I already had some ideas in mind for how I wanted my childbirth to go,
even before I got pregnant. Since I was a teenager childbirth has been
an interest of mine that I've read a lot about. When I did get pregnant
(at the age of 21) I decided I would have my birth attended by a
midwife. I found a great one who shared my Christian faith and who also
encouraged me to educate myself about my various birthing options. She
had a small lending library for her clients. I borrowed "Gentle Birth
Choices" and "The Birth Book," by the Searses, and read both avidly. I
came away from my reading convinced that I would have a water birth,
where the baby is born in a birthing tub. My midwife was very
supportive. She had attended many water births and said pain was really
reduced for the mother, and the transition from the womb was definitely
eased for the baby. She also added that in her experience, waterbirth
babies were very alert right from the start and didn't cry as much. I
went for seven months of pregnancy convinced I would have a homebirth,
but after I hit the eight month I suddenly felt like I would be too
uptight in our little apartment to have the experience I wanted, so
decided to have the baby in a birth center instead.
Three days after my due date, on April 26, 1999, I woke up about seven
in the morning and got up to go to the bathroom. I was surprised to feel
a *gush* down my legs, and looked down to see my pajamas were soaked. My
first reaction was, "Huh?" followed by, "Please, God, not yet." I had
been very sick and coughing for three nights, and a few days before had
received tragic news that a good friend had been murdered. I didn't feel
emotionally or physically ready at all, but oh well! It was the baby's
time to be born. I told my husband, "I think my water broke," then went
in to the living room to tell my mom, who was visiting from out of town.
She squealed, but I was still out of it emotionally and just shut the
bedroom door again, then paged my midwife. She told me to go to sleep
again, and, amazingly, I did! I slept until one o'clock, when
contractions woke me up. They escalated pretty quickly and by seven in
the evening my midwife decided to drive over with her assistant. We had
a birthday party for my friend Gretchen, who was taking pictures of the
birth, then my mom, Joel (my husband), my midwife, and her assistant,
all headed over to the birth center with me.
My doula showed up just before I went into transition. This was
providential as she is also a licensed massage therapist and so really
helped me through this painful time. It lasted for an hour instead of
the half hour my reading had led me to expect. It hurt so badly that all
I could do was moan, "God, help me!" Then I heard my midwife say quietly
to my mom, "You might want to call Gretchen now," which made me happy
because I knew she only wanted Gretchen to come when delivery was
imminent. Little did I know!
My midwife's assistant checked me and announced it would be okay if I
pushed, so I crawled into the tub with my husband behind me and started
to push. It hurt so bad! I turned to my mom and accused her, "You told
me it would feel good to push! You lied to me!" Her look of surprise is
funny in retrospect, but I felt pretty betrayed at the time. I kept on
pushing and pushing and it seemed like nothing was happening. I was
exhausted because I had been in labor for 18 hours before I started
pushing. I later discovered that for some women pushing is less
productive in the tub even though it is also less painful. I couldn't
believe how badly it hurt. I kept on saying, "This has to stop hurting.
I *need* for it to start hurting." But of course it never did.
After the second hour of pushing I was starting to believe this baby was
never going to come out. Then suddenly my midwife said, "You can see the
baby's head!" She had her assistant position a mirror and flashlight so
I could see the head. It had lots of dark hair. I was really encouraged
but also completely worn out. Each push was agonizing and I had started
to yell with them, which probably didn't sound too great to the poor
people working in the birth center, although I'm sure they're used to
it. I was really embarrassed that I couldn't seem to keep my big mouth
shut but at the same time I was so mad that this wasn't going according
to my private expectations that I didn't care. After two and a half
hours of pushing, I started falling asleep between contractions. I woke
up one time to see everybody smothering giggles, and asked, "Did I
snore?" My husband shook his head no. Everyone else nodded yes. I got
mad at poor Joel and said, "Don't lie to me! And stop laughing!" Which
of course only made everyone else have to spin around to hide the fact
that they were laughing their heads off. My midwife's assistant kept on
putting her head down on her arm; I thought this was because she was
tired but in fact she was hiding the fact that she was laughing
hysterically because I kept on moaning dumb things like, "Why couldn't I
have had my mother's birth? Why did I have to inherit my grandmother's?"
(My mom had four easy natural births; my paternal grandmother had four
difficult heavily medicated births.)
At last, after three hours of
pushing, the baby's head finally emerged--underwater!--and rotated. My
midwife held his head, looked me in the eye, and said, "Now, Jocelyn,
with the next contraction I want you to give a big push and get those
shoulders out." I all of a sudden was terrified and said, "I don't think
I can!" She answered, "Yes, you can," just as I did. The baby was born
at 9:57 a.m. I said, "There's my baby!" and grabbed him out of the
water, placing him on my chest. Everybody was taking pictures; it looked
like a press conference with all the flashbulbs going off, which was not
precisely according to my birth plan (I wanted dim lighting) but I
didn't mind. We layered warm wet towels on the baby and kept pouring
water over him as he did a full pushup off my chest, looked around the
room indignantly, then laid down again. He didn't really cry that I
remember. My midwife said about the pushup "I've never seen a newborn do
that before!" We still didn't know the baby's gender so asked our
midwife; she shook her head and smiled, then said, "I'm not telling," so
we peeked under the towel and saw that he was most definitely a boy. I
delivered the placenta after three pushes--it was really easy. Then we
all three crawled out of the tub and went to lie down on the king-size
bed in our birthing suite while our midwife took the baby's
measurements. He was 23 and a half inches long, he weighed 8 lb 12 oz,
and his head was 15 inches in circumference! We named him Abishai David
Judah Smith. What a big guy. I only had a tiny tear that required two
stitches and didn't hurt a bit.
We ordered pizza, everybody ate then left except our midwife, and then
Joel, the baby and I all fell asleep for three hours. After that I took
a shower and got dressed, then, six hours after the birth, the three of
us headed home.
Copyright 2000 by author
Used by permission
Check out Jocelyn's website at http://www.angelfire.com/tn2/highneedbaby/index.html
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