I know this is a long story but I've just got to write it all down. Besides, I know that some of you are birth junkies and just love all the details, lol. That and I would have loved to have read a full birth story online before our labour.
And so that was how Chris found out he was/could be/might be a dad. He woke up at midnight to the hysterical sobs of his crazy wife ranting about doctors and hospitals and not being pregnant but there was a baby and the pain, the pain! Could I be miscarrying? ... So much for the candlelit dinner huh?
The next day I woke painfree and decided that I was going to override my emotions and believe the Doctor. He must be right. I was not pregnant. That evening Chris' cousins invited me to go pig hunting. About 16 of the farm kids were going too and everyone was SUPER excited to be showing Miss Towngirl what country fun really was. I couldn't refuse to go just because I was a crazy lady who thought she might have a baby to protect. Ha! Delusional. So I climbed on the back of a ute and proceeded to go bumping around 300 acres screaming out whenever I saw something with tusks. And then my pocket started vibrating. Chris was busy pointing a spotlight at a pig about to get it's throat slashed as I answered the phone.
“Hello?” I yelled.
“ Congratulations.” An Iranian accent said. “You are pregnant.”
The next evening Chris got his candlelit dinner (only it turned out to be dessert) and a card with a poem I had written for him:
I know that you don't know me yet,
And you think I'm very far away,
But Mummy and I have been giggling,
When we cuddle you each day.
I like to feel your strong hand on me,
As God makes me in Mummy's womb,
Before you know it, He will be all done!
I can't wait to see you soon.
God has promised me that you will teach me
How to play and how to run,
But most importantly, He tells me,
You're going to teach me about His Son!
I think I make Mummy tired,
But I'm so glad that she has you!
She's already confided in me,
Without my loving Daddy she wouldn't know what to do.
So I want to tell you that I love you,
You're already the greatest a baby ever had!
I like it where it's warm and cozy,
But I just can't wait to snuggle my dad!
And yes, he cried ;-)
So now let's fast forward a few months -
During the pregnancy I was blessed beyond my happiest dreams to be able to spend time with a birth-nutter. Yes, Charlotte, I just publicly called you a birth-nutter. It – Was – Great! Out went all the fears of childbirth, that most taboo of all subjects. I think the changing point came when Charlotte let me watch Rachie's birth. I had honestly never seen anything so beautiful (tearing up again here!). And the very fact that she allowed me to watch something so sacred really moved me and taught me that birth is meant to be enjoyed and shared. I started watching birth films and realised that birth is normal. More than normal it is a priviledge and a right of passage and the only time in our lives when we ever get to assist God in the miracle of giving life. By the time labour started I was not even the slightest bit nervous.
I would have loved to have had a home birth but as we were not in our own home I knew that couldn't happen. Plus I have this thing where my body doesn't do things it's meant to so, you know, I end up seeing specialists. If I could have had a home birth with two midwives and a hospital next door I would have done it. Instead, I began looking around Sydney for a nice place to birth. Tania, my Pastor's wife, recommended Hornsby Hospital. If you are reading this and you are a Sydneysider I cannot recommend that place enough. When I looked them up on the internet I found news articles about how they are forerunners in midwifery, that they don't get the doctors in for a normal birth, that they have a very low C-Section rate and that they're just plain NZ like. God is so good, I got in. Apparently they are normally booked out months in advance but there was a space just for us. When we went for the tour I fell in love. The birth units were so deliciously comfortable that they could have passed for hotel suites. And the bathrooms! Delirious sigh! I was sure that if I could have water I would be fine and these bathrooms had deeeeeeep spa baths and three shower hoses and everything I could ever want. The thing that sealed that deal was when our tour guide (a midwife) said to our group, “Now this is the bed but DO NOT get on it. It's here so you can shove it against a wall and throw the mattress on the floor.” Yay! All the other hospitals were so precious over whether or not you could take a CD into the room that they would have died hearing about matresses being thrown around!
About a week before I was due I was getting some prep done for a Ladies Meeting. It was to be The Event Of The Year. It had to be perfect. And a part of the Plan of Perfection was to have a giant poster painted on fabric. As I was in my nesting stage I was keen for anything that involved fabric so it was my project. There were still a few weeks until the meeting but on Tuesday afternoon Chris walked in to see me on the floor painting.
“Honey, what are you doing?”
“I'm doing my painting.”
“You have heaps of time. You should just do it later and get some rest.”
“No, I don't know why hon but I have to do it now. Right now.”
About two hours after the last paint stroke, at 7pm, our labour started. The first contractions were quite mild but already five minutes apart, so it didn't take long for me to know that this was the real thing. I'd had a few false labours but they had started with intense contractions that petered out, this was like there was some kind of build up going on. By the third contraction the curtains were closed, an instrumental CD was put on, the lights were dimmed and I was surrounded by pillows and cool cloths. The husband that had refused to attend a birth class seemed to magically know all the tricks. When I looked up at him, most puzzled, and asked him how he knew what to do, he puffed up all masculine-like and said gruffly, “Pfft! From working with the sheep on the farm.” And huffed out to the kitchen to get the powerade. To this day I have no idea how he knew what he did about birthing. Personally, I think he read a few books behind my back. Sheep just don't need soft music playing in the barn.
