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August 27, 2003
Matt and I knew our conception due date was May 26th because, as sad as this may sound, it was the only time we “tried” during the entire cycle. However, my first ultrasound gave me a due date of June 5th. So, we modified the conception due date from May 26th to the 30th, and my midwives kept that date and June 5th in my chart for liability purposes should I deliver early or late. In retrospect, the long due date window helped me avoid my tendency to fixate, and I managed to cope with being overdue much better as a result.
Shortly after I learned I was pregnant, we heard from so many family members and friends saying they wanted to be in town for the birth, a lovely notion as many of our loved ones live far away. The more we thought about it, however, the more we realized that many of these people were expecting to stay with us. Although our home is more than suitable for guests, I began to seriously stress out at the thought of having a house full of people, no matter how helpful their intentions, at the tail end of my pregnancy. I wanted so much to create a calm, loving environment in which to welcome my baby to the world. I wanted to trust my body and my baby to birth naturally and free of stress. So about six months before the birth, I told everyone who wanted to come that we were so pleased they wanted to come, really and truly, but we couldn’t have a house full of people surrounding the birth. We couldn’t play favorites with family, and so we chose to draw a line in the sand. Needless to say, I broke some hearts and angered many people whom I love, but it was the right decision for me at the time and I have no regrets.
After months of back and forth about my parents coming to Seattle for the birth (and not staying with us), my mom decided to come all the way from Barbados on May 27th. With nothing, nada, zippo in the contraction department two weeks later, I was beginning to feel very anxious. Until about Day 12 of her visit, I was very patient and focused on getting little errands done and everything ready. But by Monday morning (June 10), I folded under the pressure. Matt’s mother, Shari, arrived the night before, and I was starting to really feel the heat, especially because both mothers were planning to leave the following Saturday (June 15).
Despite having wanted not to intervene in any way, to trust my body to do its job, I just couldn’t take the pressure of our mothers’ presence, and the thought of them having to leave before our baby was born was heartbreaking. It was certainly not a situation I had envisioned, but that Monday morning I called my midwife Wendy and, in a tearful plea, asked her what I could do besides walk three miles a day, try to coax my sick husband into sex, etc. In her calming and loving way, Wendy recommended I call Neil Conaty, her favorite pre-natal acupuncturist, and also suggested that I could take castor oil. I thanked her profusely and immediately made an appointment for four p.m. that afternoon to have my first acupuncture treatment.
Later that morning, my mom came over (from the hotel in which she was staying) and we went for our ritual walk in Ravenna Creek—we walked at least three miles a day during her entire visit. Shortly after our return, Shari showed up (from the apartment she was house sitting) and the three of us girls went to lunch with Matt at Portage Bay Café. During lunch we realized that we had just enough time to catch the matinee of The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood downtown before my appointment. So, off we went for a somewhat sappy movie that was quite difficult to watch sitting between my two “moms.” Shari and I had both read the book and had been talking about seeing the movie together for a year or so.
Afterwards, we practically had to run to make it to my acupuncture appointment on time on Capitol Hill. While I was led back to a small, dimly-lit room, my moms sat down and chatted in the ugly and confining waiting room. Mr. Conaty, a friendly-looking, bearded man with a pleasant voice and a calm manner, asked me about my pregnancy and proceeded to stick a bunch of tiny needles in certain pressure points around my hands, arms, legs, feet, shoulders and back. He got me comfortable with pillows and soft lighting and then left me to “relax” for about 20 minutes. He returned several times to check on the needles, move them around, and set up an electrical device that made them vibrate. He remarked that my threshold for pain was very high as he turned the wattage up on the electrical vibrator several times asking, “Are you sure this doesn’t hurt yet?”
As we were wrapping up, I asked him what kind of results he had seen. He said that some women go into labor after several hours or days, for others nothing, and one woman’s water broke right there on his table. So, I had hope.
Once we got home, my mom and I walked to Bartell Drugs to get some castor oil while Matt and his mom made a lovely dinner of albacore steaks, rice and salad. Before going to bed that evening at around 10:30 p.m., I downed half the bottle of castor oil in some orange juice (not nearly as bad as I thought it would be), and crawled into my fluffy, down bed in only a t-shirt and my underwear. At 11:30 p.m., I awoke to a pleasant warmth covering my legs and quickly jumped out of bed (as quickly as an overdue pregnant woman can jump). I knew my water had broken, and my first thought was that I didn’t want it to destroy my feather bed. Go figure. I went to the bathroom and watched in amazement as the toilet filled to quite a high level with my fluid. It didn’t seem to be subsiding a great deal, so I changed my underwear and put on a maxi pad.
