early. Everything was packed in the car and ready to go. The three of us got in Jay’s car and left for the hospital. It was still dark. I was very nervous, but also very excited. I felt like I had been waiting and waiting to receive the biggest and best present anyone had ever given me, but I wasn’t even sure what it was going to be. Jay’s ex-wife called him on the drive to the hospital and wanted him to take one of their sons to school, or something. I can’t quite remember the details of the call but I remember him telling her, “I’m taking Mandy to the hospital to be induced” and I felt like I was about to spin off into space.

I kept going over breathing techniques in my mind. Jay and I had rented lots of tapes from the library and practiced our breathing. I had even written out a list of what techniques we were going to use at what stages of labor. I think I included diagrams of how to use the birthing ball as well. I was pretty much anticipating that I would forget everything I learned and I wanted to have something there to remind me. I guess I didn’t trust that Jay would remember either.

My room was big and nice. We were on the seventh floor, I think. There was a big private hot tub in the bathroom just for me to use. We set up a CD player and Joy had brought lots of mix CDs that we put together. My nurse was really nice. But she said something about Pitocin contractions being “wicked” and that scared me. I told her about how I didn’t want any pain medication and she kind of said the same thing my doctor had told me about leaving my options open. I changed into a gown and they got me hooked up to an IV and they started the Pitocon at a low setting.

Things from here on are blurrier. My sense of time got all screwy. I remember the contractions starting and me thinking that it was not going to be a big deal. I was doing my breathing and I was walking around the halls and wheeling my little IV stand with me. For a while I walked around with my sister and my friend Brooke, who showed up sometime that morning. We were laughing and talking. We walked around and around. At some point the pressure was getting a little more intense. We went back to the room and I think this is when I got on the birth ball. I had also brought my “focal point” which was a collage I had made with a picture of a lotus and the words “om mani padme hum” and some glitter. We got that out and put it on the floor where I could stare at it. I think this is when I started wanting someone to squeeze my hands during my contractions. Brooke and my sister and Jay were all taking turns holding my hands and squeezing them and doing my breathing with me while I was sitting on the ball and bouncing around. I was staring at the lotus picture.

I can’t remember how many times I saw my doctor or my nurse. I was very focused on my breathing and I was starting to need it to anchor me through the contractions, which were getting increasingly intense. I can remember at the beginning saying things like, “it doesn’t hurt- there’s just a lot of pressure”.

At some point I got into the tub and turned the jets on. Jay sat on the bathroom floor beside me and held my hand. We kept doing the breathing. I remember still feeling pretty on top of things at that point. My mom showed up while I was in the tub. I was happy she was there. I’m not sure how much time had passed at this point- several hours I guess. I remember my doctor coming in while I was in the tub and commenting to the nurse on our breathing- she said something like, “I haven’t seen anyone breathe like that in a long time!” and at the time I took it as a compliment and felt really proud. But later I felt like she had made the remark like, “Oh how cute- let’s see how long that lasts”. In our birthing class one of our teachers asked how many people intended to get an epidural and like everyone but us and I think one other couple said that they did. I thought that seemed like a cop-out. Anyways I guess it’s kind of quaint now when doctors have couples that come in determined not to use pain medication.

I got out of the tub and back onto the ball. I think it was my mom and Brooke that were holding my hands at that point. Jay went to find something to eat. While he was gone I started to have a lot more pressure and the pain was starting to be harder to stay on top of. I was starting to get scared. I couldn’t believe how intense the pressure was. I felt like my insides were going to rip apart. I started to worry that the baby would be squashed by what my insides were doing to her. I don’t know how many times my Pitocin dosage had been adjusted by this point, but basically every time my doctor would come in to check me, she would act surprised at how I wasn’t making more progress, so she would up my dosage. I think it was about this point that I started to think about the torture machine from The Princess Bride. I started to think that my baby was just not ready to come out and that it was wrong of us to be trying to force her.

Jay felt horrible when came back. He still talks about how he shouldn’t have left and how he feels like it was his fault that my pain got worse, but it wasn’t. Finally I couldn’t keep my breathing even. It was all I could do to keep from doubling over. I was writhing around and grabbing onto the hand rails on the bed. I told Jay I wanted medicine for the pain because I just couldn’t handle it. Maybe if I had been further along I would have had a little glimmer of hope to help me along, but I don’t think I had even reached 5 cm yet. The nurse called the anesthesiologist. I had been in labor for almost eight hours by then.

They asked everyone to leave except for Jay. I remember there was a med student there watching and the anesthesiologist was explaining to him everything she was doing. They were talking very casually and I remember it made me angry. I was sitting up on the bed and she asked me to lean forward, which was really uncomfortable. She told me that it was very important that I hold still, which was also uncomfortable, and nearly impossible. Jay was in front of me and I asked him to squeeze my hands so I could focus on that. The anesthesiologist gave me the shot in the spine and then she said “Uh-oh. You don’t want to see that!” And I wanted to murder her but I was in too much pain. I had to ask, “You don’t want to see what?” before she explained that she had drawn some spinal fluid back out when she took the needle out. She said, “Your vertebrae must be really close together,” like it was my vertebrae’s fault she drew the spinal fluid and I wanted to murder her again.

