Lena's birth story took several weeks for us to process and document, but after a year, we've had enough space from it to finally publish it, on the day of Lena's first birthday, so that when she's a bit older she can fully understand her incredible journey into this world.
We love this baby more than we ever thought possible. Happy Happy Birthday to our Lovely Lenabel.
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On Thursday night, or I should say early early Friday morning, June 25th, 2010, I started having contractions. After weeks of waiting for just one Braxton Hicks, or anything that resembled a contraction, they finally came, and they came full on. Every ten minutes through out that night, I felt contractions that were not like anything I had thought or been told they would be. They did not feel at all like period cramps, they did not feel at all like Braxton Hicks, they felt deep and painful, and they kept me up. Every ten minutes I would get on all fours atop the bed and breathe through the contraction. When it subsided I would lie back down and try to rest until the next one came. This went on and on until 7 or 8 in the morning. Since the contractions weren't speeding up, or getting more painful (as if!), we didn't call the hospital and instead decided to get up for the day.
As soon as I left the bed, the contractions stopped, or I should say, decreased in frequency, from every 10 minutes to every half hour to an hour. Daniel and I decided to take a walk to see if that would speed up the contractions as many people had advised. So we walked around the neighborhood for an hour and nothing, the contractions seemed to have disappeared. And so we went about our day.
That evening the contractions came back, and again kept me up all night. This time I couldn't go through them alone, and woke Daniel up for every single one. We breathed together, and he massaged and stroked my back. I tried different positions to manage the pain, but the only position that I could tolerate was on all fours, and child's pose. So we did this all night long, until the morning, and again as soon as we got out of bed the contractions decreased in frequency, and sometime stopped all together.
This pattern, painful contractions through out the night went on for four nights, and every day they would die down. On Sunday I was feeling overwhelmed, saddened, disappointed, depressed, angry, and exhausted. Why wasn't my labor progressing? Why was a going through so much pain and work, but not enough to get me into the hospital and deliver my baby? After googling what I had been experiencing I found out that what I was going through was actually quite normal in some women, and it was called Promordal Labor, basically early labor that goes on for a long time and doesn't seem to progress enough to get you to Active Labor. I learned that the emotions I was feeling were normal, that feeling depressed and defeated and disappointed were all common during this period and that I shouldn't feel bad about my feelings. Well, at least I knew what I was going through now, it wasn't just a big mystery, and that helped to calm my anxiety and sadness a bit.
After another long Sunday night of contractions and several phone calls to the midwives at the hospital, I finally had had enough, and called HCMC to demand an appointment or admittance to Labor and Delivery. They obliged and at 9:30 on Monday morning we entered the hospital and were escorted to a room on the Labor and Delivery ward where the midwife told me promptly that I was going to have my baby today, si o si (as we say in Argentina). I was so scared they were going to send me back home, and so incredibly relieved when she told me I would be staying. She checked my cervix and I was dilated to 3 centimeters, which meant that at least the four days of hard work had gotten me somewhere. It was decided that what I needed most, and what might help bring about more frequent contractions, was sleep, and so I took a sleeping medicine to help me sleep and codeine to help mask the pain. I slept fitfully, but painlessly, for 6 hours, and when they checked my cervix again I had made it to 4.
It has been almost three months since Lenabel was born and since I started writing down this story. I must have had to take some distance from the experience, or maybe life just got too busy with a newborn baby to write everything that happened down. I'll start where I left off as best I can....
After getting some much needed sleep, I woke up feeling great, but not having progressed a whole lot. 3 centimeters to 4 centimeters was something, but not enough to get me where I needed to be. So at this point the midwife came in and presented me with my options. I could continue with the present situation, moving slowly, no meds, resting, etc., or I could get put on Pitocin to induce harder more frequent contractions, and this I could do with or without medications. Even though I felt better with some sleep in my pocket, it was pretty obvious to everybody that I was still pretty washed out and weak from the past four days. The midwife suggested I get on the Pitocin, and though I hadn't wanted to go this route when I had thought about my birth in advance, it was clear to me then that this was the way to go. And I also felt strongly that I wanted an epidural at this point. Pitocin induced contractions can be much harder and more painful than “normal”, and I had had enough pain. Of course this threw the whole water birth plan out the window, but I didn't care anymore. I just wanted to get the baby out fast and safe.
