Evan's Birth Story (Warning: extremely long!)

Here is Evan's birth story. It's incredibly long, because it's first and foremost a record for my own memory. If you don't like reading details about medical stuff/birth...don't read this. I basically just wrote whatever I was thinking and didn't necessarily edit out the gross details, haha. You've been warned!

Evan’s Birth Story

            I guess the story starts on Monday, April 9. I saw Wendy, my midwife, for my weekly checkup, and I finally agreed to let her check to see if I had dilated at all. I hadn’t wanted to know previously, because I didn’t think it made a difference whether or not I was dilated…I could have been and not gone into labor for another 2 weeks, or I could have not been dilated at all and gone into labor that night. So for me, it was better to not even know so that I wouldn’t be thinking and obsessing about when Evan would come. Anyway, she did check me, and I was dilated 2cm and effaced 50%. She said that was great…but not so great if I planned on making it another two weeks in order to finish my semester at school. She said I would probably have him any day. I figured she was just saying that, and I kept telling myself that I still had lots of time and that if I could just get done with clinicals, I’d at least be more ready for Evan to be born.

            The rest of the day after seeing Wendy, I had some bloody show and was losing my mucous plug. At first I thought I was just having some bleeding because of the internal exam. I started feeling kind of sick, and ended up getting about 3 hours of sleep that night. I had to get up at 5am for clinical, and felt pretty nauseous all Tuesday morning while at clinical. Looking back, I guess I kind of knew something was happening, but I didn’t want to admit it because I was so focused on finishing the semester. I kept saying there was no way he’d be early, and that I still had some time left.

            I went to bed Tuesday at 11pm, and at 12:30am on Wednesday, I was woken up by a sudden gush. Even though the sensation felt exactly like I had spontaneously lost all bladder control and wet the bed, I immediately knew that it was my water breaking. It was as if my brain knew what was happening before I was even fully awake. The second I was woken up by it, I said “Jon, my water just broke.” I didn’t even have time to think about it or consider what had just happened, I just blurted it out. I ran to the bathroom and had several more small gushes. I kept thinking that maybe I had just been really relaxed and peed the bed or something. I laid back down, and the gushes continued. It was impossible to sleep after that, especially since I started getting some mild cramps. I had never had any painful contractions at any point during my pregnancy, but I definitely knew one when I felt it. They weren’t bad, but they started shortly after my water broke, which confirmed for me that it had indeed been my water and not just an unfortunate lack of bladder control.

            Between the contractions and continued small gushes of fluid all night, it was impossible to sleep any more. I was so excited and kept thinking, “I might have the baby today!” I figured that hey, my water had broken, the baby would be here within a day, right? I called my clinical teacher and told her I wouldn’t be at school that day (Wednesday). I called Wendy and she said to just hang out and let her know my progress throughout the day. The “assistant midwife,” Kristin, came over that morning to check on me and listen to Evan’s heartbeat to make sure he was fine. My contractions were getting a bit stronger, but weren’t regular at all. They would get stronger and more frequent when I laid down and tried to rest, and then they’d start going away when I got up and moved around. It was frustrating, to say the least. I basically just sat around waiting all day for things to get going, but they never really did. My parents and Catie came over to hang out. Catie and my mom cleaned my car for me…that was such a nice treat! I laid down Wednesday night and tried once again to sleep, and had no luck. I would doze off for a minute or two, and then get woken up by a contraction. The contractions kept getting stronger but were only coming about every 10 minutes. They started coming every 3-5 minutes and I got really excited, and then they would stop all together. I decided around 2am on Thursday to go downstairs and bounce on my exercise ball to see if I could get the contractions to come more frequently. They were painful, but I was just breathing through them. I knew for sure that there was no way I was even in active labor yet. My body was starting to shut down from lack of sleep. By my calculation, I’d had about 5 hours of sleep in the last 3 days,  and I was definitely feeling it. My body was shaking and convulsing, I didn’t have the strength to sit up anymore, and I was so nauseous. I called Wendy and told her that I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to sleep, but the contractions were preventing that. I wanted things to progress, but I figured I still had so much laboring ahead of me, that there was absolutely no way my body would have the strength to handle any more. I was afraid that sleeping would stop labor altogether, but at that point, I was willing to have things stall if it meant I could get a little bit of rest.

