Originally published in Mommy Magazine in 2006.
No one ever told me about the bedside commode.
I spent nine months (ten if you’re counting) telling anyone who asked that I had no pre-conceived notions of labor. Sure, I wanted to go natural, but aside from that I claimed to be an open book waiting for my birth story to magically appear in gilded lettering.
In reality, I’d seen enough episodes of A Baby Story and Birth Day to know that I wanted a shower. I wanted to surround myself in steaming hot water while practicing calming breathing and sucking on ice chips. I wanted my husband by my side, the lights dimmed, and a myriad of comforting labor positions to choose from. Sure, it would hurt, but I’d follow my birth plan like a slightly foul-mouthed goddess.
A week after my due date had passed, my husband and I cruised by labor and delivery at 7 am to make sure the goo I’d been experiencing for three days wasn’t amniotic goo. To my surprise, I heard the words, “well hon, looks like you’re having a baby today.”
Because an ultrasound had shown low amniotic fluid, because I was experiencing early labor pains, and because I was a week overdue, they decided to start an immediate induction.
Strike one against my secret birth plan expectations.
However, my excitement was only matched by the extremely disconcerting realization that all I’d had to eat that morning was a bagel. Just a bagel. And maybe half a glass of water. Clearly no one understood that without a steady supply of sugar cookies I had a tendency to turn into a 175 pound mommy-monster.
Dr. S, a calming and pleasant man who’d always reminded me of a Zen airline pilot, came into my room after I’d finished answering what seemed like several hundred questions about my personal history. I’d barely settled into the knees-apart and take –a-deep-breath position when I found myself sitting in a warm bunch of wetness. This is why babies want their diapers changed in a hurry, I thought. He talked me through the next steps, explaining that the device they’d use to measure my contractions would also be flushing saline to keep everything buoyant and happy in babyland.
Nodding and flushed with excitement—I was having a baby soon!—I announced that I had to pee. The baby was repeatedly head-butting where that early morning half a glass of water had expanded my bladder to full capacity. I glanced across the room at my beautiful private bathroom, ready to hobble over and find sweet relief.
Then my first of a handful of amazing labor nurses delivered my second dose of birth plan smashing reality.
The bedside commode. Plastic. Unforgiving. And anything but private.
It was right about then that my best friend Meagn, my mother Karyn, and Nancy–my doula—all arrived in a flurry of womanly support and excitement. It was also right about then that I wanted absolutely nothing to do with any of them. Yes, it’s great to see you, I thought. Yes, I was extremely relieved that my doula has arrived so quickly, and yes, I was ecstatic that my best friend remembered my laptop and threw in the added bonus of Pirates of the Carribean on DVD.
But I had to pee! And not in front of people. Not with strange tubes extending from my nether regions and a pad soaked with questionably-colored fluid stuck to my butt. I didn’t mind flashing my (perky new) mommy boobs and I was beyond attempting to wear real panties, but something about the combination of increasing whoa-that-actually-hurts pain and a big open room just wasn’t doing it for me.
I kicked everyone out, did the deed, crawled back into bed, and we were ready to go.
For about an hour, despite that first of many uncomfortable run-ins with the plastic bedside throne, labor was the coolest thing ever. I had my husband cheering me on, my mom and best friend to talk to, and the expert and loving support of my doula, Nancy. I sucked on an orange popsicle, listened to Sublime, and watched the contraction monitor rise and fall in jerky little waves. I even danced around a little while grinning for pictures.
“Look, that one went up to forty!,” my husband would exclaim encouragingly.
Then, between what felt like one contraction and the next, everything ceased being fun. Suddenly it wasn’t quite as entertaining to hear that the magic red numbers on the monitor were starting to climb again. I could tell without looking. I could feel them.
And I wanted everyone to go away.
Things got serious after that. My mother and best friend headed out for lunch and returned only to be kicked out by my apologetic husband who had the unfortunate duty of trying to translate my pointed, pained looks and glares. The Pitocin drip had my contractions coming on with extreme regularity, and they were starting to push toward the top of the charts. None of the positions that had felt good during my Prepared Childbirth classes worked. I wanted to curl into a ball somewhere warm and dark and similar to unconsciousness.
For the first of many times, I started to think, ‘I can’t do this.’ Pause. Stop. Reverse. There’s no way this baby is coming out, I thought. It hurt so bad at the tip top of each contraction that I found myself silently chanting, ‘I’m never going to do this again. I’m never going to do this again.’
And then, for a while, each little break would bring me newfound confidence and determination. Sure, I was only dilated to four centimeters and it had been several hours. But a baby was coming. A beautiful perfect baby boy and I was going to do this—as long as my husband was there to hold my hand and Nancy was there to rub lavender on my feet and calmly remind me that my body knew how to have babies.
Around five in the early evening, I asked for a half dose of Nubain. The pain was simply more than I could handle, and I was finally able to swallow my pride enough to try something. I didn’t want an epidural for several reasons. It felt like giving in. It scared me. I didn’t want to be even more confined than I already was with an internal monitor.
The drug did the trick for two hours, and when it wore off, it was too late to have any more. The contractions were coming again and again, with 30 second breaks. Once in a while they’d come one on top of the next with no break at all. I’d dilated to an eight, and then the strength of the contractions had caused swelling in my cervix and I’d dropped back down to a five. At the apex of each contraction I found myself hoping for a cesarean delivery. I was convinced that there was no way that kid was going to fit.