So in they came with the Pitocin drip, and quickly thereafter the anaesthesiologist came in with my epidural. I was scared getting the epidural put in, but truthfully it was probably the easiest part of my birth experience thus far. It went it in quick, didn't hurt much at all, left me still able to move my legs, and did an excellent job of masking the pain from the contractions. The Pitocin took me from 4 centimeters to 6. And here again I stalled.
There had been a shift change and a new midwife came in to explain my different options. The midwife on call, Kate, happened to be one of the midwives who I had seen frequently for my prenatal visits. This was reassuring in some ways, but also a bit disappointing for me, because though I liked this midwife she sometimes made me nervous. Something about her energy made me feel anxious, but at this point there was nothing to do, you can't just choose another midwife. In the end there couldn't have been a better midwife to help me with my birth, but I didn't know this then.
Kate suggested she break my water (amniotic sac) to increase the contractions and the dilating. There were all sorts of pros and cons to this procedure, but in the end Daniel and I felt that it was our best options, so we had her do it. The procedure took less than a minute, and it felt so strange and wonderful to feel the rush of fluid leave my body. Turns out there was miconium (baby poop) in the fluid so even without an epidural I wouldn't have been able to do a water birth. I progressed from a 6 to a 9. Of course there were all sorts of other things going on between these to markers, but I can't really remember everything. I do remember having to be put on oxygen because the baby's heart rate kept decreasing with every contraction, and the extra oxygen helped to keep her heart rate steady. I also remember being able to feel a lot of my lower body despite the epidural. I wasn't feeling the contractions, but I could definitely feel and move my lower half. It also seemed that the epidural had worked better on the right side of my body than my left. I asked for the anesthesiologist to come back and see if she could help get the epidural to work equally on both sides, and she came but wasn't able to really do much for me. She said she could increase the Pitocin drip, but I declined this offer.
After what seemed like an eternity I reached 9.5 centimeters, and Kate said it was time to push. I think this is the part that is so hard for me to write for some reason. Probably because so much emotion and work went into this part of the experience. It so happens that the epidural basically ran out at this point, and I was able to feel all of the contractions, the urge to push, and pain when I pushed. This part of my birth was so incredibly difficult. I was in a lot of pain, and I was working so hard. I remember feeling like I couldn't breathe, gasping for breath. With each contraction I would push, and there was this weird pain on my left side that I couldn't get rid of, that I had to push through to be able to keep pushing. I thought I would be vocal during my birth, but I never imagined that I would yell and scream and moan as hard and as loud as I did. I swear it was deadly, my screaming. The midwife would encourage me to go deep and low in my throat, and I would try this and it seemed to help with the pushing. I pushed on my side, tried to get on all fours but hated it, tried to be on my back but hated this too, and so continued to push in what I would call a very awkward position, all torqued, my upper body on my side, my lower body on my back. Daniel tried to come close to me and help out, but I preferred he stay to the back of the room, where I think he was content to be anyway, pacing back and forth, waiting for the birth of his child. The midwife, two nurses, and my doula were all around the bed, helping me with each contraction, encouraging me to push harder and longer. I asked for a C-Section repeatedly to no avail. Even as the baby's head was crowning I pleaded for a ride to the Operating Room.
Suddenly after an hour and a half of pushing the women around me started seeing baby's head bob in and out. With every push they could see it, and when the contraction subsided and I stopped pushing the head would slide back in. Kate encouraged me to push harder, which I did, and eventually, somehow, I felt the baby start to leave my body. It felt like a swoosh, like a slithering gush of something leaving. It felt amazing.
Out came Lena, Daniel was crying in the back, there was all this rushing around, since there had been miconium in the water they had to aspirate her lungs, and then after this they brought the baby to me. All I could feel was relief that I didn't have to push again, that I had birthed my baby. She was tiny and wonderful. Helpless and real. I was in awe at what we had accomplished, me and Daniel. A baby girl, Lena Isabel, was born on Tuesday morning at 4:58 a.m. She weighed 7 pounds 12 ounces, and measured 21 inches long.
