(Part 1 here)

As told by Kaylah:

Sunday afternoon, with labor nowhere in sight, I felt that awful performance anxiety return and called Zaina to talk about my options. We discussed sweeping my membranes and the introduction of blue and black cohosh. Since I had the herbs on hand, I began alternating doses of each every 30 minutes.  After 12 hours of puny contractions but no labor, I took a break from the herbs. Monday evening while I was taking the dog out to pee, I felt a trickle of fluid down my thigh and wondered it I was peeing myself. I took a few steps back towards the house and the trickle turned into a warm gush. I practically shouted as I came back inside – “My water broke!” – as if that was evidence of anything at all. It was 9:30pm. I was hopeful that labor would be close behind. Mostly I felt relief. Things are actually going to happen now, I thought. I had begun to believe the rumblings made by the midwives at MCA and spoken by my own mother about my 35 year old uterus on it’s fifth pregnancy being unable to rise to the occasion to get this presumably big baby out. They talked about it in terms of quantifiable risk, but I heard it as a judgement of my body, and by extension, judgment of me. I returned to my affirmations about trusting birth, trusting my body and trusting my baby to be born on her own terms. There is a kind of surrender that is necessary when you really lean into trust, and that surrender is kind of terrifying. But a huge part of me was just done and ready to let go. Okay, baby: your move.

 

I called Zaina with the update and said, “Okay, this is it. No turning back now.”

 

She packed up and made the drive to our house. As we waited for the arrival of the midwife and my labor, we watched a particularly gruesome episode of Game of Thrones. I sat on the birth ball that was draped with a towel and continued to leak fluid, circling my hips and rocking back and forth. Because time was now a factor and my contractions were nil, we brought the blue and black cohosh back into rotation. They helped to facilitate some good contractions, but they were irregular and not quite strong enough to kick off real action. Again, I was advised to rest, but my brain totally rejected that suggestion. I remember thinking that this was my last chance, and that maybe the reason why my labor had stopped twice before was because I had fallen asleep on the job. I didn’t recall labor being at all like this from my past experiences . . . something that would start and stop and fool you by disappearing like a slippery fish. Doubt crept back in at the edges of my mind, along with the specific fear that labor was hard work that you have to DO, and obviously I wasn’t doing it right. Practically all night I walked and rocked and moaned and groaned. The next day on precious little sleep I squatted and lunged and walked some more. We practiced every Spinning Babies position and adjustment in the book. We went to lunch at the Orchard to take my mind off of things, during which my contractions completely vanished. As evening drew closer, Zaina came into my bedroom to talk to me about the reality of our window. The 24-hour mark since my water had broken was only a few hours away. If labor didn’t start in earnest by 9:30pm, we needed to discuss the possibility of going to the hospital. My mom’s anxiety at this point was palpable. She kept mentioning the risk of infection and worried about all the things we couldn’t know for sure were okay since we didn’t have a way to constantly monitor the baby at home. Nathan and I confronted this potential outcome of a hospital birth head on. Details like: packing a hospital bag, who would come, who would stay behind. Nathan admitted he had already packed a bag earlier in the day, sensing this inevitability. The admission depressed me.

 

He joked to lighten the mood, “Well we’ve eaten all of our birth snacks so obviously we need to go buy more.  Plus, I have prescriptions waiting at the Target pharmacy that I forgot to pick up…so we should run a quick errand to knock those things out.”

 

I looked at him and sighed. “Fuck it. I’m not in labor. Let’s go.”

