Entry 8: A Birth Story (Part 2) ~ Laughter

This post picks up where I left off in my last post, A Birth Story (Part 1) ~ Fear, so if you haven’t read that yet, you may want to start there. This post also contains some candid descriptions and photos of the physical experience of birth, so if that’s not your thing, feel free to bow out.

One week before my due date, spurred by an increasingly foreboding mid-week forecast (and an increasingly anxious wife), my husband started looking for a set of chains for our tires. Inches (or possibly feet) of sleet and snow were predicted to blanket our area, and we weren’t confident that all-wheel-drive alone would get us beyond our gravel lane, to say nothing of the 28 miles of winding country roads we’d need to navigate to get to the hospital. Walmart didn’t carry chains, so Nate placed an order on Amazon that was supposed to arrive on Wednesday—just hours before the winter storm.

We started running through possible scenarios if I went into labor in the midst of the storm. If the roads were especially treacherous, we could go to the hospital in New Philadelphia instead of the one in Millersburg. Although it was about the same distance from us, the highways that led to New Philadelphia were likely to be clearer than the twisting two-lane roads we were supposed to take through Amish country. Of course, this would mean giving birth in an unfamiliar setting with a doctor I’d never met—not ideal.

And what if we couldn’t get out at all? What if we were marooned in our cabin, or my labor progressed too quickly to get to the hospital in a snowpocalypse? One of our nearest neighbors happens to be a retired doctor who practiced family medicine for many years. When my husband ran into him the Monday before my due date, he told him, “If Lucy goes into labor in the middle of the storm, and we can’t get out, you might have to come over and deliver the baby.” Our neighbor laughed, but Nate said he was only halfway joking. “Well, okay,” our neighbor told him—it had been a while, but he’d delivered babies before.

Early on February 1, around 3 a.m.—five days before my due date—I started having contractions about every twenty minutes. They were strong enough to keep me awake, so I thought, “Let’s do this, baby!” A Tuesday or Wednesday birth would allow us to beat out the storm. But I was also cautious. Four days prior to my son’s birth, I’d had a night of intense contractions that subsided as I showered in the morning, preparing to head to the hospital.

This time around, I took a middle-of-the-night shower to see if my contractions would abate, but by 7 a.m., they were coming every ten minutes. I contacted my midwife, and she said that if I wasn’t too uncomfortable waiting until my appointment that morning, she would check me at the office before sending me to the hospital. An hour later, my contractions stopped.

At my appointment, my midwife confirmed that I was only one centimeter dilated and sixty percent effaced. For those who haven’t given birth, in order for a vaginal delivery to be possible, the tiny opening in the cervix (the muscle that connects the uterus to the vagina) needs to expand by ten centimeters, and the cervix itself must soften and shorten (“efface”) from about 2.5 centimeters to a paper-thin margin. While my body was certainly moving in the right direction, it seemed unlikely that the baby would arrive that day. We discussed the approaching storm and plans B and C. My midwife offered to check me again the next morning to see how I was progressing, and she reassured me that if I came to the hospital in early labor, she would not send me home.

Deflated, I picked up a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger, a frosty, and fries at Wendy’s and woofed them down in the parking lot. Why not add some empty calories to my worry and exhaustion?

My mother, who was even more anxious than I was about the approaching storm, called that afternoon and made another impassioned plea for an induction. The idea of inducing labor to avoid bad weather, which had seemed absurd when she first mentioned it three weeks prior, suddenly held more appeal.

“If my midwife was open to that, she probably would have mentioned it when we talked through my options,” I said.

So, I remained compelled (if not committed) to letting baby arrive in her own time, even if it happened to coincide with the worst weather event our area had seen in thirty years.

That night around 4:30 a.m., when I woke for my hourly bathroom visit, I discovered what is called the “bloody show,” a mixture of blood (from ruptured vessels in my dilating cervix) and mucus (from the “plug” that, until then, had sealed the opening of my cervix)—a telltale sign that labor is imminent. Excited, I texted my midwife, who informed me that this was likely a result of the exam she performed the previous day, and that even if it was a bloody show, labor could still be days away. There was nothing to do but continue watching and waiting.

