The Labor Story

Pregnancy and labor are over and the new member of our family is here. Sebastian Drake Goodwin was born on July 7th, 2009, at 9:07 a.m. He was 8.8 pounds and 21 inches long. We've been home from the hospital for two days now.

Hospital. Yes, we ended up at the hospital after all our planning and learning about natural birth. The labor was a different experience than I anticipated. There's no way to know what you're going to get when you start the labor process. I'm glad I didn't know what lay ahead of me beforehand: it's better to live it in the moment. It's the only way to get through it.

I went into labor in the middle of the night on Sunday night, Monday morning. It was about 2 a.m. when I woke up with contractions. I wanted to let William sleep as long as possible since we had the whole labor in front of us. I couldn't sleep again: the contractions were too strong, but they were still pretty far apart. I woke him up sometime after four. He started timing them with a convenient app on his iphone. He started getting things ready and I lay in bed. We learned in our classes to ignore labor during the first stage and do other things, but it was pretty impossible to do that from the beginning because the contractions were intense. William threw together a labor playlist (something he had been trying to get me to do for weeks) on his computer. Once I was in labor I knew exactly who I wanted to listen to: Loreena McKinnet, Sarah Brightman, Lisa Gerrard, and Enya. He put my ipod on a docking station and we listened to the music in our bedroom. The music helped. Sometime after the sun came up he called the birth center. Anabel wanted to talk to me. She asked me some questions (I can't remember what they were now) and told us we should probably come in. She heard me having a contraction over the phone and I think that convinced her. It was around 9:30 a.m. when we got to the center.

Once we got there we were whisked right in to the birthing room we had chosen, Santa Fe, where my friend Wren gave birth. The room was so nice and cozy. When she checked me I was only at three centimeters. She said we could go back home for a while if we wanted, or we could stay. After watching me go through another contraction and seeing how painful it was, she suggested we stay. We got in the shower after a little while. It's hard for me to remember the early part of the labor now. It went on for a very long time, but time seemed to lose meaning. The contractions got more painful and closer together. I got in the tub, which felt wonderful. William rubbed me if I wanted to be rubbed, gave me water, didn't say anything when I got snappy, and was generally a great guy about everything that was going on. As the contractions got stronger, the pain got kind of out of control. I started to ask about the Nubain, which was a drug they had available at the birth center for pain relief. Anabel was reluctant to give it to me that early, because she said they usually saved it for transition, and also it could slow down the labor. After a certain point I didn't care anymore about anything but getting some relief. She gave me the Nubain and I got in the tub again. I felt such intense relief getting something that took the edge off the contractions. They were still painful, but I could manage it. Anabel suggested breaking the bag of waters to hopefully speed things along, as my progress was slow. I felt anxious about doing that. I asked William to call Wren in (she was there at the center, along with her husband Anthony and my parents) so I could ask her about when she had it done. I sat in the tub and talked to Wren for a while. I felt so much better at that point than I had earlier. She reassured me and I decided to go ahead and let Anabel do it. I got up and got back in the bed.

Anabel broke the bag and the amniotic fluid flooded out when I stood up. I didn't feel any different at first. Then the contractions slowly started to get stronger again and more painful. Somewhere around this time the woman in the next room started to get closer to giving birth. There was only one midwife at the center, so Anabel had to go next door to assist her. Then the most difficult part of the labor started, because my contractions kept amping up, the pain relief had worn off, and the only person checking on me was a very clueless and fairly incompetant assistant who kept touching me during contractions, even though I told her not to, slamming doors when she went in and out of rooms, and not relaying information back and forth between me and the midwife, as far as I could tell. I finally yelled at her to stop touching me.

