This pregnancy began only 6 weeks after the death of my mother. The birth of my first son, intended to be natural, resulted in a transfer from a birth center to the hospital and ultimately in a c-section. I grieved for both losses, one fresh, one aged. Because of that, I had an enormous emotional investment in the outcome of this birth. I didn’t dream very much about the baby or the birth during the pregnancy, rather, I dreamed about my mother, but one dream in particular stood out. First some background: Mom and I had the peculiar hobby of collecting produce stickers. We made a game of it. We stuck them onto things and mailed them back and forth to each other. We playfully competed to see who could find more and more unique designs. I honestly don’t know how it got started, but it went on for years. In the dream I remember so well, my homebirth went beautifully, “without a hitch,” and a couple of hours afterwards, when the chaos had quieted, I realized that my mom was there, and had been there with me throughout the birth. I simultaneously realized that she shouldn’t, couldn’t, wasn’t supposed to, REALLY be there, and I knew she had to leave. I looked around for her and she was already gone. Then I went down the hall to check on the baby, it was a boy, and I saw his face as clear as day in my dream, He was sleeping peacefully, and there, on his sweet tender little forehead…was a produce sticker.
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The Birth of Reid Michael McCalpin
Because labor started in the middle of the night with my first son, I went to bed every night for a couple of weeks wondering if this would be it. On Sunday, September 14, I asked Michael to help me clean the house up a little. I told him, “I usually do that on Monday while Kenneth is at preschool, but it seems like it would be a good idea to straighten things up a bit.” So we vacuumed a little, and tidied up. I swept the front porch. It was a beautiful crisp fall day.
That night I went to bed with the same thought, “will this be it?” Around 3:00 am Kenneth woke up with a nightmare. He was really crying when I went into his room and he said, “I want to come into your bed with you.” So I allowed him to do so, explaining that it would only be for a little while. He curled up next to me and sucked his thumb for 15 or 20 minutes and then I told him it was time to go back to his bed and he went without protest. I did not know that those sweet warm moments with him tucked in beside me in the dark would be some of the last for him as an only child, but they are cherished memories now. I tucked him back into his own bed and kissed his sweet cheek.
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At 5:18 am, I woke up needing to go potty. With no small effort, I heaved my bulging belly over from my left side to my right and started sliding out of bed <WHOOSH!> my water broke! I was startled and I gasped, “Oh, Sweetie! My water just broke!” Michael leapt out of bed, and I said, “we need to call Joyce and I need a towel!” I wish I had remembered that we had all the chux pads right there, they would have saved the mattress better than the towels did! Oh well. I remembered that Joyce had been concerned because at all my recent exams the baby had been pretty high up and not engaged, so, I followed the most conservative of her instructions and put my bottom in the air to take pressure off of the cord just in case it was trying to prolapse. Michael called Joyce to tell her what was going on and I asked him to ask her if I could move. The instructions she gave were to stay down - well, I wasn’t sure if that meant stay like I was, or just stay laying down so I just stayed like I was. The trouble was, all this time, I still really needed to pee! While we were waiting for Joyce, I called my dad. He was supposed to come up and help us out with Kenneth. He said he was just about to walk out the door for his morning walk, but he would throw some clothes in the car instead and head on out, embarking on a 10 hour drive. It wasn’t long before Joyce arrived, she checked the baby’s heart and all was well, I finally got to pee! Since everything was fine, Joyce offered to stay or go, and left it up to me. At that point I couldn’t think of a good reason for her to stay so I told her to go on home and we’d call her when we needed her. Kenneth woke up while Joyce was here but I told Michael to go on back to bed and get some sleep and that I would fix breakfast for Kenneth and get him ready for his day at The Spanish Schoolhouse. Michael didn’t argue! I figured it made more sense for him to get some sleep since he was so sleep deprived after Kenneth’s birth. I knew I would need him later and the best thing to do was let him sleep now while I was able to manage on my own. I honestly figured we were in for the long haul since Kenneth’s 26 hour labor ended in a c-section, I was psyched up for real marathon.
