The beautiful birth story of my second daughter

The birth of G.*race A__delaide, born at 38 weeks, Saturday March 29, 2014, 6:47am

Preface

I am sure that at many points in her life she will hate being compared to her sister but I cannot write about the birth of my DD2 without comparing it to that of her sister. Thus to write about how powerful this birth was, I need to write a little about the birth of DD1 two years earlier. DD1 began her birth at 40 weeks plus four, and arrived early in the hours of 40 plus five. My birth experiences with each were entirely different. Both spontaneous labours and natural deliveries, but that is where the similarities ended. By the time I began labour with DD1 I was primed and prepared to the absolute max. I pounced all too energetically upon early labour. I had my yoga birthing positions, I had my fit ball, I felt so good I cleaned the kitchen, shaved my legs and tinted my eyebrows. I was so excited and so full of anticipation I did not sit down once and relax. But I was not prepared for the intensity of progressing labour and my early eager beans soon expired and I was exhausted. So I decided that once I went into hospital I would get an epidural. By the time we arrived I was 5cm dilated and so proud that I did that all by myself at home but I was also panicking and losing focus, the pain and frequency of contractions were frightening me and I demanded an epidural, ignoring my husband’s quiet, gentle reminders that this was not what I had wanted.

DD1's birth was not traumatic per say. She was born with the assistance of a venteuse because she was a little distressed and tired after a 19 hour labour. The epidural was, on the surface, uncomplicated and easy. But after the headiness of the first nine or so hours the rest of my labour could only be described as being in a kind of disconnected twilight zone. I was exhausted but oddly wired. I could not sleep. I was cold, I had bouts of uncontrollable shivering. It was the dead of night and the epidural was so strong I had very little feeling whatsoever. My baby was being born but I was barely aware of it. When I talk about it now, I say it felt as though I had abandoned my baby to birth herself.

I didn’t know it at the time but I was deeply unsatisfied by this, my first birth. I have always been quite in tune with my emotions and my body so this lack of connection was completely destabilising and only after DD2 was born two years and one month later could I acknowledge that while a textbook birth in many respects, I was actually, silently, upset by my first birth. Upset but secretly so because I was also ashamed that such a pain-free, stress-free, trauma-free birth could make me feel this way. I later went on to develop mild postnatal depression, again unchecked, and I believe the two were intrinsically linked. That for me as an individual, the process and emotion and feeling of my birth experiences are very important to my sense of self and meaningfulness, not to mention feelings of connectedness to my newborn. Perhaps unsurprisingly, when I fell pregnant with DD2, I experienced strong antenatal anxiety. Which is why her birth was so healing, so beautiful.

And so now, DD2.

Dearest G.. race,

I write our birth story as a letter to you, as I did for your sister when she came to us.

Redemption. Rebirth. Enlightenment.

These are the words that came first to my mind in the early days and weeks after the birth of you, my second precious daughter. The phrase, birth is my religion, even danced about my head; still does. Such was the impact of our shared birthing experience. It was a deeply spiritual experience.

You began your debut – burrowing, squirreling, pushing, gliding, flying – right on 38 weeks. I was 38 weeks on the Friday March 28, and was in labour by 1am the 29th.

Unlike with your sister, this time around I experienced very little prelabour. However you were always burrowing down, digging deep. I had experienced Braxton Hicks from early in both pregnancies but yours were far more insistent, more intense, right from mid in the second trimester. Yours felt so akin to pre-period cramps that I should have been worried about losing you or about a dangerously preterm labour, but oddly I was not. Despite my antenatal anxiety I was confident of your wellbeing.

However you did give me clues that you just might be an earlybird. Little clues that I ignored at the time. I began losing innocently-sized pieces of my cervical plug from a few weeks before I went into labour (with your sister I lost nothing until active labour, when it all came out in a giant messy gloop in the hospital). This time I was finding pieces of plug the size of a ten-cent coin, but irregularly, from a few weeks, to four days, before labour began.

Another clue: three days before you were born I felt very sluggish and ‘off’. This was a sign with your sister that she would arrive imminently, but this time I fobbed it off as perhaps a urinary tract infection and drank copious amounts of cranberry juice!

