McClain's Birth Story

To me labor and becoming a parent for the first time is a bit like reading about driving a whole lot but never getting behind the wheel. I think of the evening of October 18th, 2013 as the beginning of our finally taking the wheel:

My mom was visiting for two weeks, and she had already burned through her first week while we waited for baby Williamson to arrive. My brother Hunter came to hang out for the weekend, and it looked like it was going to be another couple of days of thumb twiddling as I was already three days past my due date and had decided this baby was never coming out. But then, just after we finished dinner and sent mom and Hunter off to bed, my water broke. I had been having contractions for a few hours, but had had many other evenings like this, and knew I wasn't very far along. However, I was strep positive and Sam was anxious to get going as our midwife had told us "not to dilly dally." To me this meant we had time for me to take a long shower and stop by the grocery store to procure cookies for the nurses. Sam was annoyed that we couldn't go straight there, but I knew we had many hours ahead of us. While I showered, Sam "packed" (i.e. grabbed our already packed go-bags from a nearby table and proclaimed he was ready to go whilst I called out more items that we needed that he had to go look for, one at a time). Our 1:30am cookie run didn't take as long as I'd hoped, and when we arrived at the hospital we learned they had lost our pre-registration paper work, and I was forced to answer such pressing questions as "are you currently employed?" before they would check us in.

We got settled in our room and after some time two nurses arrived and were very amused that 1) I had never been in a hospital before as a patient (I guess this was evidenced by the fact that I was hanging out in my clothes and hadn't changed into a hospital gown yet) and 2) I claimed that I wouldn't be getting an epidural. Oh they thought that was hilarious. They informed us that I was about 3cm dilated, then botched getting an iv stuck properly in my arm for the strep antibiotics (and apologized profusely for it). Sam's mom arrived and we turned on our hypnobabies tracks and settled in for a long night. The contractions were uncomfortable and seemed to be getting closer together, but the hypnobabies tracks and support of Sam and his mom were helping immensely.

Around 10am my midwife Nancy arrived and informed me I was 4cm. Only 4! I was a little deflated and hoped that I would be further along after all those hours. We labored on, rolling around on the birthing ball, and hypo-breathing our way through wave after wave. There was one room reserved for women laboring without drugs that had a bathtub, and I kept asking if I could be moved there. I longed to soak in some warm water. At first I was told the woman currently occupying the room was "almost done" and her baby was "small" -- but every time I asked I was told the room was occupied, and finally I realized they had given the room to someone else instead of moving me over to it! Also complicating matters was the fact that 12+ hours into labor, I still hadn't reached "zero station" i.e. the baby hadn't dropped all the way (in fact my midwife and a couple of nurses asked me if I had every had surgery on my business because I guess it was unusual that the baby hadn't dropped this far into labor). At 5pm Nancy checked me and told us I was 5cm. Only 5!? I was approaching 24 hours in labor and fatigue was beginning to set in. I also felt I was set back by having to sit down every hour, get hooked up to the iv, and get those darned antibiotics. I wanted to be up and moving around and this lying down every hour felt like a constant step backward. Nancy was concerned I had only progressed a couple of centimeters in over 12 hours and suggested we start a "whiff of pitocin" to see if we could make more progress. I wasn't too excited about getting the pitocin but when Nancy hinted that the alternative was going to be a c-section I knew I didn't have a choice. I had trained and trained with this hypnobabies program and had envisioned things going a bit differently!

As soon as they started me on the pitocin -- the "lowest possible dose" according to Nancy -- the rocketship of pain began and things moved super quick. At this point I tried to keep doing my breathing and my hypnosis techniques but the pain intensified so quickly that all I could do was scream through each wave. I kept wondering what I must sound like to any people in the hallway who happened to be walking past my room. Around this time the nurses changed over and thank God I got this wonderful nurse, Melissa--an angel sent from above who said she had had four children all natural and had been given pitocin with her first just like me. Melissa suggested my screaming would be more effective if I redirected my energy to a low groaning, and she showed me how. What a difference. I felt immediately like Melissa and I were fast friends and I remember telling her "they made me take pitocin" and after what felt like an eternity of horrible painful contractions I asked her "Am I close to transition?" (I knew from my reading that transition meant I was getting close to pushing time) "Honey, you're in it right now," she said, and I told her "I brought cookies for everyone, and I want you to have all of them." I congratulated myself on maintaining the ability to make the occasional joke.

At this point time and space had slipped away and I was in my animal brain, but Nancy checked me again at eight something and I was around 9cm. I just remember having to clamp down on Sam's arms and relying on him so much to look at the monitors and tell me when a wave was about to start and when it was ending. "Natural labor, what was I thinking?" crossed my mind a few times, but then the room filled with nurses (it seemed like the whole floor was there--oh look there's the ladies who did my iv last night--meaning I had been at this for 24 hours now, yeeesh). The dang pitocin had done the trick, and around 9pm, it was finally time to push. I remember Nancy checking me and saying she could "feel the baby's hair." They had me flat on my back and in stirrups, which made me feel rather like a barn animal. When I began pushing, Nancy told me to push, and take a breath in between, to prevent tearing. Now it was burning like the fire of a thousand suns, something else I had read about, and I was getting a charley horse in one leg, and like 8 people were yelling at me to push while I just tried to concentrate on Nancy's direction. I wanted to scream at all of them to shut up, but being back in the South all I managed to say was "I am so sorry but I am going to poop." After 20 minutes of pushing, Nancy said "one more push and you're going to meet your baby," and oh I was determined to have this thing be over and meet whoever was waiting in there. He popped out and promptly pooped all over me (I'm told--we were both cleaned off and I couldn't see a thing from the position I was in). Nancy announced that she thought he was going to be nine pounds and I hadn't torn one bit. She handed him to me and informed me that I "have the perfect birthing pelvis" (Well at least SOMETHING about this process was perfect! I remember thinking) and then I was just shocked as I held this new, wriggling little human. Samuel McClain. He was sucking on two fingers and looking around at this big new world, all eight pounds eleven ounces of him, and he was perfect.