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I got a hand towel and put it in my panties to soak up the water and fixed Kenneth’s breakfast and packed his lunch. I was starting to have some mild contractions at this point, and I stopped to send some e-mails and post on some bulletin boards that my water had broken. Meanwhile, I burned the bacon, so I think it’s safe to say that I was not 100% focused. After we ate I went into Kenneth’s room to get his clothes so I could get him dressed. I discovered that his fish had died. I picked Kenneth up and showed it to him and explained that it had died. He expressed mild concern, but fortunately was not upset. He saw his Word Family game on the shelf behind the fish bowl and wanted to play it. I got it down and sat on the floor with him and we played with it for a long time. Michael got up in time to make himself some coffee and eat some breakfast, but not in time to take a shower, before he had to take Kenneth to school. I called Ken and Lori and asked if they’d be available later in the day to pick Kenneth up from school if we needed them. Ken said they were.
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While Michael was gone taking Kenneth to school, Joyce called to check on me. That would have been around 9:00 am. I told her I was doing fine. She suggested that we get the tub put together because at another recent birth they didn’t have it ready in time for the mother to use it. I told her that as soon as Michael got back I’d set him to task, and I added that maybe we would go for a walk or something to try to get labor going strong. She asked if we had done any nipple stimulation or other labor inducing activities, and I told her no, because I’d been getting Kenneth ready for school and getting breakfast ready. I told her I was going to take a shower, and I did.
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When I got out of the shower, Michael was still not back from taking Kenneth, but I started checking the contractions by the clock, they were coming pretty fast now, two or three minutes apart. I went to the closet and put on my pink maternity outfit. It was the same one I labored in with Kenneth and I had been pushing it to the back of the closet for a couple of days saying to myself, “no, today is not the day to wear this.” However, I knew that this was it, and it felt good to put it on.
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When Michael came in he was on the cell phone for his Monday morning conference call. I was up on the bed on all fours and I was having to really concentrate and work to get through the contractions now. I remember thinking, “Okay! I need you now! get off the phone!” which he did. I told him Joyce had suggested that we get the tub put together and he started working on it. I snapped a couple of photos of him putting it together while I was between contractions. It seems like I was having to break tasks into tiny steps in order to get through them. Between one pair of contractions I went to get the camera, then I was only able to take pictures after waiting for the next contraction to pass. Then between another pair of contractions I went to the computer, determined to post the photos of Michael putting the tub together. I couldn’t do it! I just didn’t have enough time between contractions. I realized then that I was going to have to eat my words about posting live labor updates on the web. This labor was so different from the prolonged leisurely one I had with Kenneth.
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| I wandered around the house some and leaned on all fours on the ottoman the way I had so many times during the pregnancy trying to keep the baby anterior. On the floor at the foot of the ottoman, the Golden Book Encyclopedia was open to a page discussing submarine cables and outlining the history of the letters “C” and “G.” I think I reread it about 40 times. Joyce had left the birthing ball for me when she’d been there that morning and I bounced on it through several contractions, one of which Michael video taped from beginning to end. I haven’t watched that yet, but it will be interesting to see how long it lasted. It seemed like an eternity. Around 10:00 am I decided it was time to call Joyce, it had only been an hour since I’d talked to her, but the contractions were coming long and fast now, one on top of the other, and I felt like I needed her. I had one contraction while talking to her and I tried to hand the phone over to Michael but she didn’t want me to. She wanted to listen to me, which I thought was pretty funny since I wasn’t saying anything! Joyce said she had been thinking it was time to come and she said she’d be on over. While we were waiting for Joyce I asked Michael to take a photo of me, “in all my glory.” I wanted a good fully pregnant picture of myself. At the end of one contraction I jumped up, I was telling him, “hurry while we have a moment!” but the camera was acting up and he couldn’t get the flash to charge very quickly, I was really struggling to smile at all, and even to stay standing in the spot we had chosen for the picture. Dang! It was hurting now! As soon as the flash popped I dashed over to the birthing ball and started bouncing. For some reason, it really helped. |
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At 10:20 am, when Joyce got here I was back on the ottoman again reading about submarine cables. She asked if I’d eaten and I said, “no,” at first, then I realized I had eaten breakfast. She was making a disapproving face at me, and I quickly added, “Oh! I had breakfast!” It was hard to remember what I’d done so far that morning! I told her the contractions were coming one on top of another, she said she wanted to check me so we got up to walk back to my bedroom. I ripped my shirt off, letting it fall to the dining room floor and said, “It’s hot!” She checked me and I was at a three. I got up on the bed and Joyce went to get the birthing ball. She was wiping it off and I remember watching her and thinking, “Good Lord! How long is that going to take?!” Once she had it cleaned she let me lean on it, which I did, up on the bed. It seems like I spent a lot of time in labor trying different things. I tried cursing, twice, but it didn’t help, so I stopped.