When contractions started soon thereafter, I felt cautiously optimistic. Maybe I’d have a 2/2/22 baby after all. By 7 a.m., they were much stronger than they’d been the previous day and coming in three- to five-minute intervals. I re-packed my hospital bag and debated whether to wake my husband and son. But as soon as they were out of bed, the time between contractions began lengthening.

Over the next nine hours, I had sporadic contractions that ranged between five minutes apart and fifty-two minutes apart. Some of them were stop-and-breathe-through-it strong, and others felt like mild cramps. Some passed in less than half a minute, while others dragged out for over a minute. In short, I had no idea what was going on.

This infographic visualizes my contractions between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m. The blue bars represent the intervals (length of time) between contractions. The darker the blue, the stronger the contraction. The green line tracks the how long the contractions lasted.

On the other hand, it was perfectly clear that Winter Storm Landon was up to. It had already spread a layer of ice from the Rockies to the Plains—downing trees, knocking out power, and stranding travelers. The first bands of rain would reach our area that evening, transitioning to a wintery mix sometime in the night.

After dropping my son off at daycare, I passed the time doing laundry and reading scholarly articles for a literature review I’d hoped to have written before the baby arrived. I also started looking into hotels in Millersburg. Something was happening, though I had no idea if what I was experiencing even qualified as labor. Didn’t it make sense to station myself as close to the hospital as possible?

I called my sister, an OB-GYN, who suggested, “Why don’t you reach up there and strip your membranes? That would probably get things moving.”

“Didn’t I already lose my membranes when my mucus plug came out?” I asked.

“No, those aren’t your membranes,” she explained. “I’m talking about your amniotic sac. Just reach up there with your finger and give it a good tug.”

“I don’t think I have the fortitude for that,” I told her.

“I wish I were there,” she said. “I’d do it for you.”

I momentarily entertained the thought of calling a midwife friend who lived up the road and specialized in home births. Maybe she’d come over and strip my membranes? I tried to imagine how that conversation might go… Hey, friend. I haven’t seen you in a while—and I know I’m not a patient of yours—but I need to get this baby out ASAP. Mind coming over, reaching up my vagina, and tearing open my amniotic sac?

I wasn’t sure our friendship was at that level—or that she’d even be on board with that kind of intervention—so I abandoned that idea and texted my midwife. She agreed that getting a hotel near the hospital seemed like a good idea. My husband was a little more difficult to get on board—he didn’t want to get needlessly trapped in a hotel for several days—but I held my ground. We decided we’d stay through dinner, drop our son off at his grandparents, and drive up to Millersburg before the ice arrived.

Once we solidified our plan, I felt incredibly relieved. Then I sat down on the toilet to pee and felt something fall out of me. I looked between my legs and saw a blood clot the size of a ping-pong ball sitting in the bowl. Panicked, I texted my midwife, who told me it was nothing to worry about unless I was bleeding heavily and continuously. Still, she thought I should stop by the hospital to get checked before forking out $100 for a hotel room.

At her recommendation, I drew a warm bath. Just as I climbed in, my son and husband got home.

“Mommy, you’re taking a bath!” my son exclaimed, looking delighted when he discovered me in the bathtub. He tore off his clothes and climbed in before I could stop him.

“Only three toys,” I told him as he reached for his basked of bath toys. “There’s not room for you and me and all your toys in here.”

Suddenly, I felt something warm running down my back.

“Are you peeing on me?” I asked.

“Oh yeah. Sorry.” I turned my head, and he flashed an impish grin.

So much for a relaxing soak, I thought. But then he fished his miniature teapot out of the basket, filled it with water, and poured it over my back.

“That feels nice,” I told him. So he kept filling the teapot and pouring it over me, and it occurred to me that this was a sweet final moment to share as mother and son before his sister’s arrival upended his world.

When I stepped out of the bath, I felt a gush and saw blood running down my legs and soaking into the white bathmat.

“Nate!” I called out. He appeared in the bathroom door. I pointed to the blood and said, “We need to head to the hospital now.”