But perhaps the biggest clue you gave me was the day before you were born (in fact hours before labour began). But you were a little trickster, for it was a very cryptic clue indeed. For months I had been complaining of a regularly sore lower back, annoyingly frequent and outright uncomfortable Braxton Hicks and other pre-period tightenings. But the day before you were born this all ceased. Completely. I had such a lightness of body. I remember I took your sister to the park to meet a friend. It was warm, I was in a fitted grey tank top and low rise jeans. My belly (you inside!) was looking particularly prominent and lots of women told me I looked ‘ready to pop’. I laughed aand said I still had two weeks until my due date and that since my firstborn was almost a week overdue I was expecting the same this time around. Besides, I felt so energetic! Not at all tired.

My third trimester with you had been the best trimester of the three. I mentioned this to my Mum on the phone in mere days before labour too. She must have been a little bit telepathic because she kept warning me that you might be early and, not knowing your birth was only hours away, I again laughed, and told her that I felt too good to be going into labour anytime soon.

Despite having a high-energy day, the night of the 28th I was very tired (another clue dear one!). An enormous fatigue struck me out of the blue and shortly after dinner I confessed to your Daddy that I simply had to go to bed. I showered, undertook my usual evening rituals, and went to bed thinking about everything I needed to do before your due date. This rather long list included writing an essay for an artist friend for her upcoming exhibition and organising Plan B for your sister for when I went into labour. We lived interstate from all family at the time and my parents were booked to fly across a few days before you were due. Plan B included asking our lovely next-door neighbours if they would walk across and care for your sister in her own home in the unlikely event I went into labour early. But I had not bothered asking them yet as I was so certain you would be another latecomer!

That night, I went to bed early and slept immediately and easily. However shortly after midnight I woke with very uncomfortable Braxton Hicks. Arg, not again! I thought, used to being besieged by my overly active uterus. I rolled over and ignored the feeling, annoyed that they had only disappeared and left me in peace for a day. I woke again around 1am and remember thinking that these Braxton Hicks were particularly intense. I also recall they felt isolated to the very bottom of my pubic area, almost between my legs, rather than up higher and along the general breadth of my expanded uterus. They were keeping me awake and at some point soon after I got up and heated my wheat bags and tried to press them against the aching area, which was difficult as I had to try to wedge them between my legs as well as across the lowest part of my pubic bone. It did occur to me then that perhaps something was happening but I was barely 38 weeks! There was no way I would be in labour now! My Mum wasn’t here! We hadn’t yet asked anybody else to care for your sister! I had things to write and we didn’t have a kitchen because we were in the middle of renovating it! I supposed that the universe obviously hadn’t aligned everything just yet so I simply did not accept that you were coming.

In a strange way, this was the best (subconscious) tactic to take in dealing with labour, especially considering how overly eager and active I had been in early labour with your big sister, which wore my body out. This time around, with you in my womb, it was nighttime. It was dark and peaceful. Everybody in the house was fast asleep (though your sister was oddly restless, not waking but calling out in her sleep). I couldn’t fall into a deep sleep myself – I was increasingly uncomfortable – but I was very relaxed and able to doze.

I was also pleasantly unaware of the time. I only looked at the clock twice in those early hours. Once, around 2am after I had been wakefully uncomfortable for an hour or two - when something deep inside me told me to note the hour - and again about 4:30am. In between these two checkpoints labour was progressing very quickly but relatively comfortably. You were moving stealthily my darling bud! I was having contractions but I was not yet calling them contractions as they did not feel overtly painful. In fact, and possibly because I was not completely convinced I was in labour, they were perfectly manageable with my wheat bags. I became more ‘suspicious’ of what was really happening after I realised that I had been getting out of bed with each ‘ache’ because they felt worse when lying down and that each ache was longer lasting than the last.

But even without thinking about it I had developed a little ritual to work through each contraction: I would get out of bed, walk through to the ensuite, sit on the toilet, breath deeply, walk back to bed once the feeling had passed or if I felt I needed to walk it off, then doze. I was silly in my denial though because one of the reasons I started walking to the toilet each time was because my bowels felt a little upset … I had two or three big emptying of my bowels and vaguely recalled that this was a generally accepted sign of labour but I had not experienced it with your sister at all so it was not an immediate flashbulb moment for me. However I did have the presence of mind then to pack the last items in my hospital bag and put on my carefully chosen labouring nightgown – selected because it looked more like a soft, breastfeeding-friendly dress than a pair of jimjams!

