Becoming A Mother {Part II}: Labor & Birth

This is Part II in my story of Becoming A Mother and all about my labor and delivery with Will {if you missed Part I of this story – all about my pregnancy – you can read it HERE}.

My water broke at a little after 10am on February 28. I was 42 weeks pregnant and exactly 2 weeks past my due date.

If I had not gone into labor on Feb. 28, I would’ve had to transfer care to a hospital and forego my dreams of a home birth. So needless to say, I was pretty stoked. I believed it was all happening for me, just as I’d “planned”.

“The Universe is on my side.” I thought. “I’ve got this.” 

But I had no idea the long road ahead and the unforeseen difficulties I would face over the next 16.5 hours to bring Will into this world…

My labor had a slow start and I didn’t really feel too much for the first few hours. I labored around the house, switching positions often, feeling restless. My midwife on call that day – Traci, came over to my house around noon to check on me and administer IV antibiotics because I had tested positive for group-b strep (something they test for late in your pregnancy). She said she’d be back in about 8 hours, unless my labor progressed faster.

I found myself most comfortable laboring on the toilet – partly because of the Midwive’s Brew (which, because of the castor oil, can cause diarrhea) and also (I have since learned) because it’s one of the places where we are most used to “opening” and the hole in the toilet seat supports that.

Regardless of labor “progress”, almost immediately, I began to implement the hypnobirthing techniques I’d learned.

Hypnobirthing, at its core, is all about the way you breath to allow a mother’s surrender to the natural process of labor. During labor, you have contractions (surges) in order for the baby to move down the birth canal and for the cervix to open. The muscles of your uterus contract (tense) and then relax. The principles of hypnobirthing believe that if you tighten against the muscle tensing (contraction), you are inadvertently interfering with the contraction and will thus experience pain. So by surrendering to the surges via your breath work & entering a self-hypnotic state, you can let the body do it’s work and remain “relaxed”; thus keeping out of the fear-tension-pain cycle I mentioned in my first post.

Hypnobirthing has two types of breath you utilize – I refer to them as labor breathing & birth breathing. For the labor breathing, on your inhales, you imagine filling a balloon (your belly) with air and expanding. On your exhale, you imagine your breath – or the balloon – floating up and out of your body. So the idea is open and release up versus contract and push out/bear down.

For almost 9 hours – from around 11am to close to 8pm, I sat in complete silence, engaging in this “labor breathing” on the either the toilet or the rocking chair in Will’s nursery; and two times in the bathtub. It took all my energy and focus to be present to each surge and breath my way through it. I couldn’t speak or eat. I was given water often, which I sipped through a straw, by my doula and Regan – and I could barely even muster the extra energy to open my mouth to do this. My doula twice gave me honey on a spoon, but that also took more effort than it was worth to me.

At some point during my labor (I had no concept of time), when the contractions began to intensify, my body would shake uncontrollably between surges. I was sitting perfectly still, but my body – especially my legs – would convulse / quiver as if possessed. Then as soon as a surge washed over me, it would stop completely. It was another wild sensation of labor that I had to practice surrendering to versus fighting or controlling, because doing so would impact my ability to stay “above” the surges and relax deeper between them.

Still to this day, my labor with Will is the most mentally & physically intense thing I have ever done.

Yet, through it all – for 9 hours of active labor,

I truly experienced NO. PAIN. 

I know that sounds crazy. Unbelievable, even. But I swear to you, it’s true. Zero pain. I realize it’s the opposite of what we’ve come to believe birth is. The vast majority of representations of birth in mainstream media or television is ALL pain, suffering. And I fully acknowledge that we all will have our own path within birth and sometimes that must BE pain because of where we’re at and what we must go through or learn to become a mother. But it’s also important to know what’s POSSIBLE and what we have the ability to co-create, to imagine, to practice.

And to be honest, it’s STILL challenging for me to even put to words the difference of feelings between the sheer, indescribable intensity of surrendering and opening my whole labor (which was so incredibly powerful and all-consuming) and yet no pain (as we experience and think about pain as hurting). Staying in my breath took everything I had. There were many times when my mind said, “I want this to be over” or “I can’t do this anymore”. During almost the entire time, those 9 hours, Regan was by my side. Encouraging and steady, often silent or using the partner-support hypnobirthing gestures he’d learned, tracing a light touch up & down my leg in symphony with my breath during the surges.