The first night was kind of ok. I walked around during the little breaks but found that the pain was huge if I was caught standing during a contraction (which is weird because later on I would stand through them, odd. Maybe my body was still adjusting) so I would literally race back to my comfy chair and kneel with my head on the back of the headrest until the peak was over. I had a great time chatting with Chris and would interuppt him randomly with, “Just a sec hon!” while I buried my face in the pillow and paced my breathing.
At about 10pm I was getting exhausted and asked the Lord if I could please have a rest. He gave me two hours, and I remember occassionally waking up just enough to feel the pain and my body squirming but not enough to open my eyes. At 11:40ish I woke up with a really painful contraction (“It's just a muscle working, it's just a muscle working...”) and rolled over onto all fours. I have a note in my book that says, “11:50 – third of the painful contractions”. From there my chart shows that on average they were about five minutes apart again, and by 12:07am there is a note that some were tailing. I remember the breaks getting shorter and shorter and finally I had to wake Chris. I didn't want to because I was still thinking that the birth would be some time soonish and that he would need his sleep. When the contractions were between 3-5 minutes apart Chris called the Birth Unit and told the midwife what was going on. She said that was fine and just to let them know when I was down to consistent 3 minutes apart. She also told me not to eat, except lollies and powerade. She spoke to me on the phone briefly and I had two contractions during our converation, during which I bit down on my lip, clamped my eyes shut and moved the mouth piece away so she wouldn't hear me groan. At the end of our conversation she said, “well we've been talking for about seven minutes and you seem fine so there can't be much happening.” I remember looking at the phone in stunned disbelief. Had she never heard of willpower? Bah humbug to her anyway.
And so it continued for all the rest of that night and into the next morning. Wednesday I can barely remember, although I know that I did a whole lot of sewing of the little favour bags for The Perfect Ladies Meeting. And a friend dropped by and wanted to stay for the excitement but my body REALLY didn't like the idea and shut down for half an hour. I remember thinking that that was a nice half hour. I walked up and down the long rock staircase outside for a bit too. I didn't like being outside, it felt wrong and alien. The sounds of the cars and the world moving threw me off. If I had been in NZ I think I would have enjoyed being outside in a favourite spot but here it was too different and impersonal.
That evening things went up another notch and I barely slept, I just remember trying to doze upright on mountains of pillows and waking up every few minutes to pain, and then dropping back into dozing again. I didn't want to sleep because I felt like I was getting caught off guard with the contractions but my body needed the rest. At about 3am we called the midwives again because the contractions were steadily 3-4 minutes apart and tailing. They recommended that I take a warm bath and keep going.
So we ran the bath, which was no where near deep enough. I would try to kneel during the contractions but my belly would come up out of the water so it defeated the purpose. But the heat was looooovely. At about this time some kinda hormone thing kicked in and I felt so lovey-dovey towards my poor hubby :-D He had scrubbed the bath and massaged me and got me everything I needed and was just such a knight-in-shining-armor. It was the best thing in the world to have him as my team-mate. It really bonded us in a special way and I earnt a lot of respect over those two days. I feel for women whose husbands do not get to watch, in awe, the way that a woman handles having her body broken to give life.
I thought I would never want to get out of the water but eventually I knew that I needed to be more upright, so I got out. Let me tell you, the first contraction out of the water almost killed me! God gave us water with it's anti-gravitational purposes for a reason and I propose that that reason was childbirth. Ha! I think I need to speak at the next TED convention for this discovery!
Chris went back to bed and I tried to nap on the pillows again. It didn't last long but I wanted Chris to sleep so I headed to the shower. Once I had the hot hot water on me I felt a million times better, but there was still pain coming that I wasn't prepared for and I knew I had to do something to hold it together. So the Lord told me to sing. I sung in the shower for about three hours that morning and it was my favourite part of the labour. I started with Amazing Grace. The strength that my body was using for the labour overflowed into my throat and made my voice stronger and more beautiful than ever before. I enjoyed singing songs that I have always loved but couldn't quite reach the high notes, now I was hitting every single one. Pitch perfect. There was no need to remember to sing from my diaphram because that was all my body could sing from. To start with I would suck in my breath when the peaks came and wait for it to pass while I knelt on all fours, but soon I realised that they hurt less if I held my note through the whole contraction. After I had sung every hymn in my repertoire I started again, sometimes finding a song with notes that helped me focus, so I would sing the chorus over and over. While I was in the shower I felt stretching inside of me. I don't know what exactly it was but to me it sure felt like my body was opening. It encouraged me to keep going, and it felt weird to feel sensations inside my body, in places that I never even knew I had nerves. Chris came into the bathroom part way through “Buelah Land” and told me emotionally that he had been listening to me from our room and that I sounded very very beautiful, and that he was proud of me. Then he left again to arrange for our pastor's wife, Tanya, to drop in more lollies and a hymn book (I needed more songs to sing!).
