![\"Collage3\"](\"\/birthstory_images\/images\/collage3.jpg\")
\n<\/p>\n\n<\/p>\n
Maya was due on March 17, 2006. But I was two weeks
\noverdue, and extremely impatient, hoping to go into
\nlabor. Ted and I had decided that we wanted it to be
\njust us in the delivery room, no other family. On the
\nother hand, I had NO experience with babies; and I
\nwanted my mom to be there to help with her when Ted
\nwent back to work. So, we decided she would fly the
\nalmost 4,000 miles from Juneau to Philly one week
\nafter the due date, so she would be there to help us
\nas much as possible.<\/p>\n
Since she was 2 weeks late, our plans were obviously
\nnot working out as we had hoped. My mom was there,
\nready to help. But no help was needed for a week before
\nMaya’s birth, which was fine actually. It was nice
\nto have that time together. I couldn’t tell you the
\nlast time we had spent a whole week together, no work,
\nno school – probably never. Certainly not since the
\nlast time we had gone on vacation together when I was
\na kid.\n<\/p>\n
On March 27th, I had my last exam. The midwife told
\nme that if I didn’t go into labor on Thursday, I
\nshould check into the hospital Thursday evening, after
\na light dinner. Um…what? Spend the night in the
\nhospital? I hadn’t really gotten that far in my
\nthinking, and I wasn’t happy about it. But I wasn’t
\neffaced at all, and they would apply some goop to my
\ncervix, which would help efface it, and it might even
\nstart some contractions. <\/p>\n
I couldn’t see any sense in
\nTed and\/or my mom staying at the hospital with me.
\nThere was nowhere for them to sleep, and it seemed to
\nme that we were in for a long day on Friday. The
\nmore rested we all were, the better. So I was
\nadmitted, put into a fashionable robe, had the goop
\napplied, a device strapped to my belly so they could
\nmonitor the baby’s heartbeat, and that was that. The
\nmidwife said they would hook me up to the pitocin at
\n9am, and that usually it takes a while to get going, so
\nwe decided that Ted and my mom should come back at 10
\nthe next morning. They went home, and I stayed
\nbehind. The goop did start some very minor
\ncontractions, like bad menstrual cramps, which came
\nabout every 10 minutes. I dozed throughout the night,
\nwaking with each contraction, trying to get
\ncomfortable while hooked up to the fetal heart monitor
\nand listening to hospital sounds.\n<\/p>\n
At 7AM, my water broke. I buzzed the nurse and told
\nher.
\n"Are you sure you didn’t pee in your bed?" she asked.
\n"Huh? Does that happen often?" I asked.
\n"You’d be surprised," she said.\n<\/p>\n
The indignities of motherhood were just becoming
\napparent to me.
\nIt was my water breaking, however, not pee. At 8AM,
\nthey started the IV of pitocin, a whole hour early. I
\nsettled in to wait. OUCH! the pain, amazing, scary,
\nwhat-was-I-thinking PAIN started pretty much right
\naway.\n<\/p>\n
A couple of words about pain. I don’t like it.
\nHowever, I like needles even less than I like pain,
\nand the sight of the needle at childbirth classes had
\nmade me rethink the epidural, and try for a natural
\nchildbirth. And part of natural childbirth is pain
\n(any childbirth, actually…I have yet to hear of one
\nthat is painless, natural or not.) My midwife had
\ntold me that one way to look at it was that the pain
\nof childbirth was a natural pain, as opposed to
\nbreaking a leg or rupturing an appendix, and that
\nusually what determines whether a woman needs an
\nepidural is the duration of the labor. My family
\ntends to have embarrassingly short labors, so I was
\nhopeful that I could get through without seeing that
\ndreaded needle.\n<\/p>\n
The midwife kept asking me if I wanted to call Ted and
\ntell him that contractions had started in earnest. But
\nmy addled brain was afraid; afraid that in his
\npanicked state, he would get in a car accident on the
\nway over to the hospital, and then he and my mom would
\nbe dead while I gave birth, left alone in a strange
\ncity to raise my baby. Too many Hans Christian
\nAnderson stories in my youth, perhaps.\n<\/p>\n
At 10:00, I was standing next to the bed, trying not
\nto murder the resident who kept trying to take my
\nblood pressure. She couldn’t get an accurate reading,
\nbecause my contractions were too close together, and
\nthe cuff tightening around my arm made me homicidal.
