Labor of Love

Most women say that they have a some sort of amnesia that happens about the pain and discomfort during labor that allows them to do it all over again to add to their clan. I want to write about my experience to make sure I don't forget the details. There's no need for me to forget about the experience to convince me to have another baby. I'm still incredibly determined to outshine the universe by having more children, and I may have accepted my fate but have not quite forgiven the universe for taking my first baby away from me.

I suppose i could port all the details about my pregnancy to this blog, but I thought I'd make a clean break and write about life A.D., right before his full head of black air was exposed to this world.

Note: The following may make you uncomfortable. Skip this post if you are uncomfortable reading about bodily functions, malfunctions, and lady parts.

Prior to my decision to get induced, I was as my brother-in-law described, walking around "willy nilly" about 5-6 cm dilated. For those of you who have heard me tell this story before, you can skip this post as well. So on tuesday the 16th, I had an appt with my doc who laid out 2 options for me. 1) I could let nature take its course and see what happens or 2) he could arrange for my paperwork to be ready for me to check in to the hospital to get induced the next day. Both options had advantages and disadvantages and the decision was left to me. Huh? I could barely decide what I wanted to have for dinner, let alone decide when would be the appropriate time to bring my baby into this world. All I could do was pray for a sign.

They wanted me to call at 6am to see if they had a bed available for me. I was supposed to check in at 7am. We set the alarm for 5:30 to get ready in case they had beds open and we needed to leave at 6 to get there by 7. The night before I wore the outfit that I had planned to wear to the hospital to save time getting ready, and I was tired since the decision to be induced or not had weighed on my mind all night. I woke up and I had dropped a piece of watermelon on route to my mouth on my white shirt. Brian was downstairs, wondering what the hold up was, and I was hand-washing the stain out of my shirt at 6:15, wondering if this was a sign that i shouldn't be going to the hospital today. Fortunately he was patient and i tentatively got in the car, reassuring myself that I could still go to the hospital and then decide not to go through with it. In the car ride there, "Let's Wait Awhile" by Janet came on. Are you serious - that song never gets any airtime these day, unless it's some friday night throwback weekend romance mix. Why would it be playing at 6:45am? That's a serious sign! What am I going to do?

I started contracting a lot more when we got off the freeway, enough that i would have called the doctor and brian, although in hindsight I'm wondering if my stress caused these contractions. But the contractions really scared me. I got to this point in my pregnancy in which I didn't know if I could trust my body anymore. I got Dylan to 37 weeks and I didn't know if I should press my luck. I wanted him out, so that other people could help me take care of him. The pressure and anxiety of being the only person who could really take care of him while I was pregnant, really started to wear on me. Plus, as far as letting nature take her course, this entire pregnancy was fated with human medical intervention, why not 'til the end? So when we got to the hospital, I was ready.

We checked in at 7:20am and I was on pitocin by 9:30am. I had hard boiled eggs and the last of my mango, which I can say gave me just enough energy to make it through. And so we waited. Dr. Katz would come and check up on me here and there, and sure enough, my cervix willy nillyed itself to 8ish cm and it was around then that I think I started to loose my grip on reality because I was almost convinced to not have the epidural. To be clear, I did walk into the hospital with a birth plan. The only plan I had was that I only wanted Brian in the room, that I wanted an epidural and wanted to have a c-section if the baby showed any signs of distress. Both labor and delivery nurses tried to coach me out of having the epidural, and for a few hours I was considering it. Thinking back, maybe hunger or the pitocin makes you delusional. Dr. Katz came back at 5:30 to break my bag of waters and then the pain exponentially increased. It's like when you're standing in line at the club, waiting to get in. Every now and then the door would open to let someone in or out, and you would hear the music blaring inside. It's loud, but fine. And then you would get closer, and closer to the front of the line, and as the door would open, the music would be louder. And then you get into the club and the music was loud, but tolerable. And then imagine yourself strapped down in stirrups right next to the biggest speaker and the music is so loud that your eyeballs vibrate inside your head and you can barely think. That music = my contractions, and when my water broke, the only clear thought I had in my head was to tell the nurse to go find the anesthesiologist, STAT.

The pain of getting the epidural was not bad. Although they tell you that it takes 15-20 minutes for it "to take." So after 30 min of grimacing through every contraction, I asked the nurse if it's normal to still feel EVERYTHING, because I started to wonder if the drugs even did anything. The anesthesiologist came back, made some adjustments, and then order was re-established in my birth plan. I wasn't 10 cm yet and there was still some time to kill. I checked my email, blogged about the experience, shopped for my niece's bday gift, etc. but by 7pm I was ready to push.

My body at his point was still a vessel that was somewhat recognizable and pseudo-responsive. I was still able to feel every contraction, well before brian or the nurse could detect it on the monitor and surprisingly could still feel and move my legs and toes. Our labor and delivery nurse's husband was the executive chef at Carneros, so for awhile that was some interesting banter about food, wine and restaurants.

Dialogue:
Me: So what's your favorite restaurant in wine country?
Nurse: Oh, I like this place in Napa, PUSH, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, PUSH. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, PUSH. But we don't eat out that often.
Me: Oh really? Have you tried... Oh wait another contraction. PUSH, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, PUSH. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, PUSH.

Meanwhile, Dr. Katz would come in, and I'm pretty sure he was exaggerating the progress I was making. Over the course of the next 4 hours, he would slowly transform from his shirt and tie self to someone who either looked like he worked for NASA as an astronaut, or someone who deals with chemical waste, in full police riot gear. And it would be very ceremonial and dramatic, like "look I'm taking my watch off now..."

My stamina was waning and I had no more energy for culinary conversation. It was time to get this show on the road. They asked if I wanted to see him crowning in the mirror to motivate me, and then I asked them if they wanted me to pass out, because that's what would happen if I saw his head coming out of my cha-cha. They wanted me to push harder, to push longer. No duh. I wanted to too, and after 3 hours you wonder how much longer could I possible do this for? But like any other woman in labor, you push the doubt aside and you focus and you just bear down and do it. You tell yourself that this is it. That you can do this. That billions of women across eons have done this. That animals do this. And that women who think they are having bowels movements but are really having babies do this, so I should be able to do this too. And so you do it, because that's what women do. And the last time I checked before my body became unrecognizable, I was a woman, so I wiped the sweat off of my palms, tucked my double chins under, gripped my thighs and PPPPPUUUUUUUUUUUUUSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHED!!!

Once Dylan's head was out, it didn't take very long to push out the rest of his little squirmy body. Dr. Katz pulled him out and placed him on my chest, and Dylan made his gender known by peeing all over me. He was perfect, even down to the golden urine arch.

We did it. Dylan Young Fong was born on Aug. 17 at 11:17pm. And so it begins.