When Jesse arrived I was in the shower working on coping. In the other room, my hyponobabies tape droned on as it would for much of the next 24 hours. It sure didn’t afford me a painless childbirth (still unconvinced this happens from hypnosis or shear luck of the draw) but the message was soothing and since I’d listened to it nearly every day of my pregnancy, the familiarity was helpful, especially the continuous positive tone.
Shortly after Jesse arrived I decided I wanted the tub set up. While I was waiting for Markus and my sister to set it up I got the bathtub running. There is some standard birthing wisdom that it’s best to avoid the tubs until you are in active labor. I am pretty sure had someone said that to me I would have said, “Screw the standard wisdom. I like the water, I NEED the water!” Jesse had brought her herbs and essential oils and offered me some. She started to put some on a washcloth and I told her to go ahead and put it in the water. The orange blossom oil smelled wonderful and relaxing…and then the burn started. I was instantly out of Laborland and crying in pain. I am one of those people that looks at poison oak and starts with boils and itching. In American Samoa, I touched mango sap and woke up with my eyes swollen shut. I had an awful reaction to the oil…it felt like it was burning my skin off. It seemed totally unfair to have to deal with anything other than contraction pain (which were still coming). Everyone flew around the house trying for remedies….aloe vera, baking soda, anything. Eventually, the cure was good ol’soap. I should have let someone else wash it off as I still have a long stipe of burnt skin down my right thigh. I remember saying, “I have so much adrenalin in my system, it will be a wonder if my labor starts back up again.” The contractions had slowed but once I was out of searing pain, labor resumed.
My Sister and Markus shaking on a job well done.
The tub was good to go around 7pm and I thankfully got in. It was just as I’d imagined. I remember saying, “They’re going to be lucky if they can ever get me back out of this.” Two hours later, I was needing some feedback on how labor was progressing. My contractions were starting to radiate into my groin and my butt and I was in a stinky mood. Of course, this whole time my team had been amazing. Markus was wonderful and at my side continuously.
It was at this point I asked Markus to call Catherine to come. She said she was going to send someone over that lived closer to check my dilation. Carissa arrived around 9 pm and had the unfortunate task of telling me I was still at 2cm….that meant that I hadn’t changed at all in all those hours of labor. I felt this might be an issue with having a stenotic cervix (I’d had some problems in the past) and that if we could get stronger contractions from ruptured membranes we could break past that (a stenotic cervix will often not dilate, not dilate, than boom be very open all of a sudden and labor will commence normally). Carissa didn’t have a second person to monitor the baby and didn’t have an amniohook so made a call to Catherine for direction. Catherine was in a meeting and asked to talk to me. I was in no mood to be put off (I’m a midwife, I knew there were some good reasons for not rupturing membranes at that early stage) and told Carissa that if Catherine wanted to talk to me she needed to come-did I mention I was in a stinky mood? Luckily, Catherine is used to pissed off laboring women and agreed to be there around 10:30 pm.
I grumpily got back in the tub to await her arrival. And labor hard while there. The pain was turning into something I’d never heard laboring women describe before….many women have radiating pain down there thighs and back pain. What I was starting to feel was excruciating cervical pain and as before pain in my groin and butt. I kept thinking, “WHAT is going on? This isn’t normal labor! I’m prepared for NORMAL labor, not some weird anomaly. I’ve never even SEEN this kind of labor after hundreds of deliveries. What the hell!”
On the Birthing Ball
Catherine arrived and patiently talked me off the ledge of rupturing my membranes. Of course, she was right. Luckily, I’d had some cervical change, I was now 3 cm and lots of show. With renewed hope I started trying to work with this labor that was such a stranger to me. I think it was at this point that I shared my history with cervical pain and stenosis with Catherine, wondering if this had to do with the strange labor pain and slow progress. I think we all just had a collective shrug of the shoulders.
Laboring in the tub
The baby was checked regularly and boy was he a trouper. Never, in all of this long labor did he falter. Interestingly, my uterus had some performance anxiety around Catherine and Kit….I’d be contracting away and out of it in Laborland. I’d see Catherine and “snap” I was back and my contractions would space. Really this didn’t surprise me one bit, and I mentioned it to Catherine. She nodded, they’d recognized it as well. I think that’s why they kept mostly to the living room during the early labor.
