Birth Story

A (really awesome) reader emailed me and mentioned looking for my birth story, which reminded me that I’ve been meaning to revise it for about a  year (here’s the original). I don’t want to forget details that surfaced later, so I figured it was time.

This is a long story, so I’ll do you the favor of inserting a jump so you can read more or skip.

7 a.m. on Monday, November 17, 2008. We arrived at the Labor & Delivery unit to check in for my induction.

Somewhere inside, I was sad — sad that I was going to lose this closeness with my daughters. Disappointed that I had to be induced. Everything about my twins pregnancy was so highly monitored, so planned, that I just wanted to go into labor on my own. But miles of walking, acupuncture, massage, sex, Evening Primrose Oil and pretty much anything else I could think of had failed.

Mostly, though, I was exhausted and I just wanted to get it over with. I was wearing something resembling a tent at that point. My ankles also looked like this . . .

. . . and my 50-inch stomach looked like this.

At almost 38 weeks along, I’d done a good job. I surrendered myself to the process.

The nurse led us to our labor room. An hour of paperwork and some really disturbing questions (did I want to be revived if something should happen to me? Eh….let me think YES PLEASE). She poked an IV into my arm and stuffed a bunch of blankets and pads under my ass. I wasn’t planning on shitting myself right away, but hey. I was new to this.

At 8 a.m., Dr. Fabulous from Jamaica showed up, cool and casual as ever. “Are you ready?” he asked in his calming island accent. He produced what looked like a long crochet needle and, with a swift move of the wrist, broke Baby A’s water. The warmth gushed between my legs and onto my thighs. Ah, so that was what the pads were for.

The doctor left. I wasn’t sure what to expect at that point, but nothing was happening. Chris and I looked anxiously at each other. He texted some people. I flipped through the TV channels.

This was pretty easy.

***

A lot can happen in 40 minutes. A load of laundry can finish washing. You can get ready for a night on the town. The sun can explode and engulf the earth.

Also, contractions. That’s about how long it took from the time the doctor broke Baby A’s water to the time the first real contractions set in.

At first, I wasn’t sure what was going on. I was starting to feel a lot of pain in my abdomen. The pains were coming on every couple of minutes and seemed to be getting worse. Each wave of pain built on the last to where it kind of felt like I was going to lose control of my insides.

Somewhere around hour two, I realized, “Um, hold the phone. I think I’m in LABOR and these are CONTRACTIONS.”

***

You know how, in the movies, the woman in labor screams at her husband and tells him to go eat his own feces? Threatens to cut off his wiener? Heaves and pants uncontrollably while having a fiery conniption?

Yeah, that was me.

I clutched desperately at the bed rail, tears bursting uncontrollably from eyes, literally unable to breathe through the waves upon waves of contractions. “Chris. CHRIS. CHRRIIIIISSSSS. Listen to me. I AM GOING TO DIE. CHRIS I AM GOING TO DIE. CHRIS YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND I AM GOING. TO. DIE.”

“Babe, you’re not going to die. You’re doing great. Just breathe, try to . . . ”

“FUCK YOU, YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT THIS FEELS LIKE I AM GOING TO DIE.”

Mind you, this was all without Pitocin. These contractions were the evil-doing of my own body. It had turned against me. Satan had gained control of my vagina and was punishing me for everything I had ever done.

This went on until about noon. I’m pretty sure Chris gave up on me at some point and started messing with his BlackBerry. He may have left the room. I may have killed him. I don’t know. I couldn’t see anymore.

I finally asked for something, anything to take away the pain. A nurse came in. I think I told her to go to hell. She put something in my IV called Nubain, a.k.a. Sparkly Unicorn Rainbow Dust from Heaven. Within seconds, I urinated the bed and went to sleep for an hour and a half.

***

I don’t remember the epidural. I must have told Chris that I was ready for it when I was rudely awakened out of my Sparkly Rainbow Nubain Reverie by the contractions.

It didn’t seem to take long for the adorable, ponytailed anesthesiologist to skip into the room.  I don’t remember her washing my back or inserting any needles. I don’t remember feeling anything at all except for the cool numbness that trickled down my back and legs.

Lamaze is crap. Birthing balls are for idiots. Natural childbirth can suck my left labia. Because epidurals are awesome and drugs are your friend.

Some time after putting in the epidural, they started me on Pitocin. I didn’t care anymore. I couldn’t feel shit.

