Now that I have cooled off- literally, still sitting on cool packs 7 weeks post partum, I think I have a more well rounded view of my birth. There are two distinct and equally important stances that each of my feet is well embedded in.
One: I am watching my 2 year old circle about the living room right now. She stinks like poop. She has major bedhead. She is doing something really naughty by the Christmas tree, and as soon as I correct her, she will scream like a banshee and I will carry her over my shoulder and plop her in the crib. She will kick me in the nose, most likely, and damage an ear drum. BUT, I love her. This is just a moment in time, and as she circles the Christmas tree and throws glistening tinsel into the air and into her hair like a 4th of July reenactment, she is full of wonder and joy and thrill at all that is new in her life this Christmas. Praying she doesn't break anything glass. Warmth, aching heart, desperate devotion stuff stirring in me now.....I love my children.
Two: I don't enjoy giving birth. Well, who does? (Actually I have come across a few on certain birth blogs) I don't just not enjoy it. I skate past "I don't endure birth well" to "I cannot handle birth."
I have had 4 very different births, I think I can sum up pretty quickly.
Birth 1: Less than 4 hours long. Hospital. Epidural. Graceful delivery. 5 stitches and hellish recovery.
Birth 2: Less than 3 hours long. Hospital. Attempted spinal. "BABY IS COMING! I AM NOT NUMB!! BABY!!!". Graceful recovery.
Birth 3: Less than 2 hours long.....crowning in the elevator (of the hospital). Moderately difficult recovery.
Baby 4. More than 15 hours long. Homebirth 7 weeks ago. Still recovering.
I'm sure there are more components to each labor- like labor length, stresses surrounding labors and births, and baby sizes. I, however, have entered every birth with a "plan" and every birth my plan seems to go terribly wrong. (Has anyone ever followed that thing that every pregnancy book on earth tells you to create- THE ILLUSTRIOUS BIRTH PLAN!!!? The value that they carry in a birth was made known to me when I had my first baby....yeah, it stayed folded up in my hospital bag.) Once I realized that I have babies too fast to get pain relief, I had a PLAN to try natural birth. Once I realized that natural, 10 minute long births in a hospital are more traumatic for the staff THAN me, I planned a homebirth.
I am friends with many moms who are full on homebirth proponents- like, consider the hospital to be the most dangerous place for a birthing mom to be. I've never crossed over that far, but I did my research and felt it was safe, and even normal. Now, I am probably the first homebirther in history to admit that I really didn't enjoy my homebirth. I missed my IV, and my catheter, and nurses who took my baby away. I missed heating pads, and cold packs brought to me every other hour. I missed the pain pills. Even after I'd done the research, then I felt painfully guilty that I am apparently not as "natural," as I thought- or that I don't love my baby enough to choose the most natural route. But I've tasted and seen too much, and knew what I was missing.
On the flip side, I had a midwife who spent hour long appointments with me. She was kind and full of traditional wisdom I had never heard before. AND EVERYTHING WORKED! I soared through 3rd trimester. After the birth, I didn't have medical students popping in every couple of hours and bumbling around with my newborn, while trying to make small talk about breastfeeding and how much babies should urinate. I won't even mention the medical students that EACH took a turn dropping newborn Cori to test her startle reflex. THREE DOCTORS IN A ROW. I will never forget her jolting and screaming as she startled and squalled, startled and squalled...and again. Ok, so I mentioned it. I didn't miss that, ok? One thing I loved about homebirth is having CHOICES. That was nice.
But I'm stuck. I don't like giving birth in a hospital, and I don't like giving birth at home either.
As for Trinity's birth, I will start by igniting a mental picture for you. Imagine this book erupting into ghastly flames:
Intense? Well, my labor was intense. I feel foolish I let faith arise for a painless birth. Maybe I should laugh instead? Some day.
Because of my history with fast births, at the first sign of pain, I called my midwife. I was really convinced Paul was going to deliver Trinity and I wanted to eliminate that possibility. When my midwife arrived, I was 6 cm and mostly effaced. She confirmed my bag of water was bulging and Trinity was on her way. Somewhere around 3 am, Cori started screaming. Probably because our dog was outside our door (which is parallel to her door) whining to come lick and sniff our midwife and her sterile supplies. We have a wonderful friend (Laurie) who came to our house at that ridiculous hour to watch "Barbie's Life in the Dreamhouse" with Cori. Then came 3 am, 4 am, 5 am. I walked the halls and was amazed at how little pain I felt. Contraction...five minutes later....contraction...with perfect consistency. I became tired, but also knew that walking was moving my labor along. My midwife's apprentice checked me sometime in the early morning hours and determined I was close to 8 cm- she said dilation was kind of uneven, but it some places it was that much. I thought, "IT'S WORKING!" As in, I was experiencing a 98% painless labor. All I felt was pressure. At 6:30 am, everyone was sleeping but me. I started crying because for the first time all night, I felt all the energy drain from my body. I hadn't slept all night, my body had been laboring, AND I was met with a crossroad: keep walking or go to sleep. I was thinking that everyone would be majorly disappointed in me if they hung around that long with NO baby action, so I kept walking. At 8 am, I was met with a new challenge: finding completely new people to watch my kids. I cried some more. Good thing I had already tried to build a community here and many came through for me. I just had to network a little. Once that was taken care of, I went to sleep (with everyone's permission) and woke up to no contractions.