 

On the drive to Target I had one tepid contraction. In the store I wandered aisles aimlessly in a fog of resignation. I felt like it was as good a place as any to hide from the ticking clock. As I met up with Nathan near the office supplies, I was suddenly slammed with an intense contraction that almost brought me to my knees. I cried out in surprise and grabbed the nearest shelf to lean on as I rode it out.  While we were in the check-out line I had another big one. Fellow customers were either steering clear of me or stepping up to offer assistance. All of the sudden it felt like a terrible place to hang out. We paid and made it to the car before the next one hit. After that, I was back in a pattern of contractions – every 2-3 minutes – kind of kicking my ass in the passenger seat.  Nathan tried to drive through Chik-fil-a for a milkshake and I moaned low and loud as he ordered. I wanted to go home but instead Nathan suggested we drive to Starbucks. He claimed he needed caffeine to fortify for the night of labor ahead of us, but what he was doing was stalling for time. He had made the connection between my labor picking up steam away from home and totally stalling out whenever we returned. His private plan was to keep me away from the house until the baby was practically crowning. I stayed in the parked car while he ran in for coffee. What I didn’t know then was that he was also calling Zaina and instructing our team to, once again, fill the birth pool. It was 8pm. I begged him to take me home. I was beginning to suspect back labor from the intensity of pain in my sacrum and I needed to change positions immediately. We pulled up to the house and didn’t even make it from car to front door before I had another violent contraction. After it subsided I went inside and up to my bedroom and tried to avoid making eye contact with anyone who looked at me. I rocked around on hands and knees, slung over the birth ball.Ten whole minutes went by without a contraction. I felt myself sinking inside. Zaina listened to the baby, who was still doing great, and I meekly asked if I could get in the pool. At that point I was exisiting in a world suspended between prayer and wishful thinking. If only I can get into that birth pool, I’ll be able to give birth, I thought.  I don’t remember whose idea it was to check me. It may have been mine. 3-4 cm. No change from the last time I was checked a week earlier. Tears slid quietly down my face and my chest heaved with emotion. Zaina came to sit close to my head where I lay. She lovingly told me that it was her honest opinion that my labor needed a bit of help, that she had consulted with another midwife and felt that she had exhausted her ability to help me progress beyond the point we were standing in. I nodded, fully understanding the truth of her statement and simultaneously not wanting it to be true.  I took a moment for myself and then got up to pack the rest of my hospital bag. As I made my way to the bottom of the staircase, my mom turned her phone screen towards me so I could read a text sent from one of her best friends, a woman who is like another mama to me. It read:

 

“May the Lord hold you in the palm of His hand.”

 

I felt broken open by the words and wept in my mother’s arms, grieving the home birth, the end of the pregnancy and the illusion of control that is such a tricky master. I was wrung out, utterly exhausted and deeply disappointed as we pulled out of the driveway for the short drive to the hospital. I cried hot tears in the parking lot, but by the time I walked through the Emergency Room doors I had internally shifted from sadness to acceptance. I felt determined to greet my baby with grace and full presence. She was making her terms known and we were in it together. And I still had work to do.

 

We settled into a labor and delivery room and the nurses tethered me to a bunch of machines for a period of initial monitoring. I made my mom promise to stick to the story that my water had broken earlier that day, not the night before, so I’d at least have a shot at a vaginal delivery. The midwife on call that night was Karen. I liked her no-nonsense manner that was knowledgable and steady. She embodied a kind of tenderness that night that I had not previously encountered in prenatal appointments. The monitoring showed contractions that were irregular and not nearly strong enough to be doing much of anything (obviously). When she checked me she thought I was sitting between 2-3 cm and my baby was posterior. We talked labor augmentation. To her professional credit, she had read my birth plan that requested no unnecessary interventions, and offered first and foremost to bring in a double breast pump for 30 minute intervals of nipple stimulation. The alternative was a dose of cytotec to stimulate contractions, in the hopes that it would be enough to jump start labor. The cytotec would take a few hours to kick in. As I considered my options I felt the exhaustion from the last 36 hours weighing heavily. The idea of taking a nap while waiting for meds to work was far more appealing in that moment than hours of breast pumping to reach the same end. We talked risks, benefits and considered doing nothing, but I wanted more than anything to avoid the use of pitocin if at all possible. I understood that when the overseeing OB returned in the morning, if I wasn’t in labor, pitocin would be the next course of action. I chose the cytotec and promptly passed out. Two hours later I awoke to back labor. Excruciating back labor. It was enough at the start of the contractions for Nathan to provide counter pressure on my sacrum while I was laying down, but it wasn’t long before I couldn’t stand to be in the bed. We walked the halls and continued our dance of swaying, kissing, moaning, and counter pressure. Back in the room I sat on the ball and draped my body over the ball and lunged and leaned on the bed and sat on the toilet. No position brought relief. My body tensed tightly against the pain and barely unraveled at all in the breaks. Karen tended to me while I was in the bathroom. I was trying to pee between contractions with very little success. This went on for hours. After an especially long and brutal back contraction, I asked if it was too early or too late to discuss pain management. Karen said we could discuss it at any time and offered to check me to assess how far things had progressed since our arrival. I reluctantly agreed, thinking I just might be able to hang on if I was close to transition. Nothing had changed at all. It was looking increasingly likely that pitocin would be needed to avoid a c-section. I weighed the risks and benefits of an epidural. Since pitocin was likely to intensify things considerably and I was already in a place of coping poorly and utterly exhausted, it seemed like the benefit of the break it would provide was worth the associated risks. I made the decision with a clear head and felt supported by all involved. The anesthesiologist worked fast, his manner just the right amount of witty, humorous and compassionate. The relief flooded my low back first and I felt my whole body relax. I curled into myself to rest just as the sun was rising.