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Throughout labor I changed positions, both of my own volition, and at Joyce’s behest. It seemed that each new position was awful at first, which is exactly what Joyce said, “every new position feels wrong at first, but after a couple of contractions you’ll be okay.” The birthing ball felt good for a while but then I asked if I could get in the water. At first Michael and Joyce were concerned that the water was too hot, but at 105°F they let me get in and it brought tremendous relief. As I was getting in Joyce asked if I wanted to keep my bra on and I said, “I don’t care!” I never did take it off. I stayed in the tub for a while, and while I was in there I kept my eyes shut most of the time. Occasionally, I would open them, and it was so comforting and reassuring to see Michael’s face right there, always with a little encouraging smile, he was right there the whole time, never leaving my side, always with a cup of ice water waiting for me. He was so steadfast and strong, I never had an opportunity to doubt myself because always he remained with me, sustaining me.
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Michael and Joyce discussed the hot tub. They were talking about it not working properly, but I tuned it out. Then, I felt a pocket of cool water drifting past my knees. I said to Michael, with some irritation, I believe, “Are you putting cold water in here!?” He assured me that no, he was adding hot water, and he then aimed the hose right at my knees so that I could feel the hot water coming out. Apparently I was so lost in laborland I wasn’t aware that the heater and pump weren’t working on the hot tub, or even that Michael had been bailing cool water out of the tub and adding hot while I labored away. We’ve had a lot of laughs over that since the birth!
Labor moved indifferently along, both in the tub and on the bed. I asked what the time was and Michael said it was 12:30. I suggested that arrangements be made for Ken & Lori to go and pick up Kenneth since they would need to leave in an hour to get him. I reminded Michael that they would need to take our car because the car seat was in it. Michael disappeared down the hall for a while and made the phone calls. It struck me, even at the time, that even as lost as I was in the throes of labor, I was still reflexively looking out for Kenneth. Perhaps mothering doesn’t get turned off or tuned out.
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After laboring in the water for a while, I decided I needed to go to the bathroom, so Joyce & Michael got some towels to dry me off, and I climbed out of the tub and made my way down the hall. On the way back to the tub I squatted on the floor near the corner of the bed and had a good hard contraction, at the time, I noticed I felt some relief of the pressure and pain if I tensed up the muscles in my abdomen and chest. It felt so much better that I kept doing it through each contraction. After I’d been back in the tub for a while Joyce got a funny look on her face and said, rather suspiciously, “you’re pushing!” I kind of grinned inwardly, and said to myself, “yeah, I wondered if that’s what I was doing.” I got up on the bed so she could check me, I was a good 7 or 8, and she asked me not to push. I think it was around this time that she called Sherri and said, “I need you.” Not pushing, when I desperately wanted to, was one of the most intense parts of this experience, and the first of the three most challenging moments of labor. The urge to push was just irresistible and overwhelming. However, Joyce was like a rock. She stayed with me, locked my gaze, and her presence became a solid anchor, to which I clung. I made a commitment to blow off the contractions. Damn, was that tough. I asked her, “how long do I have to do this?” She assured me, if I would stick with her until one o’clock then she would let me push. I could see her watch said between 5 and 10 'til, and that seemed manageable. She offered to manually try to push back the cervical lip and I mulled that over while I panted.