I slept through almost the entire afternoon, stirring only to mumble to Chris about how much I loved my epidural and how much I loved him.

***

In the early evening, the nurse shut off the Pitocin. Since I was to deliver in the OR, they needed to stall my progress to attend to the two emergency C-sections ahead of me. I was at 6 centimeters and my contractions went on fine without the Pitocin anyway.

At 7:30 p.m., a nurse checked my cervix and announced I was at 9 centimeters. At the same time, Chris sent me a text, informing me that he was outside eating a sandwich.

Chris was outside. Eating a sandwich. And I was 9 centimeters dilated.

I told him to get upstairs right away and call the parents. This was probably a mistake. I was starting to feel the contractions through the epidural. My upper left ribs felt like they were being crushed by a large buffalo. I was sitting in my own urine and a puddle of amniotic fluid. I was pale and tired and enormous.

And my family was standing around taking pictures of me.

No sense of humor at this point.

***

9 p.m. The nurse ordered everyone out to check my cervix one last time. We were ready. I was 10 centimeters dilated and it was time to get to work. I don’t know what made me happier: the fact that I was about to meet my daughters, or the fact that people were finally going to stop taking pictures of me in my misery.

The OR was busy. There were two sets of NICU teams (one for each baby), the anesthesiologist, the OB and a couple of nurses. The staff heaved me onto a table, wherein the doctor proceeded to tilt me upside down. This seemed highly counter-intuitive to me, but he apparently wanted my giant vagina in his face, so … Whatever makes you happy, doc.

***

***

I wish I could say I was filled with all sorts of wonderful, complex, life-changing emotions at this point. But I wasn’t. Honestly, this was just a mission. It was my final mission in a very long, physically taxing, high-risk pregnancy.

I’d already given up so much about how I imagined my pregnancy to happen. Such as:

• Having twins never crossed my mind.
• I wanted to give birth in a field of wheat with granola falling from the sky. I wanted my child to be birthed among the dolphins. I wanted to breathe my way through my natural labor, which would be peacefully silent except for the soft hum of harps playing in the background.
• I was going to have a birth plan, minimal monitoring and no drugs.
• I was going to go into labor on my own and show up at the hospital already pushing so the evil doctors wouldn’t subject my love children to unnecessary chemical substances.

Failing all of this, I knew this would happen:

These babies were coming out the same way they got in. I was going to push them out of my vagina, by God.

***

The anesthesiologist gave me another pump of medicine. The Pitocin started flowing. Not sure if it was the drugs or the adrenaline, but I was shaking uncontrollably at this point. Chris gave the anesthesiologist his BlackBerry and his parents’ camera to take photos. The doctor told me to give a little push to see what would happen.

Turns out, we were not practicing. One “little push” turned into a full-blown, count-to-10, burst-your-eyeballs-out labor push. It actually didn’t take long for Baby A to emerge. Within four or five pushes, her head emerged. Another push and she slithered into the doctor’s hands. I think it may have hurt, but my brain was completely disconnected from my body.

He cut the cord and showed her to me. I reached for her foot and whispered, “Hi little girl! Hi little girl!”

Baby A’s NICU team cleaned her up and checked her over. I remember hearing a lot of numbers. “21:35. 9:35 p.m.” I remember “Apgar 9.” I remember “6 pounds 13 ounces.” I remember them wrapping her and bringing her to me.

I remember locking eyes with her.

My daughter, Elise.

***

Things here begin to blur again. The NICU team took Elise back to the table, swaddled her tightly, and rested her on her side. She stared at us deeply. Just stared. The nurses remarked on it. We did too.

Perhaps she was waiting.

***

Dr. Fabulous performed an ultrasound and determined that Baby B was still head down. They started me on a very heavy dose of Pitocin to get my uterus contracting again. I was still shaking. My legs were now swollen to the size of tree trunks.

The doctor and a nurse started doing things. Pushing on my uterus. Pushing on Baby B to get her down into the birth canal. The doctor may or may not have inserted his entire arm into me.

Actually yeah, I think that happened.

Did I mention how much I love epidurals?

I started pushing again. The contractions were one after another and I could feel them coming on, but again, my physical body was completely disconnected from my perception of pain. I just pushed when I felt a contraction. And when it felt like my brain was going to ooze out of my eyes, I pushed some more.