Luckily, I got maybe 1-2 hours of sleep when I had a few half hour breaks in between contractions. I would have gotten more, but I was having anxiety attacks for some reason, and all I could think about was how it felt like my heart was racing. The little bit of sleep was enough to lift my spirits and give me the energy I needed. I stopped shaking and feeling sick, and I went upstairs to lay in bed again. The contractions were becoming stronger and stronger, and I was starting to have a harder time with them. I had practiced so many relaxation techniques during my pregnancy, yet I still had a really hard time not tensing up and focusing all my energy on resisting the pain. I kept telling myself, “Pain equals baby!” I imagined every contraction bringing me closer to meeting Evan, but even that didn’t help too much. I finally woke Jon up (yeah, he was just sleeping away through pretty much all of this…) and told him I was going to get up and eat and ask for Wendy or Kristin (she’s a midwife-in-training and will become a midwife in a couple months. Right now she’s a certified Doula and was going to be assisting Wendy with Evan’s birth.) to come over and bring the tub.

Kristin came over at about 9am on Thursday and checked me. I had told Jon that if Kristin told me I was only dilated to 3-4cm, I was going to the hospital. I’m not sure how serious I was, but I knew that I didn’t have much left in me to keep going if I still had hours and hours of labor ahead of me. I knew though, that without regular, frequent contractions, I probably hadn’t made much progress at all. Much to my surprise, Kristin announced that I was 7cm dilated! What?! I was shocked and so excited. I had made so much progress on my own and was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Until that point, I still had a hard time convincing myself that I would eventually get to meet my baby. It still felt like a far-off fantasy that wasn’t really going to happen any time soon. It’s funny how much power your mind has sometimes.

My mom and Catie showed up a little after Kristin got there. They were amazing and started to help get things ready. They helped Jon blow up the tub and clean and, honestly, some other stuff that I don’t remember because I was in the living room with Kristin just focusing on getting through the contractions. Kristin was truly amazing. She was what saved me from giving up when the contractions were getting painful. She noticed right away that I was tensing up during contractions and talked me through each one by telling me to relax my muscles and breathe. She just kept saying “let everything go.” It was all stuff that I knew in my head, but I needed the encouragement and reminder from someone else. Once the tub was blown up and filled with water, I was feeling pretty ready to get in. We had a bit of a hiccup when Jon forgot to inflate the bottom of the tub. It was on the hardwood floor in Evan’s room, so I was pretty uncomfortable until we decided to just put a pillow in there for me to sit on. It felt so great to be able to just float and melt into each contraction. I was feeling really great in between contractions, and was talking and joking a lot with Wendy and Kristin. They both came in and just hung out in the room with me. The contractions still weren’t very close together, but boy, they hurt! I just continued to breathe and focus on fully relaxing through each one, and it didn’t take the pain away, but it made the pain totally manageable. I can honestly say that at no point during the contractions did I ever wish I had an epidural. I guess I expected the contractions to be much more horrible. They were bad, but not as bad as I was expecting.

I started losing track of time and basically just laid in the tub motionless for long periods as the contractions got a little closer together. I kept trying to think of happy things to get me through each one, and the image that kept coming to my mind was being on the beach in Mexico on our honeymoon. With each contraction, I would tell myself, “Liz, go to the beach.” Haha. It really did help! Again, the pain was still there, but I could get through it by letting everything go. I also requested that everyone be quite during my contractions, because any noise, and most physical contact even, was really distracting. I am proud to say though, that I never snapped or swore at anyone during any part of the birth, haha. I thought I’d be saying all kinds of mean things. I was mostly just really quiet and focused during the last really intense part of labor.

I wondered if I would know when to push. I knew, from reading, what sensation to watch out for, but I was afraid I’d never feel it. My contractions still weren’t very close together, and Wendy asked if I’d want to labor on the bed for a bit, so that she could check my progress. I kept telling her that I didn’t think I could handle laboring out of the water. I felt comfortable dealing with everything in the water, but was scared of the unknown of how much harder it might be out of the water. Just in time, I started to feel “pushy” during the contractions. My body was starting to involuntarily bear down, and the first couple times I fought it, because I wasn’t sure if it was ok to push. I hate how we are so conditioned by the medical world to do everything by the book. In the hospital, your dilation is checked regularly and you’re instructed by someone else on when to start pushing. Are our bodies not capable of letting us know what to do, and when? I mentioned to Kristin and Wendy that I was feeling like I might have to push, and they said to go ahead and see if I could feel Evan’s head. I was afraid because I didn’t want to reach in and feel nothing and then become discouraged. I felt his head, though! Kristin then checked me and said that I was pretty much fully dilated, and that if I pushed during the next contraction, she could help move the little bit of cervix that was in the way, out of the way.

I started undirected pushing at 12:30 pm on Thursday. I was so grateful that no one told me the time. I had no idea what time it was, and I didn’t want to know. I figured it was probably sometime around 3, though. I did some pushing and tried to get the feel for things on my own, and then after a few contractions, Kristin asked me if I wanted them to help guide me. I can’t even describe how wonderful it was to not have someone sitting there telling me when to push, counting to 10, and telling me to hold my breath…etc, etc. They simply encouraged me to keep going, to give it a little more, to take breaths and push one more time with each contraction. It was really hard and I quickly got discouraged when I felt like I was making no progress. It felt like a long time had gone by, and it just didn’t feel like Evan was any closer to being born. I tried a few different positions in the tub, but his head was having a hard time making it past my pelvis.