Then Nancy, like an angel—and very much to the relief of my mother who had been hiding in the doorway listening to me moaning like a loon—calmly suggested that I go for the epidural. My body was simply too tense with pain. I was losing touch with my own natural ability to open and give birth.
Once I managed to get “yes” out, time couldn’t move fast enough. All those ‘I wanted the anesthesiologist RIGHT AWAY’ stories made a lot more sense. I was scared of the needle, but when it came down to it, the whole process went by efficiently and the worst part was sitting still through a long contraction that went right off the chart for nearly ninety seconds.
The next moments can only be described as absolute bliss. I reclined in my bed, felt a rush of eerie chill down my spine, and then I felt… nothing. I stared at the monitor, watched the numbers rise and fall, and felt no pain. I brought my mom and Meagn back in, remembered how to breathe, and even managed idle conversation.
But the newfound tranquil mood was quickly dampened by a sobering talk from Dr. S and his associate Dr. C, a doctor I’d spoken on the phone with several times when—as any new mom—I’d been repeatedly convinced I was going into early labor. They explained that because my amniotic fluid had shown traces of meconium and because it had now been nearly 12 hours, I was looking at the very real possibility of a c-section.
I listened and nodded, but I wanted to cry. Could this be the last big blow to my birth plan? Surgery terrified me. Now that the pain wasn’t so overwhelming and panic-inducing, I wanted the experiencing of birthing my son vaginally. It was a personal desire and had always been a personal preference. (Minus those few years as a kid that I’d been convinced that babies came out of an entirely different area and that if that was the case, I wanted a nice straightforward c-section.)
Once again, Nancy saved the day. She rallied everyone in the room around me, and with their energy and their physical support, I focused on relaxing through each contraction. I thought about opening, about guiding the baby down. They helped me rock from side to side when I couldn’t move on my own. They made the room a calming place filled with love and support, and when Dr. C took over as my primary doctor at the end of Dr. S’s weekend-long shift, he did something magical that I’m very glad I couldn’t see or feel, and announced that I was free to continue laboring on my own.
Around midnight they turned the lights off and everyone settled around me to nap. I closed my eyes and listened to the steady sound of my son’s little heartbeat. My husband slept on cushions on the floor beside me, my mother went into the hall to talk to my dad. Nancy and Meagn rested in chairs, and every once in a while my nurse would enter quietly and check on things.
Just after one am she did an internal check and quietly informed me that I appeared to be dilated to ‘a rim.’ The room seemed to wobble around me as I realized what that meant. A rim. As in ten. As in ten centimeters. As in pushing. As in I’d made it. As in we were going to have a baby.
“You’re going to have this baby!” Nancy echoed, grinning brightly and infusing me with confidence. She grabbed one leg and the nurse grabbed the other and I gave what was supposed to be a little practice push to see if I could push away the last tiny bit of my cervix.
I’ll never be able to describe how relieving and exciting and fun it was to start pushing. This I could do! I was a baby making machine. I was a goddess. I was ready to get that damn thing out!
And when it came down to it, my body really did know what to do. The Pitocin had long since been turned off. The epidural was still in full force but I could feel the pressure of the contractions. I arched and held my breath and pushed as hard as I could and both Nancy and my delivery nurse let me know that I should probably stop pushing. Quickly. The baby had crowned.
The next minutes went by in a frenzy. “Get my mom!” I yelled, despite having spent my entire pregnancy warning her that I didn’t want her in the same room as my vagina when it was go time.
It may have had something to do with that exclamation, or the big huge bright light they turned on, or the sudden influx of doctors from the NICU who were there to make sure the baby hadn’t inhaled any meconium, but my husband abruptly wavered to a standing position with an extremely bewildered look on his face.
“One minute I was sleeping and the next I was holding a leg,” he describes it.
Dr. C appeared in front of me, encouraging and no-nonsense at the same time. He had mineral oil and assured me that he’d do everything he could to avoid an episiotomy if possible. Monday the 10th had become Tuesday the 11th and despite the late hour he radiated assurance and strength.
They pulled the internal contraction monitor out and I gagged into a bedpan a few times to make sure I wasn’t going to hurl during my finest hour. For a second, I was scared of the lack of monitoring. How would I know when to push? How would I know what to do? And then the pressure radiated at my hips and back and belly and I simply knew. I entered the most amazing state of being I’ve felt my entire life. With a soft chorus of encouragement and trust around me, I pushed. And breathed. And pushed. And breathed. And in less than four contractions, George shook my leg gently and told me to open my eyes.
I stared at my son’s head. They paused us like that, taking the necessary precautions to clean out his airways before I delivered the rest of his little body. Look at that head of hair, I thought—unknowingly foreshadowing the first statement from nearly everyone who would meet my son from that point on. I squinted at the little wires sticking out of his head where they’d inserted a tiny monitor to check his heart rate hours before. I craned my neck to try to see his face. I waited for some sign of life.
Then he cried. He cried—angry and loud and confused—and I laughed and they let me push and in seconds my tiny squirmy bloody wet son was having his cord cut and my husband and I transformed from a couple to a family in one slimy brilliant moment.
After that, what my husband described as “the bloodiest of the commode trips” didn’t phase me. I had to sit on my plastic adversary one more time to prove that I could take the magical wheelchair trip out into the world with my son, and I stumbled with all the energy I could to do it all by myself.
With everyone in the room.
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