Birth Story: Sir Toddler

In the spirit of Throwback Thursday, I'll join the ranks of many mom bloggers and post a birth story. And like the fangirl I am, I'm linking up with bigger and better blogs--today, Camp Patton.

Sir Toddler’s birth story comes with a small amount of necessary exposition. To start, the hospital where I was planning to deliver was by far not the closest to our home. It was close to where I worked. My husband and I were planning on finding out the sex of our child at 20 weeks. However, Sir Toddler did not cooperate at my fetal survey ultrasound, remaining stubbornly cross-legged for the whole procedure. I was convinced, although not committed, that we were expecting a baby girl.

Four days before my due date, on Marathon Monday/Patriot’s Day in New England, I decided to go for a walk to see if I could get labor started. I managed to induce some mild Braxton-Hicks, but I decided to just give up and walk home when I got a phone call from my husband. He’d been watching the Boston Marathon on TV and saw the bombs go off. I hurried home and we watched the news coverage in shock. The rest of that day is a blur to me, except I voiced aloud to my husband my reluctance to go to work the next day.

I woke up at 4:00 AM, with contractions much more intense than any I’d experienced. Was this really happening?! I timed the contractions for an hour before waking up Mr. Husband. We called my OB-GYN practice endured 30 minutes of the ridiculously complicated phone triage system before we were told to time the contractions for another hour and call back. By the time I got through with the second phone call, we were both up and showered. The contractions were starting to hurt my lower back and we were nearing rush hour. “Are you ready to come to the hospital?” asked the nurse on call. Yes! Please.

Off we drove to the hospital, as I made all of the necessary phone calls to inform my employer. The midwife who checked me declared me 1 cm dilated, and sent us out for a walk. It was a warm, sunny spring day, marking the beginning of the short window in which New England has enviably beautiful weather. However, I was distracted by pain radiating around my legs with each contraction. Despite our best efforts to help things along, I did not progress and we were sent home.

I did everything I could to ease the pain of the contractions. I tried to nap, but I woke up every five minutes with each contraction. Taking a warm bath provided some relief, but our cramped bathroom space wasn’t the most comfortable. I tried to eat, but didn’t have much appetite for anything besides peanut butter on graham crackers. Mr. Husband and I worked our way through episodes of Justified as contractions continued to intensify, and a few less savory labor signs made their appearance. The nurses on the phone suggested we make another venture to the hospital before afternoon rush hour began.

This drive was considerably less comfortable than the last. I was relieved to find out in triage that I had progressed to 4 cm and could be admitted. I gowned up just long enough to get me to my room and take a picture, and spent the next hour in the shower.

When I couldn’t bear the steam any longer, I tried walking around to help with the pain in my legs and lower back, but it was unbearable. The nurse who checked my progress said that Sir Toddler was occiput posterior (face-up), and I was still at 4 cm. It was at that point that Mr. Husband convinced me that I needn’t be a martyr, and I asked for the epidural.

When the anesthesiologist arrived at around 6 PM, they asked Mr. Husband to leave, and suggested that he order dinner before the cafeteria closed. I asked him to order for me too, but they told me, “No food with the epidural!” (I wish I had known that beforehand, because I was ready to eat my own arm!) I got the epidural and accompanying IVs, and then settled in bed with completely numb legs. I spent the next few hours sleeping and being turned from side to side to convince Sir Toddler to flip to a face-down position, while my husband tried to sleep and watched the Red Sox lose spectacularly. At some point, my water broke, which was a very strange sensation. Around 12:45 AM, I woke up and suspected that I was complete. The nurse who came in confirmed my suspicions, and off we went a-pushing.

This part of childbirth in movies is a crazy intense-a-thon of screaming and sweating and doctors scurrying around, but my experience with Sir Toddler was very relaxing. Mr. Husband and I chatted with the nurse, and in between pushing she had me breathe through an oxygen mask. At about 1:20, Sir Toddler was just about ready to arrive. More nurses poured in to warm blankets, set up a mirror, and the OB-GYN, a slim young woman with a nose piercing, rushed in and saw me pushing. 

“Blow this one out!” she said.

Mr. Husband remarked, “It has to be a girl! Look at all that hair!”

“One more push to deliver,” and suddenly they lay a very slimy and confused looking baby on my stomach. The baby had a FULL head of hair, a cone-shaped head and… 

“It’s a boy!”

“What do you think you’ll name him?” asked the doctor.

I grinned and looked at my husband as I rattled off this brand-new boy’s name. He settled onto my chest and stopped crying. After a blur of stitches (ugh), cord clamping, weighing, measuring, and his first meal, Sir Toddler was wheeled off to the nursery with Mr. Husband for his first bath. I was left alone to eat my sandwich (the most satisfying hospital meal I’ve ever had, I was so hungry!), the nurse helped me into the wheelchair (which was hilarious because she was my size and I couldn’t feel, let alone move, my legs) and I was reunited with Sir Toddler in my new hospital room.

As it turned out, the nurse in the post-delivery wing was the mother of my husband’s classmate’s roommate (say that five times fast), so she “got us the room with the best view!” At this point, it was about 2 AM. My husband and I settled in to try to sleep, although I woke up every time Sir Toddler breathed with any noise, paranoid that he would die of SIDS. We were exhausted, but so full of joy. After all of the tragedy we had seen two days before, we had witnessed a miracle.