 

The next few hours, devoid of sensation but punctuated by moments of excitement, blur together in my memory. When the OB arrived pitocin was administered to help my contractions. Nathan and I dozed on and off and my mom texted updates to concerned friends and family. In a moment of relative quiet in the room, a subtle change in the background beeping of the machines caused my mom to leap off the couch in alarm. She firmly commanded me to get on hands and knees immediately – the urgency in her voice made me move quickly!  Almost before I was on all fours she had rounded the bed, grabbed the oxygen mask and was moving it towards my face. Just then a team of nurses rushed in and again the beeping in the background returned. My baby’s heart rate had taken a major nose dive but bounced back up after I changed position. This happened several more times and the constant changing of position was causing me to become tangled in the monitor straps. Karen was present during once such dramatic deceleration that forced a very quick chain of reactions that I had no time or desire to object to – my bag of waters was re-broken and an electrode attached to my baby’s scalp to more accurately monitor her heart rate.  An oxygen mask was put to my face to help my baby rebound. At that time Karen said I had dilated to 8 cm – 8!!

 

I looked at Nathan with wide eyes and said from behind the mask, “Call Lindsey!”

 

Karen was concerned about the heart rate decels and she knew that the overseeing OB was going to push for a c-section. My mom (who was really trying very hard to resist wearing the L&D nurse hat, but with 20 years experience, couldn’t help but see the situation through those eyes) noticed and repeated out loud that even though the heart rate drops were problematic, the way that it jumped right back up to normal after a position change was a sign that my baby was tolerating them well and that she had plenty of steam left. When I got to 9cm, Karen asked me to push a bit while she helped to move that last little lip of cervix out of the way with her fingers. My baby was still posterior and, Karen suspected, asynclitic – sunny side up and cockeyed. I gave three mighty pushes and it was announced that I was 10 cm. The activity in the dim room instantly quadrupled. A spot light beamed down from on high, the bed transformed for delivery, nurses were moving in and out of the room in my peripheral vision. A new nurse, a young blonde woman who I hadn’t really registered before, was at my side helping to hold up one of my thighs and guiding me towards the moment to push. The epidural had been turned down but I still wasn’t feeling an urge to push so she would tell me when. The oxygen was turned up full blast and created a kind of white noise near my ears that muffled all other sound in the room. It momentarily disoriented me and my pushes were weak and uncoordinated because of it. Karen was speaking to me and I couldn’t hear her so I ripped the mask off of my face and asked her to repeat herself.

 

She said in a very measured manner, “I think you are a good candidate for a vacuum assisted delivery. Your uterus is tired and your pushes aren’t strong enough to bring your baby down.”

 

I sat up and replied, “I’d like to try other positions first. I’d like to squat. I’ve only pushed six times on my back and that feels totally unproductive to me.”

