Evie's birth story

I: Slow Start

“One thing I learned from the first time around,” I told Eric as we headed out of Carnoustie towards Dundee, “this time I’m not going to try to be a hero. I’m going to ask for the epidural when I get to the Substantial Discomfort phase instead of waiting until I get to the Agony phase.” It was around seven p.m., dark and rainy, on March 13. After waiting around at home all afternoon, we had the go-ahead from the hospital to come in for my induction. I wasn’t overdue – in fact, I was at 39 weeks – but a diagnosis of gestational diabetes four weeks earlier had altered the birth plans. So once again we had escaped the speeding-through-town-with-woman-in-labor movie trope. We dropped Owen off with our friends Jason and Melpi in Tayport, got dinner near the university, and arrived at Ninewells around nine.

The induction process would begin slowly. The midwife in the antenatal ward inserted a pessary behind my cervix that would release prostaglandins for 24 hours. This was not the actual induction, but a preparation phase to finish ripening the cervix. After 24 hours, she said, if I had not begun labor on my own, they would send me to the labor suite “whenever there was a room available” to break my waters and begin the pitocin drip. It was almost midnight then, and Eric left shortly afterward as there were no partner facilities on the observation ward.

It wasn’t a comfortable night. The prostaglandins caused fairly strong back cramps that were a flashback to high school menstrual pains, as well as one-minute contractions (strong for Braxton-Hicks, or weak for real ones) about every five minutes. For extra fun, the woman in the next bed snored most of the night. I had some acetaminophen in the night and bumped it up to acetaminophen with codeine in the morning. Eric came back around mid-morning, at which point I was so tired that I found by lying very still on my side and consciously relaxing while listening to my iPod, I could nap through the discomfort. In that way I made up about three hours of sleep. When I was awake, our main topic of conversation was what to do about Owen for the following night. Melpi had taken the day off work to watch him, but needed to go down to Edinburgh for a few hours that evening – and of course, needed to go to work the next day. We had no way of knowing whether the real induction would start around midnight or not until the following morning, since the timing depended on how busy a night it turned out to be in the labor suite. I was also worried about how Owen would deal with a second night away from us. Finally we worked out a plan: Eric would go and collect Owen while Melpi went in to work. They would come to the hospital to visit for a while, then go home for dinner and Owen’s bath, and back to Melpi around his bedtime, when she would be getting back from Edinburgh. (Note for Americans: Melpi has a long commute. Edinburgh is an hour-plus drive from Dundee.) All of this last-minute planning was needed because Owen’s friend Hannah and her mom Ashley, who had been our originally intended babysitter (and is a SAHM, therefore no work conflicts), had both been ill a few days earlier. Eric left, returned with Owen around 5:30, and we had a fun time showing him how to work the buttons on the bed for a while. Owen took the idea of a second night with Melpi entirely in stride, which reassured me greatly.

II. Fast Finish (warning: sensitive, graphic, and highly self-absorbed material ahead.)

Suddenly I felt a very sharp twinge in my stomach. After breathing through the contraction that followed (a bit stronger than the others), I went to the bathroom and found that, yes, my water had broken. So much for the plan. I called the midwife. “Great,” she said, “put on a pad and we’ll check your progress in about half an hour.” Eric and I started brainstorming quickly. Melpi won’t be back until nine or so at night. We start ticking through our list of friends, trying to figure out who could take Owen right away. Then ooh the first real contraction hits. Oh wow, that was strong. Much stronger than the onset of labor with Owen. I try not to let on just how bad it is, but the only thing I can think is Don’t let Owen see this. “Go now. Get Owen out of here,” I tell Eric. “Call Ashley first and see if everyone is healthy.” Eric bundles Owen out of the room as quickly as possible. I can hear them retreating down the hall as I climb up onto the bed on my hands and knees, trying to get into a good position and Wham the second contraction hits. Holy crap, another one already? Breathe, breathe, hit the call button again. “Yes, who’s calling?” says the midwife outside the curtains.

“Me!”

“What is it?” as she steps in.

Wham. The third one hits. “Contractions. Real ones!” Breathe. Relax. Focus.

“Okay, keep breathing just like that, I’ll be right back to check baby’s heart rate.” A minute or so passes. The nursing assistant enters the room, taking dinner orders. “Would you like anything for tea?” (Americans: “tea” is Scottish for “dinner.”)

“Uh, no. No, I don’t think so.”

“Really? Are you sure?”

“Uh, yeah.” Hello, lady?? I’m up on all fours breathing through contractions, do I look like I want to eat?

WHAM. Fourth one. Harder. The midwife returns. “How far apart are the contractions?”

“Two minutes. I don’t know. Very strong,” I pant. “My partner…won’t be back for an hour.” I am close to panic at the idea of doing this without Eric.