Eventually I got out of the shower and I knew I needed to do something else relaxing and enjoyable. Without even having to think about it I found myself in the kitchen getting out bags of flour and sachets of yeast. Yes, I started baking bread. Bread has long been my way of relaxing and being happy, kneading that warm, alive dough and daydreaming. I used to make bread as a teenager when I needed time alone (none of my siblings ever followed me to the kitchen – too much risk of getting asked to do the dishes) and I would look out the window at the trees and think of all the pretty and lovely things that came to mind. So it was only natural that breadmaking should be a part of our labour!
The massage ball is tucked into my back for quick use.
Kneading that bread was relaxing and gave me a connection to my absent family.
I kneaded much more than I needed to and Chris was surprised to come into the kitchen to find me moaning deeply and pounding the dough during contractions. The back pain had been going for a while by now so Chris got the big ball and ran it across the small of my back during the peaks. This helped a lot as it was the back pain that was starting to bother me. After I had rolled out the dough and made little pinwheels I sprinkled them with herbs so pungent I still remember the smell. There was nothing particularly pungent about them really, it was just that my senses were all kicked up a notch. I quite enjoyed that sense of feeling the world around me and being acutely aware of every little detail. I felt in control and full of purpose. And hungry. I hadn't eaten anything but lollies for the whole two days – thanks to the midwife – and to be honest I really didn't want to, you know, do anything, during the pushing so it seemed safe not to eat. But then that herby bread came out of the oven and just begged to be covered with a hot, salty poached egg. So I did what I thought I could get away with – half a pinwheel and a n egg. Someone had told me that the less I ate the better because once labour is in swing the stomach shuts down and lends all it's energy to the uterus, which makes perfect sense to me. That was the first and only time I've ever made a batch of bread and only eaten half of a piece.
Now I went downstairs to my room and leaned against a bench and groaned. I felt so connected to the world, so earthed, so magnificent. With each low sound I thought of the culture that I come from and the things that are built into me no matter where I go. In my minds eye I saw generations and generations of women before me who had taken this rite of passage and learnt of the gift that God gave us exclusively. I never once felt alone. I knew God was very close and that all the saints of heaven were watching breathlessly for the arrival of this precious new creation.
When Tania arrived I heard some voices and the rustle of lollies being exchanged. Then Chris invited her to peak in and I happened to look up and see her teary, joyful face. She was positively glowing. She asked quietly if she could sit with me for a little while and it was nice to have a bit of a distraction. She had brought her youngest daughter, Lydia, who was four at the time and I was worried that I might alarm her with my noises. Lydia is a little darling of a girl and was always so excited when I visited during the pregnancy. She wanted to feel the baby move and know how he got there and used to talk to him through my belly. Quite often he would be asleep but when she bounced into the room he would turn somersults at the sound of her voice, so it felt strangely normal for her to see a part of the labour. I got about five minutes of rest because of the distraction and I was ready to invite Tania to camp out in my room for the rest of my life to halt the pain! But I relaxed too quickly and the contractions started back stronger than ever. Chris needed to use the bathroom so he handed Tania his complex formula and stopwatch and said to time everything. Neither she nor I could make head nor tale of his elaborate columns and subtractions so she just wrote times and hoped for the best. I started to sway during the peaks, and Chris was putting boiling hot cloths on my back (he tried warm and I had to tell him – HOT. My hot, not your hot!). During a part when I started to weary a little I looked around at Tania and she was weeping. “It's just so beautiful.” She sniffed. “It really is so beautiful to see you there. You look lovely.”
It was about this time, in the middle of a particularly deep groan, a poor man happened to walk in on us. Chris was doing something upstairs and his friend wanted to ask a question but didn't know where to find him. He's a little hard of hearing so he knew people were around, the door was open, may as well just poke his head in and ask the question. He told me later that it was the worst, most awkward situation in his life. Apparently he couldn't take his eyes off me because he had never seen a person in so much pain before, and he just stood in the door staring.
“Do you need something?” Tania asked sharply.
“Um, I, I um...” Mind blank. Great timing. Finally he stammered “I – I need Chris.”
“He's upstairs.”
Poor guy ran with his tail between his legs. Haha! Can you imagine, he doesn't have a wife let alone a kid, and here he walks in on his mates wife while she's preparing to give birth! I still laugh everytime I think about it. At the time all I knew was that he was present but I was past being bothered by other people.
Tania crept out when Chris came back and soon we realised that we were down to three minutes apart for the contractions, or less. I wanted to keep going a little longer so I tried a hot shower again but the back pain was pure agony. The contractions were not the problem anymore, in fact they were nothing compared to the shots searing across my back. I wanted to get into the big tub at the hospital so I asked Chris to call and let them know that I was coming and to fill the bath.
To be continued...