What happened? I don't know. I went for a brisk walk, and maybe contracted once every 10 minutes. My midwife checked me and guessed I was closer to 6 centimeters, but the cervix had swollen. After several more hours of napping, nothing was happening yet again. My midwife had some natural ideas to jumpstart labor and I agreed. First of all, clary sage in the diffuser gave me a god-awful migraine. Now I was tired, achy, AND my head hurt. Then came the black and blue cohosh- a uterine stimulant that I took alternately every 15 minutes for an hour. An hour after my doses, nothing was happening. My midwives had been at my house for over 10 hours and it was time for them to go home. I was nervous, but knew they couldn't live with me. So they went on home, and I curled up on the couch by my husband and watched the Giants game. Around 10:00 I had a contraction or 2 that hurt. In fact, they started to hurt so bad around 11:00 that I just stayed on the couch and slept because I didn't want to be alone. Paul woke me up when he went to bed and I moseyed to the room. At 2 am, I woke up in excruciating birth pain. I crawled to the toilet and when I peeked between my legs I saw BLOOD. It looked like a lot to me, and I panicked. I called the midwife in tears. At this point, I didn't trust myself to really know if I was in labor but I was terrified of the blood. "I am the worst human being on earth!" (that's what I was thinking). She reassured me the blood was normal "show" but I had never seen myself "show" that much! Contractions tightened, and I encouraged my midwife to come my way- to check baby, and possibly deliver her. I prayed in the shower as the contractions came, "Please God, protect my Trinity!! I love her so much!!" The contractions came and I cried some more, "Why, God? Why does this hurt so bad?" I finally got the courage to "feel" for myself, and sure enough, a squishy little head was just 1/2 an inch in.
When my midwife arrived, I was rejoicing inwardly, though outwardly wincing in pain and mentally tormented by the idea that blood loss could have meant something bad. She got a good heartbeat on Trinity and reassured me that all was ok. DEEP BREATH moment.
At this point Paul was being annoying, or as a sane laborer might call him, endlessly helpful. Poor Paul. I always feel like he's "in the way" as I'm laboring, pacing around me asking senseless questions, "Are you ok? Can I turn on music for you? How do you like this lighting?" I guess I'm just not a detail person when it comes to birth. He was telling me that my coping mechanism (showering) was depleting the hot water supply for my birth tub. Pesky details, again. Once the birth tub was full of basically warm water (he wasn't lying) I made my way into it, and was told 10 minutes until I met baby, most likely. You know, I really wasn't looking forward to meeting Trinity. I was, however, looking forward to ending the pain. I HATE that I felt this way. I HATE that "you're going to meet baby soon!" didn't comfort me. Maybe, "When this is over, you will have NO MORE PAIN!" But that would have been a lie, I guess. The poop, the blood, the creamy cheesy baby, the placenta, I really think homebirth put me closer than I'd like to be to that "stuff" I once considered non-mentionables.
I saw Anna Duggar's homebirth for her second baby. Do you know what she said as the baby passed into this world? "Thank you, Jesus!" I always wanted to say that. The thought, however, was far from my mind as Trinity came out of the water and onto my chest. The first thing I said as I peered down and onto the face of my miracle baby, "God that was hard. That was so hard." Welcome, Trinity.
Then, I proceeded to birth my placenta, and what looked like my body's complete blood capacity. I moved into the bed, my entire body trembling with chill (hormones turned hypothermia, apparently?) and continued to cramp. One thing I never knew about myself is that my blood clots really quickly. My midwife picked up on this when I was still cramping, and continuing to bleed heavily. She called it the "high end of normal," just something we were keeping an eye on. Two hours later, I was still nauseous, still dizzy, and still not able to nurse my baby. No heartwarming baby meets mommy stories here.
Recovery was hard, and has continued to be an oscillating process that has not carried me into normal just yet. I'm not sure if I want to have more children of my own, though I'm not making any permanent decisions. I just need more time to process. For now, I am in love with my new little person. OH, MY HEART. The hormones, these guys are for real. If you listened to my heart, I have this hunch it would sound Trin-nee-Tri-nee-Tri-nee. Just yesterday she lay next to me in bed, her eyes wide with wonder. I whispered, shhhhh and her eyes rolled back. I did it again. Her eyelids hung heavy and she went to sleep, that fast. "Shhh" is the sound my blood made when she was in my uterus. MIRACLES- that is what growing babies are made of.
This whole gushy, mushy, self-sacrificial baby-love stuff is real. It makes my processing more painful because I ask the question {to myself}, "Well, if this is what suffering gets you, can your heart afford to give it up? Who has precedence here? HEART OR BODY?" I don't know. Questions, just stop with the questions. Plus, no woman should be making decisions about future babies after just having a baby. All I know is A) I'm in love with a new baby, and B) Bringing babies into this world hurts.
Now stop all the "You're superwoman! I'm amazed by you! You inspire me!" comments I received while I was in labor. I'm here to destroy the notion that birth is romantic and beautiful--
actually, what hurts the most is that I hope and pray you don't believe me. I hope you GO FOR IT, have your babies (whoever you are!) because the truth is, birth is not impossible or wrong in any way. There's something that is wrong with me: I don't want to do it again. As hard as it is to admit that, I really need to take care of myself for a little while...emotionally, mentally, spiritually, physically, philosophically!!!
*Cue hysterical crying* WHY DON'T STORKS BRING BABIES????? WAHHHH!!!
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