It was around midnight that we all were getting exhausted. I told Catherine I wanted to lie down and was given blissful permission. Markus, Jesse and I curled up on the bed. I would have a contraction, sending me moaning and twisting or sitting straight up in bed and one or both would jump to attention. Then we’d all fall back and doze until the next one came. That was a surreal experience, to be deeply asleep and then to be jerked back into your body that was already seizing up in pain. Somehow we made it through the night like that.
With the dawn came new hope. Shades were pulled, doors opened for air. Breakfast started to be cooked-my sister and my bestfriend Hope were holding down the fort in the front of the house—cooking, cleaning and doing other village women activities, this was such a comfort to hear this real world activity and still be huddled in my bubble of labor. Catherine checked me around 5 am and yeah, I’d made some significant progress! I was 6cm! I got up and started moving around. Two hours later, she checked me and offered now to break my water because there hadn’t been any progress and hilariously I refused! I wanted to get up and move around, see where we could get without it.
In the birthing tub
By 9:40 I still wasn’t changed and I agreed with some trepidation to have my water broken. I knew at this stage in labor this could really get labor moving and it could be super intense. I remember saying, “Ok, everyone, things are going to get CRAZY now.” Catherine broke the water and a small amount of clear fluid came out. I think it was at this point that Catherine could feel on my cervix a small knobby area of scar tissue. Touching this area felt like it was a locus point for all the pain I was having with contractions. She tried to stretch that area. She was also uncertain of the baby’s position. I think there were a couple of times when she suspected the baby might be posterior. I wasn’t having classical back labor so I wondered about this.
After breaking of the water the pain I was having felt more manageable. I thought that I was now having “normal” labor. I was listening to the hypnobabies on the ipod with headphones and working with the contractions. It wasn’t until later that I understood that what was really going on was that my contractions were spaced out and less intense.
Listening to Hypnobabies on the ipod.
When the pains did come back they were still in my cervix and groin. I had instinctually started using my thumbs to dig into the crease between my thigh and groin, finding the nerves that were causing so much pain. Each time it took a minute to find and then the amount of pressure I had to exert was really hard to sustain during the contraction. We tried using massage tools to apply the pressure and they worked somewhat better. Then Jesse had a moment of genius and thought to wrap a Rebozo (a long Mexican scarf used for all sorts of maneuvers in labor but I’d never seen it used for this situation). It was wrapped around my abdomen and then up and over my thighs. Markus and Jesse would each hold one side and I would dangle…effectively cutting off the nerves during the contraction. It was a lot of work for them but it relieved the pain really well.
Markus holding the Rebozo, waiting for the next contraction.
At around noon I was still 6cm and we started to use the pump. It was a really hard process because you were basically causing yourself the pain of labor. I’d have to attached the pump, tell them to start the pump, then tell them to turn it off once the contraction started, deal with a whopping contraction, wait two minutes and do it again. The pump should have kick started stronger, longer and more frequent contractions of my own, but I was having to work for every contraction. My spontaneous contractions were still about 5 minutes apart. At one point I had a four minute contraction (one of the risks of using a breast pump) that sent me over the moon in pain and fear. In the midst of the pain I didn’t think it would ever end and was terrified and said so. I also knew that with such a long contraction the baby could be in jeopardy of not receiving enough oxygen. In the middle of the contraction I pleaded for them to listen to the baby, and the great and tolerant baby he is, he did fine. After that I needed a break from the pump and got in and out of the shower, the tub and did various position changes. The next time I was checked I was 8cm around 2:30 pm. This was really encouraging and I started back with the pump in the tub. I eventually got to the point were I was having a little pressure.
However, at 4:30 my contractions were still irregular and when Catherine checked me not only had I not changed, but I was regressing. Because of the baby’s presentation, my cervix was swelling, making my dilation less. Catherine felt that I was only 7cm now. She said we could continue with the pump or try to get an acupuncturist to come.
At this point I was over 24 hours of laboring and with the swelling I was concerned that if we continued we would start tiring out the baby and if we ended up transferring later we would end up with both an exhausted mom (me) and an exhausted baby and then end up with a cesarean.
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