Excitedly, I called both Wendy and my doula, Alissa, to let them know that the birth was imminent, and both of them told me to try to get some sleep and call again if contractions started and were 10 minutes apart. Much to my surprise, contractions started fairly soon afterward, and boy did I wish I hadn’t take that castor oil. I was in the bathroom A LOT. I did manage to get some sleep in between the contractions, but I remember waking up to look at my alarm clock with each one. By about three a.m., they were five to seven minutes apart. So, I got up and called Wendy and Alissa again. We agreed that if things kept progressing, we would all meet at the birth center at 6:30 a.m.
I finally woke Matt up. He didn’t seem surprised. Hell, he didn’t seem like much of anything at that time of day—he’s not someone who deals well until he’s had coffee and a shower. So, he got up and made coffee while I went to the bathroom yet again. As I was sitting on the toilet, I heard a rough dragging noise outside. Shortly after it died down, I started cracking up as I realized Matt was taking the garbage to the curb because Tuesdays are garbage days in our neighborhood. How very practical of him… Sitting together in silence at our dining room table, I drank some lemon tea and ate some toast with butter and honey while he nursed several cups of coffee. There was a sense of quiet excitement and anticipation in the air, and we both seemed to enjoy that time alone together before things intensified.
At about five a.m., the contractions started coming about two to three minutes apart with an aftershocky one about 30 seconds following. By the time my mother arrived, I’d been on the floor in our nursery, rolling on the birth ball, for at least an hour. I spoke to both Wendy and Alissa again at that point, and they each listened to me through a contraction, confirming that it was time to come to the birth center.
Throughout my pregnancy, women described contractions to me: “like cramps, only worse,” “horrible—there’s no way to describe it,” etc. But, I thought they were manageable and organic in the way they built up slowly, peaked and then receded. I felt confident as they progressed that I could handle them no matter how difficult they became, and it never occurred to me that I might need pain medication. I felt more convinced during my labor that epidurals and drugs of any kind were something I did not want. I wanted to truly experience all the sensations and help my body do what it was meant to do by not fighting or numbing it.
In my prenatal yoga classes, I found the meditation and humming to be extremely effective ways of helping me focus on my breathing, and I used that technique as my rhythm during labor. I thought I was humming, but others told me I sang through my deep breathing with each contraction. As a longtime childbirth educator, my mother seemed a little distressed that I wasn’t using her preferred breathing method (more of a Lamaze technique), distracting myself with patterned breathing rather than letting the contractions flow through me and concentrating on allowing that to happen. She mentioned several times throughout the day that she thought I might need to breathe a different way, but I just continued with what was working for me.
When we arrived at the birth center, Wendy, Melissa (my midwife’s assistant), and Alissa were readying the room and asking me what I’d like to do to encourage contractions. After some convincing, they talked me into going for a walk in the Arboretum, and Alissa, Matt, my mother and I set off. It was dawn and the neighborhood was quiet and the air crisp. During the contractions, I would stop for a minute or two and lean over on my knees, but by the middle of our walk I needed to hang from Matt’s shoulders to make it through them. When we got back from our walk, they talked me into lying on my side on the bed, which greatly encouraged the contractions. So much so that it scared me, and they had to coax me into staying in that position. Somehow Matt and I managed to nap between the contractions on the bed for about an hour.
When we awoke, Wendy asked us if we would mind going home for a while. She felt my contractions were still in a manageable place, and unfortunately she needed to visit another woman in labor and was not allowed to leave us at the birth center unattended. I asked them to check me internally first, just to be on the safe side, and I surprised myself that I didn’t feel discouraged to learn I was still only three centimeters at 11:00 a.m. (almost 10 hours since labor had begun). There was some concern about the light green tinge in my amniotic fluid, which I was amused to discover kept dripping out of me all day long. If the baby passed any more meconium we would have to go to the hospital to be near the “big” suction machine when our baby was finally born.
We piled into our Vanagon (Alissa included) and went back home for a while. That period is pretty foggy. I know Matt got some work done, and my mom watched a movie while Alissa and I labored in the nursery on the floor. Alissa made me some tea and toast, and I managed to eat it all between contractions. She encouraged me to go for another walk in the neighborhood, and Matt and I set out down the street. Contractions were getting stronger and stronger, and by the time we were almost to the end of the block I had to turn around. It seemed to take forever to get home, and at one point I had to drop to my hands and knees in the grass along the street to manage.
