A Healer’s Geste

Ilse is Born

A Seven-Month-Late Account (i.e. all the details might not be completely accurate)

Saturday, January 5,2008: day before the due date
Morning: late in the morning, regular contractions begin. They are about 7 minutes apart, but I am still fully functional.
Afternoon: contractions still continue at a steady but not increasing pace. Because I want a dose of antibiotics to prevent communicating strep b, I am thinking about these contractions too much, trying to determine if this is “it.” I need a dose of antibiotics 1-4 hours before the birth.
Evening: I have convinced myself that this is it and it will pick up at any point. I think it’s increasing, but I am still fully functional. Fran comes and checks and I am at 2 or 3 and not very soft. She thinks it’s early “latent” labor but that it could kick into the real deal any time and that when it does we might not have much time. Ha. So, she leaves the IV accessories and a dose of antibiotics. A few hours later, things are still moving but I think the increase I perceive is merely a decrease in my stamina. However, I get the crazy notion into my head to call everybody over. Fran, Mom, and Tonya sit around the dining room table. I get my iv antibiotics. I am definitely at 3 but effacing very gradually. Ilse’s head is quite high. I bounce on the ball. Ilse’s head knocks against my thighbone. My thighbone hurts. I didn’t know bones could hurt. She seems to get the memo knocked into her head that she should move her silly little head. She obliges. At some point in here, the contractions peter out, no matter how determinedly I try to conjure them up in my head. There’s no denying I’m not really in labor yet. All the ladies have been having a nice chat about craft stuff and the nursing world. Matt painted miniatures in silence. I bounced. We all got tired and everyone went to their own respective beds.
Outcome: A very late night.
Lesson: Hello! Don’t listen to anybody. I will have regular contractions for hours — days — before the baby is born. Just deal with it and ignore it.

Sunday, January 6th: The Due Date
Morning: We stay home from church. We walk to and around the Uptown. The Spudnut Shop is closed on Sundays. Intermittent contractions.
Afternoon: Safeway donuts and a game of Battlelore. Intermittent contractions.
Evening: Contractions do continue and I fancy they are going somewhere. Fran comes to check. At some point for some inexplicable reason, I call my audience again and Mom and Tonya come over. I am not chipper. This is taken as a good sign. It’s actually just because I’m tired. I am dilated 5 centimeters but I’m not totally effaced and Ilse’s head is still pretty high. I figure that since I’m five it’s gotta be soon. Fran suggests I walk the stairs. I do 5 or 7 laps of both flights, the come down to the living room and bounce on the ball. Immediately the contractions stop. I feel foolish and tired. I go upstairs without saying anything and climb into bed. Matt comes in after a minute or two; he had already guessed the reason and he leaves to consult with Fran. The crowd is dispersed and Matt receives the hard and fast numbers for when to call. I cry.
Outcome: More progress than I thought could be made in “latent labor,” but it didn’t really matter.
Lesson: I should have ignored it and I shouldn’t call the onlookers until I am incapable of making phone calls.

Monday, January 7th: One Day Past Due
Morning: Marji still has the boys. I wake up at 7 with no contractions and severely disappointed that I slept all night because I had wanted to wake up at 3am in unbearable pain. No pain. Matt goes to work. I do my best to enjoy my last chance of a solitary, quiet day for months to come.
Afternoon: I should have napped. I dyed my hair “Dark Brown.” It didn’t make any difference. Fran calls. Mom calls. Tonya calls. No, nothing; no, nothing; no, nothing.
Evening: I hadn’t eaten much for the last couple days, so I am hungry, tired, still very pregnant, and slightly depressed. Matt and I go out to Anthony’s for dinner. I ate too much of a much-too-rich dinner. We then drive out and pick up the boys, who don’t want to come home anyway. But, we figure bringing the boys home will make things happen.

Tuesday, January 8th: Two Days Past Due
Morning: No contractions. I wake up at 7 and am again disappointed to have not woken up in severe pain in the middle of the night. Matt goes to work.
Afternoon: I sit in the living room and crochet while the boys play with their toys on the floor at my feet. Such a domestic scene of tranquility. I do not enjoy it. I long for pain. I mope. Mom calls. Fran calls. Nope. Nope. Tonya calls and says she will be driving to Seattle the next day, so don’t call her at 3am and she won’t be back until Thursday evening. She comes close to saying something she shouldn’t….something like “So if you haven’t delivered by then, you can call me after that.”
Evening: Matt comes home and fixes dinner. I don’t eat any of it. I had felt sick all day after the rich dinner on a two-day-empty stomach. I’m morose. I go to bed and dream that I had the baby but it turns out that I was still pregnant and 5 months along this time….so delivery didn’t even make any difference, I was just still going to be pregnant anyway.
Result: icky tummy, icky spirit.
Lesson: Just keep going on with life as long as possible. I’d rather risk delivering just before Fran arrives than get my hopes and expectations up too soon.