“Do you want me to get you the gas and air?”

“YES.”

“Should we call your husband and get him back here?”

“Coming back…soon as he can…taking our son to sitter.”

The nurse is strapping the belts around my waist to assess the heartbeat and do an internal exam. They give me the gas pipe to breathe and I roll over on my side, thinking it’s been the best position all day, let’s try it again. WHAM! Fifth contraction, WHAM! sixth, seventh, I lose count and start, ahem, vocalizing. From this point everything is sort of a blur. It flashes into my mind that it’s been maybe fifteen minutes since my water broke, ten at the most since the first contraction, and I am already at what I called the Agony phase earlier. The phase that took two hours to get to when I delivered Owen.

“I want an epidural!” I am extremely clear on this point.

“We can’t do it here, we’ll get it started as soon as you get downstairs,” says the nurse. “They’re calling down to get your room ready now.” She tries to distract me. “Do you know what you’re having?”

“Girl.”

“Do you have a name picked out?”

“Secret!” WHAM!!! The moaning turns into high-pitched wails. I am now in the worst pain of my life. The rapidly diminishing part of my brain that can think rational thoughts notes, weirdly, This is either really frightening or really annoying for the other patients in here. “I want my epidural!!”

“I know. Your baby’s going to be here soon,” says the midwife. “You’re very far along already.”

“How far?” WHAM!!! Scream. Sucking on the gas as hard as I can, not that it seems to make the least difference.

“About nine centimeters.” They give me a portable gas pipe and start wheeling the bed down the hall to the elevator. I’m clutching the gas with one hand and the rails of the bed with the other. “Can you slide back a little, lass, you’re going to fall off the bed.” No I'm NOT, I think, but I can’t talk between contractions anymore. “Breathe slowly, lass, you’re going to hyperventilate.” So f—ing what? We’re in the elevator. “Dear, I’m afraid this is going to sound cruel to you… your baby’s coming very fast. I don’t think we’re going to have time for an epidural.” WHAT?!?! What is very fast? An hour? Half an hour? I cannot do this for another hour or half an hour, I cannot do this for fifteen or ten or five more minutes because my brain is going to break, I am going to break, I can’t, I CAN’T…They are wheeling me into the delivery room. “We might still have time for dimorphin,” says the nurse.

“PLEASE… anything,” I am crying, “give me ANYTHING!” And then, in a cri de coeur for wimps everywhere, I get out a complete sentence: “I DID NOT WANT TO DO THIS NATURAL!!!”

I have managed to startle the delivery room midwife. “Why not?” she says in surprise. The tiny part of my higher brain still functioning notices that this is a pretty funny exchange. “All right, we’re raising up your bed to the level of the other one,” she tells me. “After the next contraction, we want you to crawl over.” Scream. Okay. Let’s do it. I scramble over, desperate to get back into position before the next wave hits. Shriek. And then a deep intuitive sense: Push! Now! Infinitesimal speck of rational brain somehow reminds the rest of me that you are supposed to have the go-ahead from the midwife first. “Can I push??”

“Do you want to push? Okay, go ahead!” Push push push and the feeling I remember from the first delivery, like there is a dinner plate pressed up against the inside of my pelvis. Another push push push and now it’s a grapefruit and oh no I was wrong, I’m about to have a bowel movement here on the table because that can’t possibly ALREADY be –

“There’s the baby’s head! One more big push to get the body out!” Push push push and wait, Eric’s not here yet, we can’t -- “And here she is!” And they are laying this purple thing on my chest and it’s the baby and Oh my god, Eric missed the birth, he’s going to be so disappointed! But my breathing slows down and the tunnel vision I hadn’t even noticed widens back into a normal field and I’m not in pain anymore, and my god she’s here, this is it the baby is a perfect little newborn space alien, bright purple and covered in vernix and blood, and the midwife notes that the time is 18:34. Later I will see in my paperwork the time from “membrane rupture” to birth recorded as exactly 39 minutes. “Does she have a name?”

“Evelyn Aurora.” I start to shiver hard and wonder vaguely if I might be going into shock.

“Oh, that’s beautiful,” says the midwife. She is putting on a plastic apron to deliver the placenta. “I didn’t even have time to get this on,” she says cheerfully. “When they called from upstairs they warned me the baby might be born in the lift!” She assures me that Evie looks perfect and the vernix should be absorbed into her skin within 24 hours. I set about getting her onto the breast for the first time.

About fifteen minutes later, while the midwife has gone to get a colleague to do my stitches, the door flies open. I know it’s Eric before I see him because there is no knock. He bursts into the room and then stops cold at the sight of Evie, already much improved in color, lying quietly against my chest. “Oh my god,” he says, dumbfounded.

“Yeah,” I say. “It was, uh, really fast.”