 

Before Karen could argue or even answer, that young blonde nurse had fetched the squat bar and was fitting it to the bed. She was my champion. I was starting to feel more of the sensations in my body and as the next contraction mounted, I hopped up on my feet with help and dropped into a deep squat.

I was happy to see Lindsey enter the room out of the corner of my eye, but she practically became part of the wallpaper pattern, so unobtrusive was her presence. Three strong pushes in the squatting position made me feel capable and determined again. I took sips of oxygen, but didn’t want the distraction of it on my face constantly. Baby’s heart rate took another dive and Karen left the room. The nurse and my mom helped me back onto my side and I felt the urge to push take over.  With the next pushing contraction they had me on my back, and the next one on my other side. I immersed myself in the sensation and mission of bringing baby down and out. She wasn’t rotating the way babies usually do, so I did the rotating to help free up space in my pelvis for her to move. A push on my left side, a push on my back, a push on my right side. Nathan’s voice next to me raised to an emotional pitch and he joyfully assured me she was coming. Just then Karen walked in with the overseeing OB who was there to inform me my time was up. I didn’t know it at the time, but they had already prepped the OR for me. The mere sight of them filled me with a mama bear-like surge of adrenaline that helped me to sit up and push my baby to crowning. I was surrounded on all sides by love and encouragement. My mom, the beautiful nurse, my husband, my best friend and in the background capturing every dramatic, primal moment – was Lindsey.  The next push brought my fierce, stubborn baby girl – blinking and spitting blood at the sky – into the world. She practically surfed out of my body on a wave of blood and fluid.  With help I ripped off my gown and as she was lifted to my hands I brought her right onto my bare chest for the briefest of minutes. She sputtered and squirmed, wearing an expression of shock and disapproval. I couldn’t believe how big her presence was right out of the gate. It felt like I had just given birth to a toddler. After that minute, Victoria was given scissors to cut the cord and our baby was taken to a nearby table to be checked and assessed. Nathan followed her and wept.

I heard his voice yell out to me, “Kaylah, she’s perfect!”  And through tears, “Her feet are fine! She is absolutely perfect.”

Her squawk was angry.  She didn’t sound meek or mewing the way most newborns sound to me. She sounded strong and loud and pissed off! I looked over at her, feeling proud and relieved. My placenta came quickly. The volume of blood during delivery pointed to the likelihood that it had already begun to detach. Karen was amazed to find I hadn’t torn at all.  After the assessment, our sweet girl was wrapped into a blanket burrito, topped with the tiniest of hats and returned to me. I had my gown down around my deflated belly and as I took her into my arms she rolled right into me with her mouth wide open.  She latched instantly on my breast as though it was exactly what she was expecting would happen next. I laughed out loud in disbelief, amazement and delight. I marveled that this little baby had so thoroughly dismantled my birth plan – line by line – like she was proving the point that birth isn’t something you can plan or control, even with the best of intentions and efforts. I had wanted to avoid the hospital and that scheduled induction at 42 weeks at all costs – in fact I’d done everything in my power to prevent that outcome. Yet in the end my baby was born right at 42 weeks, ironically on the date of my scheduled induction, in the hospital with the help of pitocin and epidural. It’s funny how the universe sometimes dishes up exactly the thing you are avoiding so as to offer yet another opportunity for growth and healing. The experience of bringing her into the world has humbled me beyond measure and taught me more about myself than the last 10 years of therapy combined. I am grateful for the healing of old wounds made possible by being treated with dignity and respect during my labor and supported in my efforts at making informed choices and giving informed consent. She is the last baby that I will birth with my body.

Cora Maeve McCourtney

Labor began 5/24/14

Born into this world 6/4/14, 2:21pm

9 lbs 1 oz – 21 inches
You are the pink glue that will forever bond our blended family of six. As the seventh member, you belongs to all of us.

