Is the Ryan Seacrest Joke Too Much?

So you've come back for more, have you? Cruelly, I only offer you part two of what is turning out to be a three-part story. What can I say? I'm remembering more as I write.

(By the way, if you have a birth story, I highly recommend writing it out, even if you don't choose to overshare with the blogosphere. I'm finding it fascinating to see what I remember and what images can take me back to that time and place. Yesterday I found it really jarring to go from writing about "the baby" to picking up my actual, warm, cuddly one-year-old son.)

Part 2, or If Yesterday Freaked You Out, This is a Good Time to Go Get a Sandwich

After I’d finished…draining, I decided to go back to walking around the halls. I remember looking out the big hospital windows, noticing that it was snowing lightly. I thought about how, some day, I would tell my son, “On the day you were born, it snowed.” Within a few minutes of walking, however, I realized that that little crochet hook had apparently pushed some switch into overdrive. I was having real contractions now, none of this “surges” crap, and I wanted to sit down. Not because of the pain, but because I couldn’t do my full relaxation thing while standing. (Quick explanation: in Hypnobirthing, the premise is that, the more you relax, the less pain you will feel, because women’s bodies are designed to birth babies. Adrenaline and the subsequent tensing of muscles that comes from fear works against this natural design; they call this the fear-tension-pain sequence. So the “hypnosis” part is really about breathing, relaxing, and visualizing. I definitely didn’t have a painless birth, as you’ll soon see, but I really do feel like the Hypnobirthing stuff worked to keep me relaxed, especially between contractions. However, I’d always practiced this sitting or lying down, so the idea of completely relaxing my muscles while hoping they’d support my heavily pregnant self was unfathomable to me. We now return you to our extremely uncomfortable story already in progress.)

We went back to the birthing room and I sat on the bed, propped by pillows and reeling with the thought that this was NOT going to be like the videos and that this was…hard. E came back from lunch and popped her head in the room, asking, “How’re we doing?” I took a break from my quiet, even breaths to mourn, “I was smug.” To her credit, she looked properly sympathetic, even as she snickered.

I labored in the bed for a bit, but I wasn’t making much progress. Karen said briskly, “Let’s try nipple stimulation!” as if she was suggesting a quick and easy method for getting pesky stains out of your linen tablecloth. So I shuffled to the shower, disrobed, and sat on a little plastic stool while I aimed the hand-held showerhead at my breasts with one hand, massaging nipples with the other. I felt a bit ridiculous, especially since MOTH was in there as well, just keeping me company, watching this sad parody of porn. This wasn’t the last point in the process where I felt self-conscious, but it was the last time I cared.

I dried off and put my robe on. The hospital has a Jacuzzi tub for laboring (not for birthing), and that’s where I wanted to head. I liked the idea of warm water, but I wanted to float, to be surrounded by it. A nurse shepherded us across the hall, showed us how the faucets and jets worked. After getting it hot enough for me (apparently I am cold-blooded, because both my husband and nurse asked, “are you sure?” when I kept asking for the temperature to be raised), I lowered myself in with relief. I had heard and read tons about how water was amazing for ameliorating the pain of contractions, how it worked so well with Hypnobirthing because it promoted relaxation. Whee! I figured. I’ll just hang out here for the rest of labor and then a little pushing and—poof—baby, right?

I was smug.

The water actually was quite lovely. It really did seem to help me relax, but the contractions felt about the same. For each one, I would switch from my “relaxation breathing” (count in for 4, out for 8, sort of like yoga breathing) to “slow breathing” (inhale and exhale evenly and slowly throughout the contraction). I realized that each contraction was taking about five breaths, and I would count them as a way of remembering how short the contractions really were. It almost worked, except that in my mind I was going, “One…this is OK…two…here it comes, it’s getting worse…three…oh my God…four…I-can’t-do-this-anymore-and-I’m-going-to-have-to-and-I-don’t-like-it-not-at-all…five…oh, it’s ending. Huh. I really should remember that for next time.” And I did this for each contraction.

In between contractions, I really did relax, which I recommend to anyone considering this activity in the future. If you spend the time in between the painful bits obsessing about how painful it was/will be, well, that way lies madness, my chickadees. It’s here that I do credit the Hypnobirthing method and all of our practice, for I was able to be so relaxed that I was practically asleep between surges. This proved slightly dangerous in the tub, as I remember slipping down into the water and feeling it lapping over my mouth. I figured, MOTH was there if I actually did slip under—like, it didn’t occur to me that I might be able to keep myself above water. I was a little dissociated from my body at that point, I think.

After almost an hour, I got out of the tub. Looking back, I wish I’d spent more time there, because it was definitely the most comfortable I’d been, possible-self-drowning threat aside. But I began to be aware of how long poor MOTH had just been sitting there, watching me make what he later called “cute little moaning noises.” Aw, right? Anyway, I figured I’d been in there a while, surely I was almost 10 cm dilated and we’d start with the baby-outing thing any minute, right?

