LC's birth story

[Note: now that the arrival of PB is imminent, I thought I would post LC's birth story. Context, context, as Mr. Chili is always reminding me.]

It all started on January 17th, 2003. Kidding! Not going to go back to conception!

Saturday, September 20th 2003 was Mr. Chili's 36th birthday. I had planned a nice day for us. I was 37w2d pregnant, and feeling pretty good, all in all. We got up bright and early, stopped by the Tim Horton's for breakfast-to-go and then to the park for a walk with the dog. Cosmo had a great romp in the conservation area and we met up with lots of other dog owners. Did normal Saturday stuff, then headed downtown to see a movie and dinner. We knew it would be one of our last date nights for a while. We had a lovely evening.

While we were getting ready for bed, Mr. Chili joked that it was too bad the baby wouldn't be born on his birthday. Daddy & baby with the same birthday. Har har - I pretended to be disappointed, but was also relieved. After all, I still had a week left at work and really wanted my at least one or two days off work before the baby arrived.

Sunday was a great day. We took Cosmo for a run at the Rouge park and ate breakfast from Tims (yum). Then we headed to our childbirth class. Had an enjoyable class. The funny part is that we were chatting with Shannon (the instructor) and she said she had a good feeling that all of us were going to make it to the classes, that no one was going to go early. I was third in line, so to speak, to give birth. Famous last words! On our way home from class, we picked up few groceries on the way home and met MIL at home.

We had a delicious late lunch of bbqued ribs and corn with MIL. She was so excited to see my belly and so excited that her first grandchild was almost here. She took a picture of my big belly and ooh and aaahed over the baby's stroller and carseat with the teddy bear and a bib that said "I Love my Grandma". We spent what was left of the day working on things around the house. I think Mr. Chili was doing caulking on the exterior. I decided to assemble the vibrating/bouncing/rocking chair that we received as a shower present from friends. Later in the evening we watched Sunday night football in bed. I decided that we should put the pack & play together. We struggled with the instructions a little bit, but eventually got it assembled. (Yes, in hindsight, you could say that I was nesting.)

The baby's position in utero had been on my mind a lot. I knew that s/he was head down (good), but facing sideways. What they call "right occipital posterior". So when you go into labour, depending on how things happen, you can have a longer, more painful labour and a lot of back labour. Oh joy. I knew that this was going to be tough enough. I didn't need to have that as a concern too. I'd done a lot of reading about it and we had even covered it in our childbirth classes. I found out around 20w that the baby was facing this way and my stubborn child hadn't changed at all in the subsequent weeks. I had been sitting forward as much as possible, sitting on an exercise ball in the evenings at home and sleeping on my side with my legs positioned just so to help. Anything to encourage the baby to turn.

So that evening while we were watching football, it felt like the baby was really moving around. I mentioned it to Mr. Chili and he suggested I get into a yoga position called table pose to encourage the baby to turn. I was tired and grumpy and muttered about it for a while, but decided to take his advice. I spent about 10 minutes on my hands and knees, muttering the entire time. When I got back into bed I tried to feel what position the baby was in. To my amateur hands, it felt like the baby had turned. But really, what did I know? I'm hardly a professional.

Mr. Chili had fallen asleep and I stayed up watching the football game. It wasn't even that exciting, I just didn't want to go to sleep yet. I finally turned out the light around 11:30pm. A few minutes after I turned out the light, I felt this gush of fluid. My first thought was that my water had broken. Then I scoffed and thought that it couldn't be. I hauled myself out of bed and shuffled off to the bathroom. There was a serious amount of fluid - well, not that much - but more than if I had wet myself. I felt really excited, giddy almost. And I could hear our childbirth instructor saying, "don't wake up your husband if your water breaks in the middle of the night. It's going to be a while. Let him get some sleep. Otherwise you'll both be too excited and he's going to need the rest." So after waiting a whole minute, I told Mr. Chili that I thought my water had broken. He started awake and was excited too. I was still in semi-denial. We decided that we were too excited to sleep and that we should pack my hospital bag. Yep, that's right, we hadn't done that yet. I mean, I was 37 weeks, I still had time. Lots of time. Even though my water had broken, it would be hours before things got started!

We started laying things out for the bag. Mr. Chili went downstairs and put the carseat in the car, along with the instruction manual. We hadn't installed the car seat yet. Mr. Chili decided that he would do it while I was in the hospital, there would be time then. I started to lay things out. I also started to have contractions. Which had started sooner than I expected, I remember thinking. Geek that I am, I got out my handheld organizer and started the labour timing program. I started to time my contractions. They were 7-10 minutes apart and relatively short in duration. Within a short period of time, they were happening every five minutes and getting more intense. I was having to pause during contractions and concentrate. I was also losing my mucous plug - gross! (Oh and some diarrehea too. Gotta clean out the ole bod.)

I think we paged the midwives for the first time around 1:30 or 2:00am. Things were getting more serious and we wanted to know what to do. We paged Laurie first. She sounded tired and slightly annoyed. We had misread the schedule and she wasn't the primary midwife on-call yet - it was still Valerie. Ooops. So we paged Valerie. Valerie didn't sound too concerned. I could still talk through the contractions, although they were definitely 5 minutes or less apart and getting more intense. She said to page back if they got more serious or if I started feeling the urge to push. I was managing the contractions fairly well mostly on all fours, sometime leaning over. Mr. Chili was paging through the manual from our class, trying to find the coaching techniques to use. Poor guy was about a stage of labour behind.