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Eventually, I agreed to let her try to push the cervical lip back and out of the way. Sherri and the apprentice, Nicole, were there now. I climbed out of the tub and up onto the bed. Sherri was wiping my brow with a cool cloth while Joyce went to work on my cervix, which was the second of the three most challenging moments of my labor. It was excruciating. I yelled, “No! Stop!” and obviously startled Sherri, who, I think, thought I meant for her to stop mopping my brow. I was thinking, “No, No, not you, HER!” Joyce continued manipulating my cervix, at which point I hollered, “PLEASE! TAKE YOUR FINGERS OUT!” (heck, at least I was polite!) to which Sherri stoically assured me, “she’s trying to help you.” I acquiesced resignedly and somehow made it through. Afterwards, Joyce suggested that I have a couple of contractions on the toilet to empty my bowels and perhaps relieve some of the pressure I was feeling. The whole troupe of us made our way to the bathroom, where our mission was successful. This was immediately followed by the third of the three most challenging moments of labor; leg cramps. First my right hip and subsequently, my left inner thigh cramped up and I was literally crawling across the bathroom floor. I thought I was going to self destruct, vaporize and implode. Michael said, my behavior at that point was the most disconcerting of any during labor. He said I shrieked, writhing on my hands and knees. I was frantically trying any position to release the cramp. Joyce and Sherri told me that it was normal, and that it was just the baby’s head putting pressure on a nerve as it moved down through the birth canal. Normal, perhaps, but not all that much fun, really. Thank God it didn’t last very long. Contractions I could handle, but that muscle cramp might have sent me ‘round the bend if it had lasted any longer than it did. Afterwards, we all caravanned back to the bedroom, where we tried the birthing stool for a while. While I was on the birthing stool, which was positioned on the side of my bed, Joyce and Sherri saw someone up on the front porch. Since our front door is glass, that meant that whomever it was could potentially see down the hall into the bedroom, not that I cared much. After a brief discussion, they ascertained that it was either Ken or Lori getting the car keys to go get Kenneth and that they couldn’t possibly have seen me since the stool was behind the L shaped bend in the wall. Frankly, if they did, I hope they enjoyed the show! Any modesty I had was history by then.
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After a few pushes on the birthing stool, Joyce suggested that I get back up on the bed. She said the birthing stool is really hard on the perineum. She had told me ahead of time that when it got down to the nitty gritty she would like to try to have me on my back because it just made things easier for her. She added that she had caught babies in any number of positions, but that if it was possible for me to be on my back that would be handy. Well, I climbed up on the bed, but I wanted to stay on my hands and knees. I pushed like that a couple of times and I heard Joyce say, “this is a good position, this position is fine.” When I head her say that I thought, “Well I hope so ‘cause I ain’t movin’!” Anyway, they told me I was going to feel a lot of pressure, and boy, they weren’t kidding, the pressure was immense, not pain really, but tremendous pressure, it felt like there wasn’t any outlet for release, and all my pelvic bones were shifting and straining out of the way. I remember Joyce encouraging Michael to come take a look at the baby’s head, which he did, briefly, then he moved back up to my face where he continued to offer water and moral support. Then they told me I could reach around and touch my baby’s head. I used a single finger and I could feel the soft wet velvet of sweet baby scalp just inside me. What a miracle. It’s burned into my tactile memory and every time I rub the top of his tiny head, that moment comes rushing back. More contractions, more pushing, then, just when I was thinking I was either going to split in half or the baby was just going to get stuck right there permanently, a big contraction came and I pushed and <splooch!> out the baby slid, as his body moved out I could feel every contour of my baby. It was a split second, but I was acutely aware; head…shoulders…chest…belly…bottom…legs… DONE! I flipped over onto my bottom, and Joyce said, “you’ve still got cord!” but I wanted to see, I didn’t want to miss a second of it, I wanted to see my baby right then. I looked down and saw that he was a boy,
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Joyce said, “Dad you call it!”
and Michael said, “It’s a boy!”
Joyce raised both fists in triumph and said, “YOU DID IT!”
and I said, “HELL YES, I did!”
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Joyce asked, “does this baby have a name?,” and Michael and I stumbled over each other answering, “Reid Michael.” Reid was a little slow to get started and Joyce suggested that we go ahead and cut the cord so they could work on him. Joyce asked Michael if he wanted to cut the cord, and much to my surprise, he actually did it. I hope he wanted to, because I wasn’t sure he did, but considering everything we’d been through in the last 8 and a half hours, I was really glad he did it. I don’t know, but somehow it meant something to me that he take that role. It kind of reminded me of how he ended up dancing with me at our wedding even though he said he didn’t want to, and to the Cotton Eyed Joe, no less. Maybe he felt a little uncomfortable, on both occasions, but they are two of my fondest memories, and I hope he can forgive me, and find a warm spot in his heart for them as well.
