Blaise's Birth: Part 6 (Special Double Edition)

Part 1 is here.
Part 2 is here.
Part 3 is here.
Part 4 is here.
Part 5 is here.

After it is determined that I am 4cm dilated and will be admitted, the triage nurse brings in Ros, the nurse who is to win my heartfelt gratitude and allegiance in the coming hours.  I'm not sure our hospital accepts requests for nurses but if I have another baby there I am going to try my darnedest to get Ros as my nurse again, so terrific is she.

She comes into the triage room carrying a pile of linens and she seems very quiet so I am momentarily worried.  I have a fear of trying to deal with passive-aggressive people and often the quiet ones turn out to be that way.  But I learn very quickly that Ros is awesome - she is immediately on board with my all-natural birth plan and she gets us started working toward it right away.

I want to get into the Jacuzzi tub as soon as I can - our hospital's L&D wing has only two rooms with tubs, but it is nearly empty that night, so I get one of them.  The hospital is okay with intermittent monitoring (it requires a Doppler check every half hour) but you have to do 20 minutes of baseline when you first get to your room, so Ros puts me on those monitors and then goes to fill the tub.

(It seems silly to me that I need 20 minutes of baseline monitoring when I'd been on the monitors in triage for more than an hour and a half, but I guess that's just how hospitals roll.)

I am still managing my labor quite well at this point.  I sit cross-legged on the bed and chat with Ros as she moves around the room doing various things.  She has a peaceful energy and a soft voice, and I can tell that she's going to be good to have around in the coming hours.

Contractions require me to concentrate and breathe deeply, but they are still easy.  The 20 minutes are up in no time.

Somewhere in there the IV person comes and puts one in my left arm; they start me on antibiotics immediately because I need four hours before the baby is born.  (Heh.)

Ros helps me get undressed and into the tub.  The warm water, as I expected, feels wonderful.  Being in the tub is a little awkward because of my IV, but because there is nothing I can do about that, I don't waste time being annoyed with it.

I have Bryan bring me my book and then send him to get some coffee.  By then it is 2:30am and he's been up since the previous morning; I can tell he is really starting to drag.

I read a little in between contractions - probably about ten pages total - but soon abandon my book because I am losing my ability to concentrate.  When the pain of one contraction ends, I lean back and rest until the next one comes.

The hour I spend in the tub is the hardest, mentally, of my entire labor.  It is also the only time I doubt my birth plan even a little bit, not because the pain is unbearable yet - it is nowhere near - but because Bryan is so tired, and I hate to think of the toll the coming hours of having to do labor support will take on him.  For his sake there is a tiny part of me that thinks it would be better if I just got an epidural and we could sleep for a while.

(I don't tell him what I am thinking, of course.  Weeks after the birth I will tell him about it, and he will look at me in disbelief.  "You thought about having an epidural for my sake?  But you were the one doing all the hard work!"  He's such a great man.)

After he's had his coffee, though, he starts to perk up.  He is sitting on the steps by the tub, holding my hand during contractions and telling me how well I am doing. 
Between contractions we relax and talk quietly together, mostly about the huge change that is coming to our lives in just a few hours.

Ros comes in twice with the Doppler while I'm in the tub.  I have to sit on the edge and wait through a contraction so she can listen to the baby's heartbeat.  He sounds great, and I am thankful for that and for the fact that I don't have to be on continuous monitors.  The cold, hard edge of the tub against the back of my thighs reminds me how important positions and comfort measures are for labor support - a contraction is much, much more bearable when I'm immersed in the warm water.

My contractions are longer and stronger now, and it's while I'm in the tub that I develop the coping strategy that will take me through the rest of my labor.  As each one comes I anticipate it with a deep breath (I found during my labor with Camilla that this was crucial, and it's still true), and as the contraction washes over me I tip my head back and sink into it.  I center myself and work with it, thinking of the baby moving down and things opening up.

And in my head, the small part of me that still has cerebral energy left, I sing.  There's a song we sing at our parish, a simple one, and the chorus goes like this:

Abide, oh Lord, abide, oh Lord
Never cease to make your home in me.
That I might abide, oh Lord, abide, oh Lord,
Making my eternal home in thee.

With Camilla, my labor took me so by surprise that I had not prepared for it spiritually at all.  This time I've thought about it in advance; I know what intentions I want to offer.  Only between contractions am I thinking directly of those intentions, but in each contraction I am inviting Jesus to be with me and in me, and I am doing it through this song.

(Later in my labor I will lose the mental acuity to make it through the song's entire chorus, and the words that get me through the pain will be simply "abide, oh Lord" and eventually just "abide, abide, abide".)

It makes all the difference.

Part 7 is here.

Comments

[Tara]

Yay! I love birth stories. I also had GBS and had to "abide" ;-) by the 4 hr antibiotics rule. I thought it super annoying that they had to go ahead and give it to me anyway after I showed up at 8cm (after only an hour or so of labor). I guess that's what comes with the whole hospital birth package.

Anyway, can't wait for the rest of the story!

[Lisa]

I've found that singing or chanting such a mantra will always help calm me down when our toddler is being particularly difficult at bedtime. I haven't had the privilege of suffering through labor, so I can't imagine what that might be like, but I would imagine that such a meditation would be helpful.