There came a time – I’m guessing around 7pm or so, that I asked to get in the bath for a second time. My doula advised that I stay out of the bath because she said it could slow my labor this late in the game. But I insisted, something in me knew it was right.

When I was in the tub, my breath suddenly changed. I was no longer able to let my exhale breath float up & out of me. Instead, my breath became choppy. It felt like when you’re driving on icy roads and when you brake, instead of coming to a complete & clean stop at a stop sign, your car kinda jerks forward a few times, then stops. Do you know what I’m talking about? It’s so hard to describe, but I could totally show you with my hands / sounds. 🙂 I would inhale up, then my breath would “jerk downwards” 4-5 times throughout the exhale. With this, my body was overtaken with this intense and instinctive desire to push. I told my doula, “I’m ready to push”, but she didn’t think it was possible as she said I hadn’t shown any signs of my labor progressing that far (this was because I had labored in complete silence and showed no “usual” outward signs that typically indicate late stages of labor). Due to the closeness of my contractions, however, my midwife had already been called and was on her way.

I wanted a water birth. Yet somehow, it didn’t then occur to me that this could happen in my small bathtub. But one hangup on remaining there – since I’d tested positive for group-b strep, I had to get another shot before I birthed Will (or at least it was strongly recommended because you’re supposed to get a shot of antibiotic every 12 hours for the health & safety of the baby) and my midwife didn’t want to have to stop me mid-push to administer it, should the labor & pushing take longer than expected.

When Traci arrived – right at this time, she requested I get out of the bathtub to administer the IV antibiotics and check my cervix to see how dilated I was. So I got out of the tub – amidst my desire to push. Looking back, it’s the point in which I feel like I abandoned my knowing in Will’s birth. Where I stopped tuning into my body & trusting. Where I let someone else tell me, “this is what comes next” versus what I FELT viscerally in every corner of my body. For so long, I had such deep regret around this, wishing I would’ve verbalized this knowing to Traci and asked to remain in the tub. But that wasn’t my path, nor Will’s, to arrive Earth-side. We both had more struggles to overcome.

By now it was around 8pm, and my midwife found that I was 9.5 cm (10 cm = fully effaced and ready to birth). So it was confirmed that my labor had progressed to “almost there” using my hypnobirthing techniques and that I likely had gotten the urge to push in the tub. This being my first birth, I thought that’s what the urge // sensation I’d experienced was, but I was unsure & still relying on what other’s told me was happening to me. It wasn’t actually until Felix’s birth that I would have personal confirmation that this WAS for certain the urge to push.

But now, before I could push, Traci and my birth assistant (a midwifery student from Bastyr) got me all ready to administer the IV antibiotic. But we had one problem. Even after putting on a tourniquet, they couldn’t locate a vein close enough to the surface to do it…they said, because I was so relaxed. They couldn’t believe how difficult it was. It took nearly an hour, going back & forth between arms, to successfully give me the antibiotic.

While I was getting poked, Regan and my doula were preparing the birth tub we’d rented. After I’d finally gotten the antibiotic, I climbed into the tub. Again, I felt ready. Determined.

“9.5 cm” I told myself, “He’s here, my baby is finally coming to me. I am relaxed and happy.”
(an affirmation I’d said so many times with the hypnobirthing tracks).

I don’t think anyone could’ve foreseen this flook of an obstruction to my labor – how long it would take to get the IV in – but nonetheless as time wore on, and I continued to labor in the tub, it was clear that my labor had slowed down to a crawl. I was no longer at the same stage where I felt the urge to push like in the bathtub. Even so, I had tried to shift my breathing to the birth breathing of hypnobirthing – also known as “breathing your baby down”. You still focus on expansion and opening on the inhale, but instead of letting the balloon “float up” on your exhale, your direct the breath downward to help “push” the baby out.