Within half an hour, I was in the bathroom, on all fours, throwing up into a garbage can. I remember thinking that this must be transition. And also thinking that this was happening way too fast. I mean, really, I was 37 weeks. This was not supposed to be happening yet. I hadn't even finished work yet!

Mr. Chili paged Valerie again. Valerie asked if I was feeling the urge to push. I yelled/panted between contractions that I was starting to feel the urge to push. I was not nearly that coherent, though. I was panting and yelling pretty loudly. Not happy and in a lot of pain. I think I started to realize that we probably weren't going to make it to the hospital at this point. I said that to Mr. Chili, he said we could still go, and I said that there was no way I was going to be able to handle a car ride at this point. Valerie said she was on her way, and would be about an hour.

Things started to get very intense and very painful. I ended up on the bed, on my side, and was really feeling the urge to push. It was sometime after 3:00am, and things were really intense. Okay, intense is so much an understatement. Mr. Chili was being wonderfully supportive, when I could hear him. It was getting really tough. The one thing I really remembered from our childbirth classes was to put my head up and pant when I felt the urge to push. I was doing this and groaning and screaming. I know that I screamed and pretty loudly at some points because my voice was hoarse afterwards. I had no idea I could make that much noise, and I wasn't even really aware of what I was doing.

I was beginning to think that Valerie, Laurie and the student, Heather were never going to arrive. Mr. Chili was trying to tend to me, tend to the dog and watch for the midwives. Finally Valerie arrived at 3:30am with a police escort! She had never been to our house and was trying to find it in the dark, reading a map. I guess she appeared to be driving erratically, so a police car followed her for a while and followed her to our house. When she got out of the car, she explained that she was a midwife and was visiting a client. Likely the policeman heard me yelling! Of course I was unaware of this, just the quick updates that Mr. Chili told me when I was getting really scared that the midwives were never coming.

Valerie scooted upstairs and was quickly examining me. I don't remember her saying this but the she said to Mr. Chili that we were not going anywhere - I was fully dilated and ready to push. Shortly afterwards Laurie arrived, followed by Heather. The three of them spent a few frantic moments setting up materials, stripping down the bed, replacing the sheets with a shower curtain and garbage bags and getting ready for the arrival of our baby. I was only vaguely aware of these things. It was all I could do to get through each contraction. When Valerie told me that it was time to push I was glad at first. Then it hurt even more. I was yelling - unproductively - screaming, really. They had to talk to me, get me to calm down and grunt/groan instead. I was at the breaking point, not really believing that this was really going to happen. I was crying and saying, "I can't do this" over and over. Mr. Chili kept telling me how amazing I was and how much he loved me. Then Valerie told me that I could feel the head if I reached down. I tried but couldn't feel anything. I honestly thought they were just feeding me a line, that the baby wasn't really that close to being born. The midwives kept checking the baby's heartrate, monitoring to make sure that s/he was tolerating labour well enough. Then the baby's heartrate dropped. Not too badly, I think, but enough that they were concerned. So they told me to just push, push, push. No more controlled pushing, to ease s/he out. Nope. Just huge, long, screaming pushes. Again, I was screaming and they had to get me to focus. I was scared in a part of my mind, but most of me just wanted to get this over with! So I pushed and felt the baby's head emerge. Mr. Chili was on his knees by my side, watching. The rest of the baby's body just slid out on the next contraction.

They clamped the cord and immediately lay him down on my abdomen. The baby was grayish/purplish in colour and was limp for just a moment. Then we heard this quiet little cough, followed by his first shuddering breath. It was the most amazing sound I have ever heard.

Mr. Chili was on his knees next to me and we both gazed at our baby, still in shock that s/he was here. After a few minutes of rapt staring, we asked the midwives, "What is it?", "Look for yourselves", Valerie said. So we peeked under the towel and saw that we had a beautiful baby boy.

The delivery of the placenta happened next - I barely noticed it, I was just in awe of this tiny life lying on my belly.

The really-not-fun part happened next- I had torn a lot and deeply since we were in such a hurry to get LC out. So Mr. Chili took LC into the nursery and sat with him while the midwives stitched me up. Ouch, ouch and more ouch. I probably screamed more during this part than during labour. Tough call which was worse. I know that it took longer than the entire pushing part of my labour.

By the time everything was tidied up, it was about 8:30am. Mr. Chili, the baby and I dozed (after all, he didn't have a name yet) for a bit. Then we started calling our families. It was pretty fun to tell people that LC had put in an early and unexpected experience, at home too! I know that everyone I talked to was shocked and thought we were kidding at first. Nope, not a joke. He was definitely here.

So water breaking to birth was about four hours. And I was holding off pushing before the midwives arrived. I'm certain that LC would have arrived sooner if I hadn't done the panting thing - and been in denial!

Funny anecdote: later in the evening, our neighbour from across the street walking over, knocked on the door and handed Mr. Chili a bottle of wine, looking slightly sheepish, saying, "Congratulations." Mr. Chili accepted, and wandered back to the table, wondering how our neighbour knew that I'd had the baby already. We learned months later that our window had been open, and our bedroom faces the street, his window had been open too and apparently his wife is a light sleeper. So basically she heard me screaming... Not too embarassing that....
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It will be interesting to see how PB's birth story goes. Little bugger is already insisting on being different - coming relatively late!