Then, I heard it happen. The Fart. It was the type of fart that could only mean one thing:

I had shit myself.

The sound startled me. Did I just shit in the operating room? I wondered how bad it was. I didn’t notice a janitor come in with a mop or anything, so .  . . Maybe I hadn’t?

In a surprisingly stern voice, Dr. Fabulous demanded, “DON’T YOU WORRY ABOUT ANY NOISES YOU HEAR DOWN HERE. YOU PUSH!”

***

So I pushed.

***

It didn’t seem to be a long time since Elise had been born, but apparently it was. Maybe a little bit of panic was growing in the room. I was pushing and pushing and Baby B still hadn’t emerged. I noticed and I didn’t notice. I just kept pushing.

At one point, maybe 20 minutes after Elise came, I remember the doctor sitting on a stool between my legs. Bill Cosby flashed through my mind. “Push ‘em out, shove ‘em out, waaaaaay out!”

He asked to no one in particular, “What time was Baby A born?”

“9:35,” someone responded.

Dr. Fabulous looked over his shoulder at the large, black-and-white hospital clock hanging behind him. It was verging on 10 p.m.

He turned back around slowly and, through tired eyes, he peered around the room and said one simple word:

“Patience.”

***

Within a few minutes, things started happening again. The doctor demanded that I push harder. The nurses were folding me in half. I was doing everything that I was told. Chris was watching from over my shoulder with a huge grin on his face.

Baby B insisted on coming out sunny-side up, which is what was taking her so long. I didn’t see any of this happen, but Chris told me that Dr. Fabulous attached a vacuum to her head and started pulling while I pushed. He pulled and pulled and pulled — until the vacuum popped off her head and went flying into the wall behind him. Blood shot everywhere. The doctor kept his cool, reattached the vacuum, and demanded that I keep pushing.

10:03 p.m. Baby B emerged from between my legs face-up, like a mechanic casually rolling out from under a car to ask for a wrench.

More numbers: 22:03. 10:03 p.m. Apgar 9. 6 pounds 1 ounce.

Althea was, once again, snuggled next to her sister. We were a family.

***

Okay, that was a bit of deceptive cadence there, because things were not over.

First, I was very pleased to learn I hadn’t torn and didn’t have an episiotomy. Dr. Fabulous had used some old-fashioned mineral oil to make things easier.

The placenta emerged. The doctor pulled it out by the two cords, holding it like a giant grocery bag. It was pretty impressive.

The babies seemed to be okay, but I think the doctor and nurses were getting a little bit desperate with whatever was going on with me. I’d been in labor for more than 14 hours. Twenty-eight minutes had elapsed between deliveries, which meant 28 minutes of my vagina just hanging out in the breeze, being exposed to bacteria and doctor’s elbows and whatnot. My uterus was gigantic — so gigantic, in fact, that neither of the girls came out with the conehead of a typical vaginal delivery.

I was spent.

One nurse was practically standing on my stomach. The doctor was crushing me. Labor was nothing compared to the torture they were now putting me through. Someone came up and shot me in the arm with something. “You need this to stop bleeding.” I wasn’t even aware that there was a problem.

Within hours of delivery, I developed a fever. I couldn’t stop shaking for the two days. My legs stayed frighteningly swollen for days.

I later read in my medical records that this was called “maternal exhaustion” and it was enough of a problem to have noted it as a complication in delivery. Althea’s heart rate had been suffering throughout the labor. Elise was born with dangerously low blood sugar. Then there was the vacuum assist. I was lucky to have delivered vaginally at all.

***

By 11 p.m., we were taken back to my labor room where nurses washed the babies and helped me to nurse for the first time.

Keep in mind that, at this point, it had been more than an hour since Althea was born. This meant that our parents had been sitting in the waiting room with no news.

No news, for new grandparents, is bad news.

Nurses started coming into the room to inform us that my mother was mounting an offensive against all hospital staff, threatening to strangle and/or maim someone if she wasn’t allowed to see her daughter and grandchildren. My mother was apparently convinced that the staff had sold us on the black market for a couple of extra pillows because she started demanding to know what they had “done with us.”

I gave the nurses permission to tell her to eff the hell off because I was TRYING TO FEED MY CHILDREN.

***

We went home on Thursday. The hormones, the sleep deprivation, the lack of nourishment, the complete disasters that we became . . . none of that matters now. Because these:

Became these: