Welcome Jun!: The birth story

From Jun's first days

Full disclosure: this picture was taken before discharge from the hospital. I didn't have a nice sweater in labor and delivery.

Eric and I would joke that it would be very convenient if labor would start early Saturday morning so I could sleep during early labor, Jun would be born by the evening, and we could have Almondine's chocolate almond croissants for breakfast Sunday morning. Not to give away the punch line, but we may have used up our convenient baby luck early on. Let's hope that wasn't the last of it.

Saturday morning at about 2:30 am, I woke up to what could have been labor or really bad indigestion. I tried to get back to sleep, and was able to get some rest until 4:30. Eric went to draw a bath, but the stopper on the tub chose that moment to stop working, so there was some quick handy-man action in the early hours of the morning. I soaked for about an hour, and got a little more rest, but the contractions were becoming increasingly intense.

We waited until the respectable hour of 7 to wake our birth team, made up of our neighbor, Carmen, and our doula, Jessie, but told them to take their time coming over. Carmen made it up at about 9, and not long after, I started to pull inward and just want dark and quiet. Carmen began to time contractions, but we didn't know what we were doing, so we would time contractions based on when I felt a wave of pain come and then pass, when what we were supposed to be timing was the actual tightening across my abdomen. We called the midwife because by noon, we thought my contractions had reached the 4 minutes apart for 1 minute for an hour rule-of-thumb. Turns out when measured correctly, I wasn't there yet.

As we checked in with Jessie on the phone, she kept talking about early labor and how I was progressing through early labor. By now the contractions were strong enough and required enough of my concentration, that the idea of only being in early labor was terrifying. I didn't voice my concern, but I really felt like if I was still in early labor, a stage where I should still be able to distract myself from laboring, I wasn't going to make it through this birth without an epidural.

As the storm raged outside, Jessie and Carmen kept checking in with our midwife, Jess, while Eric did his best to keep me comfortable. Finally at 4:30, Jess arranged to meet us at the hospital in 5:30. I think I might have started to get a little panicked at this stage because I didn't want to get in a car, I wanted to walk. The though of sitting down, even for a 5 minute car ride, seemed like the worst idea ever. I was terrified that I was going get to the hospital and be at 4 cm, and be stuck there for the rest of the day, but at the same time, I was finding myself becoming more open to the idea of pain relief.

We met Jess in triage. After the internal exam, Jess gave me the best news of the day, I was already 8 cm dilated and 100% effaced. I got rushed right into a labor and delivery room. I knew I could make it now, I was almost there.

Jess let me know that when she broke my water, I might lose a centimeter, but before she had a chance to manually break my water, it broke itself, all over Jessie's foot. It was a childbirth movie-moment, like a water balloon hitting the floor. After my water broke, labor changed. Rather than long, peaked contractions, these were shorter and created a much stronger urge to push. The baby was still high up, so Jess asked me to try and labor down. She guided me through my breathing and with each contraction, I could focus on not pushing and letting the contraction push the baby down. Jess also gave me more to focus on. At 7:30, I could start pushing. The clock turned, I got back in bed and could start using the contractions to push.

After 3 contractions, the baby was moving down the birth canal. Eric could see the scalp. We were close! But then my contractions slowed, eventually dropping down to one every 6 or 7 minutes. Nipple stimulation got a couple more contractions going, but even that stopped working. Since I would need a small does of pitocin after delivery anyway, I was given my does early. One contraction and Jun was crowning, the next contraction her head and shoulders were out. Jess told me to reach down and grab my baby and I pulled her the rest of the way out and up onto my chest. At 8:47 Saturday evening, Jun Marie Elene joined our family, and Sunday morning, we had a bag full of chocolate almond croissants.