The Dawn of Man, Part Two

(This is a continuation of Amos' birth story. Please first read "The Dawn of Man - Part One" if you want to have the whole story.)

Nancy crawled onto the bed and checked me again. It was terribly painful as she inserted her hand and felt my cervix, and I screamed in agony. She said I was fully dilated, no lip of cervix remaining – all clear to push the baby out!

(Amos and me, one week before this moment in time.)

Nancy and Gina helped me to get off the bed. They cleared the floor of the rug and put down lots of towels. They grabbed the birthing stool and had me sit on it. I started pushing. I don't know how to describe it other than pushing is like trying to get the biggest turd (cinderblock is more like it) of your life out of your body. It was crazy to feel someone's head start to descend through my vagina. His head would come down with each push, and then it would slide back up as I eased my muscles. I wasn't entirely comfortable on the stool, so I begged to get back in the water. Nancy seemed reluctant to let me, but I was determined. So, into the water I went. I tried several positions and found that being on my knees, sometimes crossing my legs, was the best position for me. I would hold onto the sides of the aquadoula, pulling myself up and grunting my way through the pushes. I was scared to push because it really was the most painful thing I've ever experienced. At some point, I felt a POP! as I pushed. I didn't know what that was. Phil put on the "Pushing Baby Out" CD that came with our Hypnobabies course. Finally, I was able to concentrate and use my training. The voice on the CD soothed me and somehow brought my wild animal brain back into focus.

I felt Amos' head come down farther and farther with each push. I would hold him there as long as I could to help my vaginal muscles stretch to prevent any tearing. It was the first time I felt like I was in a bit of control over the whole situation, as I held his head inside of me. For some reason, Nancy and Gina disappeared. I guess they figured that my pushing would last long because my laboring had. Well, they were wrong. I felt panicked when I realized that I was about to crown Amos' head and they weren't in the room. I told Phil to go get them. I had to resist the urge to push any further, knowing that otherwise I'd deliver Amos alone. Finally, they came back into the room, and I started to push again. Nancy said, "We have a crowning baby!" I asked if she could see hair, and she wasn't sure since I was in the water. They checked Amos' heart rate as I pushed some more.

For the first time, I heard panic in Nancy's voice. She yelled, "You need to stand up now, Sarah! His heart rate is dropping!" I quickly stood up in the water and Nancy positioned my legs farther apart. "Squat down and push that baby out now!" she said. I held on to whatever was around me – peoples' shoulders or whatever I could grab. I pushed with all of my body and soul, grunting, crying, and feverishly trying to fight through the pain. My memory is foggy about this moment in time. I know that I felt so overwhelmed with the idea that my baby's heart rate was going down, and I had to push through the most intense feeling of pain and fear no matter what. My mothering instinct, I suppose, is what drove me through it.

"Here he is!"

3:42pm, MST.

I looked down, and in a blur, I saw a bloody, small gray body being passed from between my legs to the nurse. She had an oxygen tube for the little gray being. Amos pinked up quickly and looked around the room with his big eyes. Gina passed him to me, after he pooped all over her and the side of the tub. I stood there in the water, and all feelings of shakiness and relief that I had suddenly felt when his body passed out of me now switched over to complete awe. THIS is what it was all about. This is what I was trying to do all this time, I suddenly realized. I just gave birth to the kicking, squirming thing that had been inside me all this time, and here he is. There are no words to describe it. There really aren't.

I know that everyone else was looking at his limp body and being concerned about his breathing and lack of crying. But, I just held him and knew that everything was alright. I told him over and over, "Hello! I'm your momma. Hello, Amos." It was the first time I spoke his name and knew that it applied to a real person now, a little bitty person. Phil and I would grin at each other as I stood there holding his son and leaking blood and whathaveyou into the aquadoula. Nothing else mattered. Amos was here.

Amos' umbilical cord was very long, and it had been loosely around his neck when he was born. I didn't know it at the time, but after his head crowned and came out, Nancy had gently pulled the cord from around his neck. It didn't cause any problems.

