His Birth Story
Updated: Oct 28, 2022
This is a long post about the hardest day of our lives. It's meaningful to share with our loved ones, but more importantly, this is an attempt to finally recount the events of his birth in writing, to capture the details for a time far in the future when some part of us misses that day.
Laboring at Home
In the early hours of Monday, September 26, 2022, I was getting up every few hours to use the restroom. Around 3am, I was awake, lying in bed, noticing irregular contractions. Leaving Zak asleep, I got out of bed to whip up scrambled eggs. Before I could even turn on the stove, I felt an urgent need to take a dump.
After I had evacuated my bowels, I wandered downstairs where Arthur was sleeping on the couch. I rolled my yoga ball to the living room and began playing Bo Burnham's Inside on Netflix to distract me through early labor. Not ten minutes after turning on the comedy special, I was interrupted by another emergent urge to take a dump.
When I wiped and saw the bloody show, my body immediately shuddered into uncontrollable shaking. A tremendous sense of fear washed over me. Zak was upstairs asleep, and as much as I pride myself on being an independent, self-sufficient woman, I was frozen in place and terrifyingly alone.
By some feat, I shuddered my way upstairs and finally woke up Zak. It was 4am.
Still shaking, I hopped into a scalding shower to breathe through contractions as Zak timed. Zak passed me a protein bar between contractions, which were already only 5 minutes apart. After 3 contractions, the tracking app alerted "It's time to go to the hospital!" so Zak called our midwives. They told us to continue tracking, and when the contractions were at least 5 minutes apart for a full hour, they'd meet us at the birth center. I promptly puked in the shower.
At 5am, the hour of contractions was up. I had stopped shaking and the surges were 3 minutes apart. We left the house with puke drying in the shower.
Our Team
We'd spent more than a year cultivating a relationship with our birth team. A midwife at the birth center, Camille, cared for me throughout our miscarriage last year. I met with our doula, Hayley, before we even started to try to conceive, when we started to build a support system that represented what we wanted to experience through the birth of our children.
We found ourselves exploring local birth centers because neither of us are super comfortable in hospital and/or medical settings. Specific to the idea of labor and delivery, I wanted to know the people in the room, I wanted to avoid an epidural as well as other medication for a number of reasons, including previous experiences reacting poorly to medication that reduces blood pressure. I wanted Zak and I to share in the experience, and for him to be closely connected to me as a birth partner from start to finish.
Driven by these preferences, Zak and I found a birth center with incredible staff and midwives. We took classes to prepare for an unmedicated labor and delivery. We crafted a playlist of moody, deep music for us to get lost in. We met with our doula in sessions about crafting a birth plan and preparing for the fourth trimester. As we carefully curated a support system and a birth plan that reflected our values and desires for the experience, my therapist reminded me: this plan centers around someone who hasn't read the plan.
At the Birth Center
When we arrived at the birth center, I was 5cm dilated.
By 5:30am, I was sitting on a yoga ball in the shower at the birth center, with hot water pattering against my lower back. Zak lit a candle and placed it on the sink where I could see it. Thousands of miles away, my parents were burning the same candle, so we'd see it burning and know we were with one another even though we were far apart.
Thus began my labor. The room was dark, with candles burning and the low hum of hand-selected Modest Mouse, Tame Impala and Sturgill Simpson songs to match the tone of the room. I breathed through every surge channeling the hypnobirthing techniques that resonated most.
I imagined a bowl in my belly, with my baby laying inside. Smoke filled the bowl and billowed around the baby, spilling out into my core. As I breathed in, the smoke crawled up my back and at the top of my breath, the smoke ran over my head and descended down my chest with my exhale. The smoke changed colors to represent what I needed most with every surge. Some breaths, the smoke was lavender for patience. Others, the smoke was tangerine for energy.
With each exhale, I hummed and blew my breath down. I recalled one of the birth mantra cards scattered around my house: I believe in falling, sinking, melting down. Down, down, down.
Zak held me for much of this time. In what felt like no time at all but was actually a couple of hours, Hayley, my doula, asked if I was ready for a cervical check. I was 10cm dilated and it was time to get in the bath to push. I remember looking at the clock, it was past 9am and I thought to myself, "We'll be meeting our son before noon."
In the tub, I was surrounded by my doula, a midwife, a birthing assistant and Zak, who held my hand, brushed my hair and coached me through every breath. Zak watched the birth assistant ready her pen with an eye on the clock app, ready to note our son's time of birth.
