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.

Of walking and books

Chloë is so close to walking. She routinely clings to our legs and, when we move away, stands there, unsupported. Lately she's been clapping while she stands there, so the balance has got to be there. She'll also walk clinging only to my shirt or my hand. Not by herself so far, but it's going to be soon.

Her favorite book these days is Bath Time!, by Sandra Boynton. I can recite it for you if you like. It's a floating bath-safe book, with pictures of a pig getting a bath, and on the last page the pig's nose is positioned over a squeaker. I've been reading this to her for months, squeaking the nose whenever I got to the end, but in the last couple of weeks she's really gotten the concept--and started squeaking it herself. Then she tried squeaking his nose on the other pages he's on. What a smart girl. She'll be running the world in no time.

Well on her way to being a teenager

Chloë ate an entire pizza last night.

Well, an entire baby pizza. We had homemade pizza, and I decided that instead of trying to cut off bits of ours, as we've done before, we'd just give Chloë her own. So she got a tiny pizza, about the size of an English muffin. She had refused her baby-food corn/green beans/rice medley at lunch, and I suggested that we spread it on the pizza. "Turn her the other way when I'm putting this on her food," Eric said. We put down a little tomato sauce, the baby food, and a sprinkling of mozzarella. Then we baked it for five minutes, let it cool, cut it up, and let her have it. She devoured it. Then she wanted more, so I ended up cutting off bits of my pizza for her too. Next time she'll get a bigger one.

Update

Since I haven't written lately, here's the latest news in Overlord-ville:

Chloë is loving this whole feeding-herself-with-a-spoon thing. We need to fill it up for her, and she realizes this (though she did her valiant best to fill it herself last night out of the baby food jar and the bowl of peas, with different but ultimately futile results each time). So dinner consists of Eric or me filling up her spoon and Chloë depositing the contents in her mouth. Then she points the spoon imperiously at one of us to demand more. She's so satisfied with herself. I love it.

I've taken her outside to play in the grass a bit the last few days. Mostly this consists of pulling up grass and watching me watch her try to eat it, or handing it to me gravely and waiting until I put it down, then pulling up and handing me more.

We took her to gaming on Monday, but discovered that we can't do that anymore, at least for a while. She consented to sit and watch for a short time, but then she wanted to play. Then she wanted to crawl, and then she wanted someone to play with. Her henchmen attempted to placate her, but she was only temporarily mollified. She wants to do her own thing now, thank you very much, and will accept no substitutes.

Her newest favorite occupation is climbing the stairs. We keep the gate up most of the time, and when it's up she climbs the two steps to the broad landing and stays there, caught in a playpen of her own making because she hasn't figured out how to climb down yet. When we take the gate down, she zooms up the staircase. She climbs with her right knee and her left foot. When we went to visit her grandma, it didn't take her long to discover, joy of joys, a carpeted staircase.

She's also preoccupied with making clicking noises with her tongue. She discovered it a while ago, but she seems to have taken a new interest in it. Especially when she's just finished a meal (food or R.I.N.D.S.), she'll start clicking away, grinning around her open mouth. At dinner Eric and I get into it too, and we'll all three click at each other like ancient African hunters.

Also, she's extremely cute. Did I mention the cuteness?


"Do not make the mistake of thinking that flowers indicate weakness."

Big girl

The last couple of days Chloë has seemed...old. Eric has been bewailing her upcoming birthday, saying, "She's not a baby any longer!" I have poo-poohed this, saying she's definitely still a baby until she can walk, and as far as I'm concerned until she can tell me herself that she's not. But just in the last few days I've noticed how very much she's grown. How she has goals of her own, and opinions, and how she manages to tell me what she wants, even though she doesn't have words. How she's patient with me when I lug her places, but impatient when she can see I've cut up some strawberries but all she's got in front of her is crummy bread. How she understands when I tell her "no shoes" (and cries because of it) or when I start playing Pattycake or This Little Piggy with her, even if she's not actually interested. What a big girl she is. I still think she's still definitely a baby, but her toddler self is starting to peek through.

Status report: Month 11

As year one of Project L.E.O.: Phase 2 nears its end, I'm reflecting on how different my life was before Chloë was born. When the house was quieter, cleaner, less full of baby laughter. When the kitchen and living room weren't littered with toys and books and random kitchen implements. When we could put small things within three feet of the floor. And when someone wasn't always watching me.



Eleven months is pretty awesome. She laughs a lot, especially on the Daddycoaster and when she's upside down. She also laughs when things simply strike her as funny, which is new and charming. She's so communicative, especially for someone who can't actually talk yet--though I haven't yet felt that she needs to. She's observant and curious, looking and moving everywhere--not quite walking yet, but she's starting to think about it. She's let go and supported herself on her own two legs and nothing else for a few seconds at a time. Then she eases down into a squat, or falls over, and doesn't seem to think much of it. But Eric and I always catch our breath, wondering if this will be the time she decides this new way of moving is for keeps.

Separation anxiety is still in full swing, though it's not crippling. There are still times when she cries in mingled rage and grief when I put her down, but from all reports she gets over it very quickly when I leave for work in the morning (including today, when she stayed with Grandpa Snyder and Nana because Eric is in Columbus) and she's happy to wrestle with her daddy even when I'm there sometimes.