Wednesday, January 9th: Third Day Past Due
Morning: The fabled 3am waking with pain. Yes! I get up and rock. 30 minutes and these are real-deal contractions. I am still cognizant, so I’m not nearing transition, but since I had been at 5cm, I figured it wasn’t going to take much to get there. I bask in the belief that I know what’s going on and this is all going to progress quickly and wham, bam, I’m going to have a baby before the boys wake up in the morning. I time the contractions. 3-4 minutes apart, lasting about 45 seconds. After a half-hour of consistency, I wake up Matt. I know these are the numbers Fran was waiting for. He is relieved that something is happening, but I detect a trace of skepticism still. I let him time them. Yes, I was right. I hate timing contractions, though. I always feel like there’s a “right answer” (3-4 minutes apart, 45-60 seconds) and I’m getting it wrong. But there’s no mistaking this feeling and this rhythm. I call Fran. We wait until we hear her verdict before calling my mom. Fran checks. 7cm and mostly effaced, but the baby really should be lower. I continue in labor while Matt times the contractions and Fran works on paperwork. She’s observing while appearing to be minding her own business. Matt did call my mom. My contractions decrease. I try mentally working them up again and pretend they are not decreasing. They stop and my mind is cleared of the labor fog. This isn’t good. But then it comes back. Ilse had descended, but she was posterior. I labored for an hour or two posterior. Marji came and got the boys dressed and took them out to breakfast. Ilse was still posterior. Very suddenly, labor ceased and my mind cleared again. This wasn’t right and proper. Ilse had gone back up. I felt like nothing was going on or happening. Labor was non-existent and I felt very pregnant. Fran prepared some labor tea to help restart things. As soon as I had swallowed the last drop, I had a ringer of a contraction. Labor continues and Ilse descends again, facing sideways. Fran tries to turn her manually. Agony. Pure and undiluted anguish. My water breaks, but that head doesn’t turn. Though I am upright again, Ilse decides to try that movement herself. This is excruciatingly painful and it is not proper labor. The pain is Ilse turning her head; it is not normal contraction pain. This pain is torture and not progress. There is no rhythm to ride, no easing, and no sense of working with the pain. It is straight pain, raw and unhelpful. I cope as best I can, but I cannot get on top of it. Fran suggests different positions, and I move around, expending the last of my energy to do something — anything — to make this stop. If this would stop, I might even accept being pregnant forever. I am no longer swaying and moaning. I am screaming. I am not in control and I have no idea what will happen. I wonder how long this has to last before I’m transferred for a C-section. The pain begins easing, but I hardly notice because I am spent. Curling up in a ball on my bed, I whimper and moan and even begin to fall asleep. I doze, awake in searing pain, doze, whimper, and resolve that though I may have more children, I will have an epidural regardless of how many tubes it involves. I accept the fact that this may never be over and I’ll just keep Ilse inside. In my dozing, I imagine a three-year-old inside my belly. Fran asks if I want to try pushing. The thought hadn’t occurred to me. I had no energy. I figured pushing couldn’t be as bad as what I had already endured, and it was my only ticket out of this. So, despite having no urge to push, I pushed. And I pushed. And then the pain came again and felt right — so right! This was the way it was supposed to feel! I pushed again. I was exhausted, but finally I knew this would be over in minutes and I was on familiar ground at last. Then I was told that the head was almost out; I gave every ounce of my being into another push and felt the melon emerge — the right way, then felt the slithery mass of shoulders-belly-legs. And my first conscious impression was not that I had a baby, but that I was relieved of a great weight. I was myself again. I was DONE with labor. Labor was OVER. And not only that, pregnancy was done and over. I was me. Only me. All this in the first split-second before they were directing me to grab my baby and suddenly I was on my bed with a newborn on my chest. And I had a baby. This was my most traumatic birth, but it was also my most exhilarating postpartum. The extremes of the labor had not left my consciousness, but they were matched by and overwhelmed with the bonding hormones like none of my other births were. It was all over. All over. And I was calm and happy and overjoyed and pleased in a way I had never been before.

And after birthing Friedrich and holding his tiny little body, miscarrying my next, and being tortured in childbirth, I think my inability to let Ilse cry alone at night and my enchantment with her smile is more than adequately explained. And I am glad for, not regretting, the home birth and will do it again if I can. You cannot hold a woman to her 8cm resolutions.