Things intensified, again subtly, so that it became difficult to walk through to the ensuite and back again. So from this point I would sit up and move to the edge of the bed, sit lightly on my hands and simply rock my hips side to side, back and forth, or in a circular motion. I breathed deeply. The rhythm of the rocking was soothing, as was the gentle pressure of my bottom on my hands. It was like a lullaby, rocking me into a state of peacefulness. I didn’t need to stand up or to lean over the bed or get onto all fours or any of those labouring positions. I just needed to sit, breathe, rock.

All this time it was so, so peaceful. I had no inclination to wake your father up at all. I loved and craved this quiet time. So dark, the street asleep outside, barely any wind or movement. I had at some point in time gradually, peacefully accepted that I was in labour, but without openly stating it to myself. There were no words, no overt thoughts. I absolutely loved being in this state on my own – with you, my little one of course. It was our special, pre-birth time. Just you and I. Nobody to fuss or fret. It was important all of a sudden that I did this alone.

Eventually I decided things were intensifying to a degree where perhaps I should be roughly noting time between contractions as I was aware I was spending most of my time rocking on the edge of the bed without any breaks and that my breathing had become very deliberately focussed. This was when I looked at the clock again – around 4:30am. But I was not a slave to the clock; I would only check the time when I thought of it. I did note that the contractions were never any more frequent than six or seven or even eight minutes apart but despite this something was now telling me that you were coming close, so very close! I knew that it was time to wake your Daddy so I did, close to five am, by prodding him and whispering ‘things might be happening!’ It took a few prods and murmurs for your Daddy to wake up and realise what was happening and it was the shock of his life! For while I had had the last few wakeful hours to come to terms with your very early arrival, he had precious few minutes!

Once he was awake, things gained a new sense of urgency (which is why I am so glad we had our secret labouring time my dear one). I began fretting about your sister. She was barely two years old, she hated to be separated from her mama, how would she cope? Your Daddy, bless him, suggested we take her to the hospital with us and put her in the hospital crèche! I said, which crèche is that?! I was becoming very impatient and had begun quietly but decidedly moaning through contractions. The sense of impatience and just the slightest touch of panic was another sign that perhaps this labour was more advanced than I had thought. I ordered Daddy to knock on the door of our neighbours, two wonderful people with a toddler themselves, knowing that the father was a butcher and would be up anyway. Daddy then woke up your sister who cried and was a little panicked herself but, the clever, empathetic little thing that she is, she knew immediately why. She actually said ‘Mama is having the baby.’ How blessed I am to have the two of you.

Our neighbours arrived with their daughter and your sister was immediately distracted and at ease in this familiar company and began playing. I fell back into a calmer state and actually walked around the house talking to everyone, my hands anchored on my lower back, while your Daddy prepared for our departure and we both briefed the neighbours on your sister’s morning routine. Every time I felt a contraction coming on I would disappear into the bedroom but I was coping beautifully and was quite conversational. It was also important to me that I did not alarm or panic my beautiful firstborn and that desire also made it easy to cope at this point.

However the moment we left our house and started walking to the garage (down a short stairwell) things became one thousand times more intense. I went from walking socially around the house and breathing, only quietly moaning through contractions, to not being able to stand at all. Contractions started toppling over one another and the intensity of them was amazing – the contractions had a weightiness to them that made me want to crumple over and fall on the ground. I remember stopping on the stairs and clutching the handrail desperately. I cried to your Daddy that I could not come down the stairs, that I could not move at all! Of course in hindsight I was entering the frenetic end of the second stage. But it all happened so suddenly! Not even 15 minutes earlier I was calmly sitting, breathing, rocking!

The hospital was only a ten or so minute drive – even less at this post-dawn hour. I had a batch of ridiculously physical contractions in the car but close to the hospital something strange and beautiful happened. It must have been transition (I do not recall a clear-cut transition with your sister). With you, I suddenly started feeling wonderfully sleepy yet lucid between contractions. Such a short time ago I was overwhelmed, but then the contractions resumed a clearer stop-start pattern again and in between I had this incredible sense of dreamy floatiness, yet clarity. I remember resting my head on one hand and talking conversationally to your Daddy – I know not what about – as I looked out the car window and around me, almost falling asleep in the seemingly miniscule time between contractions. Details were clear and sharp. The angular cut of the buildings, grey roads, the softer silhouette of shaggy gum trees lining the streets, the detail of the dashboard and interior car door. Then I gazed out the car window and my eyes travelled to the top of a higher building, up towards the sky. And there, your name came to me. It was as though it floated down from the top of the pale early morning sky because my eyes were drawn upwards, up high above the buildings. And I had such a sense of you! I could feel you, it was as though you were actually skimming down from an indiscernible spot in the sky, invisible and slight. In this magical in-between time of birthing known rather clinically as transition you made yourself known to me.