After about an hour in the tub with no changes in my surges or urges, Traci thought I should get out so she could assess what was happening while I was laboring // “breathing baby down”. As my next surge came – where I engaged in the birth breathing – she placed her hand inside my vagina and felt.

After a few surges of doing this, Traci then told me that my baby’s head was crooked in the birth canal. That for every exhale breath // pushing or breathing out, his head straightened, but made no forward progress. She said, “I know hynobirthing has worked amazing for you until now. But you’re going to have to really start pushing to get him out.”

What ensued next was 4.5 hours of grueling pushing.

Looking back, what made this stage of my labor so hard was that I didn’t understand how to both open and push. To hold space for both the ease of opening and the effort of pushing – within the same breath.

I had learned how to go inward and surrender to the power of the surges, but I hadn’t learned how to LET GO. That it was about the softening versus anything I would be “doing” (a lesson I would learn many times over in my postpartum & motherhood). Because I didn’t know how to let go; specifically how to let go FULLY in my pelvic floor so that my cervix could complete it’s final opening, I had to push through.

As a fitness instructor, regular exerciser and a woman, I’ve been constantly told my whole life – by media, by my peers, by fellow instructors, by fitness models, by the entire fitness & health industry – that I needed to keep my abs (my “core”) tight all the time.

But the first lesson that I was to learn from my birth was that there was equal value in being strong // having a strong center + core AND being able to fully relax and let go of ALL the tension // engagement. That strength we so value, without the ability to release or fully let go, is hindered; weakened. In exercise, if we’re always holding a muscle tight without equal release, we actually lose contractual capacity of said muscle; we lose power and adaptability. Life and birth, it turns out, are no different.

We are only as strong as our ability to ALSO release.

When I was pregnant, one of the most common things I heard was, “You’re so fit! Birth is like a marathon, you’ll have no problem.”

People told me that healthy, fit people have easier births. Well intended shares I’m sure, but in the end, totally not helpful because it shaped my expectations of what my labor & birth would be like. I neglected a huge piece of essential birth preparation – learning to PHYSICALLY let go of the constant contraction I held in my pelvic floor so that Will could pass through the birth canal. I have since learned, however, that this practice – combining the mental aspect of surrender with the physical release of letting core contractions fully soften – is NOT something we talk to mothers about, nor use as an (at least mainstream) technique to help them prepare. This practice would make the biggest difference in my birth with Felix, and something I work on with all my expecting momma clients now.

In truth, I think we’re doing women a disservice by focusing solely on birth as a physical event or even comparing it to a physical feat. Because it’s NOT like anything we’ve physically ever done before – it’s not about our ability to do & push through, it’s about releasing. About finding the delicate balance to being engaged, yet not controlling. It’s a spiritual event where mind & body surrender to the natural knowing of the body. Never in my fitness practice did I practice “letting go”, “releasing” or surrendering to find strength.

And here’s the other piece of the puzzle – our modern world operates from a primarily masculine paradigm, one that only values logic and the “doing energy”; not rest, intuition or release. Sadly, we women, have bought into this paradigm & subscribed ourselves to mostly existing and operating from this energy on the daily in all aspects of our lives. We’ve accordingly neglected the tending of our feminine qualities and practices – myself very much included. And as such, when we enter into birth – a distinctly feminine space of being, receiving and releasing – we are unpracticed and in unfamiliar territory. What should be natural for us is foreign. I could talk about this for ages – for it has now become my passion & work, but reconnecting to and learning to find the sacred dance between both the masculine and feminine energies would come to be the other vast difference in my birth with Felix.

Speaking of my birth… for last 4.5 hours of my labor, I tried various positions to try to push Will out.

And when I say PUSH, I am not exaggerating. The opposite of my hypnobirthing techniques, it an all out effort of using the full force of my breath, belly & physical body to try to figure out how to move Will through me.

Countless times, Traci would reinsert her fingers, pressing on my perineum and say “push here”. But somehow I could not direct my effort there and release at the same time. 

