Max will be 4 months old on Saturday. He’s been such a joy so far. My Aunt Nancy asked me to tell her Max’s birth story and I’m glad because I have been meaning to get it down on paper (or at least electronic paper). And since I was writing it down, I thought it would make a good post for our blog. So here it is, Max’s birth story.
Max was born on June 7, 2007 at 6:39pm. It was a Thursday. I went into labor the night before around 11:30pm. We took a long walk to Sonic for a strawberry fresh fruit slush that night, which in hindsight was the telltale energy burst that everyone talks about just before going into labor. We got home about 10pm that night and I can’t really remember what I did in the hour or so before getting ready for bed, but at around 11:30 my water broke. I was standing in the bedroom getting ready to go to bed when I felt the trickle down my leg. Todd was in the room with me and I told him what had happened. This was it. Our baby was coming. I was overcome with a strange feeling, not quite fear, not quite excitement. It was something in between those two feelings, but with a strong sense of calm that underscored everything.

The contractions started pretty quickly after my water broke and I asked Todd to play the Rainbow Relaxation CD that I had been listening to as part of our Hypnobirthing practice.

We planned to have a doula attend our birth and had met with her a few times during the previous months. Todd called Angela, our doula, to let her know that my labor had started, that we planned to stay at home for a while and that she might be expected to go to the hospital in the middle of the night.

I tried to go back to bed, but it just didn’t feel right. The amniotic fluid was still flowing so I decided to stay in the bathroom, which would be the easiest room to clean later. After all, birth is a messy process. Todd and I laid on the floor of the bathroom for the next few hours letting the contractions do their thing, while I listened to the Rainbow Relaxation over and over again. I called to check in with Angela whenever something seemed to change or when I felt like I needed to talk to someone who knew about the process of birth. Angela would talk me through whatever it was I was experiencing in a calm and respectful voice, offering suggestions about how to deal with particularly painful contractions. From what I remember, the contractions were all over the place as far as intensity, which probably means something, but I don’t remember.

At around 5am I decided it was time to go to the hospital. It was still dark outside and when I got into the car I noticed our neighbors out on their porch, but I was too deep into my own head to acknowledge them. It’s like I was aware of everything around me, but didn’t want to come out of my relaxation state to acknowledge anything unless it was really really important. Once we were all loaded into the car, I couldn’t wait to get on the highway. Athens has brick streets, which are pretty uncomfortable when you are in labor. I closed my eyes and tried to maintain the calm hypnotic state I had achieved at home. I don’t remember seeing the sun come up, but when we pulled up to the door of the hospital, the sun was up and it was light outside. With the break of day, the calm quiet mood of the night vanished.

Slowly I got out of the car and walked into the hospital to the registration desk. They sent me straight to the birthing center, while Todd stayed at the registration desk to fill out some paperwork. I wasn’t freaking out or anything, actually I was quite calm, but I could hardly talk. Not because of the pain exactly, but because I was trying not to exert an unnecessary energy. I was walking so slow, that someone coaxed me into a wheel chair and I was wheeled to the birthing center.

At some point, Todd had joined me in the birthing center and Angela was there too. In the birthing room, the nurses began asking me all kinds of questions. I took my time answering them, trying to maintain my calm meditative state. I said what I could between contractions and the nurses took this as a cue to use quite slow tones with me. This set the mood for the rest of the day. Once all the routine stuff was done like a blood pressure check and a 20 minute fetal monitor, I was checked by one of the nurses to see how far along I was. I heard her say that I was a “stretchy 8”. I was definitely in labor and would be birthing the baby soon.

The next few hours were kind of a blur. I remember Dr. Anzalone coming to check on me during his lunch break, and at that point I was in the birthing tub and had opened to 10cm. The nurses tried to get me to do some pushing, but my contractions just weren’t strong enough to make me feel like pushing. I tried lots of different birthing positions; on the bed, in the tub, on the commode and on the birthing stool, but the baby was taking his sweet old time making the decent.

Several times during the day, I remember just laying on the bed resting for a while. I wasn’t able to take a nap, but it was nice to just lie there. My contractions still weren’t strong enough to make me feel like pushing, and so I allowed the nurses to coach me. In my birth plan I had specifically said that I didn’t want anyone counting or directed pushing. I changed my mind about this because I found it helpful when the nurses would give me feedback on my pushing. We would try some pushing and then take a break for a while. Finally, my contractions were strong enough so that I felt like pushing and that’s when Max came.

We had made a birth plan and it had a lot of stuff in it about our birth preferences. It included specific things I wanted or didn’t want during labor and specifics on how we wanted to spend the first moments with our newborn. If the baby was born healthy, I wanted it handed directly to me.

When he came out he was handed directly to me and I couldn’t believe how beautiful he was. Not long after he was handed to me, while the nurses were cleaning up the room (birth is a messy, messy event!), I felt a warm trickle on my belly. And I exclaimed, “Aw, he’s peeing on me!”(in the most loving mommy way, of course). But it wasn’t pee, it was poop! Lots of it! My baby had pooped all over me and I didn’t even care. I was just so happy he was in my arms.

We also didn’t want anyone doing anything with the baby until after we had time to bond with the baby and he had a chance to breastfeed. For the most part our wishes were respected. He didn’t even get a bath until almost midnight, after grandma and grandpa had a chance to get to the hospital. We held that crusty baby for hours, basking in his beauty.

As for the rest of the birth plan, our wishes were respected and I was able to have a natural birth with no pain medication, free to labor without being hooked up to an IV or EFM (electronic fetal monitor). I feel like this was the best possible way to bring Max into the world.