Say it with me, class—I was smug.

I got out, toweled off, and dressed again in my cami and my robe. I’d abandoned the idea of pants by this time. When we got back to the room, I eagerly (well, “eager” is probably the wrong adjective to use when describing a person, even a nimble-fingered person, using said fingers to determine the width of your cervix. You know, that part that you keep WELL INSIDE YOUR BODY) submitted to a cervical check, certain I would hear that we were near the end. I was at five. It’s hard to remember now, a year later, but I’m pretty sure my deep meditation at that point was like, fuuuuck.

The next couple hours are sort of a blur. I remember that I sat, backwards, on the toilet for a while, and that felt good. Leaning into something hard and cool (and, I hoped, given that this was a hospital, clean) while MOTH rubbed my back. I remember walking from the bathroom back to the bed and having a contraction hit me while people were talking to me and I sank down to my hands and knees, like I was dissolving away from the conversation. I remember E kindly stroking my hair when it was down and helping put it up when it was bugging me (and, of course, down again, when the ponytail was bugging me). I breathed. I counted. I know at some point, E had dinner and forced MOTH to do the same. They were really amazing, working as a team so that I always had one or both of them near me, but never felt crowded. I’d heard a lot about becoming irritable (to put it kindly) with labor partners, especially spouses, but I never got annoyed. To be fair, I had my eyes closed much of the time and couldn’t have told you if Ryan Seacrest had walked into the room. Well, I bet I’d have smelled him…doesn’t he seem like the kind of guy who’d wear too much cologne?

Anyway. Another check. Six. Mother fucking six. I believe my kind midwife actually threw me a bone and said, “six and a quarter.” This was really the only point during my labor that I felt a sense of despair, like maybe I couldn’t do this. I really thought I was further along, and the idea of being barely halfway was…demoralizing. I didn’t actually break down into tears, but somewhere in my mind I was conscious of the effort of this, like, “I’m (sniff) gonna be a big girl (sniff)…”

Part of our birth plan (which, thanks to MOTH, also featured the USDA Organic logo and “free range baby” on it) specified that I didn’t want to be offered medication, that I’d ask for it if I wanted it. When we were talking about the plan the night before we went in, E asked me, “What do you want us to do if you do ask for meds? Like, do you want us to try to talk you out of it?” We discussed how I’d depend on MOTH to distinguish between a genuine, calm, logical request and a panicky need for reassurance. Somewhere in the back of my mind during labor, I knew that I wasn’t going to be offered pain relief. And I knew that I didn’t want to ask for it. But it sure sounded nice, so I began to make cow eyes at people when they asked how I was doing: “I’m…so…tired…” I would whisper, thinking that, surely, someone would take pity on me and mainline some morphine or something. Instead, they all patted me on the shoulder and told me I was doing “good” or some such rot. Jerks.

Karen gently but firmly told me that we needed to move things along. She offered more nipple stimulation by using a breast pump, more walking, or…she didn’t say Pitocin, but I knew that it was lurking there. I couldn’t fathom walking in this condition, so I agreed to the breast pump. Hey, I figured, at least I’d get to practice how to use it. I really wanted to avoid Pitocin, because I’d heard how it ramps up the contractions, which was NOT AT ALL APPEALING at that point. A nurse went to get the pump, and I went back to my “breathe-count-‘I hate this’-relax to the point of near sleep” cycle. Karen told me that the baby still wasn’t positioned correctly (you want babies to come out face-down, but Tank had been mostly sunny-side-up for a few weeks), so she directed the nurses to crank the bed into almost a 90 degree angle so that I could kneel and drape myself over some pillows at the top. She then showed MOTH and E how to rock my hips back and forth during contractions. Because I was so focused on the breathing, I was really quiet during contractions, so I was to lift a finger to indicate that one was starting. Somewhere in here I got really cold, and I remember that the warm blankets they draped over me were heavenly. Something about the weight and the warmth was the most comforting sensation at that point. Karen left for a bit to check on another patient.

[Note: Somewhere in here, I threw up. MOTH remembers it being during the early pushing, but I remember it being earlier. The important part is that I totally missed the receptacle that had been offered to me during previous contractions. I threw up. A lot. All over the bed. It was kind of awful, because I HATE throwing up and have only done so three times in the last twenty years, but I have to say, those nurses are pros. Not only did they react quickly and without flinching, they had that bed—and me—cleaned up and changed before the next contraction. It was like the Indy 500 pit crew of linens.]

The nurse with the breast pump came back about the same time as Karen. Another cervical check, which I submit to without hope, considering how the last few hours have gone, and it’s only been about fifteen minutes since I was at six (and a pity quarter). With a brisk snapping off of her glove, Karen pronounces me at nine. Nine! MOTH comes over by my head and says, “You’re at nine, sweetie!” Still with my eyes closed and in between deep breaths, I faintly but firmly exclaim, “I rock!”

But do I? Do I really? Tune in tomorrow for the exciting conclusion (seriously, I promise tomorrow will be the last part)!