I handed Amos to someone and was helped out of the tub. I guess the midwife didn't follow me too well with the bowl, as Phil says that I leaked a bloody trail behind me. I sat on the birthing stool and was given my son again. I held him tightly to my naked body and smiled and talked to him. Nancy said that I had lost more blood than she would have liked, and we needed to get the placenta out. I tried to push it out, but really it was distracting as I held Amos. I didn't care about some placenta. All I wanted to do was hold him.

I pushed and pushed, and finally the placenta came out. Nancy said that it was a bit small but healthy. After the placenta was out, she realized that some of the amniotic sac was still inside of me. She gently guided the tissue out of me as I pushed. With that last push, I was free of the things that had connected my body to Amos. I was still bleeding a bit too much, so Gina the nurse administered a small shot of Pitocin (synthetic oxytocin) to help stop the bleeding. That shot was the only drug or intervention that I received during the entire labor and delivery, and I didn't receive it until all was said and done. Good job, Sarah, I say.

I was guided to the bed, and Amos and I stayed there together. He was so calm and serene. He never really cried, just a whimper here and there. I wasn't worried that he didn't cry, as many waterbirth babies are described as being just the same way. There was activity in the room that I mostly ignored as my son and I stared at each other. Phil and I would talk to him and giggle at each other. "I just did that," I would say, as if "that" is the best word I could come up with to describe the miracle that had happened.

After about an hour, Amos wanted to suckle. We tried to get him latched on but it didn't go so well. I kept trying to get him on the breast, and at some point Nancy asked Phil if he would like to cut the cord. I guess I should add here that the birth center believes in letting the cord stop pulsing and to allow the baby to receive as much blood and nutrition from the placenta as possible, so the placenta had been placed in a bag next to me on the bed. The cord was clamped, and Phil cut it. Amos was weighed with an old-fashioned hanging scale because the digital scale had decided to not work. I liked the idea of Amos hanging in a fabric sling from an old-timey scale. It was yet another moment when his birth was clearly a healthy, natural thing, separate from medical intervention, or at least that's the way I thought of it. He weighed 6 pounds 9 ounces and was 19 ½ inches long.

I was still covered in blood and meconium (that's baby poop), so Amos was handed to Phil as I went to the bathroom to enjoy the herbal bath that Gina had prepared for me. For about twenty minutes, I soaked and relaxed. I was struck by the idea that I was alone, truly alone, for the first time in ten months. It wasn't a tragic thought, just an interesting one. To this day, I haven't felt like I'm empty just because Amos isn't inside me anymore.

I came back to the room to find Amos clean and dressed. We started the breastfeeding again, and I chatted a lot with the ladies as they continued to clean up the room. It was a big task to clean up the mayhem I had left behind. I thanked them very sincerely for helping me through the last 12 hours. Nancy told me that Amos had indeed been in the correct position for birth all the time, so my back labor was caused by my previous back injury, not by Amos' position. Nancy also said that I was such an easy patient, one of the best she's ever had, not like "so many other new mothers." Really? "You've GOT to be kidding," I thought. Apparently, all the time that I was in my head and suffering through pain, they had observed a calm and collected woman who was using everything she had to concentrate and get the job done. I wasn't a screamer and I never freaked out, and it impressed the staff considerably. I try to remember that when I think about all of those hours of labor. All in all, it was 15 ½ hours of contractions and trying to get through the intense pain of back labor. If it hadn't been for my water breaking so early and the back labor, I know I would have done even better.

There was a short time when the staff left the room, and Phil and I were alone with Amos for the first time. We stared at him, and then at each other. I tearily looked at Phil, feeling so much for him as I held our child. Phil had tears in his eyes as we gazed at each other. It was the first time I've ever seen Phil cry in all of the 14 years we've been together. I can't even type this without crying.

Whew. So…

Nancy had checked my vagina just before my bath to see if I had any tears. There was too much blood to tell, but she thought I only had "skidmarks" and "road rash." Now that I was clean, she checked again. I had some tears that she thought needed stitches, so we headed to the exam room. I should add that my ability to walk was greatly hindered. I was weak from the ordeal, from fatigue, and from blood loss. Taking each step through the halls was slow going. Before Nancy stitched me, I asked her to allow me to start my self-anesthesia. It worked really well, and throughout the procedure I only felt one tinge of pain when she poked me with a needle. I felt every stitch being applied and pulled, but never any pain. The lidocaine shot helped, but my own self control was very strong.