We approached the hospital and things became intense again, just like that. You must have known where we were! Daddy must have been aware that you were not far away at all because he tried to convince me that he should drop me off at the entrance then go and park the car but I would have none of that! I wanted to hold his hand from this point in and not let go! I just imagined holding his hand, I really needed to hold his hand!

We arrived at the hospital car park and I was barely out of the car when I suddenly found myself groaning - like a cow I remember - and I was pushing! It came out of nowhere. I was powerless to stop it – that guttural, earthy groan, and that totally out-of-your-control desire to push. I felt like I had to kneel on the ground and push out a baby then and there! It was about 6:30am now. Daddy was having great difficulty getting me to walk and I would not let go of his hand. Thankfully a staffer had just parked near us, saw immediately what was happening and rushed to get a wheelchair. Daddy ran me into the delivery suite – I remember the chair pushing through the heavy double doors and then the midwives scolding us for not giving them enough notice. They must have taken one look at us and known you were practically falling out! Daddy had called them to say we were on our way in but the urgency of it was somehow lost in translation, and whoever took the call did not note that we really were coming in straight away.

While one midwife was urgently paging my obstetrician the others set about seeing exactly where we were at, you and I. I sat on the bed and rolled to one side with immense difficulty but was curious to see what the internal revealed. I had another pushing contraction as the midwives examined me and groaned again, so loudly. I should have been hurting but instead I was overcome with a sense of …. It is hard to describe but it felt like I was acutely aware my whole body was unfolding and expanding and I felt more a sense of relief and liberty with each push. I was not surprised to hear I was fully dilated but oddly was surprised to hear that they could see the head clearly during the contraction. You were coming to meet us right now!

My sweet girl, you were born at 6:47am but the 20 or so minutes between arriving at the hospital and you being born felt much quicker. I was pushing and it was as though my body was on autopilot. It knew just what to do, as did you. I remember a midwife proclaiming ‘your baby is (bull) dozing her way out!’ They were amazed at how efficiently and speedily you were descending through the birth canal.

There was no time or space to register pain or fear or hesitation. Just this immense feeling of intensity. Swelling larger than life. It is such a strange sensation. I felt so out of control, yet so in control. Or more aptly, so trusting. Things were happening within my body at an almost incomprehensible speed yet I was flowing with it. We were a team, you and I.

And just as the sensation of gently resting on my own hands during earlier contractions was grounding and calming, so was squeezing your Daddy’s hands during the pushing stage, particularly when you crowned. The obstetrician said to me just before, remembering I had an epidural with my first, 'you will feel an intense burning when the head crowns.' I did feel that burning ring of fire sensation but I faced it head on- like a lion! I just roared and pushed through, my endorphins and energy levels were so high. And I remember the sensation of squeezing his hands in a way that mimicked the way I was bearing down to birth you gave me such a distinct sense of having something to focus on. I didn’t need to shout or yell anymore. His hands were a mandala.

With a few pushes you slid right out and Linda our obstetrician immediately popped you onto my chest. You weighed 3.010kg– impressive for a 38 weeker – but there was a fineness, a slightness to your physique and I could easily imagine you channelling out of me like a petite, slippery fish. Daddy filmed you in my arms, still beautifully wet and bloody, your arms and legs, your ears still downy. Although you were now out and in my arms, we really were still of the one body because the film captured the two of us blinking our eyes slowly but in complete, unknowing unison. You wrapped your small starfish hands around Daddy’s finger and soon after you fed from my breast, suckling for almost an hour.

Later, in our room in the maternity ward, holding you close to my cheek I whispered, my love for you runs deep.

My little one, already you have taught me what it is like to soar, what it is like to feel truly empowered and enlightened. And already your blossoming personality is showing that it is true to the way in which you came into the waking, walking world. At 38 weeks and with a labour close to five and a half hours, you were, and still are, impatient, eager. Yet you also possess, much like our birth experience, a sweet peacefulness.