Avoiding the Rush

My wife went into labor on March 14th around 1 am. Thankfully, we slept between the contractions. Our birthing center is in Kirkland, WA, which is across a couple of notoriously clogged highways from our house. We decided to leave early, avoid rush hour, and stay at our friend Danica’s place nearby the hospital. That was one of our better calls.

Boris the Birthing Coach Cat

She labored there in the tub for a couple of hours. Not being a native East Sider, I've never been happier to be in Kirkland. Our friend Danica and Laurent's home was an oasis. Their cat, Boris, the birthing coach cat helped out, checking in on us constantly and occasionally barfing on the kitchen floor in sympathy. These doctor types tell you to time contractions. When they reach a certain period, you're supposed to call, drive, panic, etc. The advice we got was "give us a call when you're five minutes between contractions." What they don't tell you is whether or not this an arithmetic or a logarithmic progression! At 1am, they were 15 minutes. By 10am, they were 10, jumped to 4, back to six, leveling out at 5 for awhile. As it turns out, there is no answer to progression question, every woman is different and baby's come when they want to be born. Finally, her contractions were five, my wife's contractions were increasingly more intense. I called in, the midwife told us to hang out until we were two minutes apart. An eternity later, they were and we drove the longest five miles of our lives to the hospital.

Labor Enough for Twins

While we “only” got one child out of the deal, my wife basically labored enough for twins. She was in “back labor” alone for 10 hours or so naturally. That's when the baby's head is turned the wrong way (down towards the spine, rather the up). We arrived at the hospital around 10 p.m. or so. Her contractions were particularly intense at this point as we'd waitied until she was in the thick of it before driving in. (This was a good thing.)

My adrenaline was kind of pumping at this point, so I nearly lost it when I was handled a bunch of paperwork by the charge nurse. We'd pre-registered already, so I'd thought this was all out of the way. Even my wife was supposed to sign some HIPAA regulatory garbage. She was barely lucid as we stood at the desk staring at this clip board. I forged her name, signed mine, and thrust it back at Nurse Ratched. They then checked her vitals and finally got us settled in. Our experience at Evergreen was only up from there.

She labored throughout the night, increasingly exhausted. You can't overestimate the sheer physicality of labor. I have to say that Hollywood had this one a little more right than the Zen-like birthing videos we watched. There's no sense working yourself into a frezy beforehand, but we really weren't mentally prepared for the intensity. How could you be? We had 24 hours of "natural childbirth.

Naturally Medicated

At 7 am, the next day, the midwives agreed that it was time for an epidural. This allowed her to relax enough to ease the labor considerably. Hospital-types in this situation are, as a good friend of mine put it, "a study in non-verbal communication." The nurse and midwives are trading looks, glancing furtively at the heart rate monitors. The anestheselogist enters, makes a few commanding and reassuring noises. They glance at midwive, the midwives gives them a knowing look. I'm sitting here trying to figure all this out.

It's not like the hospital types are not communicating with you. You get the level of truth they think you can handle. The baby's heart rate is rising, mom's is rising. She's running a fever. The new midwive comes on board. After a couple hours of attempts, more furtive glances, she finally lays it down, "we need to get this baby out now or we should talk about suction." My wife, even in her semi-delirious state, locks in on that. The fetal heart rate monitor jumps along. The midwive reaches over and switches off the sound.

Up to this point, we'd been working our program pretty closely. She and I had practiced breathing exercises. We pushed, and pushed, and pushed. (Okay, I puffed and she pushed!)

After trying about twelve different positions from as many cultures, she finally had little Banjo at about 1 o’clock in the afternoon. I went into the lobby and cried for joy, relief, and general exhaustion.