Maia's birth story

Maia's birth was much faster and less annoying than Chloë's. As the attending midwife said, "First babies don't just fall out." It had a bit of a run-up in medical advice and family politics, but otherwise was nice and uneventful.

At my 39-week appointment, the midwife, Amy, who had delivered Chloë, talked to me about being GPS positive, which you'll remember from last time meant I would need antibiotics during delivery to prevent possible serious infection in the baby. She checked me and found that I was 3 cm dilated, 80% effaced. "Your body's ready to have this baby," she said. She went on to say that since I was clearly on the cusp of active labor, it might start at any time and things were likely to happen very fast, and in that case the baby was at more risk of infection if I didn't get at least four hours' worth of antibiotics before she was born, and controlling the start of labor might be the best thing. She concluded, "So, should we strip your membranes?"

I was nonplussed, and wasn't excited about being induced before my due date. (I looked up stripping membranes later and it's not exactly induction, more encouragement, but I didn't know that at the time and she didn't explain.) Amy said that my next appointment should be scheduled for my due date and we'd talk more about induction then, if I actually made it to the appointment. It was clear she didn't think I would.

But I did; five days later, on April 26, I went in and talked to a different midwife, Heather. She, too, was concerned about GBS, though she wasn't as strongly in favor of induction as Amy had been. She said, "At this point I could go either way. In a week, we'll draw the line and say 'You have to have this baby now,' because outcomes get worse after 41 weeks. Right now, it's your decision." Eric and I discussed it and decided to schedule an induction for the next day.

I was ambivalent about this decision, since I've been inculcated in the natural-childbirth school of thought and also wasn't sure whether insurance would cover the induction itself (they did). Also nearly changed my mind when told we should be at the hospital at 6 AM. But we showed up almost on time, after having sent Chloë to spend the night with the mothers, and got checked in.

Getting registered and set up and settled in took some time (especially since the first nurse couldn't get an IV in me, instead "blowing up" my vein which gave me a horrible bruise for three weeks afterward) and I didn't see the midwife on duty, Sue, for an hour or more. She told my nurse, Midge, to get me started on antibiotics and then an hour after that I'd get Pitocin. "We'll increase it a little bit every half-hour until you're at about two to three minutes between contractions," she told me. "And in a while we'll break your water, and that should help get things going too."

So they started the IV at around 8, added the antibiotics at 9, and started Pitocin at 10. "How long was your first delivery?" Sue asked. I told her 20.5 hours. "Oh," she said. "Well, this will be much faster. We're aiming for before 6."

After that, there wasn't much to do for a while. We looked at the readout of my contractions, which were unnoticeable. Upon first getting hooked up, it turned out I was in fact having contractions at ten or twelve minutes apart already, but I wasn't feeling them, and didn't for a few hours. I shifted positions every so often and read or knitted. Eric played on his phone. We talked. We got me to the bathroom regularly, which was an ordeal since I had to bring the monitors and the IV stand with me. Midge came in to check on us a few times. "Is there anything I can get you?" she said. "Most of my patients are more needy than this; I feel like I'm neglecting you." I asked for some juice to make her feel useful.

Somewhere around 11, Sue came in to break my water. "I thought we wanted to avoid that because of GBS," I objected. I was also kind of creeped out by the whole idea, though I didn't say that part.

"You need at least four hours of antibiotics, and you've had two," she said. "I'm watching your progress, and I don't see you having this baby before one." She got out the water-breaking tool, saying ,"Some women don't like this because it makes the contractions come. But they have to come."

*WARNING: GRAPHIC GIRL CONTENT* The water-breaking tool was basically a long crochet hook, and she inserted it into me and started sawing back and forth, which really creeped me out. After what I thought must be longer than necessary, there was a little trickle between my legs, and she removed it, saying, "Fluid nice and clear. Good. It's just trickling now, but in a while you'll get up and there will be a gush," she told me. *END WARNING*

She left, and I started crying a bit because the procedure had made me feel awfully vulnerable and I was still ambivalent about all this intervention. On the other hand, delivery before dinnertime was a happy thought, and I recovered quickly and had lunch, such as it was. Since I had said I might think about an epidural, Sue had put me on a clear-liquids diet plan, so I had some juice and some sorbet and nothing else. (They provided broth and gelatin as well, but the broth was chicken and the gelatin was "varied flavors" flavored, so I passed on both.)

I started noticing the contractions, first more as involuntary motion in my muscles than anything else. Midge felt at the top of my bump and explained that she was feeling for the strength of the contraction. "Press your nose," she said. "That's a soft contraction. Your chin is a medium, and your forehead is a strong one." Then I started feeling a bit of pain. Then I started staring at the clock during them--ostensibly to time them, but really because the staring helped steady me. Midge asked how my pain level was. We'd discussed this at length when she first came in, and she made it clear that she was in favor of drugs but could happily help me do natural techniques if I wanted. We'd also discussed her pain scale, in the first actually helpful description of the 0-10 scale I've heard. "0 means no pain," she told me. "1 means it's there, but it's no big deal. 5 means you're antsy in your seat, starting to think you can't tolerate it. 10 is your arm being torn off. 5 is when we'll start talking about pain meds. But we can get something for you anytime you want it. Just tell me."

As I got up the scale from 0 to 3 and 4, I started, as I told Eric, thinking about the breathing techniques we'd learned in our birth education class last time--not necessarily relying on them, but thinking about them to distract myself. Then I started actually using them. Midge watched me through one and counseled me for the next-- "Slow, deep breath in for the count of five," she said, and counted for me. "Then slow breath out."

I was still going back and forth on the pain meds issue, but I was also starting to have trouble keeping control during contractions and wanting to vocalize--which is not the same thing as needing to scream, but is the step before it, and I remembered how awful it was with Chloë. So at this point, around 2:15, we asked Midge to call Sue to check my progress and help advise me. Sue came in and checked. "You're at about six centimeters, and your cervix is tissue-thin," she said. "I'm actually not going to leave the floor until your baby is born, just in case. But this is the perfect time for some medication if you want it." When I still couldn't decide, she suggested that I try some Nubain, "To get you through the worst of it," since I was coming up on transition (seven to ten centimeters), and I finally said yes.

Midge left with the order to get the Nubain, and so did Sue, after telling another nurse or technician (I don't remember) to get the delivery cart into the room, just in case. I lay in the bed, on my side, through another contraction or two, squeezing Eric's hand, and started vocalizing--an "Aaaaaaaah" sort of sound, fairly controlled, though it was getting more difficult. Now that I'd made the decision to get some pain relief, I was happy I'd done it, and complained about why Midge was taking so long.

Then, in the middle of another contraction, the pain turned into a sudden stuttering urgent need to push, and my focused vocalization turned into a wild uncontrollable wail that I probably couldn't reproduce now if I tried. Eric says when he heard it, he thought, "Okay: now an hour of the hard stuff." I was pushing, though I knew I probably shouldn't since no one else was in the room, and just as the contraction ended Sue and Midge and a couple of other people burst in.

"What changed?" Sue demanded.

"I'm actually feeling the need to push," I said, apologetically, because I knew I was supposed to have gone through transition first and what had happened to it?

"That’s what I thought," she said in satisfaction, as people started scurrying around. "We were at the end of the corridor, and I heard you and said, 'That's a baby coming.' Nothing else sounds like that. Let's get you on your back and into the stirrups."

"Nooooo," I said, because another contraction was starting and the idea of rolling over and putting my legs up was totally ridiculous. But Midge and whoever else was in the room--I totally don't remember--started moving me, getting me and the bed set up quickly and smoothly, and I cooperated because I knew dimly that they were right and I couldn't possibly deliver a baby with my legs shut tight like they were. *WARNING: GRAPHIC GIRL CONTENT* Also, I had had the classic I-need-to-poop feeling during the previous contraction and wasn't convinced I hadn't, and figured that if I had and I moved they could remove the pad from under me and clean it up. (They didn't.) *END WARNING*

"Remember, use the cries for efficient pushing," Eric said, remembering last time when I'd been told I was spending too much energy screaming and not enough pushing. I did my best, though it felt like everything was so urgent and happening so fast that I wasn't able to focus and figure out how.

That contraction ended and another started. "This is it!" Sue said encouragingly. "This is your baby coming!" I was panting and feeling a wild need to push with all my might. "Here it is!" Sue said. "Push!" I pushed, a long, long push, and felt a sort of weird scrambled feeling down there, and wasn't totally sure whether I had just delivered a baby or not, but was still feeling an adrenaline-fueled need to do something, sort of a panic but without the actual panic--"Keep pushing!" she said again, and I pushed, and felt the "ring of fire" start and expand, and then, all at once, Maia was born.

Sue held her up, limbs sprawling, weakly mewling. "Do you want her?" Midge said. I was still panting, my heart racing, feeling like I couldn't get a grasp on what had just happened to my body, and didn't answer right away, so she said again, "Do you want her?" I gasped, "Give me a minute." So Eric got to hold her first. In a bit, when I was enough calmer that I thought I could hold her without dropping her, she came to me, the umbilical cord slapping cold against my lower belly. She had a funny ridge on her head, sort of Klingon-like, and a burst blood vessel in her left eye. Sue said the ridge was normal, from pressures in the birth canal, and the blood vessel wasn't surprising. "She'll probably have a bruise later on because she went through so fast," she said. "It's a good thing I ordered the delivery cart just in case."

Maia was pretty alert, so we tried nursing right away. When she was done, the nurses/technicians took her and started doing the usual procedures--cleaning, weighing, administering medicines, and so on. Sue pulled on the cord, cut now, to get the placenta out. I could feel it and pushed to help get it out, though she hadn't asked me to. In the meantime, Midge was throwing away the Nubain, which she'd had in her hand when she ran in. "That was what we call a slam-dunk baby," Sue said, partly to us and partly to the nurses, as she was sewing me up (I got a second-degree tear, same as last time). "I've got two more births today and they're both going to be just like that!" It was less than half an hour after she'd pronounced me six centimeters.

One of the technicians helping take care of Maia turned out to be the same one who'd wanted to watch while I had Chloë. Her name is Monica, not Martha. Eric mentioned it, and she remembered us, and was pleased he remembered her. She and Midge went to help me out of the stirrups and sit up. "Chin to your chest," Monica instructed me. I obeyed, though I thought that was kind of odd, and Midge said, "No, no--no epidural. She can move."

"Oh, that's right!" Monica said, as they helped me up. "I always forget that about natural births."

Before long, Maia was measured and cleaned and wrapped up, and I begged for food (should I have another baby, I must remember to pack some snacks), and we all started feeling life slow down a little, though we weren't over the speed of the birth. Or at least Eric and I weren't. Maia was pretty nonchalant about the whole thing. "Here I am," she seemed to be saying. "You'll have to deal with me on my terms." She's still saying it, and we still are.

Chloë's birth story, part three

In honor of Chloë's upcoming first birthday, I thought I'd *cough* actually finish the birth story. Recap: I ate a cracker, my water broke, we drove to the hospital at our leisure, the nurses laughed at me, we napped, we walked for miles, things hurt, we moved around, things hurt more, I tried the Jacuzzi, I got to 8-9 cm at around noon...

...Time rolled on. Things hurt. I kept looking at the clock opposite my bed, thinking, this has to be over by nine or they're going to cart me off to surgery. "You're still not quite fully dilated," Amy said some time later, checking me again. "I can still see the cervical lip. Let me see--maybe we can push it out of the way--" She did things with her fingers. It hurt, but so did everything during a contraction--though between contractions I felt fine, other than exhausted. I didn't hear whether it worked. She walked in and out. So did Shannon occasionally. "Trust me, this baby won't flop out on the floor," Amy said, and I was disappointed.

You won't necessarily get a C-section if we go past twenty-four hours," Shannon said, when I said something about my deadline. "It's just that the risk of infection is greater, so we'll have to do a sepsis check on the baby." That didn't sound great, but I was glad to hear that I wasn't necessarily headed for the operating room if I never got to pushing stage, which is how it was starting to feel.
They kept taking my temperature and the baby's heartbeat every half hour. Eventually, around two or three, the pain started to change to a different sensation. "I'm starting to feel the urge to push," I said, and Amy, who had just walked in, said, "Hallelujah!"

It's hard to describe how it felt, and it still hurt, a lot, which I had understood wasn't supposed to happen. "Where are you feeling the pain?" Amy asked me again. "In the front or the back?"

"In the front," I said. I was trying to push, but the need to do so wasn't strong enough yet, and she said, "Don't push if you don't feel you need to." That made sense, but I was so tired, and everything hurt, and I just wanted to be done.
The need-to-push sensation grew, but the pain didn't abate. I continued to scream during contractions and rest between times. I felt absolutely no pain when I wasn't actively in a contraction, and I started to doze during those times.

Eventually Amy and Shannon were there together again and Amy said, "You're turning the energy of your contractions mostly to screaming, not to pushing." Shannon said to me, "Okay, Jenny. You're not allowed to scream anymore." I felt indignant. So they thought I was goofing off? Did they think I liked screaming? "When the next contraction comes, I want you to hold your breath and push until I say."

The next one came, and she said, "Take a breath!" I did, and bore down. "Let it out! Take a breath! And breathe."

This was now what we did every contraction. They had me try a birthing bar for my legs, which I hated, and then for my arms, which was okay for a short while. Every time I got the sensation that another contraction was starting, Shannon coached me: "Take a breath. Let it out. Take a breath. Breathe."

It really did help, and I worried less about the other mothers on the floor, but it tired me out even more. I had given up trying different positions and was now lying on my back, with Eric/Shannon/Amy/Martha holding my legs up during contractions. I felt vaguely guilty about making them do it, and about being on my back, which my books said is actually a lousy labor position, but I was so tired. So tired. I was still dozing between contractions, and closing my eyes during them, and starting to think that maybe surgery wasn't going to be so bad after all.

Then, during a contraction, I fell asleep.

It was only for a fraction of a second. Then I woke up, disoriented, and didn't understand where I was or why I was in pain or why people were shouting at me and holding me. I cried out, and kicked away the hands holding my legs, and the contraction petered to a halt, and Eric said frantically, "What? What?" By then I was remembering where I was, and I tried to say "I was dreaming," meaning I had fallen asleep, but I was still so disoriented it didn't come out straight.

"She's hallucinating," he groaned. He moved to my side and said, "What's your name?"

"Jenny."

"Where are we?"

"At the hospital." I said it brightly, realizing that he was trying to check my lucidity and wanting to tell him that I was okay now, but figured it was easier just to answer him. Probably I just sounded insane.

"Why are we here?"

"To have our baby."

"Okay," he said, and stumbled backward.

"Hey!" I said, and Martha moved to steady him.

"I'm okay," he said. "Not enough food or drink..."

He got trail mix and some of my water. The next contraction started, and I kept my eyes open. Knowing Eric was worried about me--and being worried about him--helped me focus, and I stayed awake.

An hour or so passed, and I was still pushing. "You're doing okay," Amy said, during a sort of team meeting between contractions. "But the baby's heartbeat isn't doing as well as it was. If you can't get this done soon, I'm going to have to call [the obstetrician associated with the midwife group], and we don't want that." I took it as sort of an insult and sort of a threat--"You're doing lousy and you better shape up or we'll shape you up"--but it did renew my energy, a little.

"You're making progress," Shannon said encouragingly, during some contraction. "Look, you can reach in and feel where she is." I declined, because I was afraid if it was too far, I'd get discouraged. Shannon seemed disappointed. Sometime later she was checking me visually and said, "Your daughter has a lot of hair."

I said, "Oh," faintly, and "Okay." Meaning, "Okay, maybe I really am making progress."

More pushing, more holding my breath. Once I tried pushing when the urge had passed, because I was crazy with impatience to get this over with, but Amy just said, "Huh," in a bemused sort of tone and it didn't seem to help.

I couldn't feel myself making any sort of progress (just getting thirstier--I kept asking Eric to feed me ice). But finally, finally, Amy said, "Get the cart," and I knew this meant the end was near. "Wait until you really, really have to push," Amy said before the next contraction. I did, expecting to be done, but the contraction ended like all the others.

"She's taking it nice and slow," Amy said, which I wasn't, at least not intentionally. But a couple more contractions later, I could actually feel something happening; I pushed frantically, and felt more pressure (though not more pain) between my legs, and felt something tear; and Shannon said, "Look, Jenny, look! Your daughter's being born!"

I picked up my head and looked as Amy said, "Stop, I need to get the cord from around her neck." There was a funny purplish-looking blob half-hanging out from between my legs, her face indiscernible, the umbilical cord being unwound from her neck. That's her, I told myself. That's my baby. I actually got her out. And then Shannon said, "Well, push her out!" and I did, and she came out in a bumpy awkward rush, and was born.

It was 5:31 PM. I don't remember whether she was crying, though she probably was or I would have worried. I remember thinking she looked like a bag of purple eels. I remember turning very cold, very quickly. (I still had no hospital gown on.) Shannon did Chloë's vitals and wiped her off and wrapped her up and put a little cap on her. She placed her on my chest, tummy-down, and told me, "This is home."

In the meantime Amy was working on the last stage of labor, the placenta. "Give me a little push," she told me. I did, and it must have been enough because I don't remember her asking me again. She ordered some Pitocin put into my IV because I was bleeding more than she liked. My temperature was also elevated, so I was put on antibiotics. Chloë was perfectly healthy and they had no concerns about her.

My feet were put up on stirrups and Amy started stitching up my tear. "No wonder it took so long," she said to Shannon as she worked. "The baby came out face-up." I'd read about this: it's called occiput posterior, and means that the widest part of the head goes through the birth canal instead of the narrowest. Chloë was born with a little bruise on her forehead, like a unicorn with the horn removed. "I can't believe she had no back labor."

In the meantime I had complained of cold, and someone had piled five warmed-up hospital blankets on me. I asked to see the placenta, and Amy showed me the amniotic sac as well, which was very cool (says the biology major), a huge translucent sac with a big tear in it. Eric went to tell his family the news. Chloë lay on my chest, her face toward the window, her little eyes squinched shut because it was evening and the window faced west, growing pinker as she became hours instead of minutes old.

Then suddenly nobody was in the room except Shannon, and she was telling me things that I could hardly stay awake to listen to. Chloë was still on my chest, and she stayed there when Shannon mercifully stopped talking. "Is it okay if I sleep with her like this?" I said, because I was about to do so involuntarily. I hadn't slept, except for that forty-minute nap, in about thirty-six hours.

"Well," she said, and said something hedging about how back was best and she might roll off. "But you'll feel it if she moves, and you'll wake up."

She left me, and then Chloë and I slept together, a new baby and a new mother sleeping together in the setting sun, home.

Chloë's birth story, part 1

Seeing as it's been, um, eight weeks, I thought I'd start working on keeping my promise and put up Chloë's birth story. It will be in several parts, because I love useless detail, but there will be no quiz, so feel free to tune out if you don't want to hear about how crackers, wet shorts, a bean bag, a Jacuzzi, and what Eric keeps calling hallucinations lead up to our overlord's birth. (There will be some graphic content, as well, so be warned.)

Onward:

The evening of July 22nd, 2009, I was lying on the couch, reading. I had finally gotten the last answers I needed on my paperwork for my maternity leave that day and planned to turn it in the next day. I also planned to buy a R.I.N.D.S. rig the next day since I knew time was running low, though I still firmly believed that, having had the world's most boring pregnancy so far, I would continue to be solidly normal by being a few days late.

I wanted a snack, so I retrieved the box of Wheat Thins Fiber Selects Garden Vegetable (they taste better than they're titled). I lay down again, bit into a cracker, and felt an odd sensation between my legs. Sort of a sudden spurt of liquid sensation. Not exactly like peeing my pants (which Jackie warned us was what most "I think my water broke" situations turned out to be), but I could see how it could be confused with that. So I put down the box of what I will forever call my water-breaking crackers and went upstairs.

"What do you think?" I said to Eric, once I'd confirmed that my underwear was quite a bit bloodier than a simple pants-wetting incident would have called for.

"Huh," he said. We looked at each other.

Another spurt of fluid exited me, also tinged with pink. "Huh," I said. "I should probably call the midwives."

The number the midwives had given me was for an answering service; the lady who answered promised that someone would call right back. I went and laid on the bed with Eric and waited.

"Hello," I said when the midwife on call, Sandy, called me, and then, idiotically, "How are you?"

"You had me paged," she reminded me.

"I think my water broke," I said.

"How far along are you?" she said.

"Thirty-nine weeks."

"Well, it may be nothing; or sometimes the baby kicks just right and a little comes out," she said. ("She wet her pants," I could hear her thinking.)

"Tell her there was blood," Eric said, and I did so.

"Oh," she said, her tone changing. "Well, let's have you come to the hospital and be examined. When do you think you'll be here?"

"Maybe half an hour?" I guessed.

I hung up and Eric went into action: going straight for the mostly-packed bag, retrieving the list of what was left and packing them. I was getting more spurts of liquid, so I sat on the toilet. "We may not be staying," I said, though I didn't really believe it.

"It's better to have it and not need it," Eric said as he continued to shovel things into the suitcase.

We weren't ready to leave until nearly an hour had passed; I'd called at nine, and it was almost ten. Eric brought the suitcase down to the car; I dashed upstairs to change my pad again just when I was putting on my shoes, and then we were off.

This may be the last time we ride in this car as a childless couple, I thought in car on the way to the hospital (still not wanting to commit to the idea that I was going to the hospital to stay). I'm really glad the mothers gave us these waterproof pads, I thought (shifting around on the one I'd put down on my seat).

"Ugh," I said when we arrived at the hospital, looking down at my shorts, which were now soaked. But there was nothing to be done, so we entered. Another pregnant woman was ahead of us, being registered. While we waited, I noticed a couple of people in the waiting area notice my shorts. I watched a few droplets run down my leg to my sock.

When the lady at the registration desk noticed me, she gave me the appropriate form without even asking why I was here and shanghaied a nurse to take me upstairs. (The other pregnant woman got a wheelchair. I wasn't offered one, which was fine since I was in no pain and didn't really want to sit down in my wet shorts anyway. I wonder if the woman at registration had similar thoughts.)

That nurse, who turned out to be the supervisor just about to go home for the evening, took us to one of the triage rooms. "We'll examine you in here," she said, pulling a hospital gown from a cupboard. She started to hand me the gown, then really looked at me. "Oh!" she said. "We don't need to examine you. Let's get you a room."

She led us further down the hall, toward the nurses' station. They saw me and started to laugh. "I was going to put her in triage until I noticed her clothes," our nurse confessed. "It's kind of obvious, isn't it?" said one of the ones at the desk. I was kind of annoyed that while I had avoided being laughed at for coming for a false alarm, I hadn't gotten away with not being laughed at.

The room had a pull-out couch, a DVD player, a small fridge, an uncomfortable (the nurse said) bed, and a bathroom with a Jacuzzi tub. I changed into the hospital gown and was helped onto the bed (which wasn't really that bad) over a waterproof pad. Our nurse introduced us to the current nurse on duty, who was sick and was quickly replaced with our first real nurse, Stephanie.