Somehow, I was able to nap on my side on the sofa between contractions for a bit, which also intensified things. Alissa also got some sleep on the floor in the nursery. During my nap, our neighbor Mary Hotchkiss knocked at the door and actually came in. We had asked her to feed Ricker and Ernest in our absence, and she was wondering why we were home. Once I woke up, I labored in the living room and paced through the house for another long while until finally deciding that I wanted to go back to the birth center. We had a terrible drive at around 3:30 due to traffic and Matt trying unsuccessfully to take some back roads. I was on my hands and knees in the back of the van with Alissa by my side and Iz (Hawaiian music) on the car stereo.
When we made it back to the birth center, I decided I was ready to try the tub. Much to my dismay, the hot water stalled my contractions and made me, well, hot. However, it did lessen the intensity quite a bit, and it qualified as a nice rest until I had to get out and cool off. At that point, I sat on the rocking chair and was again surprised to realize that I loved it. I usually hate rocking chairs! But, they put a pillow behind my back, and I was quite comfy. Everyone kind of sat there staring at me while I slipped in and out of consciousness during each contraction, which were about a minute apart and a minute long by that point. I had several mini-dreams during this period, but the only one that stands out is one in which I spoke to Neil Diamond—I can’t recall what I said.
While I was rocking away in the chair, Matt decided to eat some of his stinky salmon jerky, and the smell was so foul that I made him leave the room. When he came back in, I asked someone to give him his toothbrush because I knew I would still be able to smell it on his breath. Yuck.
Again, I asked Wendy to check me, and much to everyone’s dismay I had not progressed AT ALL. Still three centimeters at four p.m., good grief! No more green tinge though, which was a relief.
So, we started talking about natural interventions like nipple stimulation, which wasn’t my first choice because it sounded rather painful and like a huge hassle, and other homeopathic things. I took two homeopathic remedies to encourage contractions, and got in the tub for a few minutes. Alissa fed me some yogurt and commented that I was tensing my legs during each contraction. She put her hands on my hips and helped me relax them during the next one, and it helped immensely.
While I was in the tub, my mom started asking if they ever encouraged more forced breathing. The midwives said they thought I was handling the contractions beautifully, and that they didn’t push any kind of breathing method. I don’t know what was said after that, but my mother decided to leave for a bit. I think she was a little worried about my failure to progress and the midwives calm demeanor. So, she asked Matt to drive her home so she could get her car. From what I could hear, Matt reluctantly agreed to take her and hurry back.
Shortly after they left, I decided to get out of the tub and go to the bathroom, and it was at that point that all hell broke loose. A contraction started building when I was at the sink, and it didn’t peak and calm back down to a break. It just kept getting stronger and stronger. Intermittently, I felt my uterus contract as if expelling the baby, but I could tell that I wasn’t dilated yet because the poor thing just felt smashed up against my cervix. This was very disconcerting and I panicked. I remember being with Wendy and then with Melissa and then with Alissa, all separately, as I dealt with this long contraction. Wendy encouraged me to give in to the urge to push, saying that the pressure of the baby’s head on my cervix would encourage dilation, but it felt VERY uncomfortable. I had a hard time staying focused on my breathing, and the lack of a break for minutes upon minutes wore me out quickly. I was perched against the sink, in a rather tense, mid-squat for what seemed like an hour, and eventually Wendy encouraged me to try sitting on the toilet.
Wendy and Melissa needed to do an internal exam, and I’m sure the look on my face convinced them to just do it with me sitting on the toilet. After both of them tried to get a sense of what was going on inside, they worked very hard at convincing me to move to the bed. It sounded like an impossible feat, but somehow I managed to do it. Right about that time, Matt came back into the room with a look of terror on his face seeing me in such a new and very exhausted state.
Once back on the bed with Matt, Wendy started to inform us of her concern. She told us she couldn’t be certain if what she was feeling was a butt or a head and that she feared if it were a head, she thought it felt like the plates of the baby’s skull were overlapping. Also, she told us that I was still only four cm. She recommended two things: first we needed to get a second opinion from a near-by midwife and second we needed to consider going to the hospital so I could get an epidural, some Pitocin, and a rest. At that point, I just wanted to have a healthy baby, and the notion that she may have turned in the last hour didn’t make sense to me. So, I was rather fixated on the overlapping plates of her skull scenario, and therefore thought the hospital sounded like a good plan.