\nI think I was in the beginning of ‘transitional
\nlabor’. I could hear my mom talking loudly as she
\nwalked down the hallway. Ted said he heard someone
\nyelling, and he thought, "I hope that’s not Julie."
\nThey opened the door, and yeah, it was me.\n<\/p>\n
Ted said I was making "animal noises", like an animal
\nthat was trapped and in pain. That pretty much sums
\nup how I felt, too. I looked at my mom’s face, and I
\nwas sure she needed to be in the waiting area. I
\nwanted this to be me and Ted, and if she were there, I
\nwould want mother’s comfort, which wasn’t going to
\nhelp me right then. So I told her to go. I think her
\nfeelings were hurt; and she had been hoping to watch
\nMaya come into the world.\n<\/p>\n
I think mine was a "back labor," meaning the pain was
\nlow down my spine, and laying down on the bed was
\nexcruciating. What helped the most was for Ted to
\nrub my lower back while I rocked back and forth on my
\nfeet, and for him to remind me to relax my shoulders,
\nthat they shouldn’t be up by my ears.
\nEventually, that scary needle wasn’t seeming quite so
\nscary, and the idea of relief was sounding pretty good
\nto me. So I asked for an epidural. The
\nanesthesiologist was at lunch, but they told me he was
\nbusy with another patient, probably because I would
\nhave lost my mind if I knew he was grabbing his only
\nchance at a sandwich while I was crazy with pain.
\nThey said he would be there soon, and that they needed
\nto examine me to make sure I was far enough along
\nbefore he came anyway. Up on the table, and
\noops…time to push. I had been told that I would be
\nmoved from the "labor" room to the "delivery" room,
\nbut thankfully the midwife left that decision up to
\nme, because the thought of being pushed down the
\nhallway in nothing but that gown, looking like crap,
\nscreaming and scaring the other moms didn’t appeal to
\nme at all.
\nSo I pushed. I had been told what a relief that was,
\nhow good it felt to finally push. Nope, it hurt like
\nhell, and I was SO scared. I remember wondering if
\nthere was a way to sneak out of there, grab a taxi, go
\nhome, and pretend the whole thing had never happened.
\nMy fear came from knowing that they weren’t going to
\nlet me out of there. So I pushed. <\/p>\n
After about 15
\nminutes of pushing, out she came. Ted said, "Honey,
\nLOOK!" But I didn’t want to – I was afraid to see
\nmyself all gross and bloody down there – so I said,
\n"No! It’s GROSS!" He said, "No, it’s our baby!" So I
\nopened my eyes, and I can tell you, I don’t know what
\nI THOUGHT was going to come out of me, but nothing
\nprepared me for it being a real, live, BEAUTIFUL baby.
\nHer lips were all stretched out, and I remember
\nthinking, "Uh Oh, here comes a supermodel," but
\nluckily they didn’t stay that way, and her resemblance
\nto Mick Jaggar was fleeting.\n<\/p>\n
Ted got to cut the umbilical cord, and we got to hold
\nher. That amazing rush of endorphins, relief, and joy
\novercame me. I was on top of the world. No one had
\ntold me that the pain stops the second the baby is
\nout…I guess I had thought it would wane. THANK
\nGOD the pain just…stopped.
\nAfter we had a few minutes with her, they brought my
\nmom in. Her jaw dropped to the floor, too. They had
\njust told her that I wanted her, not that Maya had
\nbeen born already.<\/p>\n
Overall, I know that I had a very "easy" labor: Four "J" is a work-at-home mother in the San Francisco Bay Area. She works Maya was due on March 17, 2006. But I was two weeks overdue, and extremely impatient, hoping to go into labor. Ted and I had decided that we wanted it to be just us in the delivery room, no other family. On the other hand, I had NO experience with babies; and I wanted my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-au-naturale","category-induction-the-lease-is-up"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t![\"Baby003_1\"](\"\/photos\/uncategorized\/baby003_1.jpg\")
<\/a>
\n\n<\/p>\n
\nhours from when the serious contractions began to the
\nend. It sure didn’t feel easy, though. It was the
\nhardest, scariest, most wonderful thing I had ever
\ndone. After that day, whenever something seems
\ndifficult or scary, I just think to myself, "I can do
\nthis…I’ve given birth."<\/p>\n
\nas a tax compliance analyst, and finds more fulfillment in writing her
\nblog, "Thinking About", which can be found here<\/a>. Her daughter,
\nMaya, is 10 years old.<\/em> <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"