She loves her music; Eric's been playing it for her when they're home together and she sways and bounces along. She's got a Baby Einstein video (the astronomy one) and is mainly interested in it for the faces, but she listens to the music as she's playing with her toys. She's getting a lot of mileage out of her toys with buttons...as well as anything around the house with buttons. She's also getting a big kick out of the concept of "in." I finally understand the purpose of the toy aquarium Holly gave her. And she likes her books--especially turning the pages.


Bath time has suddenly become a bit of a trial. She screams and protests when we put her in the water now, for no good reason we can tell. She can still be soothed by her rubber duck and her Sandra Boynton bath book, but bathtime isn't as fun as it used to be. I'm hoping this phase passes quickly.

Food is still exciting and awesome. She loves fruit, particularly the raspberries from our patch outside the back door, and now when we go back and forth from the house to the car she says "Na da?" and gestures toward them. But she also eats her veggies.


(Hey, anything that keeps her occupied when we're making dinner is good.)

She's ahead of her age--or at least ahead of the advice we've been reading for her age--on food. She's got six teeth, which we brush every night, but we don't think it's the teeth doing it. She's decidedly lukewarm about baby food these days, but she loves anything she can feed herself: fruit, soft veggies, scrambled egg, tofu, pasta, beans, bread, crackers, rice, cheese. She loves getting food from one of our plates...and has started feeding herself, a little. We started letting her use a spoon a couple of weeks ago, gingerly, cringing at the mess. There was a mess.


But, quickly, she got the idea, and if we load up her spoon she can now get it in her mouth with no trouble. She attempts to get the food onto the spoon, too, but her idea of doing that is to stick it in the container of food, which doesn't usually get her much, especially if she's holding the spoon upside down. Which she usually is. She holds her sippy cup upside down most of the time, too.


She's showing signs of being a lefty. I'm thrilled.

"Da" is no longer the only syllable in her vocabulary, which also pleases me. "Ma ma ma" has shown up, as have "Na na" and "Ba" and, one evening when I said it first, "Eh." She doesn't have any actual words yet, but sometimes she releases the R.I.N.D.S. and looks up at me and says "Da?" and I know she's asking something, but I haven't figured it out yet. She does know what "no" means, especially "no shoes" and "no biting." And she's got intonations when she babbles. Eric and I will both babble back to her, and we'll have a whole conversation that way as if she's really asking questions and we're really answering: "Da da da." "Da da da?" "Da!" "Da da da da..." She'll gesture to things she wants, like her sippy when we've removed it, or to the other container of food when she's tired of the one we're currently feeding her. She pushes her food tray away when she's done eating. She reaches up to be held and squirms away to be put down. Who needs words?

She's still very chubby, though not quite as much as before, we think. Her feet are starting to show some hints of arches, and her hands are plump and strong. Her hair has grown out enough that it's seriously starting to get in her eyes. Eric bought some cute little hairclips, and her Nana gave her a hairband today for a little Pebbles-style ponytail. I can't decide whether she's more adorable with her hair up or down.


She is into EVERYTHING. No drawer or cabinet is safe. No DVD or book goes unmolested. Her instinct to put everything in her mouth has abated a little, which is a relief, especially since I often find her with a bit of plastic or tissue in her hand. If I ask her, most of the time she deposits it in my hand, which is nicer than prying it out from between her teeth. The house is mostly babyproofed, though we're not militant about it, and we have baby gates up, but she still finds things to explore. She's our little adventurer, ready to take on the world.

I feel pretty, oh so pretty

First, the overlord says welcome! to newly-born baby Kenneth, a possible future consort. She advises him to enjoy the rubber duck--it's delicious.

Miss Chloë has decided that an overlord should be well-groomed, and has therefore started practicing. We brush her six teeth every night (or occasionally morning if she falls asleep before we get to that point), and although she tends to cover the lower two with her tongue she enjoys it. Lately she's started taking the brush and trying to brush herself. Then she brushes mine. Then Eric's. She does the same thing with her brush and comb; her hair is now lying flat and getting long enough to get in her eyes, so I've been brushing it to the side. She grins and squinches her eyes closed when I do it, then grabs for the brush and smooths it over her head. Usually she either uses the back of the brush or, if she accidentally applies the correct side to her head, makes it all stand up wildly. Luckily she's naturally beautiful, so it doesn't much matter. So far she's been trying to brush my teeth with it, but I expect before long my hair will be getting roughed up too.

We took her for some studio pictures on Sunday. She was a little grumpy and clingy, but consented to smile long enough to get some good pictures. She also stole a rubber duck. (Actually, that's not true. We stole it. We all went outside for a family picture and the photographer's duck was the only thing keeping her happy, and then when we went inside the duck got grabbed and stuffed into the diaper bag with everything else and we forgot to take it out again.) She's been fondling it ever since. We plan to return it (after a good washing), but I'm a little concerned that she's so pleased about this theft. I want her to think bigger, more ambitious. Ostriches at least.