Wendy enlisted the help of Suzy Meyers, who Wendy had apprenticed with following her training at the Seattle Midwifery School and respected very much. I remember Suzy’s face and her smiling presence so clearly—she seemed to glow as she hovered above me feeling my progress. I cannot recall her exact words, but they went something like this, “Wendy, that’s definitely a head, and Melissa, you’re complete. You’re ready to push my dear.” A whoop went up in the room, and everyone’s eyes filled with happy tears. I looked at Matt as he was pulling off his glasses to wipe his eyes, and briefly thought about how good I felt. In retrospect, I now realize that I didn’t have a contraction while I was on the bed after the bathroom. I was having a much-deserved lull between the dilation contractions and the pushing ones.
That lull went on for about 15 more minutes, and I managed to get setup on the birthing stool with Matt sitting behind me and a pillow between us. I vividly remember where everyone was sitting and a sense of needing to perform during this stage. Wendy commented that it was sunset, and our baby was about to come into the world. Alissa set out to get me to drink more water and eat something, but I was very reluctant. She asked if I wanted one of the protein popsicles we brought with us, and it was the first thing I’d been eager to eat all day. But alas, they’d forgotten to put them in the freezer, and she ended up bringing me lukewarm protein “juice” instead. And then my mom arrived in a worried frenzy, having gotten lost on her way back, shortly after I started pushing.
Pushing was not what I anticipated. Well, put another way, it didn’t measure up to what other people told me it would feel like. I’d heard women say that the pushing stage was gratifying because you could work with the contractions and feel the progress. Whatever! I don’t think there’s a strong enough word for the pain I felt during pushing. It was true misery: extreme pain with nowhere to go but forward, out, finished. Burning, stretching, red-hot stinging…
I pushed on the birth stool half-heartedly when the first contractions began. It was difficult to release into the sensation, and frankly, it was scary, the anticipation of pain. I kept apologizing for peeing on the floor, and for the first time all day I was happy I’d taken the castor oil because at least I didn’t have anything left in that department. After about 45 minutes, everyone convinced me to try a different position, and I managed to move to my hands and knees on the bed between contractions. After one contraction in that position, I knew it wasn’t for me. Everyone then scrambled to help me get comfortable on my side. I put my head on Matt’s lap, a pillow between my legs, and a cold washcloth on my forehead. During the contractions, my mother held my left leg up while I pushed. With each contraction, the whole group encouraged me to push once, twice, one more time, that’s it. Sometimes I would manage an extra push and feel like I’d gone above and beyond, and it felt like progress. Wendy helped me pass the baby’s head through a difficult place by curling my back towards my knees and tucking my tailbone during a few contractions, and I could feel her immediately start to descend more easily.
After another 30 minutes or so and several more contractions, Wendy and Melissa told me they could just make out the baby’s head. “You’re almost crowning,” they said. Meanwhile, I was thinking, “What! Almost? The baby’s head isn’t out yet? It feels like it’s been sticking out for an hour.” That’s what the stretching felt like. I guess it was that bulging phenomenon we’d learned about in our birth class. Despite my protests (only because I didn’t want to make any unnecessary movements), everyone helped me remove my shirt so they could quickly place the baby against my skin once she finally came out. I remember looking into Wendy and Alissa’s eyes, concentrating and pushing with the help of their comforting faces. Alissa, amid her duties as photographer, went about making the room ready for our baby’s arrival by lighting candles, dimming the room, turning up the heat, and playing soft music.
Finally, the baby’s head was peaking through on every contraction, and then it was out. Her cord was around her neck, and Melissa tried unsuccessfully to pull it over. Wendy jumped in at that point and determinately yanked the tight cord over the baby’s head. They suctioned her nose and mouth carefully to avoid meconium inhalation while I waited for another contraction to help me push the rest of her out. I think it took two or three more to get her all the way out. I remember Wendy pulling while I pushed because the baby’s body was stuck as a result of her arm positioning. She had both hands up near her face, in that folded sleeping position, and it made her shoulders tricky to get through. Finally she was born at 9:22 p.m., in a gush of fluids and meconium (which she released right as she emerged), without a single tear or scratch. They immediately placed her on my chest, all warm and confused and crying and perfect.
Matt and I looked at each other, and for a moment no one knew what to say. Our baby was beautiful but she looked nothing like us. In fact, she looked downright brown, and I felt this weird sense of panic as if someone was going to say, “She must be the milkman’s baby.” Obviously, there was no reason for me to feel that way, but I was delirious at that point. Quickly and before our eyes, our baby began to pinken and let us know she was ours—what a set of pipes. She seemed so tiny and alert, and we shared a brief few moments of quiet time together on the bed. After the cord had finished pulsating, Wendy asked who wanted to cut it, and I knew my mother should do it. It was a profound moment: one mother separating her daughter and grandchild, making them three generations.
And then, I had to push again. And push and push and push. I ended up having a mild hemorrhage, and was forced to move back onto the birth stool. Matt took the baby, now wrapped tightly in warm blankets, over to the rocking chair, and I watched them from the stool. There was a lot of blood, and the midwives placed a metal bowl under me to collect all the blood that seemed to pour out of my body. Eventually, they decided to give me a shot of Pitocin to encourage the afterbirth delivery and a shot of Methergin to discourage bleeding. A few minutes later, I pushed the placenta out, and Wendy meticulously checked to make sure it was intact.
While I was pushing, my mom and Alissa made the bed with fresh sheets and fluid absorbent pads (for my bleeding), and we were all able to crawl in and cuddle for a while. Alissa helped me get the baby latched on, and I was so grateful for my months of agonizing over breastfeeding books because I felt like I actually knew what I was doing. The baby took right to it, and seemed very satisfied to be suckling and close to me. Smelling and kissing her head, looking over every inch of her body, smiling at Matt and my mother: I had done it. I was a mother, and my baby was perfect.
Sometime shortly thereafter, my brother, Rob, and Shari arrived. We all took turns holding the baby, and then it was time to get ready to go home. Somewhere in there, I remember eating crispy oatmeal cookies (Barbara’s brand), and they made me ravenously hungry. But, we didn’t really have anything left to eat, and it was almost midnight. So, I waited until the following morning to eat. While Wendy took my vitals and talked to me about the next few hours, Shari and Matt dressed the baby, in the Zutano outfit that Jennifer gave me as a shower gift, and I remember watching them struggle with her diaper. I packed a small container of bag balm, as I had read that it’s a good idea to lube up the bottom for those first few meconium poops, and I reminded them to put some on her. I also packed the diaper service’s folding manual, and when the two of them looked bewildered at the sight of the cloth diaper I directed them to it.
Wendy sat on the edge of the bed and talked to me while Alissa and Melissa (the “issa” name thing never got confusing, as surprising as that seems) cleaned the tub and the other areas of the birth room that needed disinfecting. Wendy showed me my placenta and talked to me about why gestational age would forever be a mystery: the baby was covered in vernix which is usually evidence of an early delivery, but the placenta had a lot of calcification spots, which is evidence of deterioration and a post-term delivery. We’ll never know I guess. Also, Wendy told me that my placenta was very short in diameter but extremely thick, something they’d never seen before. She then went through many of the first night issues with me and asked where we were planning to put the baby to sleep. When I told her the baby would be sleeping with us, she recommended we spread out our pillows and put her up between our heads. She also told me to call her if anything out of the ordinary happened (she mentioned a few examples of what “out of the ordinary” might entail, but I’ve since forgotten them).
And then, it was time to go home. I was so wobbly on my feet as they helped me to the car, and I remember how odd it seemed to be leaving when no one was in the waiting room or on the street, how it had been daylight and bustling when we arrived. We ended up sitting in the Vanagon, letting out the straps of the car seat for our unusually long baby. The little Morgan weighed in at 9lbs exactly and was 22 inches long. When we measured her a week later, she was 23 inches long, and they determined that they probably measured her incorrectly after the birth. On the way home, I remember thinking about our bed and how I hadn’t changed the sheets since my water broke in them. Normally, I’m kind of freaky about a clean bed, but that night and for many months following I didn’t care at all. When we got home, we immediately climbed into our now dry sheets and fell deeply asleep as a new family. It was an amazing feeling to be holding and smelling and touching my baby next to me in my bed just a day after I’d spent all night watching the clock for contractions. It seemed as if a lifetime had passed between that yesterday and today, as if I had entered into a new, mother’s lifetime.
I can barely recall our first day except for the phone calls announcing our daughter’s birth… with no name. It wasn’t until the following evening at dinner with Matt’s mother, my mother, and my brother that Matt and I announced her name to the family. Shortly after she was born, I asked him if he liked Ella, and he said he was too overwhelmed to think about it just then. I asked him again in the morning, and he said he still couldn’t think about it yet. I was going crazy not having a name for this baby! Finally, just before dinner, he whispered, “What about Ella Claire?” and I said, “That’s what I’ve been thinking all along.”
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