As told by Kaylah:

I desperately wanted to stay pregnant until at least 39 weeks. Certainly because it was best for my baby, but more specifically because that was when my midwife would return from her summer vacation and be available to attend the birth. We had hired her only a handful of weeks prior to my due date after wrestling with my apprehension around delivering in a hospital for the majority of my pregnancy.  My primary prenatal care had been with the CNM’s at Midwifery Care Associates and my original plan was to deliver with them at Frederick Memorial Hospital. However, a tour of the Labor and Delivery unit early into my third trimester triggered me deeply, resurrecting feelings of powerlessness and fear from a previous birth in which I had experienced emotional trauma.  It didn’t occur to me then that I needed to face those feelings, I just thought it was a sign that I really needed to pursue the home birth I had been secretly wishing for all along. Nathan and I loved Zaina when we interviewed her.  Something about her quiet, gentle presence made me feel safe and comfortable, and her willingness to take me on so late in the game was a blessing. A lot of my prayerful and meditative energy went towards the intention of “stay in there, baby”.

39 weeks came and went, as did a full moon, a meteor shower, an acupuncture session on my “due” date, and lots and lots of contractions, but not much in the way of labor action. The end of my pregnancy was a psychological paradox. On the one hand, I couldn’t wait for it to be over. My ankles were enormous, my sacrum moaned with every trip up and down the stairs, my bladder was no help at all. And yet, when faced with the idea of an actual conclusion to the ride, I found I kept wanting to go hide. There were some big unknowns that created a low level anxiety in me as my due date approached; an ultrasound that had pointed to the high likelihood that our daughter would be born with clubfoot – a common congenital birth defect, our four older children were all in the throes of different stages of teenage development with accompanying challenges, and our landlord wanted to sell the house we were living in (and we weren’t exactly in a good financial position to buy). To say that I felt tempted to put my head in the sand on a daily basis would be an understatement.

 

Three days past my due date, while sitting on the birth ball and reading a brochure for a college my eldest daughter was considering applying to, the Braxton Hicks contractions that had been like a constant companion for weeks began to feel a bit more insistent. I circled my hips in one direction for a while and felt the next contraction intensify considerably. It commanded a kind of noticing that felt familiar to me. Three of my four previous labors had all begun slowly with that exact same kind of noticing. I kept the initial sensations to myself, just paying attention and staying with the circular movement that seemed to both elicit the intensity and simultaneously feel good. I couldn’t help but feel excited. Even more exciting, I was texting back and forth with my younger sister who was also pregnant and past her due date – and she was feeling the same.  Her prodromal labor of days and days was ramping up that very afternoon and I began to hold hope that the end of the day would bring babies for us both.  Cousin Twins, we’d call them. Both babies had Taurus due dates but were clearly Geminis through and through.

 

