The Husband's View of Birth, part II

On the Matter of Labor, continued

Let me just reiterate one thing here at the outset, because it is considerable in its, uh, reiteratableness. We had no idea that labor would be such a busy and non-stop activity. During Claire's pregnancy, many was the time that we laughed heartily at the popular culture's portrayal of labor: e.g. Steve Martin rushing out of the house and driving recklessly to the hospital in "She's Having a Baby, accompanied by lots of yelling by husband and wife. We knew better. We brought books and magazines along to the hospital to read between contractions (and for the halcyon and quiet time after the birth when the baby was sleeping quietly in the hospital crib).

But we were on the go the whole time. As we settled into the hospital room, we discovered that it did not have a bathtub. Luckily, the other rooms were mostly empty, and we moved next door to a room with a tub. I made several trips down to the parking lot to retrieve bags from the truck, while our doula (Alex) stayed with Claire and got her into the tub. Contractions the whole time, by now quite long and quite intense, and arriving every two or three minutes.

An hour in the tub or so. Then sitting for a while, then on the birth ball. My job was to wait for contractions and go get Claire in a big hug and we held on. Alex was a big help, letting us both know that things were proceeding normally and that we were ok. If Claire stood up to change position, she'd get a particularly strong contraction. They came along like big waves at the beach; she'd be recovering from getting beat up and tossed around by one, only to get hit head-on by the next one. She was most pissed by the fact that she still hurt somewhat between contractions. She had read that there would be a nice break between them, but not so much in the later stages. By about 4:30, she was starting to get tired and beat up, I could tell. But she never asked for pain medication or an epidural. She just kept at it. She wasn't going without pain meds for a silly "I am Woman, Hear me Roar" reason or because we're hippy types or anything. Nobody likes pain. But we kept reading and hearing about the so-called "cascade of interventions": an epidural leads to slowed labor, slowed labor leads to pitocin, and pitocin leads to intense contractions, and intense contractions stress and slow the baby's heartbeat, and next thing you know, you've got a C-section. Claire did not want this. So she cowboyed up. She also wanted to keep moving and changing positions during labor, which speeds things up and takes advantage of gravity. With an epidural, you're on you back, hooked up to the spinal drip, an IV, and a fetal monitor.

We had agreed ahead of time that it might be ME that brought up pain medication first, that I might have a hard time watching Claire hurting. So we agreed ahead of time that nobody could mention pain meds except Claire. But she didn't, she just kept plugging away. My wife is ONE TOUGH CHICK. I think if labor had stalled, or if we had spent several more hours at it, she might have considered something. But everything kept moving and progressing, until finally, it was time to push! Instead of "AAAAAAAAAAaaaa", she started saying "AAAAAAAAaaaa--eerrrrgg". Time to get on the bed.

Up next: "Any chance we could do this WITHOUT the doctor?"