I was certain I wouldn’t see my due date with my second pregnancy. I’d had a crazy amount of pre-labour and a couple of false starts (that I didn’t embarrass myself by calling the midwife over, hurrah). And yet, the “perfect time” for this baby to arrive (Easter long weekend) came and went unphased by my whims, and my due date – a carefully guarded secret – loomed, came and passed without incident. That fine Saturday I hadn’t been rostered on to work, and yet I was still devastated by tiredness. I felt that if I really tried I could get this pre-labour to stick, to turn into something more. But dramatically in despair I didn’t try; I napped instead.
Sunday rolled around to give me a new attitude. I was through with this being pregnant shit. Done with the worry that my baby wasn’t growing, over the agony resonating in my hips and desperate to find relief from the haemorrhoids that plagued me. So I called my sister and we hit the gym for an hour of cardio… that turned into forty minutes and then a shopping adventure to Aldi. Oh well.
Once home I threw myself into housework with a vengeance. I took my raspberry leaf pills, bounced on my fit ball, rubbed my nipples until my hands went numb and enjoyed chilli in my quesadilla at dinner time. My ever-present pre-labour stood staunchly by me, neither leaving nor giving into my desire for a deeper relationship, yet still I persisted, dragging my family out for a long post-dinner stroll (or waddle. Because that’s what you do when your hips feel like they are giving out and you’re trying to step carefully to not aggravate your fresh crop of anal coral) and popping … puncturing … some evening primrose oil capsules before bed where I waited in the dark for the one last secret weapon against my stubborn cervix. Hello husband, nice of you to join me…
And so, satisfied with my day’s efforts, I fell asleep for a whole twenty minutes.
I knew this was it as the first contraction ripped through me, wrenching me away from whatever hormone-addled dream I’d been having. I took three contractions in bed, dozing in between, and then abandoned that as an option. I moved to the fit ball in my lounge room, bouncing in the dark while I downloaded a contraction timer. That little app told me something I should have paid more attention to: that my contractions were already lasting over a minute and I should phone my midwife. I didn’t. Labour had just started, let the poor woman sleep, I still probably had ten hours of this to go.
Mercifully my body purged itself, saving me from delivering a potentially embarrassing “poo baby” later, and I noticed what I can only assume was this “bloody show” that women in my birth group had been getting excited about all month long. It was something I didn’t notice with my first pregnancy, though I’d eagerly awaited it, and seeing it then was the confirmation I needed. This shit had gotten real. So had the pain. I woke my sleeping beauty, and he joined me in the dark of the lounge room, where he took over timing my contractions while I paced like a caged animal. It was 2am.
There was nothing in the world like this pain. I could have sworn the bottom of my distended belly was tearing open from within, and I held onto it with one hand in the hope some support would bring noticeable relief. It didn’t. My other hand was pressed to my back. By the Gods my tailbone hurt! I recalled my midwife reminding me of experiencing that back pain with my previous labour where I’d burnt my skin on the hot packs I used for respite. It was caused by the baby having its back to my back as it turned from my right side where I carry them to the left where they need to be for optimal decent. I remembered and yet I didn’t load the microwave with a hot pack of pain-relieving power because I knew I was wishful thinking, I knew there was no way I could be that far along and I needed to be smart – don’t break out your best pain relief strategies in early labour or you won’t have any effective tools when you need them.
I had the numbers in my head. My friend Katie, a hospital midwife who had taken on some of my care, told me that the general rule is that a second labour will be half the length of the first. My first was 30 hours from water’s breaking, or roughly 12 hours from 4cm, depending on how you want to keep track. So at worst I was looking at 15 hours at best it should be at least six. I had a long time to go, no matter which way you did the math.
The contractions just kept coming. Great waves of terrible ripping agony and horrendous cramping. It was inescapable, maddening. I tried to run from it anyway, pacing through my tiny unit: kitchen, loungeroom, hallway, lounge, kitchen, lounge, hall… running into the same things in the dark. There was nowhere to go, and if I could have gone there, there would still be the pain. Since when had I become such a soft-cock? I remember my first labour clearly. Some people say you forget the pain (bullshit) others say you forget until you’re in labour again and then it all floods back and you ask yourself why on earth you got pregnant a second time – that wasn’t true for me either. I remember and thus I went into labour for the second time unafraid. My first labour was an endurance test, it tried to wear me down with its near endlessness but at no point had I felt overwhelmed or like I couldn’t continue to bear the pain.
I tried bouncing on the fit ball, but that only seemed to invite stronger contractions. I continued to walk and swing my arms, to rub my back or bump, to sway my hips. I breathed. I breathed as deeply as my lungs would allow. I visualised and used the years of meditative discipline at my disposal. I breathed in earthy green healing power and imagined my body opening up like a flower and I breathed out the bright red pain, I let it go… but there was always more where that came from.
I took a shower and the relief was sweet, I could cope for a little longer. I looked out the bathroom window, watching the steam warp in the compound’s security light outside and tried to pull it together. I reminded myself I still had many hours to go: I would greet the sun before my child, of that I was sure. I returned to the lounge room but couldn’t say anything to Obi at first as another contraction took me with full force. Blinking owlishly at my phone he said “I think I may have missed a contraction” to which I replied “you missed a few, I was in the shower” His bewildered face as he asked me “you had a shower?” clued me in to the fact he’d been asleep on the couch for a while. I only laughed. In truth I felt bad for not letting him sleep longer when I had so long to go. Labour must be pretty boring for birth support people. But I couldn’t do it without him.
