Home pics

Here are a couple of pictures I took at home a couple of weeks ago.

He finally will stay on his tummy for a few minutes.

He loves the Bumbo seat. The buzz has officially turned into a mohawk.

Birth Story, part 2-- Finally!

Well here it is, finally. Sorry for the delay. They say you forget what happens in labor after you go through it, so I guess after you hear my story you should ask David Todd what he remembers about Owen's birth!

As we got settled into our new life in Texas, we realized that since I was due on May 28^th, we would likely not be able to celebrate our 5^th wedding anniversary on June 5^th so we decided we would celebrate a little early. David Todd had Memorial Day off of work, so we decided to take advantage of our last opportunity to get out for awhile and booked a hotel in Ft. Worth. Sunday morning we went to church, ate lunch with all the Harmons, did a little shopping, checked into our hotel and settled in for a nap. I woke up from my nap at about 5:00 having some contractions. I didn’t think too much of it since I’d been having some contractions on and off for the past week. So we go dressed to go out do dinner and left the hotel.

The contractions were still coming fairly regularly while we were eating so we decided to start timing them. They were coming about 7-10 minutes apart and lasting about 30 seconds or so. We began to think that this might be the day. We stayed and enjoyed a leisurely (but too large) dinner, trying between contractions to figure out what we were going to name our baby who was about to arrive. After we finished eating we decided to take a walk. We were in lovely downtown Ft. Worth and walking is supposed to help labor so we walked around a bit. Pretty soon though, we figured we should head back to the hotel and time the contractions more precisely so we would know when we needed to leave. By the time we got back to the hotel, the contractions were about 5 minutes apart and about a minute long. I took a shower (in order to relax, not in order to get clean) and we packed up. When we checked out and told the valet that we were leaving because I was in labor, you would have thought we told them the building was on fire. We weren’t in any particular hurry to get to the birthing center, but they retrieved the car and loaded our bags in record time.

We arrived back at our house sometime around midnight and I called the midwife on call and told her how my labor was progressing. Knowing that I was a first time mom and that labor can often take a long time, she suggested I take a walk and/or a bath and call her again when I was ready to come in. We walked (rather, David Todd walked, I waddled) around our neighborhood, inching around the block and stopping every 10 yards while I had a contraction. When we arrived back home, I decided to sit in the bath for a few minutes before we drove to Dallas. The bath did feel good, but it had the unfortunate effect of making me lose my large anniversary dinner. About that time, my contractions started to feel a little different and I felt like it was time for us to go in. We called Beverly again and she said she would meet us up there.

Walking around during labor was quite a bit more comfortable than driving during labor and the 40 minute drive to the birth center gave me the opportunity to test out my hypnobirthing relaxation techniques. I really didn’t want to get there too early and I was afraid the whole way there that I would get there and be 2 cm dilated. We arrived at the birthing center at about 2:15 and found to my relief that I was 8 cm dilated. Beverly called Carol, the other midwife, and they offered suggestions and encouragement as paced around the birthing center, eating ice chips and trying to relax through my contractions. Certain that I would want lots to snack on during labor, I had packed a whole bag full of yummy treats, but at 3:00 am, after losing my dinner, food was the furthest thing from my mind. (I did like those ice chips, though!)

As it approached 4:00 am, my contractions seemed to be piling on top of each other, one starting before the previous one had ended and right at 4:00 I knew it was time to start pushing. Somewhere in there, they checked me again to see how I was progressing and I was 10 cm dilated. My water hadn’t broken yet so Carol broke my water and then it was down to business.

I had heard from several people that transition (the period from 8-10 cm dilated) was the hardest part—once second stage labor (the pushing part) begins it’s not as difficult. This, however, was not my experience. Up until this time, my hypnobirthing techniques had managed the discomfort pretty well. In fact, the idea of lying down on a bed was about the worst thing I could imagine so I wouldn’t have wanted to lie down to get pain meds even if they had been available. Once the pushing started, though, it was a somewhat different story. My second stage only lasted 37 minutes, but it was a pretty intense 37 minutes. The birth room at the birth center has a big 4-poster bed in it and I had always thought that the posts on 4 poster beds seemed pretty useless, but I found a use for them in labor. Whenever a contraction would come, Carol and Beverly had me squat down, holding onto the bedpost with David Todd behind me holding my back while I pushed so I could use gravity to help as much as possible. After about 25 or 30 minutes of that I started to crown. They handed me a mirror so I could see it (which I thought before going into labor would be really cool) and I did glance at it, but it sort of freaked me out a little, so I gave the mirror back.

After I crowned, I actually got on the bed for the first time (besides the two exams) and a couple of pushes later, Carol was coaching David Todd on how to catch the baby. And at 4:37 am on a very memorable Memorial Day I heard something like, “The head is out!” One more push: “The shoulders are out!” And two seconds later, David Todd had caught Owen and put him up on my chest in what was the most incredible single moment of my life to date. Owen (he didn’t actually have his name until about 4 hours after he was born) was pretty calm, not crying even though they really wanted him to so he could get his lungs all cleared out. He was 20 ¼ inches long and he weighed 7 lbs. 14 oz. Over the next few hours, David Todd helped do all the procedures they do for newborns, including giving him a bath, while I recovered a bit and drank about a gallon of orange juice (which I don’t really even like that much, but for some reason it was the most delicious thing I had ever put in my mouth). About 6:30 some of our family began to show up to see Owen and at 11:30 that morning we put Owen in the car and headed home.

If you’re still reading this you’ve hung in there a long time so I won’t drag it out much further, I just have a couple of reflections. Women have all kinds of birth experiences and none of them are more or less valid than any others. Sometimes, as in my case, a birth goes much how it’s planned, but in many cases for many different reasons, the plans change. I have no judgment for women who choose a different kind of birth than the one I chose and I have much empathy for women whose birth experience does not turn out to be what they plan or want. I think overcoming an un-ideal birth experience is much more difficult than not having an epidural. I am fortunate that I got not only the end result of bringing Owen into the world, but also felt validated in the process. If anyone is wondering if I would choose to have an unmedicated birth again, the answer is absolutely yes. I wouldn’t want to do it any other way. In addition to all of the benefits of unmedicated birth that you can read about books, I felt that it helped to prepare me for motherhood. Much of my time and energy and many of the things I think I do well are pretty mental activities. I do a lot of reading and writing and thinking and talking, but not a lot of things that are really physical. (I realize that all of those things are physical to a certain degree and I’m not crazy about the physical/mental dichotomy, but I’m not sure how to explain this any other way.) I don’t play a lot of sports or do much manual labor at any rate. Giving birth was a profoundly physical task that I feel prepared me for the very physical job of motherhood. It wasn’t easy—it was probably the most difficult thing I have ever done, but it was also the most rewarding.