I tried pushing from a side lying position while Traci held my top leg up. I tried pushing from All Four’s. I sat in a Squat and labored there. I rotated these positions and sank into my determination. With Will, I always had enough rest between surges to gather my energy anew – and for this, I am grateful. Each surge though, it felt like my face and head was going to explode from the effort of pushing. I would grunt and turn red and “push” as hard as I could; just hoping THIS contraction would be the one that made the progress I needed.  I wanted to weep & wallow, but was also unwilling to even take a second to stop if it meant I could get Will out faster. 

Finally there came a time when Traci suggested that I move back to the toilet and labor there until I could feel the top of Will’s head starting to emerge. I interpreted this as good news; thinking I had to be close.

Although I later had the “bathtub regret”, I am so grateful for Traci’s guidance during this whole process. She was so steadfast. She never – in her mannerisms, suggestions or encouragement made me feel like I was either close to delivering Will or really far away from the possibility. It might seem odd, but this “unknowing” kept me going. If she had given me timelines, like “not much longer now” or “you’re getting close, just a few more”, I think it would’ve been harder and I would’ve focused on “getting there” versus being in the moment of every surge individually and putting ALL effort I had into each one. 

And when I was on the toilet, it didn’t take long for me to be able to reach down and feel the top of Will’s head, just a bit. I told Regan and he told Traci and she came in to get me (she was readying the living room space for my birth).

I assumed THE POSITION – for me, that being a squat. Fitting, I know. 🙂 

Regan was sitting on our red couch and my spine was upright against it. I was between his legs, my arms on his thighs and my hands interlaced with his hands, over his knees. Every time I pushed, I would press into his legs to lift myself up. He would later say that he thought I was going to squeeze his hands off and that he could feel the intensity of each push coursing through me as I grounded into his body to hold myself up.

Between those surges, I rested my hips on the ground (still in a wide squat position). I have no idea how many pushes it took, but finally I felt the “ring of fire”. This is when the baby’s head is crowning and the labia + perineum are at their point of maximum stretching (this is right before the final push(es) get their head, shoulders & body out).

To me, it felt like the most intense stinging sensation as the skin stretched. It also felt like a hallelujah and I knew I was finally almost done.

I gathered my energy one last time and pushed Will out into Traci’s hands at 2:33am on March 1…after 4.5 hours of pushing.

I wish I could say that once Will was out, I was elated and reveled in his presence; that time stopped and I felt immediately connected to my baby. But I didn’t. After almost 15.5 hours of laboring and pushing with my eyes closed, I came back to reality feeling hazy. We hardly had any lights on, yet I could barely open my eyes. My face felt swollen and my body drained. When I finally found my voice, I felt out of body when speaking. I held Will and felt like I was living in a dream, everything seemed so unreal. I showed him to Regan (still sitting behind me) and we commented on the crazy cone shape of his head (totally normal I guess, but very shocking). Not exactly the Kodak moment I had envisioned.

I still had yet to birth my placenta, but Traci thought I’d done enough pushing so gave me a shot to help along the process (I have since learned that this is called “active management” to help speed up the delivery of the placenta. Traci pushed on my uterus and pulled the placenta out by the umbilical cord). At this point, I passed Will to Regan to complete my birthing process. Once that was done, I was moved to my bed and holding Will, really saw him for the first time.

He latched well and began to suckle while the midwives tended to me and Regan leaned in. I remember feeling both connected to Regan and disconnected from the moment at the same time. My body shakes returned, this time because I hadn’t eaten in almost 24 hours. While Traci did all the newborn checks, I ate and honestly was still in such disbelief that Will was actually here, I had prepared so much for the doing – the labor, the birth, having our house prepared and all the baby things ready, that I hadn’t really stopped to think about the feeling. What it would feel like to be a mother, to hold my baby. Or for what I would feel afterwards – on all levels – physically, emotionally, mentally, relationally and in every aspect of my being. 

The birth was done, my baby was here and we decided to name him Will Andrew (Patrick was the other hot contender). I had gone through so much to get Will here. Even so, I hadn’t yet begun to LIVE the complete transformation I had just undergone. I had no idea how my life, my body and my entire world would change. I didn’t know that with Will, I also had been born anew. That was one thing I had not prepared for – and it was about to rock my world.

 

{Stay tuned for Part III: Postpartum – Being a Mother & Healing}.