My sister, when I’d told her about the clot, had said, “If you were my patient, I’d probably want to check that your placenta hadn’t detached or anything.” I wasn’t too worried about that possibility, since I wasn’t actively bleeding, but now that I was bleeding it seemed like more of a concern.

I verified that Nate had packed the baby’s car seat and the snow chains in the car—both of which we’d need to get home—and we hurriedly dropped my son off at his grandparents’ house, where we snagged some leftover ham and cookies for the road. I crammed down mouthfuls between contractions, grateful that I felt good enough to eat (I’d experienced such intense nausea during my labor with my son that I couldn’t keep down food during the twelve hours before birth).

It was dark and already raining hard, and a cold mist hovered over the cornfields that bordered our route to the hospital. As we drove, we reminisced about the last time we made this drive together on a sultry morning in July of 2018.

Forty-five minutes later—a little before 7 p.m.—we pulled into the parking lot at Pomerene Hospital.

“Think you could go any slower?” my husband asked as I hobbled toward the door, cold rain soaking our hair and shoulders.

I glared at him and said, “I’m having a contraction, okay?”

The first and second sets of doors that we tried were locked, and eventually, on the opposite side of the building, we gained entry. Upstairs, the labor and delivery ward was buzzing with activity. My midwife informed me that she was about to assist with a c-section and that two other women were there laboring, including a mother of twins.

“This always happens when the weather is bad,” one nurse informed me.

My midwife directed me to a small exam room and said, “Change into this gown—and remember to take off your underwear.”

“Okay,” I said. “But I’m probably going to make a mess. Every time I contract, I’m gushing.”

“Your water broke?” she asked me.

Duh. I thought. Why in the world hadn’t that occurred to me before? I wasn’t hemorrhaging; I was losing amniotic fluid laced with blood.

“Yes. Yes, it did.” I laughed. “But I didn’t realize it—I guess the blood threw me. You’d think this was my first rodeo.”

“Stop right there,” she said. “We’re checking you in.”

I would have hugged her right then if she weren’t already suited up for the operating room.

By 7:30, I was sitting on an exercise ball in my wool socks and a hospital gown, chatting with the world’s nicest nurse, who also happened to be a regular at our family’s brewery. My contractions were coming every ten to fifteen minutes at this point, and my cervix had dilated to 3.5 centimeters—progress, but still a long way to go. Rocking on the exercise ball, would, theoretically, help the baby descend and speed up my labor.

I rocked and rocked and rocked, and my contractions gradually intensified and came more frequently. At some point in that time, we realized we had access to cable TV. Nate flipped through the channels and stopped on the movie Mad Max. After witnessing an explosive car crash, some hand-to-hand combat, and a handful of beautiful, semi-nude pregnant ladies running through the dessert, I decided I’d prefer something a little less stressful, so we settled on a channel playing back-to-back reruns of The Office.

Eventually, my contractions got so intense that I didn’t want the TV on at all. My nurse gently prompted me to breathe slowly and to relax my shoulders.

After about two and a half hours on the ball, with contractions coming two minutes apart, my nurse asked, “So, are you still thinking you’ll want an epidural?”   

“I don’t know,” I said, surprising myself. “I feel like this has been a lot easier than the first time around. Maybe I can do this.”

“Let’s check your cervix,” she said. “I bet you’re at six or seven centimeters by now.”

Her exam revealed that I hadn’t dilated any further since arriving at the hospital. I was stuck at 3.5 centimeters. This came as a disappointment but not a surprise—during my labor with my son, I’d stalled at exactly three centimeters. I returned to the exercise ball, but soon, excruciating contractions were coming back-to-back.

“I think it’s time for the epidural,” I told my nurse.

“I agree,” she said.

After what seemed like ages (but was really about half an hour), the nurse anesthetist arrived. I was expecting the gray-haired man who’d administered my epidural three years prior. Instead, a very young man walked in. In his Nintendo t-shirt, blue jeans, and sneakers, he looked more ready for a gaming convention than a serious medical procedure. But hey, he was stuck at the hospital in the midst of a storm. Who could blame him for wanting to be comfortable?