All of a sudden I had a horrible headache. I couldn’t see straight and I had to lay back. I said, “I have a headache” and when I said it my voice sounded very far away, like it wasn’t even mine. The anesthesiologist said, “That happens sometimes when we get spinal fluid. It’s called a spinal headache. If it doesn’t get better you’ll have to come back and get a blood patch.” Murder.

Fortunately it went away. All the pain went away and I felt like I was in a furry cocoon, looking up at everyone. I could hear all the monitors beeping and whirring and hear everyone talking but I felt like I was somewhere else. My nurse asked, “How does that contraction feel?” and I said, “What contraction?” I looked up at the monitor and I saw that I had just had a huge contraction. I couldn’t feel a thing. This is when I felt really scared. I felt like my body wasn’t mine. I had to lay back in bed with all of these tubes and wires sticking out of me and just wait. I could wiggle my toes but that was about it.

I think we kept the room pretty dark after this. Or maybe it’s just because it was getting dark outside, I’m not sure. There was a long stretch where we were all just quiet. Jay was at the foot of my bed holding on to my feet. I remember my nurse’s shift was over and a new nurse came in. She wasn’t as nice. I remember she turned the volume down on the baby’s heart rate monitor and it scared me half to death. I asked her to turn it back up. I wanted to hear. I remember it sounded like horses galloping, and I pictured my baby on a tiny horse somewhere, galloping towards me. Everyone was quiet and I felt a sense of desperation. I think my sister knew and she read me a chapter from one of Pema Chödrön’s books. It was about embracing fear and it made me feel better. I let myself be afraid.

At some point the pain came back. It started as pressure and then turned into pain. My sister was sitting by my head and I had her squeeze my hand and I started concentrating on a ring she was wearing. My doctor kept coming in to check me but I was only at 6 centimeters, 7 centimeters. Then she was worrying about the baby’s heart rate and the fact that I had been having such intense contractions for so long and what that was going to do to the baby. They were afraid she wasn’t getting enough oxygen so they put a mask on me. One more accessory, I thought. I remember asking my sister to tell my mom that the oxygen mask wasn’t for me, that it was for the baby. For some reason in my mental state I thought that would be reassuring to my mom- I wanted her to know that I was OK, that they just wanted to try getting a little more oxygen to the baby. But of course we were one and the same.

I got to a point where I was feeling tremendous pressure. We called the doctor back in and she checked but I wasn’t quite there. She left and I waited some more. I think I was still looking at the ring and just trying to breathe. Finally I couldn’t stand it and the doctor came back in. Then it was time. My mom and Brooke went out to the waiting room, and Joy and Jay stayed. Then everything got very surreal. My doctor put on her scrubs and her mask. What seemed like an army of nurses came in, wheeling a bunch of carts. Everyone had masks on. They turned on some very bright lights up in the ceiling and spotlighted them down on me.

The not-so-nice nurse came to stand by my head and then it was time to push. She kept telling me to grab my knees and pull them up and apart and push. I was so weak I could barely move my legs. I had ripped the oxygen mask off at some point because I felt like it was strangling me, so Jay held it by my face so I could breathe from it between pushing. I pushed and pushed and pushed and tried to breathe. My sister said I pushed until my face was blue. Each time I finished with a push everything went black for a second, and then I would breathe into the mask and get ready for the next push. I didn’t know this happened at the time, but I guess my sister almost passed out. My doctor made her sit down and drink some juice.

The baby wasn’t coming out. My doctor started threatening an emergency C-section. She said she wanted to try using the vacuum. She said she could try three times and if that didn’t work I would get a C-section. I remember I looked at Jay and asked him if he thought that was a good idea. I felt like I had lost all my mental faculties and I didn’t want to make any decisions regarding the baby’s well-being. He said he thought it was a good idea.

On the second vacuum Pema’s head came out. I couldn’t tell what was going on down there because of my epidural and the local anesthetic the doctor gave me. Plus nobody was telling me. So I just kept pushing and then she was out. I remember Jay saying “Oh my God!” in this voice I had never heard him use before. But it wasn’t a bad thing. I knew it was over and that she was OK. The nurses were swarming around her on one of their carts and I heard her cry. Then I was shaking really bad and I felt like I was freezing. I wanted to see her but I was shaking too bad and I couldn’t even sit up. I decided to just try and relax because I knew she was OK and that I would get to see her in a minute. The nurses brought her over but I was shaking too bad to hold her. Jay got to hold her and he looked at her and talked to her and I think he sang to her a little bit.

My doctor was getting me cleaned up and giving me stitches while the baby was getting weighed and getting her tests and that stuff. The nurses said her heartbeat was a little fast and that they needed to take her to the nursery to observe her and make sure she was OK. They wheeled her out and suddenly everyone was gone except me and Jay. After a bit I asked Jay to go check on her and they brought her back in. Her heart rate had slowed to normal and they decided she had just been a little shell-shocked from the experience. No shit. I was in labor for eighteen hours.

Then I held her and it all faded away.