I had an upper chest cold which had been lingering for two weeks and at this point it got difficult to breathe at the height of the contractions. I was wheezing trying to get air. Not being able to breath deeply when the pain was worst made the pain more unbearable. I asked the assistant if I could have oxygen. She never answered me or got back to me about whether Anabel thought this was all right, so I never got any oxygen. The assistant left us alone for a good part of the time, too, so for much of the next two hours William was dealing with me alone as I went through hell. I stood with my hands leaning on the back of a chair during contractions. I could not bear to have William touch me, which made it hard for him. I couldn't get back in the tub. Moving at all, changing position, brought on agony. I couldn't get relaxed because the pain had me in such a grip. I was literally rising up on my toes trying to get away from it. Anabel finally returned. (We learned later the baby next door had trouble breathing and she had to work on it after the birth to make sure it was all right). The first thing she suggested was that we go to the hospital. I was very surprised by this, even though it had been so rough. It ran across my mind how we had decided it was unnecessary to get a hospital tour or preregister for the "just in case" scenario. I asked her how could I possibly make it to the hospital with the pain I was having. I couldn't imagine being in a car, or even worse, strapped down in an ambulance, and going through the kind of contractions I was having. She said she could give me another shot. That relieved my mind and she quickly gave me the shot. Soon after William and I were in Mom and Dad's car, him driving and me in the passenger seat, following Anabel to the hospital. At one point when I had a contraction Anabel pulled over to wait for it to be over. I didn't realize until we were pulling away again that we had stopped.

We got to the hospital and pulled into an entrance. William helped me out and Anabel was trying to get me a wheelchair. Someone in the hospital called out something about where the wheelchairs were and I thought they were saying we had to go to another entrance, I said, "You've got to be kidding." Luckily that was not what they were saying, and soon I was seated in an extremely narrow wheelchair. I thought, "Am I so wide I can barely fit in a wheelchair?" When we got to some kind of desk another contraction started and I was making the noises I had to make during contractions and noticed very peripherally that everything went on as usual around me. We got taken to a private room and somehow I got on the bed. A nurse came in and told me she had to ask me a lot of questions. I thought, "Hell, it doesn't matter if you're in the middle of it, they're going to dot every i and cross every t." She stood entering information into a laptop and I answered her questions (my whole medical history, pretty much) with William answering for me when another contraction started. A doctor wandered in at some point and started talking about c-sections. He talked straight through contractions, which I felt was thoughtless and quite ignorant for an obstetrician to do. How was I supposed to understand, remember, and respond to medical information DURING a contraction? One can't think about anything else. It takes incredible concentration.

Needless to say, I can't remember much of what he said. I do remember he said I showed an irregular pattern of labor and the contractions weren't strong enough. Weren't strong enough? How was that possible? He checked me and I was at about 7 centimeters. He said he was concerned the baby was big and about the possibility of shoulder dystocia. I felt the baby was not too big but I was concerned about the irregular pattern. He said they could try pitocin to see if it would help the contractions and dilation. We agreed to that and I told him (when I could talk) that I wanted to be on the fast track for an epidural. I also said I wanted the pitocin after the epidural. He went away and after a while the anasthesiologist came in. He was very nice, explained everything clearly at every step, and made me feel like I was in good hands. There wasn't time to get everything done between contractions so I had to sit upright while he inserted the needle and be still during a contraction. That wasn't as hard as it might have been because I knew I would feel better very soon. He told me I'd only have to feel one more contraction before the epidural set in. I had to lie on my back so it could work (also an awful position to be in during a contraction) but it started working during the next one and from that point on I felt like I was in heaven, comparatively speaking. There is nothing like going from intense pain to relatively little pain. I could be nice again and talk to everyone and thank William. The next amount of time slid by, which I guess was several hours. I lay on my side and concentrated on relaxing my body and mind as much as possible. I thought about the baby descending and tried to visualize it.

Eventually the doctor came in again. The baby had "decels," a decellerated heart rate, on the pitocin, so they took me off of it. He gave a spiel about a c-section again and gave various dire predictions like having to manually assist the baby if I had it vaginally. He didn't think I would have changed much since the pitocin only dilated me a further .5 centimeters. But when he checked me I was at 10 centimeters, even though they'd stopped the pitocin quite a while earlier. I think the epidural and relaxation are what helped me get there.

Part II, The Birth of Sebastion, Coming Soon