At some point, the regularity and continued intensity of the surges lead me to tell Nathan that I really felt like things were under way. My previous labors all had a long drawn out early stage, followed by a fast paced, relatively short active labor. I knew that once things kicked into high gear, we were mere hours away from meeting our little girl. We went on a walk in the park in the early evening hours to see if the activity would hasten things along. It worked. My contractions jumped from 8-10 minutes apart to 3 minutes apart. I was finding it necessary to stop and sway with Nathan to get through each one. After a loop of the park, I wanted to go home and get in the shower and be loud. We called the midwife and our birth photographer.  My best friend, Victoria, alerted the women who had attended my Blessingway.  Candles were lit. Prayers and good energy sent. Someone filled the birth pool. I felt as though I was being swept forward into the tunnel of my labor. I got into the shower and sighed with relief. The hot water felt so good. After a few minutes of swaying under the stream, I had the jarring sensation of stepping off of a roller coaster. I felt a little wobbly on my feet, but no more contractions. That’s really weird, I thought to myself.  And then after many more minutes without another contraction – the anxiety set in.  Wait, what just happened?  What did I do wrong?  And – Oh crap, we called the midwife too soon! Zaina lived over an hour away but was nearly to our house at that point. Lindsey, our birth photographer, was already downstairs readying her cameras. The true dread that accompanies performance anxiety flooded my body. I got out of the shower and got dressed and had another contraction, but it was a wimpy little thing. When I emerged from my bathroom, I found my bedroom filled with people; the midwife setting up her supplies, Lindsey with her camera, Victoria in the rocking chair telling funny stories about her dogs a little too loudly. The lights were dim and the room was clean, but I began to feel claustrophobic and my impulse was to run away from that space. I don’t remember what I said or if I even spoke, but I managed to leave the house with Nathan to go on another walk. I had an enormous welling of emotion and cried as we walked, feeling both broken and embarrassed. We stayed out for a long time and eventually the contractions returned, irregular but painful. I wanted to get into the birth tub but we needed to check in with Zaina. Before we returned to the house I asked Nathan to makes sure no one was in my bedroom. I needed privacy and quiet – the exact opposite of what I had envisioned before labor started – but I didn’t know how to ask for it myself. I needed to enter my birth space vulnerable, open and ready to work, but my head space was still fixated on fulfilling perceived expectations about how things would unfold, including my own. Zaina was concerned that if I wasn’t quite in active labor yet, getting into the tub might stall things again. I asked her to check me to find out where things were. At that point I was sitting at 3-4 cm and not completely effaced. The contractions had spaced way out again after returning to the house. We agreed that I would stay out of the tub and try to get some rest. The rest of the night I tossed and turned, flopping my enormous belly from one side to the other, trying to get comfortable, still experiencing incredibly uncomfortable contractions every so often. By morning they were completely gone. It was like waking up from a dream about being in labor. I got up and found Zaina in the living room. Nathan made us breakfast and coffee. We talked for a bit about my fears and the other emotional components that had come up the night before. I voiced that I felt embarrassed. Like the “Little Girl Who Cried Labor”. As she packed to leave she assured me that it was okay. I really wanted to believe her. I felt frustrated with my body but worked to let it go. My one joy that morning was the news that my sister had given birth to a beautiful baby girl the night before. Welcome to the world, Scarlett Stone Collins!

 

I had to avoid Facebook after that. The concerned friends and family and their unanswerable questions only mounted my anxiety. After a bit of messaging back and forth with a friend, I tried to really do some digging into my fears in a concrete way. Something big and emotional was holding me back but the list of possible contenders to choose from was crowded and complicated. I decided to address one of the most potent and pressing of my stressors head on. My eldest daughter, Madeleine, was finishing her junior year of high school and had expressed her own anxiety about the baby entering our world many times. She feared being replaced and our very established family routines and rhythms becoming mangled. She feared losing my presence in her life during her last year at home. This mirrored my own fear of there not being enough of me to go around, which is really an echo of one of my oldest and most persistent fears; that I am not enough. I sat down to write her a loving letter, expressing every single thing that my heart needed to say to her before the baby came and shifted our shared landscape. Something in me softened as I hit send on the email. Shortly after, the cramping in my low back returned in earnest. The sensations mirrored the false start from three days earlier. I tried not to get excited. Stay calm, stay open, stay relaxed. Nathan and I moved to cover our bases…dogs were sent to a friend’s house so they wouldn’t be under foot, Victoria took off to NoVA to fetch my big kids from their father’s house, midwife called (again) just to touch base and report on action. I tried not to rush to judge the sensations but just be present with them. The kids arrived home. Nathan cooked dinner.  I had been looking forward to eating it but lost my appetite before I was able to ingest much.  Everyone wanted to stay up and party in preparation for baby, but I insisted that we would wake them all up when it was really go time so they could be present. When I could no longer talk through contractions we called Zaina to come.  Lindsey also got the heads up and Nathan and I took a walk.  I loved being outside.  The air was heavy and warm.  Nathan helped me hold up my enormous belly with each surge, taking some of the pressure off my pubic bone and lower back.  We kissed a LOT. I could have spent my entire labor in the arms of my husband, lips locked, surrounded by dark, warm night. I marveled at the analgesic effect that making out had on the pain of my contractions. I have no idea how long we were out. Probably hours.

