The Birthing Segment

As promised, here are the details on how my labor went.

7:30 I come in, already dilated to a four, and am administered pitocin.

12:05 My water was broken by a crochet hook.

12:12 Contractions started.

1:00 Epidural received.

2:57 Dilated to an eight.

3:24 Fully dilated.

4:23 David Tucker McKay is born at 8 pounds 3 ounces, 21 inches long.

That's the short version. I'm not sparing many details on my account below.

David and I arrived at the hospital at 6:50, just in time for the 7 am shift change. By the time 7:15 rolled around they had me in a room with a lovely hospital gown. They checked, told me I was dilated to a four and promptly told me how lucky I was, since most women that are administered pitocin spend the longest time dilating to a four. Things progress and I talked with David and the nurses, making them laugh and keeping an overall light atmosphere. I felt confident that my healthy baby boy will be born by 7 pm. That was my goal, since I heard being induced can take twelve to eighteen hours.

They strapped some monitors to my stomach so we could measure my contractions and Tucker's heart rate. David and I played with the machine a bit. We saw what a real contraction looked like (a nice, steady incline with a peak then a nice, steady decline) and what me pushing by myself looked like (basically a straight line up then a straight line down). I had to keep readjusting to get comfortable, which kept tugging at the hospital gown. Eventually I just had it removed and gave birth in nothing but a bra.

Then the crochet hook broke my water. The fun stopped pretty promptly. I went into the birth convinced I was tough stuff, and that naturally birthing my child would be a cinch. I didn't even take a birthing class, since I had kidney stones in the past, a shattered collarbone and broken foot - among many other injuries along the road of life. Well, a kidney stone feels like somebody shoving a fiery dagger along your lower-back-hip area. The pain goes down, like I suspected contractions would.

Sadly, contractions encompass your entire body, not just your kidneys. Here's how mine felt. It was like somebody had set my bones on fire. Every time a contraction came, it was like somebody threw a tsunami of gasoline over my already smoldering flesh.

I didn't know what to do with myself. At first I held David's hand. That wasn't enough. Then I looked for something to put in my mouth so I could bite down. A contraction came. Without really thinking about it, I yanked David's arm toward my mouth, to which he promptly yanked away, both amused and repulsed at the idea of having his arm bit off. He then threw a towel at my face and said, "BITE THIS!!" The nurse at the monitors (named Heather) laughed pretty hard.

A few more contractions in I couldn't control myself. I was trembling, clapping my knees together and literally throwing my arms in the air. I had no idea what to do. I turned toward Heather and timidly asked for an epidural. She assured me I was making the right choice for me, but I was going to have to wait an hour and a half, since four other women had ordered an epidural before me and they only had one anesthesiologist on rounds that morning.

Since we had an hour to kill and the pain wasn't getting any better, I asked for a painkiller to be administered through an IV. It wasn't morphine, but it was something like it. That did the trick. At once, my head and body loosened up. It was like I was resting on the softest, solid cloud to ever exist. An hour flew on by and my contractions were now like hushed birds in the distance. I was aware of them, but they were far away. By the time the epidural came, the birds (contractions) had flown closer and were getting a bit harder to tune out.

The anesthesiologist came in the room, looking like a saint at first. Then he started reading. He listed all the potential, disastrous effects an epidural could administer to the body, all with a "you better take this seriously' face. I even considered sending him out of the room and taking my luck with the fiery contractions again. I timidly asked, "How often do these symptoms occur?" He broke a smile, promised "They're few and far between", and had me sign away any chance of me suing him. They put a numbing agent over my back and had me lean forward into Nurse Heather. I got three shots. For the first one, it caused me to involuntarily jump, as if someone had hit my knee just the right way...but in my back. I don't know what the next two were for, but at least one of them worked.

I felt all kinds of comfortable after that. The only part I had a problem with was the complete lack of mobility. The nausea hit and I casually asked for a puke bag. "It worked!" I said. "Thank you!" Then I puked. Nurse Heather laughed at the fact that I was thanking the anesthesiologist for making me puke. I laid back and they left the room, giving David and me some time to talk.

They came back and checked my cervix. When I heard the number eight I was confused and asked to hear the number again. They assured me that I was really that much closer to giving birth. Half an hour later I was fully dilated! We had to wait for my doctor, Margaret Huggins, to finish up another delivery. Twenty minutes passed, then Dr. Huggins came to the room and took a look. "I see hair!" She sang excitedly. "Do you want to know the color?" I said I'd wait until he was born to know. With the help of the monitor, Dr. Huggins and Nurse Heather coached me on when to push, if I couldn't feel the contraction myself. More often than not, I knew when I was having a contraction. I pushed two to four times per contraction, since I wanted my boy out as soon as possible.

Another nurse came to the room and said, "Aubrey, your mom's here." I was baffled, but half jokingly said, "Tell her she can come on in," not thinking that my mom would actually want to see her last born child having a first born son. Boy was I wrong. A few minutes later my mom slipped into the room and quietly sat in a chair on the far side of the room. That was the only time I noticed her for the next hour, since I was a bit preoccupied with birthing.

The top half of Tucker's head was the hardest. I would push an inch out, then half an inch would slip backwards. Nurse Heather and Dr. Huggins kept up the constant chant of "push-push-push-push" per contraction, with lots of praises while I was recovering. "You did so great!" They assured me. I'm pretty sure they said that to everyone, but it still encouraged me. Finally, I felt a warm gush of fluid and saw Nurse Heather towel off some strange creature. I didn't register that it was mine. The next thing I knew, they had put this baby on my stomach! They would have put him on my chest, but my umbilical cord was too short. I had to distract myself, so I didn't panic.

"That's a baby...." I said. Then I looked to Dr. Huggins. "They say the placenta is hard to deliver..." I had started to say, but she held up a pillow case sized sack coated in blood. "Nope!" Dr. Huggins said, smiling. My eyes got the widest as they had ever gone in my life. "I don't want to eat that," I had said, not really even thinking of how offensive that may have been to say. Dr. Huggins and Nurse Heather laughed and got the placenta out of the way. Nurse Heather had clamps on the umbilical cord. "If I have to cut the cord, I charge double," Dr. Huggins said as Nurse Heather put some scissors in David's hand. David was nervous as separated the physical bond between me and our son.