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When Joyce asked me to deliver the placenta, I was kind of surprised. I was thinking, “you want me to do this now? After everything else I’ve done? Aww, come on!” but then it was over in a heartbeat and it wasn’t that bad. She showed it to me and I was so glad to get to see it! I really felt like this birth was something I did, rather than something that happened to me. I was so much more the active participant and so much less the passive observer. I love the blood and muck in the photos, I love the raw, earthy realism. I love the memory of the slick wetness on my thighs. I love that I was able to go to a very primal place inside my mind and cope with labor. I love that it was messy and real, and alive, and not sterile and whitewashed and well lit. I feel like I connected with the eons of women who have visited that place before me, my grandmothers and theirs, each of us has walked this path now.
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Moments after the birth, Michael called my Dad and told him that he had his basketball team. He’d been saying he wanted another boy so he’d have 5 grandsons and therefore a complete basketball team. He was less than an hour from the house, so he came very close to making it. But later, Irma told us that he had said, “I’m going to drive as fast as I can, but I really hope I don’t make it.” Bless his heart. He arrived while I was being stitched up, he waited in the living room. Michael took Reid out to meet him. Reid was never out of my sight from the moment I flipped over to first see him until I suggested that Michael take him out to see my dad. It struck me later that it didn’t bother me a bit that I missed that moment of my Dad meeting Reid. It had been such a sore spot for me regarding Kenneth’s birth, when I watched from far across the recovery room while Michael introduced our son to his grandparents, and I watched, without being able to hear as each of them, one by one, held the baby that I had not yet touched. But, by the time Michael took Reid out to meet my dad, I felt as though I’d already known him a thousand years. It all meant something different in the context of truly having given birth.
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Joyce said that she and Sherri had participated in over 700 births between them and they had neither ever seen a baby “shoot out” the way Reid did. They were imagining another 3 to 5 contractions and suddenly; there he was. Joyce said,”there’s nothing wrong with your pushing muscles!” I tore pretty extensively, in multiple directions and I could not even get the midwives to tell me how many stitches I had. “Too many to count,” they said. They had to call in another midwife to do the stitches because the tearing was more severe than either of them felt comfortable repairing. I swear though, having a VBAC gave me the absolute conviction that I’m capable of anything, and I’d take twice the stitches for that.
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I remember asking the ICAN list, and Joyce too, months ago when I was newly pregnant, “Will having a VBAC cure the grief I have for my first birth?” the answers I got were mixed. I think generally the consensus was that, no, nothing would ever make that scar completely disappear. However, I’ll tell you, I feel like one of the chosen few. I’ve done both. I’ve seen both sides of the fence. I belong to both clubs, I’m truly initiated into womanhood and motherhood in a more complex way than anyone who’s had only one kind of birth, and honestly, having my VBAC has almost made me grateful for the C-section. If I hadn’t had the C-section, the VBAC wouldn’t have been a VBAC and it couldn’t possibly have been accompanied by the feeling that I’d overcome obstacles and worked against all odds to have this miraculous birth experience. The C-section actually increased the value of the vaginal birth, made it more, made it better, made it alive and tangible in a way I could not have appreciated if it had gone that way the first time. What would diamonds be if they couldn’t lean against black?
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When we talked about it later, Michael said that when I exclaimed, “Oh Sweetie, my water just broke,” that it was, “Just like in the movies!” He also said that the picture of me that he took just seconds after the birth; the one with the huge victorious grin on my face, looked like it belonged on the sports page. Yes, I think it would be right at home there.
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On Sunday I had worn my mom’s cardigan sweater around the house in the afternoon. When I took it off, I hung it over the back of a dining room chair, just the way she always did when she came to visit us. It stayed hanging there all throughout the labor, and every time I walked through the room it was almost as if she had just casually left it there. My dad commented later that he thought having it hanging there was a nice gesture, as if perhaps, at any moment she was going to appear and put it on.
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Post Script:
He had 1, 5 and 10 minute Apgars of 7, 9, and 10 respectively.
I had approximately 20 stitches.
The contraction that Michael taped lasted 2 minutes and 14 seconds. Yikes!
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Happy Family
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Grandma & Grandpa Mac
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Daddy
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Sleepin' it Off
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Three Days Old - I've Lost Weight!
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First Car Trip (To Pediatrician)
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My Mostest Favorite Midwife - Joyce!
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First Time Out to Eat - El Chico, a Family Tradition.
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