"First we need to get you hooked up to the monitors," she said. I wasn't excited about the monitors to start with, having read that electronic fetal monitoring has made absolutely no difference to birthing outcomes except for potentially contributing to the C-section rate, but I knew that the hospital required some initial monitoring and the midwives had told me it wouldn't need to be done continuously after that.

So I spread the gown and moved my hips so that Stephanie could get the two belts on me. "You have such a cute belly!" she said. "Do you even have any stretch marks?"

"I don't know," I said vaguely, though I did.

"Let me look." She did, and (mothers of the world, do not hate me) pronounced, "You don't have a single one!"

The two belts (one to monitor contractions, one to monitor fetal heartbeat) did their thing. The baby looked perfect and I was actually having occasional contractions, though I couldn't feel them. Sandy came in and said to me, "I'm really sorry your water broke so early. You're the last person I wanted this to happen to." She explained that I was under a twenty-four-hour deadline, and that if my contractions didn't start progressing very soon, she was going to have to start Pitocin on me. I was completely unenthusiastic about this, and she said she could give me a couple of hours, including a little bit of sleep. So Eric curled up on the couch, and me in the bed, and we did our best to sleep.

Week 38 visit

Eric came with me to this week's midwife appointment--he figures he might want to start meeting the people who are going to be in the delivery room with us, plus we'd meant to talk to them about this whole "birth plan" business (and the back-and-forth I keep getting from them about the specter of induction), but we totally forgot that last part.

Instead, I got my first cervical check. This involves the midwife--the student, Jennifer, in this case--donning a pair of gloves and *WARNING: GRAPHIC GIRL CONTENT* putting her hand inside my you-know-what to see how many fingers she can put through the cervical opening, and how thick it is. Jackie had described the cervix as being like a turtleneck; it can be tightly closed and all thick and bunched up, as is normal, or it can be open and thin, which is what will happen when I'm ready for labor. After some pushing and leaning and telling me to put my fists under my hips to tilt me enough for her to get to the right position, *END WARNING* she determined I'm one centimeter dilated and somewhere around 25ish percent effaced (she didn't sound very confident), -3 to -2 station (baseline is -4). In other words, not very far along at all. But it's kind of nice to know that something actually is happening.

"You're just about where I'd expect a new mother to be," she told me, *BEGIN WARNING* pulling off her blood-tinged gloves, "where not much is going to happen for another couple of weeks. You might spot a little tonight," she added thoughtfully as she disposed of the gloves. "The cervix is so vascularized at this point." *END WARNING* The exam was not actually painful, but definitely uncomfortable, and Eric looked kind of alarmed.

Everything else looks fine, baby seems to be occiput anterior (her back to my front, which is what we want), and I got them to give me a doctor's note to excuse me from the jury duty summons I got for August 10. We're figuring that's not going to work out so well, unless they want the twelfth member of the jury to be a bleeding, sore, hormonally unbalanced new mother, and the thirteenth member of the jury to be a tiny evil overlord.

Childbirth class IV: Death or Serious Injury May Result

The last childbirth class was mainly on safety and postpartum issues. Not much instruction on how to actually take care of a newborn, though we got handouts. I was slightly disappointed, but I admit that the title of the class doesn't specify anything about what to do once the kid is out and we've got other resources for that.

We started out with a ridiculously boring video on carseat safety. There were a couple of good points in it, but most of the video was shots of various kinds of carseats and booster seats and how they should be installed in various kinds of vehicles, with some crash test scenes for variety and scaremongering, and I've forgotten most of the information already. We did get a handout for a program at Toledo Hospital for free checks of our carseats.

We went over CPR and poisoning briefly (biggest poisoning incidence of children in the US: iron poisoning from children's vitamins) and general baby-proofing. Then we moved into what babies will look like when they come out. The answer is apparently Bill Cosby's assessment, "like a lizard." They'll have coneheads and puffy faces, tiny squinty eyes, covered with acne and vernix (cheesy "cream" on the skin) and lanugo (body hair), cross-eyed, with blue hands and feet, swollen breast tissue (male or female), and birthmarks and rashes everywhere. Supposedly we will think they're cute anyway.