But minutes turned into hours. After two hours in the tub, my midwives checked his positioning and asked me to change positions outside the tub. They led me to the bed, where I pushed on my back. They explained to us that they suspected our baby was "OP" or sunny-side up, which meant that his back was against my back instead of my belly, and his face was being crunched against my public bone instead of easily moving past it.
I pushed on my back, pulling tug-o-war style on a rope against a revolving door of midwives. I pushed on a stool, lunging on one leg and then the other. I pushed on the toilet, seated backwards clutching a pillow.
In total, I pushed for more than four hours, unmedicated.
To the Hospital
As I pushed on the toilet, I realized I was reaching a breaking point. The doula asked Zak to leave the room, drink some water and a breath. Between surges, I asked a question I hoped to never ask: what is going to happen next?
The midwives explained to me that after four hours of pushing, my care timed out at the birth center. We'd need to move to the hospital.
My team saw the heartbreak on my face and assured me that the birth I desired was still possible. At the hospital, I could take an epidural and get some rest before starting to push again. I began to breathe through my contractions again while the team made a plan for the short 5 minute journey to the hospital.
I was ushered into the passengers seat of our car with Zak at the wheel. He followed our midwives to the ER entrance, where I was wheeled into the L&D room. The contractions I had in the car were excruciating--the strongest pressure I had felt so far--but they were quickly outdone by the contraction I had seated in a wheelchair in the hospital elevator on the way to L&D.
The L&D room was quickly filled by a swarm of nurses calling orders and asking me intake questions, including my date of birth, allergies, the date of my last period and insurance information. My midwives continued to direct hospital staff to my chart. Within a minute of getting into the room, a nurse shoved her hand inside me to check my dilation. As I actively breathed through a contraction in Zak's arms, the anesthesiologist commanded: "for this next contraction, don't move and arch your back like a cat." As urgent my needs were, each interaction felt like a tremendous violation; the clash between hospital staff and my team was an eruption, a violent change in the tone of the birth we had hoped to have.
After barking back at the anesthesiologist to please give me a second and breathing into the position she needed me in, I was given an epidural. The room cleared almost as quickly as it filled, and the hospital staff left me, Zak and Camille, my midwife, to wait for the epidural to take.
A Turn for the Worse
With the epidural on its way to taking effect, I closed my eyes and breathed through the surges, returning to my baby in a bowl of smoke.
In this trance, I was deep within myself. I heard voices at a distance as I sank deeper into my breath. Those voices seemed to escalate, but I couldn't bring myself to pay attention. Later, Zak helped me understand what had happened:
After the room was cleared, Zak and Camille kept an eye on the vitals for both myself and the baby. The monitor showed the baby's heart rate dropping to critical levels in the 80bps range. They helped me move from one side to another, trying to move into positions to encourage the heart rate to adjust, with no such luck. Camille rummaged through the drawers in the room to find a monitor, which she placed on the baby's head to confirm they were reading the baby's heart rate, and not mine. It was his.
Camille called in the hospital staff, including nurses and doctors, to evaluate our situation. Soon after, she called my attention back into the room. I'll never forget the way she told me: You're going to push, and you really have to push. I knew by the way she said it that this was it.
The first push with an epidural, I couldn't feel a thing. I didn't even know if I was having an active contraction. And I immediately knew that it wasn't enough.
The doctor in the room advised that an emergency C-section was preferable to using a vacuum, which presented too many risks. I agreed, and within seconds I was in the operating room.
As the operating room filled, a nurse commented that I was unusually calm. But I wasn't calm, I was entirely disassociated.
Under normal, planned conditions, C-sections can be completed with an epidural, meaning that the birthing person can be awake, a sheet is drawn over their body for the operation and the baby is set on their chest. In this scenario, the birthing partner can be in the OR. However, if an epidural isn't available, the operation is done under general anesthesia. The birthing person is entirely unconscious and the birth partner is not allowed in the room.
Camille saw the writing on the wall and joined me in the OR. She let me know Zak wouldn't be able to be here, and she held my hand.
In the background, the anesthesiologist explained to the team in the OR that my epidural had only been in effect for about ten minutes, and that she'd bump it up to try to avoid general anesthesia. The nurses pricked at my abdomen and I very directly let them know I could feel every touch--please don't slice me. The anesthesiologist then grabbed my shoulder and brought a mask to my face. With a few breaths, I was out.
Our Son was Born
I woke up and Zak told me he was beautiful and had green eyes. The nurses put him on my chest and we soaked him all in.
Our son was born via emergency C-section at 3:25pm. He was born crying and covered in meconium.
His birth was nothing like we had planned. Now a month later, we're still processing everything that happened to bring our son into the world. Zak was right: he is beautiful beyond belief.
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