the story of FMW

Woke up on Friday morning (February 27th) to the most exquisite painful contractions – one at 5:30 woke me up , I fell back asleep, a second woke me up at 6:45 and I was too excited to go back to sleep. I woke G up and we talked about it. I called Libby and we decided to wait for the next one before she got on a plane… I called Mardi and we decided to change her flight to Friday, since it was only changing it by one day. (She had purchased her ticket for the 28th-6th… and had to be back in SF on the 6th so no real option except using the existing ticket…). By the time the next one came at 8:30, Libby decided to head to the airport and buy her ticket. I called our Midwife and she said, “yes, good, this could develop into full blown labor and we’ll met your baby tonight or it could go away and be nothing and you have your baby next week. Whatever you do, don’t clean your house. Nap, rest, eat lots of carbs and drink lots of water.” Mardi arrived at noon, Libby flew in at 3. Tira (my manager) arranged for a housecleaner to come clean the house!! And all contractions stopped.

The four of us went out to dinner – Catcus, my favorite! – and on the way had one last contraction. The rest of the weekend was nothing but really strong Braxton Hicks contractions. Lots and lots of Braxton Hicks. But nothing like those Friday contractions. This caused some anxiety, since I had Libby and Mardi come up to be party to my labor, and there is no labor. Woke up Sunday morning with the most serene sense of peacefulness – somehow, this is all going to work out, everything is okay.

Monday was more of the same. We were all feeling some frustration about the state of no labor, so we decided to go for a walk – did the 2.8 miles loop around Greenlake. That evening, the four of us recounted what we had done to get this adventure started: I had acupuncture, G&I had sex, I had taken several hot showers, we walked almost 3 miles around the lake, we laughed until we almost peed our pants, we cleaned the entire house, we grocery shopped nearly a dozen times, we'd been in and out of cars so much we lost count, we had spicy food, drank lots of water and spicy chai tea, we rested by the fire often, we knitted a baby blanket and pants, we watched comedy and dramas, we did calisthenics, we did adult and kid laundry, and we'd sung Barry Manilow to the belly to annoy the baby out...

Then, Monday night at 11pm, I had noticeable unexplained wetness between my legs. But I was afraid to get excited again.


Tuesday morning, 12:44am. I woke up to go to the bathroom – and there was a gush down my leg. I made George get up and come look at it, to see what color the fluid was. It was clear, pink and odorless, which was reassuring. We lay back down, and then, at 1:06am, the first contraction hit. They came on strong – every 4 minutes for 30 seconds. We paged our Midwife, she advised to keep track of the contractions, call back when they become a minute long every 4/5 minutes for an hour.

So we lay back in bed, and tried to sleep. I tried to rest – at 3:30am the contractions were about the same, we got up and made an egg sandwich. I hopped into the shower to get some relief. An hour later, we were in the living room, tracking the contractions (still the same interval) and chatting. G went back to bed around 5, and I lay on the couch. It was raining hard outside. I was able to sleep for the three minutes in between contractions, and sometimes through the contraction – but every once in a while the contraction would wake me up. I got back in the shower about 6am. I wasn’t actually timing the contractions – I was counting my breaths and my counts stayed the same (in retrospect, I was just extending the breaths instead of actually counting a true measure of time).

I woke up G at 7am, and told him that I was nervous that I couldn’t keep up with contractions – that the interval/duration was the same, but I they were really painful. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to handle another 12 hours of this level of pain…

He wanted to sleep more, so I went into the living room and called our Doula. I told her that I had been at the same spot for hours, 30 seconds four minutes apart… she said it was okay, that some women never get to the minute long contractions, just to find a position that was comfortable. I mentioned that the only place that was comfortable was the shower, but I couldn’t stay in there because I got too hot – she suggested taking ice water and cool washcloths for my forehead in with me – genius! – and I was headed back to the shower. Mardi and Libby got up just after 7 – they came into the living room while I was on the phone with our Doula – I told them what was happening, that the contractions felt the same as the ones I had felt on Friday (which was a small relief to me, I thought I was making things up) and that I was headed to the shower. They brought me ice water in a non-glass container (such smart thinkers, those two!).

I hung out in the shower with more contractions. George came in a few minutes later with the laptop to track my contractions. He called the midwife to let her know what was going on – he told her more of the same, more of the same (he hadn’t actually tracked any contractions yet). They hung up, and we started noting my progress:

Time - Duration; Time since last contraction
07:06:04am - 46 seconds; n/a
07:09:37am - 46 seconds; 3 minutes and 33 seconds
07:12:56am - 45 seconds; 3 minutes and 19 seconds
07:15:31am - 43 seconds; 2 minutes and 35 seconds
07:18:36am - 53 seconds; 3 minutes and 5 seconds
07:21:20am - 42 seconds; 2 minutes and 44 seconds
07:24:25am - 55 seconds; 3 minutes and 5 seconds
07:26:47am - 40 seconds; 2 minutes and 22 seconds
07:29:07am - 57 seconds; 2 minutes and 20 seconds

The next contraction, if I remember correctly, cracked the minute mark – the last one I recall tracking was 1 minute, 23 seconds, with only 2 minutes between… Since this pattern was hardly the same as 30 seconds every four minutes, George was frantically paging the midwife to GET HERE NOW. At this point, I thought there was no way I could keep this up for hours. Little did I know that my baby was less than two hours from being born…

In retrospect, we think Transition happened just before 8 am – those three contractions had me (literally) climbing the shower walls. I had both hands on the wall with the faucet and my feet on the back wall and just started to go up – I was completely horizontal. Libby and George must’ve sensed how crazy I was feeling… I just wanted to get away from the pain. I was on the verge of totally flipping out – up to that point, the contractions had been akin to a sine/cosine curve – starting slow and peaking out and coming back down… these contractions stated at the top and held for a bit and then dropped off… but I didn’t know that, I thought they were starting out and would get stronger, and if that was the case I was surely going to perish, because they started so strong there was no way I could endure them getting stronger. Once I realized that these were different, that they started high and then tapered off, I could handle it better, but those first few sent me up the wall, literally.