We went over post-birth procedures for the baby: erythromycin in the eyes, shots of vitamin K and potentially hepatitis B vaccine, measuring weight and circumference and height, taking footprints, checking reflexes to assess gestational age, Apgars. We discussed things to expect for new mothers: looking pregnant still, engorgement, pain and bleeding, hemorrhoids, potential PPD, urination and sweating like you wouldn't believe. Jackie was enthusiastic about the products used to treat most of these issues, particularly witch hazel and Dermaplast, and dressed up in a hospital gown, wig, and hospital-issue underwear to demonstrate how they were used.

She discussed breastfeeding for a bit, enumerating all the benefits (not only will it make the baby healthier and smarter and the mother thinner and happier, it will rotate your tires and keep your cat from vomiting on the carpet) and dispensing advice on pumps. She also discussed "babyland," the magical realm in which you spend hours gazing at your newborn while visitors drop by and clean your house for you. She also said that the average mother is interrupted 84 times in a two-day hospital stay, including nurse and doctor visits.

The class ended with review in the form of Jeopardy! with some Family Feud thrown in, the expectant mothers versus the support people. Eric is in Columbus, so I was assiduously taking notes the entire class, but I put them aside for the game. Even so I managed to steal the winning 20 points with "lochia." (Probably the support people had blocked this out of their memories, even though Jackie had been telling us about it a scant twenty minutes ago. I'd like to block it out of mine, but sadly that will not be possible for long.)

One of our classmates hadn't made it because she delivered last Monday, but she brought her baby in for the last few minutes. She wouldn’t say much about how labor went, which seems like a bad sign, but then she'd had to have a C-section and she did seem happy about having the baby out of her (she was very uncomfortable at the previous sessions). She also volunteered (without knowing what we'd been discussing that session) that "breastfeeding slims you down" and Jackie was pleased.

We filled out class evaluations in exchange for our last two handouts ("What to Bring to the Hospital" and "What to Do if the Laboring Mother Panics"), and when I turned mine in Jackie said, "Was your husband not able to come because I cancelled last week? I'm so sorry! I always really liked his comments. Tell him he can call me if he has any questions." This may or may not have been wise of her, but I appreciated it. I think the class was a good idea, overall. We learned some things and got to ask questions, and the breathing exercises were actually useful (and for this last class we tried out labor positions first, which was kind of interesting and kind of appalling). We'll see in approximately five weeks how useful it turns out to have been.

Symptoms they don't tell you about

I haven't had many pregnancy symptoms so far. Some *WARNING: GRAPHIC GIRL CONTENT* breast soreness and, er, slight leakiness other places, and perhaps a heightened awareness that there are working parts down there, *END GRAPHIC GIRL CONTENT* but no excessive tiredness or nausea as I'd been warned to expect, especially by my poor friend Courtney, who was alerted to the thought it might be a good idea to take a pregnancy test when she started throwing up after breakfast for no reason at about five weeks.

My newfound preoccupation with cooking may or may not be a symptom, since I've also been feeling kind of deprived of my usual cooking outlet--Eric hasn't been going to his normal weekly gaming night, so I don't get a cooking night to myself anymore. I may have detected a new one, though: excessive weepiness when listening to sentimental music. "Christmas Eve and Other Stories," specifically, by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. I like this CD a lot, but the story parts are deliberately, unsubtly sentimental. In previous years that hasn't bothered me; but I put the CD in my car recently and started tearing up as soon as I got to the first story bit ("Ornament"). It was extremely annoying, especially since I was on my way to work at the time.

Desire to buy things might be another symptom...although I'm not feeling any desire to buy baby stuff specifically, so maybe that's just a symptom of the Christmas season. This will be our last babyless Christmas (unless something happens). Fa-la-la-la-la.