In spurts we talked. I wondered aloud if this time was much worse than last time or if somehow I was just weaker this time around. Less prepared, not as able to cope. Maybe I’d been cocky. He told me that from his angle it looked the same. That wasn’t reassuring. He also told me I was doing well or suggested things I could do to manage the pain. He rubbed my back and whispered sweet nothings, and didn’t pressure me when I refused his multiple requests to turn on a light. I began to suspect I couldn’t do it this time. I wanted pain relief! I wanted... something… though the Gods know that no way in hell would I be letting some guy stick a needle in my spine. I began to entertain thoughts of a c section with general anaesthetic. Stupidity and madness.
I took another shower, labouring there until the tank ran cold, and again felt mildly restored. I was able to tell Obi that I wasn’t coping, that I needed additional help and to please call Sonja. She would remind me why I had chosen this. She’d give me a back bone. It was just after 4am. I had a long way to go and every minute made me less sure I’d get there. I paced, I hit the walls. I moaned. I wanted to scream. Wanted to, but didn’t.
“I can’t do it” I choked out. “Please run me a bath…” I don’t know if I even finished that thought vocally, but inside I knew that if water was used too early in labour it could slow down or even stall contractions, so I aimed for that. I reasoned that I couldn’t be more than 5cm, probably wasn’t even in established (real) labour yet, and nevertheless the contractions kept coming. Some did not end before the next one began.
The water was bliss. I laid down with my distended belly submerged and my cheek resting on the edge of the cold porcelain and closed my eyes. The change in position and the effect of the water on my strained muscles conspired to give me at least five whole minutes without pain. And then the wave started to build within me again. Like last time, I couldn’t labour in the water. There was nowhere to go. I took the first contraction just pacing the tub and scrambling around the tiny bathroom; a blink of madness and then it was gone and I laid in the soothing water once more. For about thirty damned seconds. It was somewhere around this time that I realised I was still bleeding. How long had that been happening for? In the back of my mind I silently hoped I hadn’t left red splatters on the white rug in the lounge room; because this was a totally appropriate moment to worry about that kind of trivial thing. And then there was pain. I struggled out of the tub and shooed Obi away from the toilet where he’d been perched, watching patiently.
I started to ramble, I heard myself talking about the pain, about how I couldn’t do this and then another voice, also belonging to me, spoken or unspoken I cannot recall, mentioned transition. I read that when women reach transition – the point where they reach ten centimetres of blessed dilation and the body readies itself to push – they often have a few moments of believing they can’t do it. Even staunch natural-birthers often call for drugs at this point, but of course it’s way too late for that. In this tumult of words and thoughts, knowledge and fear, my water broke. Obi laughed with me, it was so unexpected, so relieving, and of course I was in the perfect place for it to happen. “Most women’s waters break at the beginning of the second stage” the voice said. But there was no way I was that far along, I couldn’t be! The midwife wasn’t even here… I grunted in pain and effort.
“Miriam, are you pushing?” Obi asked me, leaning forward from the edge of the tub. And that’s when I realised, yes, I was.
It was definitely an urge to push. When I laboured with Isis, I never had this urge, my body simply started pushing in a neat pattern of four that I could chose to take part in or simply endure. This time I was to do the work, but I didn’t have a choice in the matter. I couldn’t NOT push. I couldn’t slow down. I couldn’t regain my calm.
But Dustin was there, all reassurance. “We’ve done this before” he told me, not a hint of fear on his face. When he needed more room, he told me. He warned me as she crowned and looked to make sure the cord was not around her neck. He prompted me that the baby would turn to get its shoulders out and I was grateful for the reminder. He forgot nothing and didn’t hesitate. I’ve always admired how competent he is with pretty much every task he attempts. It was over very quickly. To my surprise, it didn’t hurt half as much as I’d remembered. I like the second stage.
There she was, our new baby girl, cheesy and perfect and… not crying. “We need to rub her to get her breathing” I said. It didn’t take more than a few strokes and then she stretched her lungs to their fullest capacity. Once she started crying, there was no stopping her. She was loud! Loud and healthy and perfect.
We hadn’t prepared anything; there were no towels laid out, no plastic tarps. I had assumed the midwife would take care of all that when she got in, you know, because I still had a long way to go and there was plenty of time. I guess I ignored all the clues that told me otherwise simply because I didn’t want to get my hopes up. I didn’t want to throw all my energy away in early labour and fall into despair by the end. Didn’t want to face that disheartening moment of labouring for hours only to be told I wasn’t yet in “active” labour.
Selene’s incessant wail achieved what my labouring had not and Isis woke up, joining in the chorus. I waited, back in the tub with a towel to keep Selene warm, while Obi comforted Isis, readied a nest of towels on the bed and let Sonja in. As he left I called after him “Look at the time!” I didn’t want us to not know her time of birth!
Selene and I had some skin to skin, punctuated by her ear-splitting cries, and she had her first feed too, latching with a painful intensity right away. Isis came to investigate, and clung to Obi through the worst of Selene’s banshee wail. With help I moved to the bed where I could relax and bond with our newest family member. But there was something I wanted to take care of before I could relax. I wanted the placenta out, and to be past the risk of a post-partum haemorrhage. Sonja cut the cord, because Dustin’s still not into that task despite being more than capable of delivering his own spawn, and I called for a bowl. Without hesitation I asked for the syntocin needle. I would have a managed third stage, it wasn’t work the risk. While Sonja prepared the jab (suspiciously slowly) in the other room my contractions started again and the placenta birthed naturally in all it’s disgusting glory. And I didn’t start bleeding to death, didn’t pass out. I barely felt faint, despite not sleeping all night and having had nothing to eat since the night before. It was 5:35am.
I felt like a fucking champion!
Edited to add...
Vernixy baby <3 Bless my breast there
A few hours and showers later:
My fav pic so far:
Isis at the park playing with Abigail (ie some random)