When we returned home we found our extra guests sleeping on couches and we retreated upstairs to the quiet of our bedroom. Zaina came in to check my vitals and listen to our baby. It was then that I noticed a drastic decrease in the intensity of my contractions. Baby was doing fine and Zaina suggested I sleep if at all possible, in case I woke up to active labor.  Nathan fell asleep and I stayed up a while longer to meditate and talk to my baby.  I told her that I was ready, that she could come when she was ready, that so many people loved her already. I must’ve dozed during my meditation because when I opened my eyes, my birth music playlist had completed a full 120 minute cycle and was beginning again. I went to bed only lightly cramping, feeling resigned.

 

The next morning I said goodbye to Zaina who left to attend a few appointments nearby, Lindsey had departed before we all woke. I was starting to feel like a really bad birth joke. My mood wasn’t great. Later that afternoon, my mom arrived. She had come up from my sister’s house in Durham where she attended the birth of Scarlett and was excited to learn she just might be present for the birth of our baby as well. Mom is a retired labor and delivery nurse and attended the births of two of my other children. I was grateful for her presence. We tried to enjoy her visit without focusing too much on the possibility that the baby might not come during her stay. She was scheduled to fly on to Maine about a week later.  Meanwhile, the midwives at MCA, who I continued to see for co-care (just in case) had asked me to come in weekly for a non-stress test (NST) since I was already past my due date and in the “advanced maternal age” camp. My mom accompanied Nathan and I for our appointment the next day where we encountered an office nurse with a truly unpleasant bedside manner.

 

“Bottoms off and get on the table!” she snapped, kind of the way I imagine I’d be spoken to if I were spending the night in jail. I raised an eyebrow and questioned the necessity of removing my pants for a NST and she looked at me like I had asked the dumbest question she had ever heard. “Don’t you want to be checked?”

 

“Um, no, actually I don’t.”  She held my gaze and then shrugged, her irritation with my lack of obedience was apparent.
When she took my blood pressure, no surprise – it was elevated. The whole exchange triggered me. I sat in stony silence while we waited for the midwife to come in. Baby passed the NST beautifully but the midwife was concerned about my BP, combined with being 41+1 and 35 years old. She told me it was her duty to advise me to go straight to the hospital. I shared with her privately that I felt sure my elevated BP was due to the interaction I had with her nurse and requested that we retake it at the end of the day before deciding on a trip to the hospital. She agreed. After a grounding meal of pizza at Pistarros and some processing with my mom and Nathan, I returned to the office just before it closed. I felt calm and relaxed when I walked in only to become triggered moments later when the same rude nurse from earlier came out to call me back for my BP recheck.  I couldn’t believe it.  Again my BP was high and there was nothing to do but go to the hospital for monitoring. I sort of expected the trip to exacerbate my anxiety, remembering back to the tour of L&D earlier in my pregnancy, not to mention the implications of elevated BP late in pregnancy.  In fact, it did just the opposite. We were cared for by incredibly compassionate nurses at FMH who were both funny and kind and the two hour monitoring was a breeze. My BP was only slightly elevated when we arrived and had completely normalized by the time the monitoring was complete. It was a relief to know everything was fine and that we could go back home.  We met with the midwife again before leaving and she suggested scheduling induction of labor for the following Wednesday, which was the date I would be 42 weeks exactly.  She joked – “If we put it on the calendar, we won’t end up needing to do it!” She told me to go home, eat a spicy meal and have sex, and with any luck I’d go into labor over the weekend. I hadn’t shared with her my plans for a home birth.  I figured it was my business where my baby was born and I had covered all of my bases for various potential outcomes. I understood that the policy of Simmonds, Martin and Helmbrecht, the OB practice that served as an umbrella for the midwives of MCA, would not “allow” me to go beyond 42 weeks without intervention, but that wasn’t a battle I was interested in taking on in that moment, as I fully envisioned having my baby at home.  I set my intentions on that outcome as we went into the weekend.

(Continued in part 2, here)

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