So then Libby and George talked me down a bit, I got situated kneeling on the floor of the shower. Libby was kneeling into the tub from the outside, rubbing my shoulders and helping me breathe and growl. The noise making helped in an odd way – it didn’t make the pain any less, but it gave it some definition.

I asked Mardi to work on my back – she didn’t hesitate and hopped in the shower fully clothed to provide counter-pressure support for each contraction. At this point – probably around 8:20, the urge to push was overwhelming. I looked around at my people and thought, “well, I guess my Aunt can deliver the baby?” since there was no Midwife, no Doula. Just me and my husband and my aunt and my best friend… I would swear this was the point when Libby asked me if I felt safe, and I replied yes, but I think I heard the question as, “do you feel loved?”… the only reason I didn’t deliver the baby in the tub was because of Mardi’s counter-pressure. In the moment, I just kept tackling each contraction as it came – and trying really hard NOT to push - but in the back of my mind, I was sensing the quiet panic in the room, the oh-shit factor that was starting to sink in with my people… and at 8:45, the Midwifery student walked in.

The sense of relief that flooded through me was amazing. She took one look at me and said, “Do you feel like pushing?” and I replied with an emphatic “Yes!”. She said she needed to check me – so we turned the water off and she hopped in the shower. With a brief touch, she calmly informed me that I was going to get out of the shower and deliver my baby. This was shocking news to me – realize that I had no idea that I progressed through all the phases so quickly – it didn’t seem possible. What happened to owning the process? What happened to working with the contractions? Where was my rhythm? I had no ritual! I felt radically unprepared. And yet, I found myself being helped out of the shower, onto the floor on all fours. My aunt sat down on the floor, and I buried my head in her lap, and we started.

The student talked me through, and I bore down with every ounce in me. Progress! and at the same time, I have never felt anything so different before in my life. To find out that I had a whole set of muscles that I had not used before for their intended purpose – and that they were good at it – it was confusing. My physical sense of what was happening was very unwired. It hurt, yes – it was painful, for sure – but it was so new that my analytical mind found it fascinating. Granted – that part of my mind was way in the back… front and center was the idea that there was no way this baby was coming out, it was too hard.

Of course, I rationalized with that thought too – I didn’t want to transfer to a hospital, so bear down and get the baby OUT! So that is what I did. And some contractions later, the head was out. I was told to stop, as the cord was around the neck… and then, “keep pushing if you can”, but I couldn’t. I flashed on all the videos we had watched… it had seemed that all I had to do was get the head out, and the rest of the baby just slipped out… and yet, here I was, waiting for the next contraction and having to push(!?!) the shoulders out. I didn’t have any energy left, it hurt tremendously – so I screamed my way through it, and our baby was born. She was passed up to me, and my first thoughts were, “Oh, her nose is squished and she has a cone head. It will take weeks before we think she is cute.” And then I just sat down and marveled at her… and our Midwife walked in.

I looked up at her and said, “We have a baby”. The room laughed. She helped me get into a squat and delivered the placenta. After that, I recall eating a bowl of steel cut oats, breastfeeding the little bean for the first time, watched her get weighed and measured… all from my bed. Since then, I have spent the last five days marveling at our Fiona Marella – listening to her ridiculously funny sounds (she is amazing at impersonating a seagull, a dog squeak toy, a helium balloon, and a toaster popping out a piece of toast, although not on demand, unfortunately), changing her diapers, taking naps together, and feeding, feeding, feeding.

I’m not a big fan of the saying “everything happens for a reason”, however, if I didn’t have that false start last Friday, there is no way my Aunt or Mardi would’ve made it up to Seattle in time for the birth. We had several days to relax and laugh and eat and laugh some more… it helped me get out of my head. As for the birth itself – I prepared myself for pain endurance, spent time with my meditation practice and really wanted to face the endurance of it – find a rhythm and really work it. What I wasn’t prepared for was fear. It didn’t seem possible that I went from the beginning of Active labor to Crowning/Birth in about 2 hours. And we didn’t have anyone that could identify it for us – the four of us in the room were very concentrated on getting through it, doing what needed to be done. But I don’t recall ever identifying the situation. I was searching around on the information superhighway to see what they said about precipitous births, and this definition floored me:

“Though it happens in only a small number of births, the strong contractions that accompany a fast labor can be overwhelming to a mother who did not expect to progress through labor so quickly. Emotionally, the mother may begin to doubt herself and her ability to cope because she is having such difficulty handling what she believes to be early labor.

Physically, a fast labor, specifically a fast pushing phase may increase the risk a mother tears if her body is not ready to stretch. However, some experts believe whether or not a woman tears has more to do with whether she is working with her body than how fast birth happens.

It is important that the coaches and caregivers assess the physical and emotional signs to reassure the mother that she has progressed quickly. For many women, knowing that they are nearly done makes them feel more confident.”

Well, the good news is that I didn’t tear. And there is no possible way that anyone could’ve predicted that I was going to have a fast labor. After we were all tucked into bed, the midwives kept saying, “This never happens with first time moms!” and we all know that especially in the Whiteside house, you never say never!