He chatted with the nurse about the weather for a while without acknowledging me. When she told him I’d had an epidural before he said something along the lines of: Great. Then we won’t need to go over everything that could go wrong.

Epidurals have magical effects, but getting one is an absolutely terrifying experience. Imagine being told to “hold perfectly still” as a tsunami of pain rolls through your body. Imagine soaking the bed beneath you with amniotic fluid as someone can sticks a needle into the fluid-filled space surrounding your spinal cord.

As the anesthetist inserted the needle into my back, I said, “That feels weird.”

“Weird how?” he asked.

“Weird, like uncomfortable pressure. I don’t remember it feeling like this last time.”

“No sensations traveling down your arms or legs?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

Then he inserted through the needle the catheter that would deliver the medication, and my right leg lit up with electrical pulses.

“My leg—my right leg,” I said, willing myself not to move. “I’m feeling electrical pulses.”

“Must have hit a nerve,” he said. “We’ll have to start over.”

As he withdrew the needle I whimpered, “I’m afraid.”

“You shouldn’t be,” he countered. “If I left the epidural where it was—now, that would be a reason to be afraid.”

I bit my tongue, resisting the urge to say, “Not helpful, bro.”

Thankfully, the second insertion worked, and within minutes, I was blissfully numb from the waist down. Free from the grip of pain, I fell into a deep sleep.

When I awoke an hour later, around midnight. My body was shaking, which my nurse informed me was a sign that I was transitioning to the final stage of labor.

“I’m sorry, but I think I’m going to throw up,” I said. A green bag appeared in front of my face, and I puked up my dinner—a fitting finale to a pregnancy punctuated by projectile vomiting.

“That’s also a sign that you’re in transition,” my nurse said.

My midwife soon arrived with two more nurses in tow, and she verified that I was completely dilated, save for a small lip of cervix.

“I can push it aside, or we can hang out for a few minutes until it moves aside,” she said.

So, we did what any sensible laboring woman and midwife would do and spent 45 minutes discussing America’s hoarding of the COVID-19 vaccine, the pros and cons of universal healthcare, and collectivism vs. individualism as cultural values.

Okay, time to push, she told me around 12:45 a.m. At my request, they positioned a mirror at the base of my bed, so I could watch my progress. During my first labor, I found this helpful for moderating the strength of my pushes, since I couldn’t feel anything. Birth is also a pretty amazing thing to witness, especially if you’re the one doing it.

After a few pushes, I could see the top of my daughter’s head, which was covered with dark swirls of hair.

My midwife turned to Nate and said, “Want to catch the baby?”

He shook his head and said, “I don’t think so.”

“Come on—you just told my mom you could deliver the baby at home, if need be,” I said.

He took a deep breath. “I guess this is the last chance I’ll ever get to do this.”

“Definitely,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. “Am I going to get gloves?”

A nurse handed him a pair of blue nitrile gloves, which he quickly identified as being way too small for his hands.

Someone quickly located a pair of larger gloves, but given the clammy state of his hands, he was only able to get them halfway on.

“I feel like this baby is coming soon,” I warned everyone.

“Wait, wait—get him a pair of the powdered gloves,” someone said.

Another pair of gloves appeared, and as he struggled to get them on, he joked, “I’m pretty sure this is how we ended up here to begin with.”

The delivery room erupted in laughter. A few seconds later, I glanced in the mirror and realized that my daughter’s head had emerged.

“Oh my gosh,” I said. “I laughed her head out!”

And we all began laughing again.

Thankfully, Nate succeeded in getting his gloves on, and as I continued laughing and pushing, he caught our chubby, slippery, little girl and placed her on my chest.

An enormous wave of love washed away any remaining traces of anxiety. She was here—healthy and pink and perfect. And though she did manage to arrive in the midst of a winter storm, what I will remember most about her birth is not the sound of cold rain beating against the windows but the ring of laughter heralding her entry into the world. May she always find herself at the center of such joy.

I dedicate this post to my amazing midwife and nurses, who served my family with equal parts skill and compassion (and who captured this special event by snapping several of the photos in this post).