 I should mention that the entire time I was pushing, Wendy and Kristin were monitoring Evan’s heartbeat and it was perfect every time. He tolerated labor like a champ! It’s amazing to me how much people (mostly medical professionals that I told I was having a home birth) obsessed over the fact that I wasn’t going to have continuous heart rate monitoring for the baby. I am not blind to the fact that sometimes, it is totally necessary and is responsible for saving the lives of babies. But, on the other hand, it is so necessary in the hospital because almost every woman is given so many drugs that can mess with the baby’s heart rate. Babies are designed to tolerate labor! When they are left alone (meaning, no drugs in their systems), they can do fine even when being squeezed through a birth canal! Anyway, I’m stepping off my soap box for now.

The longer I pushed in the tub, the more discouraged I got. At one point I asked, “Am I going to have to go to the hospital? Is this going to work? Are you sure he’s going to come out?” I still didn’t know the time, but I had a vague idea that I’d been pushing for a pretty long time. The problem was that my contractions never got very close together. They were spaced out and my body was so tired from no sleep. I was having a hard time holding myself up in the tub so Jon had to help hold me up. Wendy told me that I might have more luck if I got out of the tub, so I considered it for a few minutes (again, I was scared of the increased pain that being out of the water might bring), and she gently reminded me that it was going to take more pain in order to get Evan here. It took several more contractions to actually get out of the tub, because every time I stood up, I would get a contraction and have to squat down and push. I did make it to the bed finally, and did a lot of pushing there. I made some progress, but was so beyond exhausted, that I kept feeling so discouraged that all my hard work didn’t feel like it was paying off.  My whole lower body would cramp up so badly with each push that I couldn’t push through the entire contraction, which made things take even longer. Finally, I decided I wanted to stand up because I thought using gravity would help me conserve some energy. That worked for awhile, until my legs kept giving out. They were shaking so badly that I literally couldn’t stand anymore and Jon held me up. I sure am glad I married such a strong guy! J

After what seemed like an eternity, I could see the top of Evan’s head in the mirror            ! I couldn’t believe it.  He had SO much dark hair. That gave me the motivation to keep pushing harder, but I was shaking from head to toe from exhaustion. I don’t want to go into too much detail, but let’s just say the “ring of fire” is even worse than I’ve heard it is. I don’t think I really complained about the pain at all until this point. Wendy said that Evan had so much hair and that’s what made things even harder. All his hair was preventing him from just popping out…haha. I was screaming at this point, mostly cause I felt like that helped me to push more intensely. The next thing I knew, his head was out! A few more pushes, and his body was out too, and they handed him right up to me. I thought I’d sob the first time I met my baby, but all I could say was “Oh my gosh…” over and over. They helped me lay on the bed, with Evan on my chest. We got to lay there for about an hour while I delivered the placenta and Wendy stitched me up. Amazingly enough, after THREE hours of pushing, I had such a minor tear that Wendy said I didn’t even need stitches, but that she could give me a couple to help make things a little more comfortable.

Evan was super alert right after he was born. He cried a little bit when they rubbed his back to stimulate him, but other than that, he just looked around the whole time. I loved that. We let the cord stop pulsing before Jon cut it. I’m surprised he cut it, because he was a little woozy through much of my labor. I had expected to give birth and then just want to go to sleep, but I got a surge of adrenalin and felt really energized. Once I was stitched and good to go, I was really eager to see how much Evan weighed. He was 8 pounds even, 21 ½ inches long, and had a 14 ½ inch head…that explained why he was so hard to get out! It’s amazing, though, that as soon as he was out and laying on my chest, none of the pain, exhaustion, or hard work mattered anymore. Once Evan was weighed, we both took a nice relaxing herbal bath and I tried nursing him for the first time. The whole nursing thing is another story in itself, that I won’t even begin to talk about right now.

It’s already hard to remember a lot of the details of his birth as I’m typing this now, 6 days later. All I know is the incredible love I feel for this little boy. I get teary eyed every time I think about how much I love him and how lucky I am to be a mom…HIS mom. He is perfect in every way, and I am constantly thanking God that I was given this gift of motherhood. I think about how long I prayed for a baby and how much Jon and I went through to get to this point. It still feels so weird to not constantly be thinking, "Man, I really just want a baby already!!" I don't have to wish for that anymore, because my baby is finally HERE!