Greta's Birth

Greta came into this world in exactly the way that I wished she would. Due to my experiences in Niger and hearing the birth stories of my Nigerien friends there, I have known for many years that I would eventually choose to have a natural birth. Birth there was for the woman. It was empowering and private and fierce. Women gave birth to babies in the corners of their mud huts on a mat in the sand and were sitting upright nursing them, literally moments later. With their experiences etched in my memory, I knew that my body could handle one of the most natural and complex occurrences in the human experience if only I would let it. If they could do it, and all women throughout human history could do it, then I could do it, too, I reasoned. With Paul in Egypt for most of my pregnancy, I had a great deal of free time to sit around and read books about natural birth, doulas, midwifery, and breastfeeding. It was a tiny luxury in the loneliness that took place during that time I was apart from Paul while separated by continents. After the reading, I hardened my resolve to be an informed mother who would do everything to bring my child into the world safely and with no or minimal medical interventions. This would mean staving off inducement, drugs, prolonged fetal heart monitoring, numerous cervical exams, premature breaking of the membranes, episiotomy, Caesarean section, and doctor-assisted birth. After the research, I decided that I'd need a doula to be there for me despite the fact that I also had a midwife. Since the birth was going to take place in a hospital due to insurance limitations, I was worried that I would have to hold my ground to keep the birth going in the natural way that I hoped it could occur. Prior to the birth, Paul and I met several times with Carrie, our doula. She helped me to write our birth plan and told me what to expect from my particular midwife and from the hospital where Greta would be born. She was a wealth of information and support throughout the process. I was due on October 11, but I watched that day pass by without any fanfare. My sister, Lori, arrived and I was worried that she might have to return to Portland without a niece to show for it! On October 15, Lori, Paul, and I walked from our house over to a deli in our neighborhood called Salvador Deli where we had dinner and then walked back home. I possibly credit that long walk with Max on leash (who pulls like crazy) for finally sending me into labor! The next morning was Thursday, October 16, and Lori and I walked Max before I went to work. Twice during our walk I felt waves of something unfamiliar, but I wasn't sure exactly what it was. You would think that I would have been hyper-sensitive by that point to any strange feeling, but I just thought that it was gas. Indeed, those were my first contractions of the day. I went to work and was in a phone meeting with a client when I realized that the "gas" I had been feeling was now coming anywhere from six to eight minutes apart like clockwork. I began to keep regular track of the contractions writing them down on a stickie note while talking to my client about her immigration matters. By ten o'clock I was convinced that I was in labor so I headed back home and called Paul. I wanted to labor at home for as long as possible, so I got into comfy clothes, packed my hospital bag and prepared mentally for the unknown. It's a very strange sensation to make ready for something that is about to happen to your body when you don't know for certain what it will feel like, how long it will take, or how it will progress and to what end. I called my parents and Paul's parents so that everyone could begin their journeys to our home. Around mid-afternoon, Paul arrived from school, and we called Carrie, our doula. I was still able to talk through the contractions, so she was in no rush to come to our home. Her calm in the face of my questions was incredibly reassuring. I took a bath, had about half a glass of wine (finally!), and tried to relax. By around five o-clock, I asked Carrie to join me. She arrived at our house with a giant exercise ball, and I used it to get through many contractions. There was a point somewhere in there where everything shifted, and suddenly labor was different. It began to truly hurt, and I was unable to hold a conversation during each contraction. The contractions lasted longer and were only a couple of minutes apart. Any little noise that I heard disturbed me, and I was unable to listen to music or to even hear Paul tear a piece of tape off the tape dispenser. I used to make fun of "quiet birth" but I was discovering that I needed one. By around seven o'clock I announced that it was time to head to the hospital. I was certain that I was about nine centimeters dilated (wishful thinking), so we left. I had never really prepared Paul for how to enter the hospital, and I couldn't remember where to go from my tour seven months earlier, so he ended up taking me to the emergency room entrance. Once inside, I sat in a wheel chair and was parked in a corner. The emergency room attendant did not realize that I was in active labor until we told him. Then they whisked me to up to labor and delivery, and my midwife, Lindsey, came. She was with me from check-in until way after Greta was born, and I was so thankful again and again during that night that I had chosen a midwife. I threw on a sarong and tank top that I brought from home, began pacing the room, and nearly pulled the cord out of the wall when we could not figure out how else to turn the television off. Noise was my enemy, for some reason. I labored for an hour or so, and when my midwife examined me, she said that I was only a little over half way there in terms of being dilated. I was just plain mad. Carrie told me to get up, get vertical, and start using gravity to get that baby moving. I labored pacing the room, labored in the bathroom leaning against the sink counter, labored on the bed on my knees, and in all sorts of positions all over the place. I was trying anything and everything I had read about or that my doula suggested. It was very free because I wasn't attached to any monitors. I had no IV. I had no needle in my hand. The only difference between laboring in the hospital versus laboring at home was that periodically my midwife or my nurse would listen to the baby's heartbeat to make sure she was doing well. A few times the heart rate seemed to slow, but since they weren't doing a constant monitor, no one was overly worried about it. They just checked it 15 minutes or so later, and everything had returned to normal. My water finally broke on its own, and the contractions were one on top of another. Oddly, the pain was primarily in my hips and legs. I always assumed that I would have back labor, but that is not where I felt the most pressure. I had major urges to push by around 10:30 p.m., but my midwife asked me to hold off so that I wouldn't tire out before the real work began. If not "real work" - then what had I been doing for the last few hours? But then soon after, she told me to go ahead and start pushing; that was around eleven o'clock. By about 11:50, my midwife and Paul were taking bets on whether the baby would be born on the 16th or on the 17th of October. I was all for the 16th, but Greta held out for two extra minutes. She was born at 12:02 on the morning of October 17th. She was perfectly healthy, incredibly alert, and was nursing within minutes of birth. I was so proud of myself, my supporters, and that little girl for making it easy. The birth was exactly what I wished for in terms of how my own mind and body were able to work in unison, and Greta went through it with no drugs rolling through her system. I was up and walking around minutes after birth, and Greta stayed with us constantly until we left the hospital. I am very thankful for the experience and for the space to be free to experience birth that way. I would love to send this story to my Nigerien women friends, but I know that they would never understand why Greta's birth seems like a little victory to me.