It was taking quite some time for Nancy to do the stitches. She called Gina over and said, "Look at this. I've never seen this before." Now, whenever a medical professional says that about you during an exam, it's enough to warrant a bit of worry. Apparently, that POP! I had felt during the pushing stage was the moment when I had torn my hymenal ring in half. Women have a hymen that is normally broken during the first time they have sex or some other activity, and there is a hymenal ring that holds it in place. The ring remains throughout your life. Mine is apparently thick, so thick that Amos' big head was too much for it to handle. Nancy decided that it would have to be stitched as it wouldn't heal properly on its own. The hymenal ring can tear during birth, but not normally the way that mine had. So, there you go. I'm a medical oddity.

I had a few other tears, and Nancy said I had about 5 – 6 stitches in total. I think if I had been allowed to push in the water instead of standing up to deliver Amos, I wouldn't have as many tears. But, so it goes.

We stayed at the birth center about 5 or 6 hours past the time Amos was born. Phil loaded up the car while I was slowly helped to the car with Nancy and Gina's help. Amos had been delicately (although awkwardly) loaded into his carseat, and off we went.

It was 8 or 9pm, dark, and so calm in the world as we rolled through Denver and brought Amos home for the first time. He was born on the longest day of the year, on a day with record high heat. It was also the longest and hardest day of my life, yet I know that when I look back as we celebrate Amos' birthday each year, I will remember it as the best day of my life as well. He and I both rose to the challenge. I won't mind the battle scars that remain. I wear them with pride, because I brought a wonderful new life into the world, even if there were a few casualties along the way.

Amos' at Mountain Midwifery Center in his coming home outfit, a monkey onesie and hat.

Amos' first night at home with a very tired (and bloated) Mama.

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I just wanted to add (because obviously this isn't long enough...)

I receive a lot of comments from other women that seem to indicate that they feel inferior or they feel guilty in some way because they had epidurals, a hospital birth, weren't able to have a natural birth, etc, ad nauseum. PLEASE stop thinking this way. No matter how you had your child, the fact is: your baby is here, and your baby is beautiful. Whatever route you had to take does not diminish your accomplishments as a mother.

Sometimes I refrain from telling my story because it seems to make me the most hated mother in the room. Other women do not seem to want to hear that I had a natural, drug-free birth, and I've become familiar with a certain glare coming from these women that indicates that I should just shut the hell up about my hippie way of squatting a baby in the woods. They neglect to notice that despite these choices, I had troubles along the way. My back was KILLING me. I threw up the entire time. I was dehydrated and probably should have accepted the IV. The pain was real and very intense. But, in the end, just like you, I have a beautiful baby. We mothers all end up here one way or another, and my story is not more important or greater than yours.

My midwife lent me a book that greatly helped me along my journey. I highly recommend Ina May Gaskin's book, Ina May's Guide to Childbirth. She is a pioneer for our time, and a champion of women's rights. There were very specific passages in this book that helped me during my labor. For example: one woman imagined the word "open" and focused that idea on her birth canal. She imagined it was very open and wide, and the midwife witnessed this mother actually open up her birth canal as she did this. I tried this visual technique when Amos was crowning. I feel it helped.

Those of you lucky enough to live in the Tennessee area can visit Ina May Gaskin and have her or her associates as your midwife.

I also used Hypnobabies hypnosis for childbirth. Phil and I spent five weeks in classes learning this technique from a nurse/doula. The techniques helped, especially in teaching me to be loose and limber instead of tensing up and yelling.

If I have another child, I will choose the same birth center and use Hypnobabies again. I will also consider lots of exercises to strengthen my ding dang back, and perhaps look into acupuncture for lower back injuries.

I hope that my story has helped others in some way, but mostly I want to pass this memory along to my son so that he may know the tremendous love and dedication his mother and father had for him during his birth.

Second day home.